By Don Boys, Ph.D.

Well, it’s February so it’s Black History Month. During this month we will hear of the great accomplishments of legitimate Blacks as it should be since they made a lasting and impressive contribution to America’s success. However, unprincipled, insecure Blacks will embarrass honest Blacks maybe to the point of blushing. In trying to give Blacks heroes, they often deal in speculation and mythology to give Blacks a pat on the back when they speak glowingly of “great black civilizations” that never existed.

I will use this month to give a true and balanced perspective to reality—praise where praise is due and correction where necessary. After all, everyone should be interested in truth even if it hurts at times. Jesus said, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  But He did not promise it would always be accepted.

No sane person defends slavery, but you would not know that when listening to non-thinking bigots who maintain the defense of the Civil War equates to the defense of slavery.

There is not a person alive in the U.S. that was a slave or anyone alive who kept slaves. No thoughtful person agrees with the collective guilt theory. Had I lived in Georgia during the Civil War, I would have done what Robert E. Lee did. I would have fought with the South even though, like Lee (who freed his inherited slaves in 1862), I disagree with, even abhor, slavery.

General Lee did not defend slavery, but he did defend the right of a state to decide for itself about the issue and about the right to secede from the Union. And few historians would suggest that the original thirteen colonies joined into a union with the knowledge that it would be treason to change their minds. And there is no legal or historical doubt that a state had a legal right to secede. There would have been no Union if it had not been understood that a state could leave once it joined.

New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island made joining the Union contingent on being able to leave. Their position was: peacefully if we can; forcefully if we must.  Leave the Union.

During the war of 1812, more than one Northern state threatened to secede and refused to send troops to fight that war. No one accused them of being illegal because all informed people knew the states had the legal right to leave the union that they had entered voluntarily.

Moreover, it would have been better to have two successful, friendly nations rather than kill over 600,000 men—and destroy the South and deplete the North. While that position could be defended in the 1800s, it cannot, in my opinion, be defended today. The uncivil war was fought (and won by the North), and so much time has passed with us surviving financial disasters and numerous wars, it would not be wise to seek dissolution of the Union today.

While I would like to see California severed from the Union like deadly cancer, it would not be wise, in my opinion, for that to happen. I have noticed that the hypocrites on the left do not bring up the “one nation, indivisible” argument as it relates to present-day secession. They are very critical of the southern states who seceded but do not make the same argument for California in our day. They are hypocrites as usual.

Of course, slavery was not the main issue for at least a year into the war.  It was taxes, state nullification of federal laws, and southerners fighting to keep the northerners out of their land. It is ludicrous to think that southern boys left their womenfolk at home unprotected with crops and cattle in the fields as they marched north with flags waving and bugles blowing for the purpose of guaranteeing about 3% of rich southern farmers the right to own slaves. Some southern boys were a little slow but not that slow.

Additionally, Lee was concerned about releasing thousands of slaves (without education, ability, life experience, and social skills) into a society damaged, disjointed, and almost destroyed by the War of Northern Aggression. Think: General Sherman’s almost 300-mile scorched earth march from Atlanta to Savannah.

Sherman’s 66,000-man army wrecked 300 miles of railroad and numerous bridges and miles of telegraph lines. It seized 5,000 horses, 4,000 mules, 13,000 head of cattle, and unknown numbers of chickens, turkeys, sheep, and hogs from civilians. They stole as much bread and potatoes as they could carry. What they couldn’t carry, they burned. They confiscated 9.5 million pounds of corn and 10.5 million pounds of fodder and destroyed numerous cotton gins and mills. Sherman expressed his desire to “make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.” Very principled Yankee!

It is interesting that Grant’s family had slaves (for whom he was responsible), and he did not release them until after the war! Should he be on the list of offensive figures to be removed and vilified? Grant did allow freedom to his personal slave in 1859, although he could have sold him for $700, a tidy sum in those days. Moreover, Grant was always in need of money, which made granting freedom to his slave even more admirable. Some Yankees have done commendable things.

However, in a letter to his father on May 6, 1861, Grant’s disregard for Blacks was obvious: “A few decisive victories in some of the southern ports will send the secession army howling and …. negroes will depreciate so rapidly in value that no body will want to own them …. The nigger will never disturb this country again.” I suppose we should demand that they tear down all statues of Grant and remove his photo from the White House–and, as an act of public service, I will accept all fifty-dollar bills containing his offensive photo!

It seems every relationship between the white and black races always has the vile reality of slavery in the background; one of Lee’s letters to his wife is relevant. He wrote in 1856, “In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country.” He added that slavery was “a greater evil to the white man than to the black race” in the United States.

After reflecting on his comment, I agree with him. While slavery has been a reality since man’s earliest days and has been defended by the world’s most esteemed philosophers, including many professing Christians, slaveholding showed man’s evil propensity and fallen nature. Of course, slavery harmed and destroyed thousands of people, and that can never be justified; however, there were some residual benefits from slavery. My boyhood idol, Booker T. Washington, strongly believed that was true.

Even Cassis Clay, better known as Muhammad Ali, who fought George Foreman in Zaire for the world heavyweight boxing title, realized his advantages because his ancestors were brought to America. Ali won the fight, and upon returning to the United States, he was asked by a reporter, “Champ, what did you think of Africa?” Ali replied, “Thank God, my granddaddy got on that boat!” Only a fool, a fanatic, or a falsifier would disagree.

Honest, informed people will recognize that there was wrong on both sides of the war, but the war is over, and the North won. Nevertheless, I refuse to permit northern hypocrites to rewrite history and denigrate everything southern and paint us all with the broad brush of bigotry. There was bigotry, hatred, and malice on both sides, just as there was courage, honor, and commitment, as reflected in the statues erected by both sides throughout the south.

To sustain a sane, safe, and stable society, we should treat all people fairly as originally created in the image of God with no special treatment for anyone because of their race or religion!

But then, no radical leftist will agree to “no special treatment” for Blacks, women, or the homosexual crowd.

(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives who ran a large Christian school in Indianapolis and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. Boys authored 20 books, the most recent, Reflections of a Lifetime Fundamentalist: No Reserves, No Retreats, No Regrets! The eBook is available at Amazon.com for $4.99. Other titles at www.cstnews.com. Follow him on Facebook at Don  Boys, Ph.D., and visit his blog. Send a request to DBoysphd@aol.com for a free subscription to his articles and click here to support  his work with a donation.)

“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”  John Bunyan, Baptist Preacher

On June 29, 1843, Robert James graduated from Georgetown College, the first Baptist college west of the Appalachian Mountains.  He later earned a master’s degree.  Robert was considered a skilled orator, faithful pastor, and educator. He was one of the founders of William Jewell College in 1849 in Liberty, Missouri.

As a pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Holt, he baptized as many as 60 converts in a day. Jesse James’ son wrote that when 60 people were baptized, his father (the future bank robber and killer) was 14 months old and was held aloft to observe the unusual ceremony. Jesse’s son also contends that his father was baptized near that spot when he returned home wounded in the Border War.

Robert James was not paid much by his congregation and supported his family by farming. Before leaving to do evangelistic work in the California goldfields, he had founded Baptist Churches in New Hope and Providence. In 1849, he organized Pisgah Baptist Church in Excelsior Springs. During his eight years of pastoring in Missouri, he was paid less than $100 for his service.

Robert’s sons may have been thieves, but he was not a thief. Robert and Zerelda whom he called Zee had two sons, Frank (born January 10. 1843) and Jesse (born September 5, 1847). A third child, Susan, was born in1849, and all were active in the church.

When Jesse was about three years old, his father was asked to be the chaplain for a wagon train to the goldfields of California in 1850. As his father left their small home, Jesse clung to his legs begging with tears for him not to go. His father died of cholera in a small gold camp and was buried in an unmarked grave. Who knows how Jesse James would have turned out if his father had been first a father, then a preacher?

The James family were slave owners and were known for being kind to them, even permitting slave children to sleep in the main house. When the war ended and slaves were freed, their former slaves remained at the farm for many years.

Zee James married two more times and she and the boys soon began attending Mount Olive Baptist Church in Centerville (Centerville would later be renamed, Kearney, and Mount Olive became known as First Baptist in 1872). In 1852, Frank and Jesse’s mother married a neighboring farmer who quickly left her, and before she filed for divorce, he died in a horse accident. The undertaker arrived before the divorce lawyer.  She married a third time to Dr. Archie Reuben Samuels in 1855, who took an interest in the family’s welfare and increased the size of the farm. He also took an interest in one of their female slaves and fathered a child by her.

After the start of Lincoln’s War of Northern Aggression in 1861, Frank joined the Confederate Army and was soon discharged. Eighteen-year-old Frank joined Quantrill’s Raiders, a guerrilla group known as Bushwhackers that harassed Union soldiers and sought to protect southern sympathizers along the Missouri-Kansas border. Most of Quantrill’s guerrilla fighters were teenagers, one only 13.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Eastern Kansas was settled by abolitionists who formed into merciless, marauding, and murdering anti-slavers called Jayhawkers and another group known as Red Legs, both supporting the North. As a young member of the Red Legs, Buffalo Bill Cody admitted, “We were the biggest thieves on record.”

The hatred between slaveholders (southerners) and abolitionists (northerners) along the Missouri-Kansas border was equally fierce. There was not much civil about the Civil War. Civilians were killed with impunity, prisoners were mutilated and slaughtered, crops were destroyed, stock animals killed or driven off, and homes were left ablaze. All because some states wanted to leave the union as was understood as possible when they joined!

For others, the issue was whether or not to permit slavery.

These “soldiers,” allegedly in the cause of the Union, attacked people in Jackson and Clay Counties in Western Missouri who  were mainly Southern sympathizers. Many towns were burned to the ground, and many slaves were freed. The Union marauders drove off cattle and horses, killed the men, and terrorized the women. In retaliation, the southern sympathizers fought back and were called Bushwhackers. Each man was known to have eight loaded pistols at all times. Their most infamous leader was Charles W. Quantrill, a drifter or dedicated southern leader, depending on whom you believe. Union troops often shot Bushwhackers on sight.

Seeking recognition and acceptance, Quantrill traveled to Richmond, Virginia, to receive a regular Confederacy command under the Partisan Ranger Act; however, the southern officials already knew his reputation for brutality, and he was denied a commission. Some southerners continued to defend him.

When Quantrill and his Bushwhackers attacked Lawrence, Kansas, on August 21, 1863, they cited the deeds of the Red Legs as their motive for their attack on the town. About 400 guerrillas attacked the town and killed about 185 men, robbed two banks, and burned most of the town. Frank James participated in the massacre along with future outlaws such as the Younger brothers who later became part of the James-Younger Gang. Jesse boasted that he had also been there, but his boast is suspect. All outlaws have a tendency to exaggerate and embellish the facts.

Quantrill himself said his motivation for the attack was “to plunder and destroy the town in retaliation” for earlier Union action in Osceola when nine leading men were executed by Union officials. Others say the retaliation was because Jayhawkers had taken wives and sisters of the Bushwhackers and imprisoned them in a weak, three-story building in Kansas City that collapsed, killing four of them.

Just three months after the Lawrence raid, a party of Union soldiers invaded the James’ farm looking for information about the location of Quantrill’s camp.  Fifteen-year-old Jesse was horsewhipped when he refused to answer the soldiers’ questions. Jesse’s step-father was questioned and then hanged from a barn rafter, although Jesse saved his life by cutting him down and then shot one soldier as the others fled. Jesse ran into the farmhouse and shot a soldier who was raping his mother. He killed two soldiers that day and fled into the woods to join Frank and the raiders. Dr. Samuels was feeble-minded after that event and died in an insane asylum.

Jesse, now 16, followed Frank as a Bushwhacker led by “Bloody” Bill Anderson, who decorated his horse’s bridle with scalps of Union soldiers he had killed. On September 27, 1864, in Centralia, Missouri, the guerilla group apprehended 24 unarmed Union soldiers from a train and executed them as they were going home on furlough. Pursued by Union troops, the Bushwhackers managed to kill more than another hundred Northerners. Frank and Jesse were involved, and Jesse was credited with killing eight soldiers.

When the war ended, Jesse and Frank, like many others, saw massive inequities as Northerners took vengeance against the southerners, and Reconstruction only magnified the sense of unfairness. Jesse and Frank, the four Younger Brothers, and others fled to the hills and continued to raid, rob, and kill. Many people defended these outlaws because of the persecution their families suffered during the war.

The war ended in April of 1865, and in May Jesse rode into Lexington, Missouri, with a white flag in an attempt to surrender to Union troops. A Union soldier shot him in the chest, but he managed to flee to safety and recuperate. This was often used by confederate sympathizers to excuse gangster activities. They were “forced” into criminal life by the victorious and still-vengeful Yankees.

When Jesse was 18 years old, the James-Younger gang of 10 or 12  robbed the Clay County Savings in Liberty in 1866, a few months after the Civil War came to an end. The Younger boys are falsely said to be cousins of the James. This robbery was only a year before Jesse’s name was added to the Mount Olive Baptist Church! Ironically, Liberty was the location of the college Jesse and Frank’s father helped establish. The young gang of thieves stole over $60,000 in cash and bonds, and an innocent teenage boy was killed during their escape.

When banks became larger, more protected, and got time-release safes, the James-Younger gang changed with the times and robbed stagecoaches and trains. Jesse, and especially his mother, promoted his criminal activities as a kind of Robin Hood, taking only from Northern banks—which only the mentally challenged believed.

In 1874, Jesse and Frank took blushing brides and tried to live anonymously, robbing, and killing periodically but moving frequently. They had been chased for years by the Pinkerton Detective Agency without any success. In 1875, a group of Pinkerton agents surrounded the James’ farm and threw a smoke bomb into the house, and Archie Samuels (Jesse and Frank’s half-brother) threw it into the fireplace where it exploded, killing Archie. Their mother’s right arm was injured, resulting in amputation below the elbow.

The media reported the device was a “bomb” which resulted in even more local sympathy for the James boys and increased hatred of government. It also gave some credibility to them being forced into criminal behavior. Years later, a letter by Pinkerton was found in the Library of Congress in which Pinkerton declared his intention to “burn the house down.”

Following a badly botched robbery of First National Bank in Northfield, Minnesota, in 1876, the robbery spree came to an end. Two of the gang members were killed, and the Younger Brothers were injured and sentenced to life in prison. Frank and Jesse escaped unharmed back to Missouri.

Jesse’s wife had a baby, and he rented a farm in St. Joseph, Missouri in 1881 under the alias of Tom Howard. The governor and the Pinkertons announced a $10,000 reward for Jesse, dead or alive. Jesse, feeling a need for protection, hired Charles and Robert Ford to live with him not knowing they had bargained with the governor to betray Jesse.

After breakfast on April 3, 1882, Charles and Robert were in the living room, and Jesse walked in and laid his gun belt on a table, something he had never done. Looking at a wall picture, Jesse stood on a chair to dust (or straighten) the picture, and Bob Ford shot him in the back of his head, killing him. Jesse was dead at 34, and the song, “The dirty little coward shot Mr. Howard has laid Jesse James in his grave,” expressed the attitude of many.

Frank James surrendered to officials on October 5, 1882, was tried and found not guilty, and died at the age of 72 from natural causes at the James’ farm on February 18, 1915. During their 15-year crime spree, the James-Younger Gang committed 26 holdups taking more than $200,000 and killed more than 24 men from Iowa to Texas and Kansas to Huntington, West Virginia.

Jesse’s funeral was held at what is now First Baptist Church of Kearney, Missouri and where Jesse had been a member. The principled pastor refused to say a word about him but warned people that sin will kill, and Christ is the answer for every person’s need of salvation—a salvation that always results in a change of behavior.

Jesse and Frank were Baptists but were not genuine Christians, as is true of many church members today.

(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives who ran a large Christian school in Indianapolis and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. Boys authored 20 books, the most recent, Reflections of a Lifetime Fundamentalist: No Reserves, No Retreats, No Regrets! The eBook is available at Amazon.com for $4.99. Other titles at www.cstnews.com. Follow him on Facebook at Don  Boys, Ph.D., and visit his blog. Send a request to DBoysphd@aol.com for a free subscription to his articles and click here to support  his work with a donation.)

“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.” – John Bunyan

George Orwell warned, “The most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of history.” That has been happening since the zealots, pretending to be sensitive about imperfect people, started removing portraits and statues of historical persons.

The anti-historical fanatics are tearing out the guts of this nation. They finally succeeded in removing the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson from their place of honor in Charlottesville. These history-hating hypocrites pretend to be so superior; however, those twits don’t qualify to wash and polish the bronze statues of those two principled men or shine their boots while alive.

Charlottesville Mayor Nikuyah said the removal was “one small step forward” in dismantling White supremacy and reckoning with their past. The comatose mayor doesn’t know that we dealt with our past with something called the Civil War, resulting in the removal of slavery. More Americans died in that war than in WW I, WW II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the recent wars in the Middle East—combined!

Removing Confederate statues, rewriting history, and denigrating everything southern, misnamed “progressives” are whitewashing our history as we turn away from the inconvenient truths of our past.

I suggest the black zealots and black mayors be handed a copy of CliffsNotes or SparkNotes as a quick introduction to that war. Or, someone might read them the text since there are few pictures.

General Lee was one of the most talented, gracious, and conscientious men of the day. Before freeing his wife’s slaves and preparing them for freedom, General Lee’s wife taught the slaves to read and write and the women how to sew. Most Americans don’t know it was illegal to educate blacks in most of the south. This was especially true after the summer of 1831, following the massacre of 55 white men, women, and children led by Nat Turner, a slave and professed Baptist preacher—in reality, a religious nut. Many states made slave education illegal. Mrs. Lee refused to obey that law.

Following his surrender, Lee refused many lucrative job offers and, in 1865, accepted a small salary as president of Washington College (later Washington and Lee University) located in Lexington. One of their professors and other racial jerks want to remove Lee’s name from that institution because he was a “traitor.” Washington and Lee Professor James Casey (a self-hating white dude), said, “[Lee] betrayed that oath to the Constitution of the United States for one reason and one reason only, to protect the institution of slavery.”

Only a racist or a poorly trained person says the original and foremost reason for the Civil War was slavery. The professor had also said, “something is wrong with white folk.” His false claim about the war being fought over slavery became popular when it became politically expedient to do so after the south exploded over collection of taxes on imports at the Charleston port.

The civil war happened because two contending parties—the North and the South—disagreed on who would collect taxes on imported items at the ports of entry, specifically at Fort Sumter off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. However, a war over taxes doesn’t sizzle but fighting to free slaves will cause men to march to their deaths. So, the South wanted independence, not the protection of slavery, and the North wanted an intact Union, not the abolition of slavery. And with an intact Union, the feds could continue to charge 40% tax, not the 10% South Carolina charged.

Southern leaders correctly asserted they had a legal and moral right to secede from the Union. In fact, New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island made joining the Union contingent on being able to leave. No colony would have agreed to be part of the Union if they did not have the right to return to their independent status.

In 1855, soon to be famous Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson broke the law every Sunday morning when he taught a Sunday school class of Blacks at the Lexington Presbyterian Church. He was also careful that even during the war, his tithe was sent to his church.

Compare Lee and Jackson with Senator Robert Byrd, a lifetime Democrat and an organizer in the 1940s of a chapter of the KKK in West Virginia. He wrote in the early 1949s, “The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation.”

Byrd wrote to Senator Theodore Bibo in 1944, declaring, “I shall never fight in the armed forces with a negro by my side… Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.”

Senator Byrd was a member and the founder of that chapter and was elected Exalted Cyclops unanimously. While he repudiated the Klan in later years (after he was an established Washington insider), he and the Democrat Party vehemently opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for 57 days! Senator Byrd filibustered for 14 hours against the legislation, yet Democrats still call him “the conscience of the Senate.” He was a typical politician—a bag of stale wind.

You see, that was when Democrats believed in and used the filibuster; however, today, the Democrats don’t believe in it when it is advantageous to the Republicans.

Did I mention that Democrats are certified hypocrites? They have a well-earned Ph.D., Doctor in Hypocritical Pomposity.

Now, since the very sensitive progressives want to correct all wrongs of the past and live in a pure society without offensive proslavery statues, why have they left Senator Byrd untouched. His busts and photos in Washington have not been removed. Is there a crusade in West Virginia to change the numerous streets, parks, and schools that bear his name? If not, why not?

Would my critics not be too hard on me if I suggest that Democrats are the sleaziest, most despicable hypocrites ever? They do irreparable damage to truth and present and future generations by manipulating historical reality.

Tyrants have always preferred fiction over facts and write history to please themselves. I revealed in my book The God Haters an example of politicians manipulating history when Caesar tried to obliterate the memory of Pilate because he had offended Caesar. Pilate, therefore, did not exist since Caesar said so, and officials and historians willingly obeyed by removing Pilate’s name from all records.

Mark Antony had a similar experience with his memory being formally expunged from Rome’s official records after his affair with Cleopatra. Antony and Cleopatra agreed to commit suicide, and Antony stabbed himself with a sword and died in Cleopatra’s arms. She then killed herself with the bite from a poisonous serpent.

Antony had antagonized Cicero, and the powers that be, so his name was removed from the history books. “His name was obliterated from the…state registers of official events. His statues were removed. It was to be as if he had never existed. The Senate …voted that no member of the Antonius clan should be named Marcus….His birthday was made …an unlucky day, on which public business could not be conducted.”

However, that was not Cicero’s opinion when he wrote in 80 B.C., “The first law is that the historian shall never dare to set down what is false; the second, that he shall never dare to conceal the truth; the third, that there shall be no suspicion in his work of either favoritism or prejudice.” Antony was a toddler at the time and many years later, Cicero did the opposite to punish Antony. Such was politics along the Tiber—as well as the Potomac. The same has been true for more decades along the Moskva and Volga Rivers in Russia.

Soviet despot Joseph Stalin sent fellow Communist Leon Trotsky into exile and airbrushed him out of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia; then to finish the matter, assassinated him in Mexico. For decades, when a Soviet official fell out of favor with the sitting Soviet tyrant, the offender was painted out of the official photos of the most recent May Day Parade in Moscow.

There is no end to such catastrophic and wretched activities of little men using their temporary authority to strike back at their real or perceived enemies. Officials with little minds, guilty consciences, enlarged egos, and gobs of personal insecurity will always use their power to accentuate their positives and modulate their negatives.

However, the past is always with us. Sane, secure, and stable leaders will not rewrite history for political, personal, or pecuniary reasons; but we can count on the misfits, malcontents, and malefactors to distort history.

I suggest today’s lowlife rabble-rousers stop desecrating and removing historical heroes and patriots or be consistent (for a change) and destroy every vestige of Senator Robert Byrd, former Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan.

(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives who ran a large Christian school in Indianapolis and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. Boys authored 18 books, the most recent being Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! The eBook is available here with the printed edition (and other titles) at www.cstnews.com. Follow him on Facebook at Don Boys, Ph.D., and visit his blog. Send a request to DBoysphd@aol.com for a free subscription to his articles, and click here to support his work with a donation.)

In all fairness, I suppose it would be acceptable for me to mention that General Sherman was a monster and proved it in his almost 300-mile scorched-earth march from Atlanta to Savannah. Sherman wrote to Grant in 1865, “We are not fighting against an enemy army, but against an enemy people. Both young and old, rich and poor must feel the iron hand of war in the same way as the organized armies. In this respect, my march through Georgia was a wonderful success.”

He stole every animal possible and killed those he could not take. He stole all the grain he could carry and burned every barn to the ground. And it was war against a people, not an army!

General Sheridan describing his part of the war in the Shenandoah admitted, “I have burned 2,000 barns filled with wheat and corn, all the mills in the whole country, destroyed all the factories of cloth, killed or driven off every animal—even the poultry—that could contribute to human sustenance. Nothing should be left in the Shenandoah but eyes to lament the war.” Very principled men, those Yankees.

So, if we are going to hold southern soldiers responsible according to modern standards then we will do the same for northern soldiers. Won’t we? Hypocrites!

Rather than learn from the good and bad decisions in our past, the non-thinkers rewrite history and express hate for southern culture. They demand that statues of highly principled men be removed from the public square and portraits of them and of major battles be relegated to obscure storage rooms.

Slavery and legal segregation were blights on our nation, but that is behind us. The segregationists today are radical Blacks and non-thinking, self-hating Whites. However, some critics assert that segregation was the major and almost exclusive blight of southerners. There are many southern values such as love of country, way of life, commitment, courage, leisurely lifestyle, gentle weather, etc., that make the South distinctive and are often reflected in our history, monuments, music, and general culture. Today, official segregation is a moot issue.

Only a small percent of southerners owned slaves, and the first slaveholder was a Black! His name was Anthony Johnson who owned black and white slaves! So, there is plenty of blame to go around starting with black chiefs who kidnapped and sold their own people to Arab slavers long before New World colonies were involved. I have noticed that many of the black agitators refuse to discuss these embarrassing facets of this issue, being willing only to demand their position be heard and accepted. I have no guilt over slavery, but I am embarrassed by it.

It is the business of each city and state to decide about monument removal or not—not outside black or white activists. Moreover, there must be consistency in vilifying objectionable leaders of extremist causes. If statues of slavers and Klan supporters are to be removed from public view, then former Democrat Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia (former Klansman) must be treated the same way. Any Byrd monument or plaque or reference in D.C. or elsewhere must be removed.

That would also be true of Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black (former Klansman and Democrat). Same with anti-American and black extremists W. E. B. DuBois, Malcolm X, etc. But that won’t happen. And agreeing to remove a few monuments will only encourage the fanatics. Progress will be possible only if there is honest reciprocity.

Desegregation came about in the U.S. school system in 1954 with the Brown v School Board of Topeka, decision. And while it is good that schools were desegregated, the decision was not a wise one. If the court had simply ruled that any student could choose which school he wanted to attend, that would have solved the problem without bloodshed, violence, expense, turmoil, etc., in both north and south. Unknown to many, the worst of the bloody riots surrounding school desegregation happened in the North.

Northern racial hatred was evident before, during, and following Lincoln’s War of Northern Aggression. In Democracy in America, Alexis Tocqueville wrote in 1864 that “the prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the States that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those States where servitude has never been known.” He was right on target.

Few are willing to admit that the North had “whites only” restrictions in restaurants and hotels, and almost every northern city had its share of racial killings, cross burnings, and white-black riots. Thomas J. Sugrue, a professor of history and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, revealed in Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North that major black entertainers “had a hard time finding rooms and faced Jim Crow in restaurants when they toured the North.”

Following WW II, Blacks streamed to northern cities, but they did not move to New York City but to Harlem, not to Chicago but the Southside of Chicago. Malcolm X stood before a Harlem audience in 1964 and declared, “America is Mississippi. There’s no such thing as a Mason-Dixon line—it’s America. There’s no such thing as the South—it’s America. . . . And the mistake that you and I make is letting these Northern crackers shift the weight to the Southern crackers.” I shockingly find myself agreeing with a black racist extremist!

Black activist James Baldwin reflected on Blacks immigrating to northern cities: “They do not escape Jim Crow: they merely encounter another, not-less-deadly variety.” He was saying that the North was as bad as the South! Martin Luther King, Jr. said that even in Alabama and Mississippi, he had not encountered mobs as hostile to black civil rights as those in Chicago.

All the major northern cities had huge ghettos of Blacks, and Martin Luther King, Jr. did not lead a march through the Chicago suburb of Cicero, because of so much hostility about integration. In 2011, the liberal Salon website revealed that the ten most segregated cities in the U.S. were Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, New York, and Milwaukee. Notice the common denominator! And even the U.S. military was segregated during WW II! So, let’s be even-handed in the criticism of black/white relationships in both North and South.

In this rush to make right all the past wrongs of famous men and in light of the resent awareness of the mistreatment of women maybe we should visit the lifestyle of Martin Luther King and his numerous mistresses and his mistreatment of them.

Oh, well, maybe not. After all, consistency can be carried too far.

(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives who ran a large Christian school in Indianapolis and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. Boys authored 18 books, the most recent Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! eBook is available here with the printed edition (and other titles) at www.cstnews.com. Follow him on Facebook at Don Boys, Ph.D., and visit his blog. Send a request to DBoysphd@aol.com for a free subscription to his articles, and click here to support his work with a donation.)

Last week the respected Southern Baptist Convention joined the fanatics in chipping away at the perceived symbol of the South by voting overwhelmingly to repudiate the Confederate battle flag. It’s one thing to admit their denomination was founded in support of Southern slavery but to flagellate themselves and others with the Confederate flag is outrageous. SBC muckety muck, Russell Moore sobbed, “It’s not often that I find myself wiping away tears in a denominational meeting, but I just did.” All right, I respect his heartfelt, although unjustified emotion; however, I assume he also sobbed when he saw the White House lit up with the homosexual rainbow flag!

Thousands of Baptists declared at the St. Louis conclave, “Today Southern Baptists affirmed that we are more committed to the gospel than we are to a flag and more committed to the future than we are to the past.” That is a fantastic statement that no Christian would deny; however, it does not justify their unnecessary, unprovoked, and unjustified attack upon a major portion of this nation.

The South-haters like to control people–all people, North and South. Those people who won’t be controlled are dangerous to the control-freak tyrants. The tyrants believe such reluctant people must be educated in the public educational system that is controlled by the “controllees.” If people will not succumb to controlled education then they must be educated against their will, hence the use of television, movies, music, as well as schools to mold people the way the “controllees” want.

A major way to control people is to control the culture resulting in the “correct” view of events. We saw this following the craven shooting by a white thug in Charleston, S.C. of nine members of a black church. The cowardly thug was seen in a photo with a Confederate flag and the fanatics went ballistic! Cowardly politicians rushed to the television cameras to denounce the Southern culture and one of its symbols–the Confederate battle flag. The South Carolina governor and the legislature removed the flag from statehouse grounds. That is much easier and safer than making a cogent defense of their hasty actions.

However, when Muslim fanatics are seen with a Koran or the Muslim flag the same liberal control freaks are strangely silent. Could it be because they are cowards or collaborators or even crusaders for Islam? If not, then what is the explanation? At least, they are hypocrites.

The fanatics are on a roll. They want to remove all historical figures who do not meet the present pristine political picture of perfection; but no person or group is without blame. All people are flawed–even the fanatics who have appointed themselves Cultural Commissars. For many years, the fanatics have castigated Columbus and insist that he be anathema. Now, the zealots are running amuck sandblasting names of famous military and political leaders from schools; ripping up statues, and tearing down Confederate battle flags. Those same people usually have no problem with the infamous rainbow flag of the perverts that was even displayed at the White House following a seizure of insanity by the U.S. Supreme Court!

The Confederate battle flag waved over slavery for only four years yet the stars and stripes waved over slavery for almost a hundred years. Slavery is a shameful, sinful, and sullied part of our history but only a part. The battle flag also stands for courage, commitment, consistency, and culture.

The fanatics are determined that while they can’t change what happened in the past, they will sure change the narrative to fit their skewed view of the past. Narrow-minded leaders have done that for thousands of years.

An example of politicians manipulating history is seen in Caesar trying to obliterate the memory of Pilate because he had offended Caesar. Pilate therefore did not exist since Caesar said so and historians and politicians willingly obeyed by removing Pilate’s name from all records. For many years, Bible critics told anyone who would listen that the Bible is unreliable because Pilate could not be found in any historical record. Then archeologists, digging in the rubble of Caesarea by the Sea, found a five-inch-thick stone that referred to Pilate and had been used in the famous amphitheater where I have preached a few times. Of course, the stone had been used because it was exactly the size needed and was used with the forbidden information about Pilate underneath! It is on display in Caesarea today.

Mark Antony had a similar experience with his memory being formally expunged from Rome’s official records even though he was related to three of Rome’s first five emperors–Caligula, Claudius, and Nero! His mother was a cousin of Julius Caesar under whom he served in the army and became second-in-command. Antony, while his wife was in Rome, had a lengthy affair with Queen Cleopatra of Egypt fathering three children, and then he and his lover killed themselves.

Antony had resisted Octavian (later known as Augustus) and when Augustus gained total power, he decided to remove Antony from the history books: “His name was obliterated from the […] state registers of official events. His statues were removed. It was to be as if he had never existed. The Senate […] voted that no member of the Antonius clan should be named Marcus […]. His birthday was made […] an unlucky day, on which public business could not be conducted.” So, Marc Antony legally ceased to exist because Caesar said so.

This kind of glaring dissimulation, distortion, and dishonesty continued to the War Between the States. During the first two years of Lincoln’s War of Northern Aggression, the South whipped the Yankees and Northern states grew weary of seeing their sons come home in boxes or buried in a Southern meadow on Chickamauga Creek or on a North Carolina mountainside. For the first two years, the reason for the war was taxes, not slavery; however, Lincoln changed the war rhetoric to a more emotional subject than finances. Slavery was the emotional button for the North that Lincoln pushed and it worked. Slavery was worth fighting and dying for, but not taxes.

Modern totalitarians, with the same bias, bigotry, and bullying as ancient Caesar, plan to dig up the body of Confederate General Nathan B. Forrest buried in a city park whose name used to identify the park. But it gets worse; the fanatics are cancelling the annual Jefferson–Jackson Day dinners because both men held slaves. But then, slaves were held by Washington (about 300), Jefferson (about 200), Madison (more than 100), and Monroe (about 75). In fact, of the first 14 presidents all owned slaves except John and Quincy Adams. Eight of them owned slaves while serving as president! Here’s a shocker: Abe Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, was served by slaves in the White House even though the slave trade was abolished in Washington in 1850–long before he was elected!

So, to be consistent (never a major concern for liberals), they must change the name of the cities that honor Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and all the others who were flawed men. Moreover, all the streets, schools, and airports that honor those slaveholders must be changed. Maybe we should take a massive wrecking ball to America to satisfy the fanatics.

Thoughtless or bigoted blacks who demand that the Confederate Flag be shredded are smearing many Blacks who fought under that flag. The first black military officers in the U.S. were blacks who commanded a regiment of 1500 enlistees for the Confederacy. Of those black soldiers, Professor Walter Williams declared, “Black civil rights activists, their white liberal supporters and historically ignorant Americans who attack the Confederate flag have committed a deep, despicable dishonor to our patriotic Southern black ancestors who marched, fought and died not to protect slavery but to protect their homeland from Northern aggression. They don’t deserve the dishonor.” Oh, I forgot to mention that Williams is black!

I should also remind you that I don’t own a Confederate flag and was not born or reared in the South.

Tyrants, totalitarians, and toadies never change; and modern politicians continue as in the past: they exaggerate their successes, excuse their shortcomings, and excise their sins and they do that by rewriting history–even wrecking history.

Boys’ new book, Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! will be released next week by Barbwire Books.