The exemplary courage, faith, hope and love by Mary of any other name or place matters more than any other factor in birthing, nurturing, inspiring, motivating and educating new generations for better and more fruitful lives. We believe and dare suggest the attributes of Mary among many mothers of African heritage is why so many African-Americans were able to persevere and overcome conditions and environments (including denigrated shelters and unhealthy diets) in which many other historically enslaved human groupings (such as Arwak natives that greeted Columbus) virtually perished.  Artistic depiction on  right by famed artist Alex Beujour is a reminder for us to remember the MOTHER and HIM that lifted us UP to generate goodness, not more famous fashions, foolishness and follies that denigrate rather than integrate humanity.

Our hope with this website is to encourage African American genealogical research of more courageous generations in family lineages such as (but not limited to)  patriots in American Revolution for national independence and Civil War for personal liberty. And, yes for believers of African or any other heritage, … life, liberty and pursuit of happiness in Africa matters as a matter of our faith that whatever we do for “the least of us” we do unto the Christ we believe in.  For non-believers, such beliefs and caring does not matter.  As the wondrous self-conceived “Whoopie Goldberg” recently remarked, “I am only interested in what goes on in my house.”  Yes, but Black men outside her house and trying to look into her soul might find it helpful to counsel regarding the inspirational biblical story about Esther that is applicable to not only enlightened, educated and privileged Jewish princesses born in New York City, but also Black women who admire and emulate them for their courage, … and superior knowledge.

By contrast, we believe purple people mentalities often exhibited for one-line laughs are not products of ignorance but rather a clear absence of the faith that some of us believe in.  Whoopie is not hostile to the faithful, but simply keeps them at arms length away from her life. She is a very bright woman that might be helpful in telling White women admirers some daily truths many of them have never heard or considered such as Black men like Adam Clayton Powell insisting on inclusion of Title Nine in the U.S. Civil Rights Act that Barry Goldwater and most other conservatives voted against. Tell them what she saw and heard in the past two Olympic games with thousands of American women excelling because somebody cared 40 years ago. Dr. King loved sports but he did not live to see the outpouring of goodness by women of African, Asian and European heritage in the house that Jack Kennedy helped build.  We believe the need for sites and topics such as this are needed because so many youth of African heritage are being bombarded with propaganda contrary to the facts of human history and experiences in Africa, Asia, the Americas, Caribbean and Europe. The airwaves of radio and television are increasingly filled with talking heads challenging given truths.

Famed talking head pundits like Sean Hannity possibly descended from or related to below Union Army veteran has been known to welcome unenlightened and uneducated pretentious African-Americans onto his show for one-line sound-bites such as: “I did not own any slaves, so why do poverty pimps like Conyers, Jackson and Sharpton think my tax dollars should be used to pay them reparations for people who died a long time ago.”  As expected, his declarative statement of fact and fiction normally leaves most paid guests defenseless and speechless to respond. He then offers his opinion and ideology that America is a land of personal responsibility, free enterprise and opportunities, …and if anything is wrong it is a person’s own fault (citing Ronald Reagan that “it is not the responsibility of government to to ensure equal results).”

“Alright, I invited you on the show to give you a chance to explain why so many African-Americans pay attention to the poverty pimps talking about slavery in a country that is free, coast to coast and north to south?”  And then based on that premise of legitimate discussion and more or less response that Jesse Jackson does not represent opinions of all Black folks, … Hannity initiates a negative opinion of African-Americans who dare speak ill about the legacy of slavery and those persons who did own or fight for the right to be owners of slaves as chattel property (such as his Alabama born wife’s ancestors. There were some 1164 rebel young men named Rhodes).

Imagine what would happen if he said, “I did not kill any Jews, so why should my money be used to pay reparations for what Nazi murderers did?”  Rather than such stupid bigotry, his fame is based on rebel rousing yelps about the “the least of us.” 

After his disastrous attempt to ambush Reverend Jeremiah Wright, he is now enlightened enough to not try argue bible verses with an enlightened and educated Black preacher.Like most other fox hounds, Hannity never served in the military and did not know what happens when you initiate a camera ready firefight against a real marine-always a marine like Jeremiah Wright. Most African-Americans enlightened in the faith were not surprised by Wright’s right hooks that literally knocked Hannity out cold before rescue by his co-host for a more liberal point of questioning.

If Hannity expected to confront an ignorant Hollywood characterized ghetto preacher or pious mouthed Black imitator of Jesuit priests, … he obviously did not know very much about Black history, the Black church or its champions in the faith dating back long before Hannity’s ancestors got off the boat. Trick questions like do you want to go back to Africa would be answered “yes, have you been there?  I have friends in Ghana and South Africa, and go often and try to spread the gospel as Christ asked us.”  Africa is big continent, with a lot of nations, cities and towns and there is a lot to see and do there. 

Hannity once had an African-American “wanabe” from Los Angeles who claimed to be a friend and owner of his own business, some sort of janitorial establishment that employs several inner city Blacks. Enough said, to make Hannity’s point that America is a land of opportunity without affirmative action but his lowly educated guest added the comment that caught Sean by surprise “Blacks should stop listening people like Jesse Jackson and trying to go to college but need to do like me in establishing their own business.”  The self-same uneducated Black friend of Sean Hannity went on to explain that his hero was Booker T. Washington who believed the best opportunity for Black folks was by learning a trade and starting a business, not going to college. Hannity merely smiled.

The late Senator Patrick Moynihan once noted  that “while all people are entitled to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts.”   Indeed, the world was recently stunned into near hysteria to hear Iranian President declare his ridiculous opinion that Nazi Germany did not murder millions of Jews in Europe (applicable to common factoring of lies such as that imposed by many bastions of historical bigotry). Other facts are the Jewish Holocaust occurred less than a generation after Ottoman Turks murdered at least a million Armenians; and two generations after Belgium and other capitalized colonials in the name of private enterprise virtually decimated the Congo population; and three generations after the KKK was organized in America to specifically murder and otherwise terrorize four million ex-slaves in the former confederate states.  So, do facts matter in the formulation of public opinions and ideologies?  You betcha! Facts do matter unless enlightened and educated people remain silent in the face of ideological attacks against TRUTH.

Who white-washes away facts and substitutes same with fallacies or make-believe views?  Image below of chairperson of the Texas Board of Education exemplifies the battle still being waged by racist reasoning that slavery was not so big and bad as many of us seem to believe based on facts we have seen and heard.  Yet, we must never forget that most people are influenced by beliefs, not facts.People believe what they want to believe about whoever it pleases them to dislike, distrust, disdain or even hate.  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Persian: محمود احمدی‌نژاد, Mahmūd Ahmadinezhād [mæhˈmuːd(-e)

Texas mentalities came into existence, not as commonwealth values like Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and most of the other original states (excepting South Carolina and Georgia), … but as a republic of privately owned empires in land, slaves cotton, and cattle guarded and protected by armed might paid for with bonuses, land, cotton and slaves, not taxes and tithes such as Virginia. Most of these men of military means and methods came from Louisiana and Tennessee such as Davy Crockett and were welcome and happy to be Mexicans until Mexico declared slavery illegal in 1834. Texans talked about it and by year 1836 were in full rebellion to stop Mexican nonsense about taking away their slaves.  General Santa Anna’s attack on the Alamo to disarm and put down the rebellion killed Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and everyone else excepting the Black man enslaved to the rebel commander and allowed to quickly migrate further south into Mexico. 

But, Texans were tough and under Sam Houston won the victory of rebellion, called themselves a tax-free republic until 1848 when Mexicans decided again to end the rebellion. Texans begged for help by interference of the United States government and  President Polk with gold fever in California chose to annex California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and even the badlands of Oklahoma to keep them safe and sane. But, within five years of becoming an American state by affirmative action of the United States Government of the people, for the people and by the people, …

… the new Texas talk among slave owners was about the new republican party formed by Chicago big-shots suggesting slave-owners ought not be able to take slaves into California and other states west of the Mississippi River for mining gold, growing food or “king cotton”.  African-Americans who were intelligent and close enough to overhear and understand the talk going on in Texas, … were generally pleased at the prospect of not being  linked up again for a long march to California. 

Many, if not most, Texas adult slaves in the 1850s had the very unpleasant experiences of being chained neck to neck in those long marches to Texas from places alike Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia and South Carolina, and even Georgia and Florida in the Seminole trail of tears that poured for years.  The joke among many African-American men for a century afterwards was that of a deputy sheriff looking for runaway slaves in the north insisting his state’s right in northern courts pursuant the fugitive slave act for return of both slaves and shackle chains as valuable private property.  Slave owners and their offspring before, during and after the Civil War firmly believed they had not only a God-given right pursuant the bible and even the Pope and King of England; but also a constitutional right beginning in 1785 to own inferior people as property classified as three-fifths of a person for purposes of affording them representation in the United States census and Congress. Any threats, promises or actions to change or challenge these state’s rights were both immoral and constitutionally illegal, in their view.  The greatest orators in the U.S. Senate pronouncingr state’s rights to have and hold slaves (including expansion into non-slave territories of the west) were: South Carolina’s Senator John C. Calhoun, Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis and Louisiana Senator Judah P. Benjamin.

For rich men of the north without slaves, it was unfair competition to compete with another man using slaves for his labor and comfort.  And, there were even a lot of poor White men in the south, such as future President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee who very much resented the unfair advantages held by owners (including cousins) of large tracts of land and slaves in Tennessee and Texas. A lot of preparatory talk occurred in Texas prior to the election and inauguration of Abraham Lincoln in 1860.  Talk had it that Lincoln wanted to take away their liberties as a White man to take his slaves wherever and whenever they wanted.  Most though very rich were not well educated and articulate like Virginian and South Carolinians who argued about constitutional rights, and too arrogant for counsel by the aged Sam Houston to not rebel against the United States government.  But, Texas did rebel and literally privatized and hired the pro-slavery Cherokee Indians like William Holland Thomas to do most of their fighting to defend their notional state’s rights to own slaves and to rebel. 

Cherokee in the American Civil War

For the most recent example of Texas type talk and thoughts, … the slave trade should be taught to school children as the triangular trade albeit the facts that Great Britain embargoed it in year 1807, followed by the United States Congress and President Jefferson in 1808, and the rest of Europe soon after. Americans fought and lost a war at sea with Great Britain because of determined infractions by private enterprise slave runners to run the British blockade.  Texas non-educators that dominate and determine which text-books children should be allowed to read Ignored facts that domestic slave breeding in states like Virginia for export to other states during period from 1808 to 1861, … far surpassed the numbers of slaves previously imported from Africa and Caribbean. To be sure about it, Texas was not a state long enough  before the Civil War to be guilty of the most godless practice in the ante-bellum institution of chattel slavery, … induced, expanded and sustained by forced breeding of humans as was done with animals in the name of scientific agriculture.  But, no doubt Texas slave-owners sought and bought big strong “bucks and bitches” from slave breeding states like Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and yes, Missouri to supplement their “negro stock.”

Many enslaved women were forced (studded) or otherwise encouraged by owners and overseers to have sex and baby slaves until unable to do so or early death whichever came first. Indeed, Black male slaves with desired characteristics of size, strength and obedience in the early 19th century were often chosen to be studs and given extra ordinary benefits, fancy clothing and privileges (light duties such as carriage drivers).  And, generally speaking Black women did not love such men who impregnated them and vice-versa, and  referred to such studs as “my baby’s father” a term still heard commonly among  ghetto welfare mothers. The big musical hit of Porgy and Bess tells the tragedy of such events after slavery when the hapless Porgy is hauled off by a White sheriff, and she goes away with a stud named “Sportin Life.”   So-called libertarians who complain about federal government interference have no idea as to extent of their state and local government interjection in the name of law into lives of “the least of us past.”

Even bigots ought to be able to read and understand census data confirming the numbers of slaves in the slave holding states at least tripled after the triangular trade was shut-down by American, British and European navies, and many Africans such as the Gold Coast Chiefs in the 1830s that signed agreements with the British describing such trade as  “an abomination that ought not be tolerated.”

The Civil War was not about slavery but the Ten Commandments of State’s Rights?

1.  Rights of states like Virginia to demand free states like Ohio allow bounty hunters to bear arms to find, kidnap and return fugitive slaves to slave states per fugitive slave act of 1791. Rights of Virginians to establish and expand slavery into new lands of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. Rights of slave states to require annual registration and payment of related court fees by free colored persons or arrest and return to slave status.  Conflict with personal liberty laws by states like Pennsylvania.

 2. Rights of states like Alabama to continue importation into Mobile Bay of slaves from Africa and the Caribbean contrary to the British 1807 ban against the slave trade and U.S. law of 1808. Prompted War of 1812 between Great Britain and United States due British Navy consistent boarding of American ships at sea carrying embargoed cargo (slaves and enslaved seamen).  Lincoln vowed to enforce embargo law and did so immediately upon election in 1860.

3.  Rights of Tennessee and other immigrants in Texas to secede from Mexico after the government thereof under General Santa Anna abolished slavery in 1834.  Mexican War Rights of slave-owners and traders to establish and expand slavery into new lands, territories and states such as New Mexico and California.

4.  Rights of  states like South Carolina to ignore federal laws not acceptable in a sovereign state such as South Carolina and the implied constitutional right to secede from the Union (John C. Calhoun).  President Andrew Jackson vowed to hang for treason any legislature or governor that tried to do so.

 5.  Rights of states like North Carolina to demand northern free states enforcement of Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 that required state and local law officials of all states to aid their “southern deputized regulators” in capture, arrest and return of fugitive slaves to slave state courts and owners. Over 50,000 slaves per year were escaping to free states and Canada often aided by Whites in the northern states including hundreds via the underground railroad.

 6. Rights of states in rebellion such as Texas to have and hold human beings as chattel property contrary to the Emancipation Proclamation effective January 1, 1863.  Texas forced to surrender on June 19, 1865 and slave owners forced by Union troops to release their slaves. 

 7.  Rights of states like Tennessee to help organize and sponsor terrorism in 1866-1867 (murdered over 175,000 ex-slaves)  led by former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest against mostly Union army veterans in the defeated confederacy who were emancipated from slavery.  President Andrew Johnson ordered Union army to occupy states formerly in rebellion, protect ex-slaves and arrest of men engaged in terrorism.

8.   Rights of states like Georgia by any means deemed necessary to disenfranchise ex-slaves as American voters. Voting registrars empowered to give literacy tests to illiterate ex-slaves and free-born offspring, and impose poll taxes on people of color with or without money for the privilege of registering to vote, … not vote dependent on aforementioned literacy tests that often included such questions as “reciting the ten commandments or paragraphs of the U.S. Constitution and names of confederate generals.”

9.   Rights of states like Florida to re-enslave young Black men for construction of public roads and other purposes. Enactment of vagrancy laws required local law enforcement between 1876 and 1946 to  arrest hundreds of thousands of unemployed young Black men and judges to impose fines and incarceration on those unable to pay their fines, and sheriffs to lease such prisoners to road contractors and farmers to recover the costs of court and unpaid fines.

10.  Rights of states like Louisiana to legally segregate African-Americans from Whites in all public places including hospitals, churches, schools and transportation facilities not to exclude water drinking fountains. Rights of states like Mississippi to have and forever hold all-White police, courts and juries in the trials of Blacks. 

This site includes beginning fallacies such as polygamy, breeding and ending results like defenseless matriarchal lifestyles that facilitated slavery and subsequent cries by millions of women for saviors in heaven and on earth to generate changes, more often than not, achieved by 18th, 19th and 20th century movements and wars (relative Armageddon’s for African-American and other young men who died for liberation of others and ought to at least be remembered by patriarchal generated genetic kin). There are still many writers indoctrinated in the ante-bellum mystique of imagined goodness of masters rooted in the very Roman slave-owning doctrine of Paul (not Jesus), … who would suggest that slavery was not so bad as Civil War veterans and agitating ministers of the gospel like Henry Hyland Garnett (below)  believed it was? 

Mind you very carefully to understand that slave owners and many others wanted a Roman Republic for America rather than a enlightened democracy of free men and women. Thomas Jefferson’s declared doctrine and ideals about democracy was not what rich men outside Virginia valued, … unless they happened to have been Virginia born and bred in milk of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. Indeed, without Virginia born brains and other resources, … the civil war would not have lasted more than 90 days,  Rich cotton plantation owners who were not well born sought to imitate and exceed Virginia’s Randolph, Carter, Custiss and other aristocratic lineages.  In fact, many men of ambition in Texas prior to the Civil War visited Monticello and Mount Vernon, but not to praise former occupants but rather to replicate and excel them in grandeur. Their hero in the American experiment at government was clearly Alexander Hamilton who in the federalist papers and as Secretary of the Treasury emphasized private property rights, … not George Washington who liberated his slaves upon death or Thomas Jefferson’s declaration that “all men are created equal.”

South Carolina was by far, followed by Louisiana, the worst bastion of pretentious aristocracy wherein only 10,000 white people were franchised to vote leaving such to the rich land and slaver owners. Like Rome, it had at least one slave for each two free residents and wealth was to had by plunder and enslavement of “the least of us.”  Wade Hampton owned 1500 slaves and most Whites were too poor to own any but nevertheless as in the Roman Republic and Empire that followed, … they were superior persons because they were not slaves or women, always disposable if a man of means had a desire to do so. Slave owners saw themselves as Roman patriarchs, not American patriots that many of their offspring would now have us believe.  Indeed, there was nothing patriotic about rebelling against the Mexican government and then doing the exact same thing against the United States government a generation later.

And, yes in New Orleans and a few other locations in the ante-bellum south there were mulatto offspring daughters of some slave owners given their freedom, land and slaves to own. But, in cotton production states where Roman mentalities that killed Christ and anyone else that opposed them, … slaves were viewed and treated as private property not subject to interference by government.  Many White slave owners were comforted by testimonies and tales of endearment by well-fed and clothed plantation mammies and preachers, who persistently warned them about potential trouble-makers, … especially uninvited free-ministers preaching to young men.  Indeed, as evidenced by the thousands of Black Church burnings and even bombings in places like Birmingham, Alabama during the 1960s, … freedom of assembly and religion was not freely given to African-Americans anywhere to care to learn.

For example, this site cites the plight of Fanny Fuqua born in year 1795 and apparently gave birth to 15 offspring per slave breeding quota goals of her owners.  It was affirmative action of the worst kind, … to generate slaves, not Christian enlightenment or education. Eleven of her sons escaped their Bedford County Virginia enslavement to serve in the U.S. Colored Troops during Civil War. 

Fanny’s grandson Dudley Fuqua, born in 1867 lived out his life as a survivor in legacy of change for “the least of us.” He died as a very rich man in Pittsburgh abt. 1941, … and much too soon for future playwright August Wilson to hear and write his story of tears and tribulations in the costs of liberty for the least of us.  August Wilson did not know very much about Black men achieving and living outside his limited world view. In fact, most African-American writers do not seem to grasp the significance of contributions by African-American young men in paying the bills in blood, sweat and tears for what we now have. 

Most of these young patriots for the least of us (including ingrates whose ancestors stayed put in place as cowardly slaves) were either killed during the war or hunted down and murdered by ex-confederates after war’s end (175,000 mostly USCT veterans) per official U.S. government report in 1866-67 submitted to President Andrew Johnson.  The president expressed regret and authorized Union Army to continue occupation of ex-rebel states.

The rebels for all their bombastic proclamations had a difficult time even with conscription getting 650,000 plus young men under arms, mainly perhaps because without armed overseers the young Black bucks normally disappeared from the southern labor force and way of life. Black women could hoe, plant and pick as well as male slaves but could not plow and lift those heavy bails onto wagons and pole barges or drive mules to the rail-heads and markets. The Shenandoah Valley, the Confederate breadbasket quickly collapsed as Frederick Douglass had predicted it would without young Black men.

South Carolina was the richest rebel state, had most agitated for secession and began the war when its gaily uniformed militia barraged federal forces at Fort Sumter into surrender, … also later threatened secession from the confederacy if confederate troops recruited in South Carolina were taken out of the state wherein the aristocracy of nine thousand White voters were unanimous in their opinion their militia of poor landless armed young White males were most needed to keep Blacks toiling in the service of “King Cotton.” The richest aristocrat was Wade Hampton who owned several plantations in South Carolina and Mississippi and had over 1500 slaves, claimed he did not like slavery and not unlike titled European aristocrats, … he adorned himself in the uniform of a Confederate Lieutenant General as he paraded about balls and halls of glory in Charleston and Columbia before Union General William T. Sherman’s army moved in to burn it down as a lesson to ante-bellum traitors. Sherman was opposed to the recruitment and use of Black troops for combat, but did not hesitate to employ many thousands for the laborious tasks of destroying confederate capacity to wage war including rails, wagons, mules, cotton bales and crops. 

United States Colored Troops

Numbers of Union “Colored Troops” by state, North and South

For people who understand human demographic norms of societies around the world in which approximately 10 percent are military age young men, it is still amazing that from a population density of 500,000 people of African heritage in the free states and four million enslaved in the slave states, … the Union was able to obtain over 408,000 young men volunteers (none conscripted). By any measure, it was the highest percentile (9 percent) of any demographic grouping both north and south, union and confederate.  

Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, a self-professed libertarian with typical contempt for Black liberation history, last year made the startling response to an African-American caller to Larry King’s TV show that, “Civil War and loss of 650,000 lives could have been avoided if President Lincoln and Congress had simply purchased the slaves from slave owners and then released them!” Though nothing could be further from the realities and truth about slavery and the Civil War, the startled caller responded apologetically, “Oh, I hadn’t thought of it that way.”  And Dr. Ron Paul smiled. He is not a bigot, but like many self-proclaimed libertarians have reasoned that unconstitutional government interference in private property matters took away personal liberty of citizens to own or free slaves. Indeed, the often astounding reasoning of the amazing Justice Clarence Thomas would most likely agree: the Civil War and Emancipation Proclamation were both unconstitutional.

This site is to help new generations reject information so very often misconstrued and reinterpreted such as blaming liberators like Douglass, Garnett and Lincoln, even runaway slaves for the Second American Revolution for liberty. Too many revisionists like Ron Paul still do not condemn the institution of slavery that within a generation after the triangular international trade in slaves was made illegal, the industry re-energized itself.

Powerful men in the name of free enterprise legally enacted laws and practices that quickly made domestic slave breeding the number one industry in States like Virginia for sale and shipment to new slave states like Mississippi and Texas, … wherein last futile battles of the Civil War were fought in June of 1865 nearly three months after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse in April 1865. Texas slave owners ignored the Emancipation order issued in January 1863, cursed Lee for surrendering and did not free their slaves until June 19th when Union army troops literally forced them with bayonets at their throats to do so.

Yellow Rose of Texas Plus More

And, the rest of the most amazing twist in history ignored is that confederate division fighting in Texas was composed of and led by Cherokee Indians who believed in and owned a lot of slaves west of the Mississippi River.  So, the Union generals sent a lot of U.S. Army Colored Troops to find and defeat them in memory of Cherokee atrocities against captured colored soldiers in Arkansas. More twists and turns in human realities is that many the U.S. Colored troops (including George Washington Williams) who went to Texas and later into Mexico to aid in the Mexican liberation struggle were offspring of the African-Cherokee-Seminole sexual unions in previous generations. Indeed, by time the Civil War ended there were a lot of Black Indian mulattoes, half-breeds, runaways and slaves living east and west of the Mississippi River. 

Formation of the four Buffalo Soldier regiments by Congress after the Civil War enlisted many men of African heritage speaking several native American languages, and helping to open the west for history long denied by many preachers and politicians like Ron Paul who know  little about liberation history beyond approved texts preached and taught in the public schools. Texans can tell tall tales that are almost laughable until one realizes that many truly believe what they are saying about government helping “the least of us” being socialism rather than Christianity such as exists when worthy people such as themselves are helped with highways, dams, rural electrification, farm subsidies, military bases, flood control, clean water, pest control, and millions of contracts to do this and that plus more. Jesus would likely be the first to acknowledge that no one on earth has received more government affirmative actions than the American south and southwest states for the sake of goodness.  And African-Americans have never complained about Whites receiving benefits, but rather the challenge has always been to be included such as farm subsidies that were historically denied to Black farmers in Arkansas, Texas, Tennessee and other states by local White farm agents who graciously aided white farmers. 

Does Dr. Ron Paul and his kind of libertarianism think African American offspring of slavery are not intelligent enough to analyze such realties they have seen and heard?  It was affirmative action by the United States government that helped liberate African-Americans from not only slavery, but also state sponsored terrorism, persecution and segregation by the very segments of the population that now urge rejection of such in favor of enterprising spirits that enslaved, denied and and denigrated them. The American Civil War defined who we are and ought to be as a nation under God. For the educated and enlightened, … rejoice and be exceedingly glad the philosophy of life espoused in first century by first generation in Christ did not exclude “the least of us” from blessings of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, despite centuries of denigration even by many claiming to do so in HIS name.

Indeed, slavery in Africa, Asia or the Caribbean and Americas did not come into existence, … nor end without enabling theologies we ought not forget or allow to be modern minstrel “show and tell” entertainment. We are concerned that many pretentious pulpits have evolved  a theology not rooted in gospels of functional change, … nor philosophy spanning generations of life before and after our own.  

Rather far too many African-American youth are being lost to the faith via popular media trivia that has lessened knowledge and interests in functional faith and factors of survival and measurable goodness.  We believe scholars have a particular calling to measure, not simply grade success or failures in human progress, such as educating preachers as Booker T. Washington tried to do, … teaching youth proper use of the bible. Yet, we know from knowledge of our history that pulpits and people united to save humanity such as demonstrated by Reverend Jesse (Robinson) Jackson in our lifetimes make a big difference in generating goodness for ourselves and others to be born again.  The challenge is about attitudes and behaviors, … including past, present and future!  Enlightened believers should tell “the least and most of us” what they have seen and heard.  Jesus suggested that believers do so!

We believe older generations of enlightened and educated African-Americans have a moral obligation and opportunity via the internet to tell youth what they have seen and heard in their life-times inclusive of stories received from parents, grand-parents and even great-grandparents and relative ancestors who were enslaved or engaged in ending enslavement of “the least of us.”  One cannot legitimately tell youth that past generations were unimportant to know about, and concurrently preach to them about the spirit and philosophy of Jesus given 67 generations ago. Perhaps we have found the enemy to be us who say little about what matters to new generations who might embrace the faith if we explain how and why before we mount our death beds.

“Go and tell John what you have seen and heard” [Luke]

Site is about energetic and enterprising ancestors and others of  faith rooted in philosophy of Jesus, declaration of Thomas Jefferson, and visions of Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr.  We hope our topics listed on left below will help enlighten and motivate parents, preachers, teachers, students and writers who profess knowledge about “the least of us.”  We want gifted youth in particular to take time out for meditation, not medication, to hear better angels of their nature.  Maybe care about heritage, explore DNA linkages and contemplate how so many souls got over to a better life?   Have enough curiosity and respect to try and understand, rather than judge the faith of men and women who had very little else to have and hold close such as music. 

New generations of curious mothers like Dr. Laura Kathleen Hemings Lee Brady Sullivan (below), a living descendent of functional Christian caring, …. still look to us for information about the past and want to know how they are daughters of the American Revolution, not simply a descendent of Sarah (Sally) Hemings and Thomas Jefferson or other celebrated persons.  As a scientist, she does not need a DNA test to ascertain her ancestry, but rather affirmation in the body and spirit of Jesus Christ that spanned generations of goodness for revolutionary change to achieve “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”

The facts of human matter are that Americans from the beginning of English and even French and Spanish explorations and settlements in the early through late 16th and 17th centuries procreated hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of offspring by concubines of African and Native American heritage. Whether called mulatto or Indian, successive generations procreated often blurred color distinctions to the point that many women married as white women by early colonists had both European and African heritage in their DNA trace.   Sizeable numbers of European origin women, excepting Puritans and Quakers, did not accompany husbands or emigrate in significant numbers, even as criminals and indentured servants, until the beginning of the 18th century.

Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of North America as it was, not the way most historians choose to remember it, … were centuries of mighty men who conquered the geography and all within it including the weather and women of all colors, class and caste.  Offspring of unions between men and women ought not be a mystery to minds otherwise intelligent enough to accept facts evidenced in human DNA sequences.  Many thousands of African-Americans from the very earliest years of European colonization, including English, French, Spanish and Dutch, … were of mixed heritage including Native Americans.

George Washington knew the heritage of William Lee via his father Colonel John Lee, and was not surprised by William’s courage and mastery of equestrian skills.  This trait also extended down to women like his descendent Betty Lee Thornhill, a former beauty queen in the 1940s, and who always cared about her heritage of caring for others, … generations after the death of Frank and William Lee at Mount Vernon.   

She was born of a father Temple J Lee & Irene Jackson up from Virginia that helped hundreds of migrant Blacks from behind the cotton curtain and many White immigrants from Eastern Europe gain employment in the Pittsburgh coal industry wherein he established and operated a prosperous coal transport business (mules and trucks) for mine owners as his customers. And, his family owned and loved riding horses.  Without men like him, it is unlikely that so many miners from Alabama and Georgia would have known about and come to Pittsburgh region for jobs that paid well. 

Gaining the knowledge and access to jobs as coal miners was never easy for anyone, especially African-Americans located hundreds of miles away from people with power to hire.  So it was that men like the Lee family founders of Sunrise Baptist Church in a small coal mining town went out of their way to help generate knowledge and access (including mining licenses that by State law required 18 months of apprenticeship).  For a would-be miner to get a job in the mines of Pennsylvania, he had to have contact with someone who wanted to afford him a helping hand to meet the man that would take him in under their wings of care that often involved risks and a loss of production pay for goodness sake.  Selfish men never did or would be helpful.

D & A evidence now confirms what many African-Americans like Lee descendents (Betty Lee Thornhill and daughter Irene Thornhill Stuart) on far right have known or at least believed for eight Christian generations since that of William Lee who died in 1828 and is buried in an unmarked grave at Mount Vernon, not far from the tomb of George Washington.  Finding William Lee, digging up his remains and testing his DNA along with that of Black and White Lee males buried across Virginia might prove interesting but not useful to us.

We are seeking to comprehend and imagine the spirit that was within the man, not simply his flesh. We believe there are many thousands of Lee descendents generated from seeds planted at Mount Vernon. William and his brother Frank in the 18th century sired many, if not most, of the African-Americans living today and using surname of Lee in virtually every state of the union. Many are dynamic & aggressive personalities like Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California, … and unique in adventurist and equestrian attributes. Indeed, who is Congresswoman Lee?

Congresswoman Barbara Lee

During visits to Mount Vernon by descendents, they know his remains are there and certainly by now, … he and his brother Frank’s spirits know Lee offspring visits occur because of caring about what they cared about.  Yes, their lives were useful and helpful, not simply to George Washington and fellow slave owners. For sake of affirming their faith, … some Lee carriers of common genetic traits might argue the long-held supposition put forth by other ethnic and racial groups.  Is it possible that certain sperm and eggs are chosen to generate thousands of souls (like our beloved Barbara Lee, daughter of a career military patriot) needed for liberation and salvation?  Why do such people care about “the least of us.” Anthropology, Ideology, psychology, sociology, theology or more than that? Perhaps their DNA can help explain?

From the generation of two brothers fathered in mid 18th century by a English colonial militia officer emerged not only enslaved participants in the American Revolution for political and economic liberty championed by George Washington, … but also hundreds of descendent volunteers two generations later in Union Army and Navy to help end chattel slavery and foster human liberties expanded by Abraham Lincoln.  Emancipation could not have occurred without them and their kind of young men who proved to be useful in their faith and functions.   Their descendants ought to try and understand they too are sons and daughters of the American Revolution whether or not others embrace them.

Lee Patriots

We do know that daughters and sons of free men and women of color, as a result of sacrifices on their behalf, … were able to embrace conventional marriage in generation of goodness in life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for their offspring generations.  Proof is depicted in below photograph taken in 1939 of Thomas Findley Lee great-great grand-son of William Lee and wife Mary Elizabeth Hemings great-great grand-daughter of Elizabeth (Betty) Hemings. Mary Elizabeth Hemings Butler Lee and her husband Thomas Findley Lee (retired livery business owner) in their garden on Monticello Street in Pittsburgh, PA.

Mary Elizabeth Hemings Butler, b. 1863

Thomas Findley Lee, b. 1859

And, like it or not, Elizabeth (Betty) Hemings who died in 1807 is buried at Monticello in eyesight of Thomas Jefferson’s tomb.  Indeed, death had no victory over them with literally hundreds of descendants who still name children in their honor.  There are few officially  census classified Black families or individuals in America with White ancestry. 

Indeed, love of family relations, horses and helping others among generations of so-called Black Lee’s in Americans likely exceeds that of the other Lee descendants tracing their heritage back to England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, … wherein many Irish young women were taken as wives and concubines by conquering landlords from England, Scotland and Wales.  Indeed, the game of “bridge” could only have been invented by the amazing British evolvement and conquests that included evolution of analogy and language of empowerment for all seasons and places far beyond the restraints of old world theologies and mysteries by robed men with minor league minds.  Britannia ruled. 

Queen Charlotte, Wife of King George

And, America and Europe have long had a lot more Whites with some African ancestry than care to recall it, including Queen Charlotte.  Indeed, color has blinded many scholarly descendents of 20th century immigrants who do not know America’s Revolution of 1776-1783 also included many people of African heritage.  So, … we have to seek through archives to enlighten!   We do not deny that many mothers during and after slavery were untruthful and even unknowledgeable in the fatherhoods of their offspring.  Genetically evil ones came from Africa along with the good. We have no illusions that all people sold into slavery were innocent victims. 

But, a driving issue on this site is that most enslaved mothers of future goodness knew and cared who were the fathers of their children.  Many were courageous in naming their children in knowledge of fathers in a dominant culture that legally sought to classify them as little more than breeding stock in the category of other farm animals rather than human beings.  We believe a conscious effort in the spirit of Christ was evidently made by many mothers to name offspring with bloodline traces to their heritage, … Black, White and Native American, Males and Females. 

And, then … ALONG CAME BETTY

Who are daughters and sons of America’s first and second revolutions and who has DNA links to:

                          Elizabeth (Betty) Hemings

                                                and

                                 William Lee’s Story

(negatively depicted as a frightful turban wearing eunuch in portrait of fearless George Washington many years after Washington’s death in year 1799. Portrait was initiated and sponsored by lawyer/novelist Washington Irving (writer of Rip Van Winkle) whose extended family in America-England were “merchants” in the very lucrative golden triangle of denigration and death for least of us. And most lawyers reasoned it to be good.

His kind of intellectualism categorized and classified slaves as sub-human chattel not worthy of post-revolutionary war Christian compassion urged by believers like William Wilberforce in England.  Anti-slavery activists were opposed by opportunist racist lawyers like Francis Scott Key in USA.  Before death, Washington had publicly stated that slaves should be freed and trained to be useful: prompting lawyers like Irving to portray the well-known William Lee as a inferior being in order to argue slaves were like children who needed to be cared for and protected as useful servants/slaves, … not men of useful means. 

The above portrait was commissioned and supervised by Washington himself with several sittings that included William Lee in a dignified pose, standing, not stooping, frightful, turban headed or dancing. Washington dictated who should be included in portrait of what he considered to be his closest family circle, … excluding his nephew Bushrod Washington and the body-servant of wife Martha.  He specifically stated this was the picture he wanted posterity to remember him by. 

By contrast the portrait commissioned by Washington Irving as a tribute to the man he did not know but claimed to admire was painted long after death of George Washington and quite opposite of the distinguished image of William Lee seen above.  It is evidence of the power that artists and writers then and now are able to exert about people they have never seen.  Images including Hollywood characterizations are products of attitudes, good and bad, and too often for purposes of denigrating “the least of us!”

   NOTES:

Please advise us by email regarding any images or pages that fail to load and/or errors and mistakes in our editing about your ancestors or people and places known to you. Our grand plan is to add relative blog, face-book and other links that will help foster inter-active communications among you and long-lost cousins in new generations of goodness.

Additions and corrections discovered will be included in our updates.  Please be patient as our efforts are to help inspire new authors to characterize and help tell “inspirational stories about people of color other than purple who fought, died and lived useful lives that generated generations of goodness, … not of the characteristics imagined in books by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Margaret Mitchell and Alice Walker characterizing Black males (old and young) as cowardly, useless and threats or hindrances to liberation and pursuit of happiness by women.”

The great psychological issue is not about slaves but those who still seek to rationalize the irrational about slaves and descendents of slaves as inferior human beings.   Means and methods of observation and declaration have changed; but, the underlying doctrines have remained the same suggesting that cultural dynamics that span generations should not be neglected in analysis of matters that matter — such as hereditary, chattel and sexual slavery.

The greatest of human virtues, courage, are easily applied to George Washington and other signers of the Declaration of Independence. And descendents of any White colonial during that era are assumed by historians to be the offspring of patriots even though the majority of people in the original colonies were decidedly non-combatants and non-participants.   

Yet, not all men, then or now, were courageous and patriotic; but, some who were such as William Lee are still challenged and denied with a combination of rationale and reasoning that a slave could not be courageous, — or a patriot? Classical scholars in successive generations during the past two centuries in circular reasoning consistent with the teachings of Aristotle that slaves do not have courage or other virtues, — ie slaves are not virtuous.  

A psychological profile of peoples who write about the history of slavery suggests that few are ever able or willing to assume or accept the existence of virtues or creditability among any slaves, nor do any ever suggest existence of non-Christian virtues by owners.  

“A group is extraordinarily credulous and open to influence; it has no critical faculty, and the improbable does not exist for it. The feelings of the group are always very simple and very exaggerated, so that it knows neither doubt nor uncertainty.” [Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego: Sigmund Freud].  

There should be no doubt about existence of group behavior in the establishment and sustaining of chattel, hereditary and sexual slavery that raged in the Americas and Caribbean by European colonists and later as Americans.  The question ought to be as to what extent, if any, theology of various groups restrained or sustained it? 

Scholars of the past, have only reluctantly been willing to address the issues of racism in group behavior that operated and owned the chattel slave trade; but, little mentioning has made to the realities of hereditary and sexual slavery.  In fact, institutions of slavery in Africa, America or anywhere else outside old testament tales, have been viewed and written as monolithic. 

The realities that millions of youth were born into and thus inherited the slavery of their mothers is fairly well understood; but, most historians have adamantly refused to acknowledge that thousands of White men knowingly enslaved their own offspring of mothers they sexually enslaved, — if only for a few  minutes. The birth of mulatto offspring can easily be traced all the way from slave castles on the African coasts to and through slave owners in America that generated mulatto offspring.   Unfortunately, the history of slavery is not an account of what happened but rather a telling of information that writers and publishers want known.  A psychological analysis is overdue as to how and why obvious facts are treated as unknown by historians. The emotions of the terrorism, denigration and segregation associated with slavery are conspicuous by its absence from what historians care to write about, — compared to such horrors as Europe’s Dark Ages or the modern Jewish Holocaust.

The scholarly patriot John Jay (1745-1829), American jurist and statesman and first chief justice of the United States Supreme Court (1789-1795) proclaimed to Congress “that while no man can be compensated for a lifetime of bondage, an owner can and should be compensated for the loss of a runaway slave.”

Such was the simple logic applied to the great moral, ethical, legal, and financial aspects of slavery by men in the cause of their own life, liberty and pursuit of property.

A prerequisite requirement exists to consider and understand the applicable theology and psychology in any analysis of adult behavior by past generations, — especially those that aided, traded, owned and procreated in the existence of slaves.  George Washington and William Lee were such persons, a prominent owner who pursued runaway slaves; and the latter a loyal slave who chose not to runaway to liberty.  

Understanding slaves or those who enslaved them requires an attempt to acknowledge attitudes that fostered and sustained their behavior, — even before they lived and died.  All people are born into a culture, high-medium-low, and few ever change it; but, those one or two percent of humanity able and willing to do so are generally regarded as “chosen, gifted” for better or worse!

Legacy of Hellenism

Aristotle’s greatness as a philosopher and proto-scientist is undeniable but his errors (accepted as logical truths by many millions of his disciples) have had enduring harmful effects on people of African heritage.  His doctrines of natural inferiority and female inferiority, respectively, justified, or helped to justify, slavery and the inequality of the sexes until this very day.

His great authority also helped to defend tyranny, in the name of “benevolent” despotism, and his doctrine of ethnic inferiority helped to justify racism.  All of these errors, — for that is what they are, — might have endured without Aristotle but it would have been harder for generations of scholars to justify their attitudes presented as logic. 

The attitudes of most scholars trained in the classics are consistent with the teachings of Aristotle that a slave is inferior, not gifted, otherwise he would not allow himself to be a slave. A classical scholar and those seeking to be in that class, — will not use any of the cardinal or theological virtues in describing a man like William Lee or even a very beautiful woman such as Sarah (Sally) Lee. 

And, vice-versa such scholarship assumes the impossibility and improbabilities of love existing or occurring between superior and inferior persons.  The fallacy of course, is that of the ancient Hellenists, who then logically concluded the greatest love of a superior man was the love of another superior man, not a woman or slave, or even children, who were obviously his inferiors.  Pursuant such reasoning, lust may exist between superiors and inferiors, but never love!

 The psychology of this great driving issue in American scholarship lasts until this very day in that regardless of any slave’s actions (such as William Lee) and observed behavior by other slaves or descendents, — the typical scholar, at best, will cite a lack of documentation relative to perceived virtues or superior behavior by slaves (such as William Lee’s revolutionary war services despite a written certification by George Washington).

Using the analysis processes applied by various well published scholars of other races and creeds, it is not likely or probable that anyone who was a slave (such as William Lee at Mount Vernon or Elizabeth Hemings at Monticello) —- could also have been chosen or gifted in the context of scholar validated gifted and chosen men (like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson)?  

Who was Nathanael in the Bible?

Is it conceivable that gifted human beings could not be born among slaves?  “And Nathanael said unto him, ‘Can there any good thing come out of Naz’a-reth?’ “  

All of the books that African heritage Americans have read or ever been exposed to since year 1619 when first slaves were imported from Africa into the British seaport of Jamestown Virginia, has mattered to us that their history be told.  The terms of endearment by most American historians and writers including Margaret Mitchell with “Gone With the Wind” should matter to readers about beginnings and endings that never happened (alternate histories) in great battles for life, liberty and pursuits of happiness up from slavery.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  Thomas Jefferson wrote and published those immortal thirty-five words to be read.  After  receiving a copy shortly after July 4, 1776, General George Washington, in the field since year 1775, called for it to be read aloud to the entire Continental Army. 

I choose to believe at least one of our known ancestors (William Lee) heard the call for liberty and wanted same for himself, his wife, brother and their many descendants like Robert Lee Vann, owner of Pittsburgh Courier newspaper.   

At the time of Declaration of Independence in year 1776 total population in the 13 rebellious states was estimated to be 2.5 million of which 19 percent or less were of African heritage.  Some slaves like William Lee and James Lafayette, were body servants and spies for George Washington and other officers in the colonial rebel forces.  But, from among the enslaved population Washington encouraged/approved enlistment of 5,000 in the Continental Army.   

The story of Henry Hill is about American reparations paid to young men via land warrants for volunteer services that mattered in beginning of United States, not ending of slavery by their ancestors. At time in question, the United States Government and most states had no financial currencies or other abilities to pay the revolutionary war veterans and thus chose to afford reparations via land grants.

 In fact, with the ex-colonial states winning the war against Great Britain, American importation of slaves from Africa mushroomed to the extent that it became a demonstrated public evil by time of the first census in year 1790.  Evidence of said evil was passage of the first pro-slavery law by Congress against run-away slaves seeking liberty in USA and Canada. It is unknown how many of the runaway slaves had served in the Continental armed forces as the chosen few but forcibly returned to status as chattel property slaves when the war ended.

www.Moremarymatters.com

Ghana American Foundation
The first people to arrive from the region then known as the Gold Coast were brought as slaves via the Atlantic slave trade. Several ethnic groups such as the Akan, the Ganga^[4] or the Ga people were imported as well to the modern United States and the third of these groups appear to have an influence on the language of the Gullah people.^[5][6] Because Ghanaian ports were major routes for European slave traders. Captives from ethnic groups and tribes from all over West Africa were brought there to be held and sent to the New World. Most them were imported to South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia, although other places in the United States, such as Spanish Florida and French Louisiana also had many slaves of this origin.

If the South Had Won the Civil War – Wikipedia

I was a teenager in year 1960 when alternate history novelist MacKinley Kantor of Life Magazine published his very popular book of books that shocked me to understand the views that I was to not believe about me, my ancestry and folks like Kantor or anyone else who downplayed the American determined and very bloody Civil War that ended chattel slavery in the United States.   I was angered to wonder if writer ever dared to imagine writing a novel “If the Fascist Alliance had won World War II”?   What would have occurred among Jewish survivors of the well documented European Jewish population?  Would Nazi Germany have changed to become more humanized about “the least of us seeking liberty.” 

With that fallacy in mind, we chose to start with the beginning of the Confederate hoped for ending that never happened at Gettysburg,   According to make-believe novelists like Kantor, the great General Robert E. Lee leading his famed Army of Northern Virginia easily pushed through his opposition at the Battle of Gettysburg.  Such could only have happened if the Union Army with zealous engineers like Andrew Carnegie had planned but not built the railway connecting links and lines that would have been needed to get Union Army reinforcements to Gettysburg by the second day of battle to surprise and defeat Lee.

With his great intelligence gathering cavalry under Brig Gen Jeb Stuart guarding his right flanks, Lee theoretically had pushed onward into Union Army depots gathering shoes, munitions and other supplies desperately needed by the men fighting under his battle flag.  Stuart claimed that he attacked and disrupted Union Army forces on Lee’s flanks.

Pennsylvania National Guard troops, having lost their respected leader Brig General Reynolds on the first night of the Gettysburg Battle.  Without Reynolds and his regiments lost, PA. Guard remnants were no match for Lee reinforced with captured Union Army artillery.

The Governor of Pa. as Commander-in-Chief would have quickly urged his PA. Guardsmen to surrender Harrisburg and Philadelphia. PA Civil War Guardsmen living in Harrisburg and Philadelphia would thus have abandoned their oaths to the United States as the rebel confederates had done at the beginning of  attacks in South Carolina that started the Civil War.  Newspapers would have heralded such as a Union Army rebellion against President Abraham Lincoln.

  President Abraham Lincoln was both surprised and angered that Army staff in Washington speculating about “Bobby Lee Intentions” and General Meade based in Maryland were caught by surprise at Gettysburg.   Meade was planned and ready to defend Washington, D.C. the capitol if Lee came straight up from Richmond to fight like his many battles before.  The worst challenge to President Lincoln in July 1963, more than Bobby Lee was the upcoming Presidential elections for a second-term, doomed when and if he lost at Gettysburg; and Governors of PA and MD would call for Congress to impeach him, and voters to deny him a second-term.

There would be no election year speech by President Lincoln at Gettysburg to rally the nation behind him as its Commander-in-Chief; and he would not have an opportunity to advise his cabinet members of Frederick Douglass advice that he issue an Emancipation Proclamation as a military necessity to win the war.  The great genius of President Lincoln was his wisdom to appoint General Ulysses Grant, Commander of the Union Army of the Tennessee (containing my great grandfather Charles Kyle and his brother Ellis Kyle}z; to split the Confederate States by clearing their control and use of the Mississippi River from New Orleans north. Grant’s victory was climaxed by Battle of Vicksburg costing the lives of many Black and White Union warriors. Lincoln quickly chose Grant to command and unify all union forces to defeat the Confederate government.

Army’s need manpower to not only fight with weapons but also to load, carry, haul, store, and do a thousand and one other tasks to move, shoot and communicate with their commanders.  The Union forces had imaginative “young Turks” in the army like Signal Corps leader Brig Gen Albert J. Meyer, MD and genius of Andrew Carnegie who built telegraph, bridging and railway connections.  Albert J. Myer – Wikipedia.

And, they needed often unknown organizational genius like Andrew Carnegie in or out of uniform to make functional matters like food for troops to receive and eat.  Napoleon said, “armies move on their stomachs.”   And, General Grant told General Phil Sheridan to invade and close the Shenandoah Valley food supply source for Virginia and other Confederate States.  I have the name Robert in honor of my ancestor Robert Kyle who with his two brothers, Charles and Ellis ran away from slavery in Salem, Virginia when Union Army cavalry began their campaigns to chase the confederate troops out of the valley.   But, what if Sheridan had been beaten back and defeated in the Shenandoah Valley; and the victorious Confederate Army moved quickly to reinforce Lee at Gettysburg? 

By time of the Gettysburg Battle, Frederick Douglas the political genius had already convinced AME bishops in cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh that men of color needed to be ready for a call to arms in the great war of liberation from slavery.   Many others of the enslaved, indentured and former slaves, men and women, saw the war all around them as they were employed and deployed to help bury the dead, care for the wounded, cook/feed and clothe the needy.  Some like Sister Sojourner Truth were close enough to battle zones to proclaim “I have heard the thunder.”  And, Sister Harriet Tubman saw and heard the thunder incoming and outgoing by Union and Confederate artillery.

With President Lincoln voted out of office, there would be no Emancipation Proclamation Order issued on Jan 1, 1864; and no U.S. Colored Troop Regiments for 200,000 young boys to men inspired by Frederick Douglass for the army and navy to pay, train and use fighting and praying for the liberation of some 4 million male and female free colored, enslaved and runaway souls of Confederacy origin.  

In theory only, The Confederate States under President Jefferson Davis would have offered generous peace terms and conditions to the United States Government.  It should stop and abolish all U.S. Colored Troops and Sailors. It would immediately stop the trade embargo on their shipments of cotton to European markets, remove Union troops from forts along the Mississippi River and enforce the 1850 federal law against runaway slaves seeking liberty in the otherwise Union States runaways to Canada.  It would also immediately halt U.S. Navy boarding American owned ships carrying passengers identified as illegal contraband.

The few regiments of colored troops organized in Massachusetts like the 51^st and 52^nd regiments and other states would not be integrated into the Union Army with federal pay and benefits.   Frederick Douglass would have told his sons and other young men to “keep the faith” because God was with them in their prayers.  Opponents to Frederic Douglass, both Black and White, may likely have countered that peace proposals being reviewed by Congressional Committees were the best chance for peace and prosperity to those colored people already free from slavery.

Free Colored residents in Virginia and the Carolina’s living as indentured servants would have been told to get ready for  great reparations back to Africa, particularly Liberia where they could go and prepare a Christian home-coming place for American field hand slaves that could be freed with ending of the Civil War.  Even worse false hopes of ex-American slaves going back to Africa would have fostered an imagined vision of enterprising Black slave owners using the experiences and technologies to be contractors using slave labor as practiced in Brazil where outright slavery did not end until the 1880s.

Slavery in Liberia – Bing images

It is upsetting to even think about what would have happened in Africa if the Confederate States of America, with a foot-hold in Africa such as impoverished Liberia had fostered a people and place for an alliance with Portugal, Brazil and others with ships, sailors and guns to make and manufacture such for clients/traders like the Fon Kingdom of Dahomey with its godless King and ruthless Amazon warriors.  The CSA would have soon had a foot-hold in Africa similar to the rubber plantations established by Firestone Corporation in real life.  

The Dahomey Amazons (Fon:”Mino” or “Minon” or “Agoji”) were a Fon all-female military regiment of the Kingdom of Dahomey which existed from the 1700s until 1904. They are the only documented all female army in world history. They were named Amazons by Western Europeans who dared imagine women to alike in killing and enslaving other human beings.

Dahomey Amazons

Combat and Structure – Amazons

Disbandment and Legacy – Amazons

Recruitment – Amazons

Political Role – Amazons

Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest captivated youth men and women of the Confederate States of America and with political wisdom and speed had organized them into viewing him as the logical defender of their southern way of life.  He was universally appraised as the best general in the great war; and best person to defend and protect their beloved Dixie.  He had been a slave owner and trader before the war began and understood how critical slavery was to raising cotton and making profits for White folks.  His Presidency of the Confederacy made them forget about old and tired Robert E. Lee who, like Hindenberg after World War I in Germany, did not really want to become a politician. 

The new Peace Treaty negotiated with the United States Government acknowledged the liberty of Confederate States of America to interact and trade with the Kingdoms of Portugal and Dahomey and other African kingdoms in fostering peaceful  trading in servants and commodities for territories like Brazil. The U.S. Government would discourage the AME Church from sending religious missionaries into places in the America’s and Africa that interfered with trade missions encouraged by the Confederate States of America.  

The United States Government would establish a Treasury Commission to hear and pay reparations in Confederate – Dollar exchangeable currency to Confederate States of America slave owners damaged and harmed by the illegal traffic in runaway slaves from time of the 1850 Act to current closure of the War Between the States in year 1865. Congress would not consider or establish any form of a Freemen’s Bureau to help poor and hurting ex-Black slaves living in vicinity of Washington, DC. and so no Hampton Institute was ever formed to pull up and onward the Frederick Douglass hoped for Booker T. Washington “Up From Slavery Story”.

In the 1880s, the Confederate States of America would almost magically link arm in arm with Brazil would anxiously have joined in schemes of European royalty and others to divide and colonize all of Africa to be owned and ruled by White men with the force of military arms and pretentious Christian caring. 

War reparations – Wikipedia

It is “Silly Sally Nonsense” to imagine reparations for slavery that began in Africa which was not a nation state; and ended in the United States with the Civil War between the Union States and rebel Confederate States seeking to keep slavery whole and holy as property.   Chattel slavery was godless and not a war fought and lost or won by states of being. 

But, our final chapter is that Confederate States of America did not win the American Civil War they initiated and fought against the United States Government to maintain and continue slavery.  The big question then and now was and is whose side does GOD reside in bodies and souls?  Silly Sally? as a Hollywood make-believe King?