Authentic News with Jim Fetzer, October 13, 2025 Hour 1

“Battle Lines Drawn Over Stone Mountain’s Confederate Legacy”

“The despatches found on the body of Col. Dahlgren, who was killed near Richmond, will be quoted in disgrace of the name of the United States as long as our name shall last. They prove that the object of the last ‘raid on Richmond’ was to set fire to the city, full of women and children, without notice, and to murder its inhabitants…. This is not warfare; it is assassination. By the laws of war all who were taken in the act of attempting to execute such a plot were liable to be treated, not as prisoners of war, but as spies and assassins. Their lives were forfeited, if the Confederates had chosen to adhere strictly to the laws of war.” (The Old Guard, April 1864, p. 95)

“The city of Atlanta, after its surrender, was burned to the ground, and only a handful of churches and a few outlying residences escaped the holocaust…. Captain Daniel Oakey of the Second Massachusetts Volunteers recounted the burning of Atlanta as follows: ‘Sixty thousand of us witnessed the destruction of Atlanta, while our post band and that of the 33rd Massachusetts played martial airs and operatic selections.'” (Sam Dickson, “Shattering the Icon of Abraham Lincoln”)

Dr. Revilo P. Oliver: “Lincoln’s ghastly war against the South … startled Europe by its bloody barbarity, so outrageous that Lord Palmerston for some time refused to believe the news from the United States, saying that such savagery was impossible for civilized men.”

Sam Dickson: “This in essence was a ‘right to rape’ order which he [General Butler] issued to his troops [in New Orleans] …. Palmerston, the British Prime Minister, wrote to Charles Francis Adams, the U.S. Minister in London the following concerning Butler’s order:

“‘I will venture to say that no example can be found in the history of civilized nations till the publication of this order of a general guilty in cold blood of so infamous an act as deliberately to hand over the female inhabitants of a conquered city to the unbridled license of an unrestrained soldiery.'”

“The Anglo-Saxon population of the whole western tier of counties in Missouri were deported from their homes by General Ewing’s General Order Number 11, which depopulated the region by forcibly evacuating the women and children on the shortest of notice, along with burning their houses and stealing their property.” (Sam Dickson, “Shattering the Icon of Abraham Lincoln”)

“On July 8, the entire town … was burned to the ground…. only the population remained, most of them women and children with a few men. The women and children were separated from the men and herded into wagons. The wagon train then set off for Marietta, Georgia, some 16 miles away. During the journey the women were forced to endure the sexual advances of the Union soldiers. [In other words, they were raped.]” (Sam Dickson, “Shattering the Icon of Abraham Lincoln”)

“[T]he Second Massachusetts negro infantry, 700 strong, Col. Draper, a white man, commanding, with one hundred white cavalry, … started for the Northern Neck….

“On the route six negroes violated the person of Mrs. G. eleven times, she being the wife of a soldier of the Ninth Virginia cavalry….

“Where they went they were led by their officers and told, ‘You can go loose and do as you please.'” (The Old Guard, September 1864, p. 200)

“Sherman used Southern prisoners of war to clear mine fields by marching them back and forth across land outside Savannah where mines were suspected. Southern prisoners were also herded in front of Northern emplacements under Confederate artillery fire so as to force Southerners to fire on their own men. Thus in the siege of Charleston, 50 Confederate officers were placed in a holding pen in front of Fort Wagner on Morris Island, so as to expose them to the fire of Confederate batteries shelling the Northern positions.” (Sam Dickson, “Shattering the Icon of Abraham Lincoln”)

“Since these are the latest recognized rules of civilized warfare, can we wonder that all Europe agree in expressions of surprise and horror at the barbarities we have perpetrated upon the people of the South, from the very commencement of this war? Our army correspondents, who have written for the New York Times, Tribune, and Herald, have spread a knowledge of our brutality and barbarism broadcast over the whole world. A correspondent in Grant’s army, for the New York Tribune, in a letter published June 20th, gives the following between Gen. Butler’s Chief of Staff and a negro sergeant:

“‘Well,’ said Gen. Butler’s Chief of Staff to a tall sergeant, ‘you had a pretty tough fight there on the left.’ ‘Yes, sir; and we lost a good many good officers and men.’ ‘How many prisoners did you take, sergeant?’ ‘Not any alive, sir,’ was the significant response. Gen. Smith says, ‘They don’t give my Provost Marshal the least trouble, and I don’t believe they contribute toward filling any of the hospitals with Rebel wounded.’

“The amount of all this is that Butler’s Chief of Staff and the New York Tribune chuckle over the account the ebony devil gives of murdering wounded soldiers. It is a source of delight to them that these negroes take no prisoners, but assassinate their victims in cold blood. In any other country such acts would be punished with death; here, in this land demonized with the implacable, the hellish spirit of Abolitionism, they are sources of delight to all who keep company with the Republican party.” (The Old Guard, August 1864, pp. 172–173)

“At Palmyra, in Missouri, General McNeil murdered, in cold blood, ten soldiers of the Confederacy…. President Davis ordered by telegraph the execution in retaliation, of ten Yankee prisoners…. the telegraphic order was never executed; … and the Palmyra massacre was not only unavenged, but justice itself was cheated by a false and most unworthy show of compliance with its demands.” (Edward A. Pollard; The Third Year of the War (1864); p. 199)

“Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus throughout the nation. He assumed the power to close newspapers and in fact closed hundreds of them in the North which dared criticize his policies. He arrested elected officials, including former members of Congress, who opposed him.” — Sam Dickson, “Shattering the Icon of Abraham Lincoln”

These quotations from the 19th century tell the truth about the South’s right to secede far more eloquently than I could. (The distracting references have been mostly omitted.)

“The first act of secession dates as far back as 1789, when eleven of the States, becoming dissatisfied with the old articles of confederation made in 1778, seceded and formed a second union. When in 1861 eleven of the States again seceded and united themselves under the style of the Confederate States of North America, they exercised a right which required no justification….”

“When the Constitution was adopted by the votes of States at Philadelphia, and accepted by the votes of States in popular conventions, it is safe to say that there was not a man in the country from Washington and Hamilton on the one side, to George Clinton and George Mason on the other, who regarded the new system as anything but an experiment entered upon by the States and from which each and every State had the right peaceably to withdraw, a right which was very likely to be exercised.”

“[T]he States of New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia, in their ratifications of the Constitution of the United States, expressly reserved the right ‘to reassume the powers delegated whenever they should be perverted to the injury of the people.’ This is simply and clearly the right of secession, and as these States were admitted into the Union, partnership, or alliance, with this condition precedent annexed, such condition became, of course, a part of the contract, or Constitution itself. But, even without this condition, is it not obvious to common sense that sovereign States have the same right to withdraw from an alliance or partnership as they had to enter it, and by the same process, viz.: through their organic, government-making, Constitution-making Conventions, in which alone their sovereignty is embodied? How absurd it seems to admit, in the case of individuals, the right of withdrawing from a partnership, and yet to deny the same right to sovereign States….”

“To help the fainthearted a little, let us ask, which State would have joined the Union had it supposed that, under no circumstances, of whatever oppression and wrong, could it ever resume its sovereign powers? Does any man believe that a single State would have agreed to the compact with such an understanding of its nature?”

“[W]hen we were at war with Great Britain [the War of 1812], Massachusetts not only refused to obey the laws of the United States—refused to allow a single soldier to defend the government of the United States—but she tried to induce all the New England States to secede from the Union, and form a separate treaty of peace with our enemy in the very midst of the war….”

“But the plain question occurs, what right has the North to constrain the association of a people who have no benefit to derive from the partnership, and who, by the laws of nature and society, are free to consult their own happiness?”

“We are dealing only with this senseless assertion … that, ‘under no circumstances can a State withdraw from the Union.‘ Such an assertion we hold to be not only senseless, but monstrous. Such a principle carried out in all the relations of life, would put a stop to all the movements of civilization. Who would enter into compacts, partnerships, or bargains of any kind, if by so doing they bound themselves, beyond the reach of reparation or retreat, to adhere to contracts after they were broken by the other parties to them? It is certain that if such were the character of the compact of the Union, not one State would ever have become a party to it. The effort to change the character of the compact into an involuntary Union, is revolutionary, and should be abhorred by every State alike; for the existence of every State is alike involved in the issue.”

“And some ten years ago a party was organized in the North for the sole purpose of getting possession of the common Government of the States, and perverting it … into a machine for completing the European scheme for the debauchment and destruction of Republican institutions. This party … elected Mr. Lincoln in 1860, according to the legal and outward form of the Constitution, though against the will and wishes of two-thirds of the American people. This combination of certain States against certain other States of the American Union … is the most astounding anomaly in the history of mankind, for, while preserving the forms of Union, it was in substance the most absolute disunion possible, and while acting within legal formulas, it aimed at a revolution, wider, deeper, and deadlier than any the world has ever yet witnessed.”

“We feel that our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of mankind that we desire peace at any sacrifice save that of honor and independence; we ask no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms.” (President Jefferson Davis, 29 April, 1861)

“This new government, complete in all its parts, went smoothly and successfully into operation. The people were happy, justice was regularly administered, enterprise was stimulated, trade would have flourished, and prosperity overspread the land, but the people were early called away from these peaceful and profitable pursuits to employ their resources and energies in resisting a hostile invasion.

“Stupendous efforts were promptly made to provide the means of self-defence; wonderful ingenuity supplied the want of facilities; material of war was obtained as if by magic; leaders were chosen, armies organized, and a contest inaugurated, which for the masterly genius and lofty heroism it elicited, has scarcely a parallel in the history of mankind.

“The war opened auspiciously for the South, and so continued through a brilliant but measured period. But at last, with failing resources, disasters followed; yet the people persevered, still relying on the scanty means that were at hand. Neither hunger, nakedness, nor death itself, could turn them from their high but desperate purpose, and if the world at first admired their dashing valor, it was now called upon to wonder at their marvellous fortitude and firmness.

“Surely, if success was ever earned without being actually won, we have an instance of it here. No people ever struggled more earnestly or nobly for a cherished object, and their enormous sacrifices prove the depth of their sincerity. But the North triumphed because she was stronger; the South fell because she was exhausted, and to assert the contrary, would be but base hypocrisy or falsehood….

“[W]e do know one individual, weakened by toil and hunger, whatever his courage or the justice of his cause may be, has little prospect of succeeding against twenty strong men resolved on his destruction. Verily, the South may claim the sympathies of all mankind.”

“The people of South Carolina have as much right to burn Boston, as the people of Massachusetts had to burn Charleston.”

“Abraham Lincoln was the leader of the greatest and bloodiest rebellion ever recorded in the annals of mankind. His whole course was a rebellion, or a war, against not only the fundamental principles of liberty, but it was a war upon civilization and upon society. His generals not only plundered private property, but they murdered nonbelligerent and unarmed people, not even sparing women and children.”

“[I]n four brief years [Lincoln] did more evil to mankind than the worst man that ever lived accomplished in a lifetime. The cause he led is the most unnatural, impious, and sinful that has ever afflicted the world, and the means of its accomplishment the vilest, most dishonest, and devilish that ever degraded our race, or stained the earth since time began.”

“Under the reign of Lincoln, everybody who opposed him was hunted down with the most merciless tyranny; they were thrown into bastiles, by telegraphic despatches, without any form of law, their property destroyed, and, in many instances, the most blameless citizens murdered.”

“Only in a community, demoralized and debased by the vices of war, and the lusts of illegal power, could a monument to such a man as Lincoln long stand to insult the sunlight and blast the vision of decent men!”

“Every State has the same right to hang a military governor sent by Congress, that it would to hang one sent by England or Russia.”

“We say to this North—to the people among whom we were born—where we can look back to an ancestry of nearly two hundred and fifty years—you have no right to impose military rulers upon the southern people. And they have a God-given right to kill every wretch who should consent to be the tool of our tyranny…. If we carry out this thing, they ought to hate us, and all that reminds them of us, forever. They would be dogs to ever forgive us. Nor would the scales of eternal justice ever be even until they were avenged of this tremendous wrong. Nations have no more right to escape punishment for wrong-doing than individuals.”

“No government can long survive which is based upon cruelty and spite. It ought not to survive. It is the right and the duty of all men to destroy it. There is such a word as ‘allegiance,’ but no man owes allegiance to a government not of his choice or free adoption, and much less to one which oppresses him. It is the divine and inalienable right of any people to destroy a government which oppresses them, in the shortest manner, and by any means which they may deem necessary.”

What did a New York magazine conclude about the Confederacy?

“[H]er battles are ours! Her cause is ours, for it is the cause of self-government, of liberty, of humanity, and of State sovereignty, recognized and claimed by every State in the Union….” (The Old Guard, January 1864, pp. 15–16)

Lord Acton to Robert E. Lee, November 4, 1866: “Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.”

Edward A. Pollard; The Second Year of the War (1864); p. 303:

“The Yankee—who has followed up an extravagance of bluster by the vilest exhibitions of cowardice—who has falsified his prate of humanity by the deeds of a savage—who, in the South, has been in this war a robber, an assassin, a thief in the night, and at home a slave fawning on the hand that manacles him—has secured for himself the everlasting contempt of the world.”

Let’s let H. L. Mencken have the final word:

“The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination—that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.”