Civil Government: Power, Nations, and Constitutional Order: Where We Are & How We Got Here

Is The Confederate Flag a Symbol of Hate? Part 2

Transcript: AI Transcript

Professor: John Weaver

Subject: Civil Government

Genre: Sermon

Dictation Name:

Date: 2002-11-13

Synopsis: John Weaver argues that the Confederate battle flag is not a symbol of hate, but rather a symbol of resistance against those who sought to destroy the South's republic, constitution, and culture. He contends that sectional animosity originated in the North, citing inflammatory statements by Northern politicians and generals calling for the extermination of Southerners. Weaver contrasts the vengeful Northern attitude with the graciousness of Robert E. Lee. He further asserts that the North harbored deep racial prejudice against blacks, passing laws to exclude them and treating freed blacks worse than slaves, while the South was more integrated. He claims that black soldiers were forcibly conscripted by the Union and that Northern troops committed atrocities against Southern blacks. Weaver concludes that if any flag symbolizes hate, it is the Stars and Stripes, not the Confederate battle flag.

[John Weaver] Most people do not understand the sexual animosity that even still exists in this country today. And may I point out the fact the sexual animosity existed even before the people came over to this country. You'll find that those who came from the northern part of England and those who came from the southern part are quite different. And you'll also find those who came from Scotland and Wales and Ireland, the Scotch-Irish, that is those Scots who went down to Ireland and then came over here, you're going to find that there was a great sectional dislike between themselves and those people of Northern England. So the sectionalism was basically in the people before they ever came to this country. And consequently, you have a lot of the Scotch-Irish who settled in the South. And of course a lot of those from Northern England settled then in the North and a lot of the sectional hatred and ill will continued. And so let me just demonstrate to you today that the hatred and the ill will in this country was basically on the part of the North.

[John Weaver] Wendell Phillips. in a speech delivered at Henry Ward Beecher's church in 1862, had this to say concerning the land and the territory of the Confederated States. Listen to what he says. He says, this land is ours, confiscated, guaranteed. It's title given to the soldier who has finished his service. Give it to the black man who is willing to take it. plant a state under the guarantee of the Union, employ free labor upon that fertile soil, and commence again the civil machinery, the organization of a state.

[John Weaver] Then he continues, I know it seems like an absolute barbarian conquest. I allow it. I don't believe there will be any peace until 347,000 slaveholders are either hung or exiled. At this point, cheers rose up. He says history shows no precedent of getting rid of an aristocracy like this except by the death of a generation.

[John Weaver] Now what in the world was Wendell Phillips saying? He's saying the only way that we're going to salvage anything is if we kill an entire generation of people in the South. Again, on January the 23rd, 1863, the New York Tribune quoted Wendell Phillips as saying this, and this is very revealing by the way, his first sentence in this quote is this, this war was primarily a social revolution. This war was primarily a social revolution. The war can only be ended by annihilating that oligarchy which formed and rules the South and makes the war by annihilating a state of society.

[John Weaver] The whole societal system of the Gulf states must be taken to pieces. So here Wendell Phillips is saying, look, we are in a social revolution and what we're going to do is we're going to revolutionize the South. We're going to reconstruct them. By the way, that's what reconstruction was all about, trying to train the South to form and to act and to think like the Northerners. Now, Kansas Republican Senator Jim Lane was a tad more specific than Wendell Phillips.

[John Weaver] When he said in his speech delivered in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1863, he said this.

[John Weaver] Now, remember, this is a senator. Senator Jim Lane said, I would like to live long enough to see every white man in South Carolina in hell and the Negroes inheriting their territory. Loud applause. It would not wound my feelings any day to find the dead bodies of rebel sympathizers, that is Democrats, pierced with bullet holes at every street and alley of Washington. Applause. Yes, I would regret this.

[John Weaver] Now listen, wait a minute. What did he just say? It would not wound my feelings any day to find the dead bodies of rebel sympathizers pierced with bullet holes in every street and alley of Washington. Yes, I would regret this. For I would not like to witness all this waste of powder and lead. I would rather have them hung and the ropes saved. Let them dangle until their stinking bodies rot and fall to the ground piece by piece. Laughter and applause.

[John Weaver] That was a United States Senator. Wanting to live long enough to see every white man in South Carolina in hell. By the way, I want you to understand something about a lot of the old timers in the South. My father-in-law, for instance, he would always vote Democratic. A lot of the old timers, they would always vote Democratic. And today you'd say, who in the world would want to vote Democratic?

[John Weaver] You've got to remember Back during the war of northern aggression, the Democrats were basically the good guys. It was the Republicans who were the bad guys. And consequently a lot of the old timers refused to have anything to do with the Republicans simply because they remembered and they knew their history. They knew what the Republicans did to the South. Of course today, the Republicans and the Democrats are both bad guys. See? But it was the Democrats who were basically for states' rights. It was the Democrats who were wanting to salvage and save the Union. And so, Senator Jim Lane says he'd like to see all the Democrats pierced with bullet holes in every street and alley in Washington.

[John Weaver] Now, the Quincy, Illinois Republican stated this. Now, remember, here's a newspaper coming out of Illinois, and here's the quote. Every Republican knows that nothing so good could happen to this country, nothing that would be of such advantage as a general and judicious slaughter of the Democrats at the polls. Every Republican ought to take a bayonet to the polls for the purpose of assisting the Federal Army in the work of killing Democrats. Now that was published in the Illinois Whig Republican, Congressman Thaddeus Stevens. Another Radical Republican said this concerning the South. Hang the leaders! Crush the South! Arm the Negroes! Confiscate the land!

[John Weaver] Our generals have a sword in one hand and shackles in the other. The South must be punished under the rules of war. Its land confiscated. These offending states were out of the Union and in the role of a belligerent nation to be dealt with by the laws of war and conquest. So here's another Congressman saying hang the leaders, crush the South. Now, Congressman Joshua Giddings stated publicly that he looked forward to the time, quote, when the torch of the incendiary shall light up the towns and cities of the South to blot out the last vestiges of slavery, end quote. What did Congressman Giddings want? He wanted every home, every plantation in the South burned out. Major General William T.

[John Weaver] Sherman, a man that no southerner should ever forget, by the way. Major General William T. Sherman wrote from Vicksburg on January 31, 1864. Listen carefully. Here's what General Sherman said. The government of the United States has any and all rights which they choose to enforce in the war.

[John Weaver] Now let me just stop there. Think about that statement. The government of the United States has any and all rights which they choose to enforce in the war. It doesn't matter about the Constitution. It doesn't matter about the limitation on the federal government. He is saying the government of the United States has any and all rights which they choose to enforce in war. Now let me continue.

[John Weaver] To take their lives, their homes, their lands, their everything. War is simply power unrestrained by Constitution. To the persistent secessionist, why death is mercy, and the quicker he or she are disposed of, the better. Did you hear what General Sherman said? The man who marched to the sea, that devastated the South, that burned, killed, butchered, raped, pillaged, destroyed everything in his path. He said the federal government has the right to do whatever it wants to do.

[John Weaver] It can confiscate the land of a civilian, it doesn't matter. It can shoot a civilian, it doesn't matter. The federal government can do whatever it wants to do and he says to the secessionist, death is mercy and the quicker I can kill him, the better off I'm going to be.

[John Weaver] Now I want you to note something. Sherman was not talking about soldiers in the heat and the rage of battle killing soldiers. But rather he was talking about killing civilians, men, women, and children. And according to General Sherman, Southerners deserve to die. All Southerners deserve to die. And the quicker the better. Now in case one thinks that I am exaggerating the interpretation of this statement, that Sherman believed that all Southerners deserve to die, men, women, and children, Five months later, in a letter dated June 21, 1863, to Secretary of War Stanton, Sherman wrote, there is a class of people, Southerners, men, women, and children,

[John Weaver] who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order. And he wrote that to Secretary of War Stanton. There is a class of people, men, women, and children, who must be killed. Secretary of War Stanton replied to Sherman's letter stating thus, your letter of the 21st of June has just reached me and meets my approval. But Secretary of War Stanton say, kill him. I won't restrain you. And by the way, there was on the part of the North unrestrained slaughter in the South, not just of soldiers, but of civilians, men, women, and children together. In a letter to General Philip Sheridan, who was as bad as Sherman, Sherman wrote this, I am satisfied that the problem of this war consists in the awful fact that the present class of men who rule the South must be killed outright rather than in the conquest of territory.

[John Weaver] A great deal of it yet remains to be done, that is, a killing. Therefore, I shall expect you on any and all occasions to make bloody results.

[John Weaver] Now here was Sherman writing to General Sheridan saying, there's a class of people that just has to be killed. And the more that are killed the better, the quicker they're killed the better. And I expect you as a general under me to make bloody results. You kill the Southerners. Senator Benjamin F. Wade from Ohio was no lover of the South. Yet in 1860 he said this, I do not blame the South for seceding.

[John Weaver] For the men of that party about to take the reins of government in their hands are her mortal foes, and stand ready to trample her institutions under their feet." Now here was another Yankee senator who realized that the Radical Republicans were the mortal foes of the South, and they were going to do everything they could to destroy the South.

[John Weaver] Now, I want to just, I can't develop everything, but I want to just take the time to contrast and compare the attitude of General Robert E. Lee. There is such a vast difference, not only between the attitudes, but also the actions of North and South. Do you realize, and I did not have time to bring this today in the exact quotes, but when the Northern armies were wreaking such havoc and committing such atrocities in the south, murdering children and women, civilians. When some of the southern soldiers got north, they wanted it to be a payback time. You know what General Lee said?

[John Weaver] You will not descend to the level of our adversaries. You will not render vengeance for vengeance. He said any man in this command who violates the rules of war shall be shot." You're not going to do it. I'm not going to allow it. And of course, he did not. But let me give you the attitude of Robert E. Lee. Here's what he said. I have fought against the people of the North because I believe they were seeking to wrest from the South its dearest rights.

[John Weaver] But I have never cherished toward them bitter or vindictive feelings, and have never seen the day when I did not pray for them. Now you compare that to burn them, hang them, kill them. And he says, I fought against those people because they were seeking to destroy my dearest rights. Yet I've never cherished a bitter or vindictive spirit against them, and there's never been a day when I would not pray for them. One day during the war, as his men were scouting the numbers of the Union Army, one of his subordinates all of a sudden realized the vast multitude of the Union forces which lay before them, and he exclaimed in bitter tones, I wish all those people were dead!

[John Weaver] To which General Lee replied, How can you say so, General? Now, I wish they were all at home, attending their own business, and leaving us likewise to do the same. He didn't want them dead. He said, I just want them to leave us alone. Let them go home. Take care of their business. We'll go home and take care of our business. One day at White Sulphur Springs, General Lee was expressing his grief at finding Southern young people so bitter against the North. He was then asked by one of his young female admirers if he did not feel resentment toward the North. At this, Lee paused and with a low voice replied, I believe I may say, looking into my own heart, and speaking as in the presence of God, that I have never known one moment of bitterness or resentment." After another pause, he continued, When you go home, I want you to take a message to your friends. Tell them from me that it is unworthy of them as women, and especially as Christian women, to cherish feelings of resentment against the North.

[John Weaver] Tell them that it grieves me inexpressibly to know that such a state of things exists, and that I implore them to do their part to heal our country's wounds." He came out a gracious man. On another occasion when General Lee was at White Sulphur Springs, the rumor spread that General Grant and Mrs. Grant had secured reservations there and were expected to arrive in a few days. And one of the young girls whom Lee had befriended had become tired of hearing the admonition to be kind and to be courteous to the North, and she appealed directly to General Lee to get his views. And she looked at General Lee and she said, well, General Lee, they say General Grant is coming here next week.

[John Weaver] What would you do then? Her boldness so mortified her friends, one of them who said, any one of us would have gladly slain her on the spot. But Lee was unperturbed by the question, and he responded, If General Grant comes, I shall welcome him into my home, and show him all the courtesy that is due to him as from one gentleman to another, and try to do everything in my power to make his stay here agreeable. To General Lee, anything else would have been unthinkable. because he was a Christian first and a gentleman second. When Lee was president of Washington College, which later became Washington and Lee College, he was seen by the Reverend William Jones speaking at his gate with a stranger to whom, before parting, General Lee gave some money. Reverend Jones inquired who the stranger was. One of our old soldiers, replied Lee. To whose command did he belong, Pastor Jones asked. Old said Lee, he was one of those who fought against us, but we're all one now and must make no difference in our treatment of them.

[John Weaver] And you find Lee always taking care of not only his own troops, but any old soldier, even a northern soldier who was in a desperate state and needed anything. Lee would always be kind and gracious to a soldier.

[John Weaver] Now I'm just pointing out the fact If the leaders of a country demonstrate an attitude, then very obviously it must be the attitude of at least that party and probably their people whom they represent. And here all the congressmen and senators were saying kill the southerners, destroy them. I'm just simply pointing out folks, if you're going to say that the confederate battle flag is a symbol of hate, What hatred does it symbolize? Certainly it does not symbolize hatred of the Union which I pointed out last week. It does not symbolize hatred of the Constitution which I pointed out last week. It does not symbolize hatred of the South toward the North. If the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of hate, the only thing it can be a symbol of hate concerning is the fact that it's a symbol of hate against those who would destroy our Republic, our Constitution, and our culture. Let me go thirdly. It was the North who hated the black race.

[John Weaver] Northerners were notoriously biased and prejudiced against the blacks. If one thinks that the war was over slavery, and that the North was eager to receive the freed slaves, one better go back and examine some of the historical facts, as well as some of the laws that were passed. You see, even after the blacks had gained their freedom, they were still viewed as an economic threat to white labor, and the North resented any competition from the blacks. New Jersey passed a law forbidding the importation of slaves into the state, and said white took this action because they said so that white labor may be protected. Here's New Jersey saying we don't need blacks up here. Now the reason we don't need blacks is so that white labor may be protected.

[John Weaver] Now the racial bigotry of the northern population against black workers had the effect of barring blacks then from social and economic advancement, thus increasing the poverty of the blacks. One commentator in that particular time stated that free blacks in the North would have been better off as slaves in the South. And by the way, Northern and English abolitionists all took note of the fact that the slaves in the South were far better treated than even the freed blacks in the North and even a lot of white workers in the North. So, Professor McMaster of the University of Pennsylvania stated this concerning the freed blacks of the North. In spite of their freedom, they were a despised, proscribed, and poverty-stricken class.

[John Weaver] The authors of The biography of William Lord Garrison said it like this. The freed colored people were looked upon as an inferior caste to whom their liberty was a curse and they're a lot worse than that of the slaves. The freed blacks in the north. You remember William Lord Garrison? He was the arted abolitionist. He was the one who had the paper of the liberator. And here the authors of his biography are saying that the blacks were far better off in slavery in the South than they were freed in the North. Because the labor market was so controlled in the North. Not only that, education to the blacks was denied in the North as well.

[John Weaver] Connecticut passed a law declaring that non-resident blacks could not attend public schools. You say, well why? Let me finish it out. Connecticut passed a law declaring that non-resident blacks could not attend public schools because it would tend to the great increase of colored people in this state." Connecticut is just simply saying, we don't want blacks up here. We're not going to educate them. They can't come into this state. New Jersey passed one of the first laws that prohibited free blacks from entering into that state.

[John Weaver] Massachusetts went a little further. It passed a law that allowed flogging of blacks who came into the state and remained there for longer than two months. And if you didn't leave, you were flogged again. In 1863, Indiana's constitution said this, no Negro or mulatto shall come into or settle in this state. Illinois in 1853 enacted a law to prevent the immigration of free Negroes into this state. Illinois in 1862, remember the war was being fought now. You think the war was fought over slavery? In 1862, Illinois passed by an overwhelming popular vote an amendment to the state constitution declaring, quote, no Negro or mulatto shall immigrate or settle in this state. They didn't want the blacks in the north. You remember the series I did where we are and how we got here? I pointed out how the abolitionists literally hated the blacks. Oregon's 1857 Constitution provided that no free Negro or mulatto not residing in this state at the time of adoption of the Constitution in the state of Oregon shall come, reside, or be within this state.

[John Weaver] So in 1857, Oregon said, all the blacks that are here now, which would have been extremely few, may stay. But after we adopt this Constitution, no black not only cannot come and settle in the state of Oregon, you cannot even come into the state. There is a great deal of bigotry and prejudice and racial hatred in the north of the blacks.

[John Weaver] Now, one of the things the northern people really feared was this, and one of the backlashes of the Emancipation Proclamation was they were afraid that those freed blacks now were going to flood into the northern states. And so to alleviate this fear, President Abraham Lincoln in his message to Congress in December of 1862 said this, but why should emancipation south send free people north? And in any event, cannot the north decide for itself whether to receive them? And this is what Lincoln said. If we freed the blacks down south, why should they flood up north? But even if they did, the states can determine for themselves whether or not they will receive them.

[John Weaver] In other words, we don't want them. Now, New Jersey in 1807 barred blacks from voting. Connecticut in 1814 barred blacks from voting. Rhode Island in 1822 barred blacks from voting. Pennsylvania in 1838 barred blacks from voting. And an interesting thing is this, the free blacks that were in the northern states suffered a decline according to the census figures from 1790 to 1830. The free black population in New York City went from 2.13% down to 0.57%, just a little more than a half of 1%. Now why, if the North really loved the blacks and the blacks were really free up North, why did the population of the blacks go from 2.13% down to nearly a half of 1%?

[John Weaver] Let me tell you why. Dr. Edgar McManus declared that many, if not the larger percentage of the blacks, had been kidnapped by the Yankees into forced migration, that is, they were kidnapped and sold back as slaves again. And New York City alone, in one year, there was more than 33 cases that are documented where the blacks were kidnapped, free blacks, and sold back into slavery by the northerners. William H. Seward, who was the Secretary of State in 1858, declared this, the white man needs this continent to labor in and he must have it. John Sherman, who was the brother of William T. Sherman, made this declaration April 2, 1862.

[John Weaver] Remember now the war was going on. And some people want to say, well, the war was fought to free the slaves. No, no, that was not why it was fought. But here's what John Sherman said, April 2nd, 1862. We do not like the Negroes. We do not disguise our dislike. As my friend from Indiana, Mr. Wright, said yesterday, the whole people of the Northwestern states are opposed to having many Negroes among them and that the principle of prejudice has been engraved in the legislation for nearly all of the Northwestern states. What did he say? They don't like the blacks. We don't want them here.

[John Weaver] And all you've got to do is look at each state's constitution. Because we passed laws saying they cannot come into this state. During the war, General John A. Dix proposed to remove a number of escaped slaves from Fortress Monroe to Massachusetts. And the governor of Massachusetts went ballistic. He objected, stating the northern states are of all places the worst possible to select for an asylum for Negroes.

[John Weaver] Don't send them up here. We don't want them.

[John Weaver] Now let me tell you something. This is not just Southern views. These are Northerners that are speaking. Charles Francis Adams, who is a Northerner himself, has written a book, which is an exceedingly good book, when in the course of human events. But on page 132 of that book, he gives us a smattering of the British attitude toward the war when he quotes several British observers. Let me give you this quote. In the words of a North British review in 1862, free Negroes are treated like lepers in the North. Another British correspondent, who traveled to America to learn about the attitudes in both the North and the South towards the conflict, wrote in an article entitled The Outlook of War, Everybody still professes to disapprove of slavery. Of course, so as the cant of the day runs, Slavery is a very dreadful thing and everybody, the South above all, would be glad to see it abolished. But slavery has nothing to do with the present war. The North dislikes the Negro even more than the South does.

[John Weaver] He is out of court and any attempt to get up sympathy on his behalf is irrelevant to this present question. So here the British were saying the North dislikes the blacks. They don't want them. And if the North tries to come to us and say, give us some sympathy, they said, you're out of court. We're not even going to look at you. So ridiculous is your position.

[John Weaver] In his book, Democracy in America, de Tocqueville, the French writer says this. Listen carefully. Though the electoral franchise has been conferred on the Negroes in all the free states, that is, they have a right to vote. If they come forward to vote, their lives are in danger. Negroes may serve by law on juries, but prejudice repels them from that office. They have separate schools, separate hospital wards, and separate galleries in the theaters.

[John Weaver] In the South, it is quite different with the Negro. Undoubtedly, the prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the states that have abolished slaves than in the states in which slavery still exists. White carpenters, white bricklayers, and white painters will not work side by side with the blacks in the North, but do it almost in every southern state, unless northern men among their workmen oppose it.

[John Weaver] Did you hear what he said? In the North? White laborers would not work beside a black laborer. But in the South, he said, in all Southern states, they do it, unless there happens to be a Northern down there who opposes it. Do you realize that many of the blacks today who think that the North was really interested in their liberation and their freedom, if they really found out what happened, they would be greatly horrified.

[John Weaver] Even a northern newspaper writing to Union troops in 1864, just a year before the war ended, voiced their alarm at how the Union troops were treating Southerners in their pillage, rape, and terror. Listen to what this northern newspaper said. Old men and women and children, the infirm, the sick, and the innocent driven from their blazing homes," that's what the North was doing to the civilians in the South, burning them out. Now listen, old men and women and children, the infirm, the sick and the innocent, driven from their blazing homes, gathering in hopeless misery around some dying campfire, shivering, starving, shelterless. Did you feel an impulse prompting you to aid in carrying out, in carrying anguish and desolation and extermination throughout the South? Listen, merely to give immediate emancipation to a race who were a thousand times happier as you found them than as you would leave them. Here's a northern newspaper saying you're down there murdering innocent people, sick people, to emancipate a race who were a thousand times happier as they were than when you freed them.

[John Weaver] Listen to what President Abraham Lincoln said, I thought that whatever Negroes could be got to do as soldiers leave just so much less for white soldiers do in saving the Union. Now let's think this through just for a moment. Lincoln said, I thought that whatever Negroes could be got to do as soldiers leave so much less for white soldiers do in saving the Union. Now when you read that it sounds like, well what Lincoln is wanting is for some black soldiers to take over some mundane tasks which would free some of the white soldiers for fighting. That is not what Lincoln meant.

[John Weaver] And I'm going to prove it to you. What Lincoln meant was this. The more blacks we can get killed, the less whites will be killed. If you don't think that's the correct interpretation, Others stated the same truth more clearly than Lincoln did. The Republican governor of Iowa stated publicly that he would prefer, and by the way, I'm giving a direct quote. I'm not trying to be ugly. I'm giving a direct quote. The Republican governor of Iowa stated publicly that he would prefer to sacrifice the lives of niggers rather than those of his best and bravest white youths.

[John Weaver] In 1864, General John A. Black Jack Logan, an extreme Republican and the post-war commander of the G.A.R., the Grand Army of the Republic, told an audience in Springfield, Illinois that he would rather six niggers be killed than one of his brave boys.

[John Weaver] Now let me tell you, there has been a lot said about the North having 180,000 Blacks who fought under the United States flag against the South. Well, a lot of them did, but most people don't know why they did or how they did. For instance, according to the laws of war, listen carefully, I'm quoting, according to the laws of war, all the property of rebels is forfeited to the treasury of the country. And slave property is subject to the same liability as other property to be appropriated for war causes. So therefore, the invading army then began to seize the slaves and conscript them into service as war property. They were the property of the southern rebels, and thus they were confiscated and forced into the northern army. General David Hunter, issued the following order from Hilton Head, South Carolina, quote, all able-bodied colored men between the ages of 18 and 50 within the military lines of the Department of the South who have had an opportunity to enlist voluntarily and refuse to do so shall be drafted into the military service of

[John Weaver] the United States to serve as non-commissioned officers and soldiers in the various regiments and batteries now being organized in the department." Now, by the way, what I'm about to give you is from the official records. What I'm about to give you is not what some individual said or saw. You will find this in the official records of the war. So here, General Hunter is saying Those blacks who have been given the opportunity to voluntarily enlist and did not, they are now going to be drafted and forced to fight.

[John Weaver] Now these orders and the following accounts certainly explain why 180,000, if it was that number, of blacks bore arms against the South. In a letter to General Ulysses S. Grant, General John A. Logan wrote, that a major of colored troops is here with his party capturing negroes with or without their consent. Did you hear that? A major of colored troops is here with his party capturing negroes with or without their consent.

[John Weaver] So I'm obliged to force them. The matter of collecting the colored men for laborers has been one of great difficulty. They must be forced to go. In the words of General Rufus A. Saxton, men have been seized and forced to enlist who had large families. And on one occasion, three boys, one only 14 years of age, were seized in a field where they were at work and sent to a regiment without the knowledge of their parents.

[John Weaver] In the official records it also says, on some plantations the wailing and screaming were loud. That is when the Yankee troops went to capture the blacks to force them into the military. Says on some plantations the wailing and the screaming were loud and the women threw themselves into despair on the ground. On some plantations the people took to the woods and were hunted up by the soldiers.

[John Weaver] I doubt if the recruiting service in this country has ever been attended with such scenes before. So literally they were being hunted down and forced into the service. So it was not uncommon then for these black soldiers to be forced into the front lines by the bayonets of the Union soldiers behind them. One Northern soldier is quoted as saying, quote, I used to be opposed to having black troops.

[John Weaver] But when I saw 10 cartloads of dead niggers carried off the field yesterday, I thought it better they should be killed than I. They were really interested in the blacks, weren't they? Another soldier commented that this treatment has created a suspicion that the government has not the interest of the Negroes that it professed. And many of them sighed yesterday for the old fetters as being better than the new liberty. What is the soldier saying?

[John Weaver] Here are black soldiers conscripted, forced to fight in the northern army, crying and sighing to go back to their southern masters. So they're beginning to get the picture the North really is not interested in the blacks at all. So the northern soldiers then viewed the slaves as enemy property, and thus they were to be confiscated, they were to be used, and of course since many times the blacks fought along with the southern soldiers and helped defend the plantations, when the Union soldiers came into town Since there would be no southern men there, white men to fight, they would take their vengeance out on the blacks who stayed to protect the property.

[John Weaver] Let me give you this quote. The official records of the war published by the United States government are literally filled with the accounts of robbery, rape, and murder endured by the Southern blacks at the hands of their supposed liberators. J. T. K. Hayward testified that Northern soldiers were committing rapes on the Negroes and such like things and no punishment or none of any account had been meted out to them. In the tiny towns of Athens, Alabama, Northern soldiers under the command of Colonel John B. Turchin, and Turchin was a wicked, wicked man, but under the command of Colonel John B. Turchin, attempted an indecent outrage on a servant girl and quartered themselves in the Negro huts for weeks, debauching the females. This account also tells of the gang rape on the person of a colored girl. Now this is from the official records. Here's Colonel John B. Turchin letting his Union soldiers rape and murder the black women.

[John Weaver] After the fall of Richmond, General Grant was notified of a number of cases of atrocious rape by these men had already occurred. Their influence on the colored population is also reported to be bad. General Saxton wrote the following report to the Secretary of War Stanton on the 30th of December, 1864. Listen, I found the prejudice of color and race here in full force. And the general feeling of the army, now you're talking about the Union Army, the Northerners. And the general feeling of the army of occupation was unfriendly to the blacks.

[John Weaver] It was manifested in various forms of personal insult and abuse. In depredations on their plantations, stealing and destroying their crops and domestic animals, and robbing them of their money. The women, that is the black women, were held as legitimate prey of lust. That's from the official record. Also there were eyewitness evidence. Nora Canning of Savannah, Georgia told how the dead baby of one of the family's slave women was dug up by northern soldiers looking for buried treasure. When the body was found, the body was carelessly cast aside to rot in the sun because there was no treasure found.

[John Weaver] Dr. Daniel Tresvant, respected citizen of Columbia, South Carolina, testified And once again, I'm quoting, I'm not trying to be unkind. I'm not trying to be ugly, but I'm giving you the language. Dr. Daniel Trezvant, a respected citizen of Columbia, South Carolina, testified how one old Negro woman who, after being subjected to the most brutal indecency from seven Yankees, so seven men raped her. from seven Yankees was that the proposition of one of them to finish the old bitch was put into a ditch and held underwater until her life was extinct. In a letter that was discovered in the streets of Columbia, South Carolina after Sherman's bummers passed through, the letter was written by Lieutenant Thomas J.

[John Weaver] Myers to his wife in Boston, Massachusetts. And here is what Lieutenant Myers wrote, quote, The damn niggers, as a general rule, prefer to stay at home. Particularly after they found out that we only wanted the able-bodied men. And to tell you the truth, the youngest and the best looking women. Sometimes we took off whole families and plantations of niggers by way of repaying secessionists. But the useless part of them we soon managed to lose. Sometimes in crossing rivers, sometimes in other ways.

[John Weaver] What did he just say? We kill them. Ones we didn't want, we killed.

[John Weaver] Now let me give you this one, and I'll try to draw this thing together for you. Some of the black slaves who were supposedly emancipated by Lincoln's proclamation of January 1, 1863, and Lord willing one day in the not so distant future, I want to bring several messages exposing the Emancipation Proclamation. But several blacks who thought themselves freed by this Emancipation Proclamation found themselves, are you listening, traded back to southern planters for cotton. In other words, the slaves who had gotten to the northern soldiers, some of them used the blacks as money.

[John Weaver] Here is what the official record says. A commission is now in session in the West with Maj. Gen. McDowell at its head investigating the conduct of Maj. Gen. Curtis and other Republican officials in conducting their military operations so as to secure the largest amount of cotton possible for their own private benefit. One of the richest revelations made is in reference to the trading off of Negroes for cotton.

[John Weaver] The specification alleges that Negro slaves had been taken from the plantations upon the pretense of giving them freedom under the President's emancipation edict, and thus used as a substitute for coin. It has been fully proven before the investigating court. The officer charged with this lucrative speculation was Colonel Hovey of Illinois, formerly the principal of the State Normal School at Bloomington. So they were going to the plantations, taking the Negroes, saying you're free, then take them to another plantation and trade them for cotton.

[John Weaver] Now let me just tell you, everywhere you go, everywhere you turn, inevitably some black or some ignorant white is saying the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of hatred. The Confederate battle flag was not a symbol of hatred against the North. It was not a symbol of hatred against our union. It was not a symbol of hatred against our Constitution. It was not a symbol of hatred against blacks. The truth of the matter is, if you say the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of hate, the only thing it could be a symbol of hate of is a hatred of those who would destroy our country, our Constitution, our Republic, our culture, and our lives. And that kind of hate, dear friend, is not unbiblical. It's not ungodly.

[John Weaver] It is rather commended in scripture. Ye that love the Lord hate evil. Let me tell you. Let me repeat this. There was no slave ever brought into this country under the Confederate battle flag. Every slave was brought into this country under the Stars and Stripes or some foreign nation. It was the Stars and Stripes that invaded the South. The Confederate battle flag did not invade the North. It was the Radical Republicans under the Stars and Stripes that tried to destroy the Union and tried to destroy the Constitution. It was the Radical Republicans under the Stars and Stripes that wanted to destroy Southern culture and Southern society. It was the Stars and Stripes that wanted to reconstruct the South to be like the North. No, if there is a flag that symbolizes and epitomizes hatred, a wicked ungodly hatred, it would not be the Confederate battle flag, it would be the Stars and Stripes. And by the way, it's that same Stars and Stripes today that is trying to institute the New World Order and destroy not only the states, but the nation as well.

[John Weaver] If the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of hatred, it's only a symbol of hatred against those who destroy everything that we believe in and hold dear and sacred. Let's pray. Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, we ask you to help us. Enable us, Lord, to understand history. Enable us, Lord, to be able to sort out the facts. Enable us, Lord, to learn what truth is and stand with that truth and for that truth whether anyone else hears it, knows it, or understands it or not. Give us grace to fulfill Your Word when You say, and having done all, stand. May we in the name of Jesus Christ stand for what's right. In Thy name we pray, Amen.

Is The Confederate Flag a Symbol of Hate? Part 2

John Weaver | SermonAudio

Lecture Metadata	Details
Speaker	John Weaver
Source	SermonAudio
Media ID	111302115534
Subject	Civil Government
Course	Civil Government: Power, Nations, and Constitutional Order: Where We Are & How We Got Here
Genre	Sermon
Date	2002-11-13
Dictation Name
Book	Book 020: Is The Confederate Flag a Symbol of Hate? — Chapter 2
Source Timed Segments	70

Formatted Transcript

Introduction: Sectional Animosity Originated in the North

Weaver claims that sectional hatred existed before colonization and was primarily on the part of the North, rooted in differences between settlers from Northern England and Scotch-Irish.

Most people do not understand the sectional animosity that even still exists in this country today. And may I point out the fact the sectional animosity existed even before the people came over to this country. You'll find that those who came from the northern part of England and those who came from the southern part are quite different. And you'll also find those who came from Scotland and Wales and Ireland, the Scotch-Irish, that is those Scots who went down to Ireland and then came over here, you're going to find that there was a great sectional dislike between themselves and those people of Northern England. So the sectionalism was basically in the people before they ever came to this country. And consequently, you have a lot of the Scotch-Irish who settled in the South. And of course a lot of those from Northern England settled then in the North and a lot of the sectional hatred and ill will continued. And so let me just demonstrate to you today that the hatred and the ill will in this country was basically on the part of the North.

Northern Leaders Called for Annihilation of the South

Quotes from Wendell Phillips, Senator Jim Lane, and others show Northern politicians and newspapers advocating for the killing, hanging, or crushing of Southerners.

Wendell Phillips, in a speech delivered at Henry Ward Beecher's church in 1862, had this to say concerning the land and the territory of the Confederated States. Listen to what he says. He says, "This land is ours, confiscated, guaranteed. Its title given to the soldier who has finished his service. Give it to the black man who is willing to take it. Plant a state under the guarantee of the Union, employ free labor upon that fertile soil, and commence again the civil machinery, the organization of a state."

Then he continues, "I know it seems like an absolute barbarian conquest. I allow it. I don't believe there will be any peace until 347,000 slaveholders are either hung or exiled." At this point, cheers rose up. He says, "History shows no precedent of getting rid of an aristocracy like this except by the death of a generation."

Now what in the world was Wendell Phillips saying? He's saying the only way that we're going to salvage anything is if we kill an entire generation of people in the South. Again, on January the 23rd, 1863, the New York Tribune quoted Wendell Phillips as saying this, and this is very revealing by the way, his first sentence in this quote is this, "This war was primarily a social revolution. This war was primarily a social revolution. The war can only be ended by annihilating that oligarchy which formed and rules the South and makes the war by annihilating a state of society." "The whole societal system of the Gulf states must be taken to pieces." So here Wendell Phillips is saying, look, we are in a social revolution and what we're going to do is we're going to revolutionize the South. We're going to reconstruct them. By the way, that's what reconstruction was all about, trying to train the South to form and to act and to think like the Northerners. Now, Kansas Republican Senator Jim Lane was a tad more specific than Wendell Phillips.

When he said in his speech delivered in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1863, he said this. Now, remember, this is a senator. Senator Jim Lane said, "I would like to live long enough to see every white man in South Carolina in hell and the Negroes inheriting their territory." Loud applause. "It would not wound my feelings any day to find the dead bodies of rebel sympathizers, that is Democrats, pierced with bullet holes at every street and alley of Washington." Applause. "Yes, I would regret this."

Now listen, wait a minute. What did he just say? "It would not wound my feelings any day to find the dead bodies of rebel sympathizers pierced with bullet holes in every street and alley of Washington. Yes, I would regret this. For I would not like to witness all this waste of powder and lead. I would rather have them hung and the ropes saved. Let them dangle until their stinking bodies rot and fall to the ground piece by piece." Laughter and applause.

That was a United States Senator. Wanting to live long enough to see every white man in South Carolina in hell. By the way, I want you to understand something about a lot of the old timers in the South. My father-in-law, for instance, he would always vote Democratic. A lot of the old timers, they would always vote Democratic. And today you'd say, who in the world would want to vote Democratic? You've got to remember back during the war of northern aggression, the Democrats were basically the good guys. It was the Republicans who were the bad guys. And consequently a lot of the old timers refused to have anything to do with the Republicans simply because they remembered and they knew their history. They knew what the Republicans did to the South. Of course today, the Republicans and the Democrats are both bad guys. See? But it was the Democrats who were basically for states' rights. It was the Democrats who were wanting to salvage and save the Union. And so, Senator Jim Lane says he'd like to see all the Democrats pierced with bullet holes in every street and alley in Washington.

Now, the Quincy, Illinois Republican stated this. Now, remember, here's a newspaper coming out of Illinois, and here's the quote. "Every Republican knows that nothing so good could happen to this country, nothing that would be of such advantage as a general and judicious slaughter of the Democrats at the polls. Every Republican ought to take a bayonet to the polls for the purpose of assisting the Federal Army in the work of killing Democrats." Now that was published in the Illinois Whig Republican. Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, another Radical Republican, said this concerning the South. "Hang the leaders! Crush the South! Arm the Negroes! Confiscate the land!"

General Sherman's Policy of Extermination

Sherman stated that the government has unlimited rights in war and that Southern men, women, and children must be killed or banished, with approval from Secretary Stanton.

Sherman, a man that no southerner should ever forget, by the way. Major General William T. Sherman wrote from Vicksburg on January 31, 1864. Listen carefully. Here's what General Sherman said. "The government of the United States has any and all rights which they choose to enforce in the war."

Now let me just stop there. Think about that statement. "The government of the United States has any and all rights which they choose to enforce in the war." It doesn't matter about the Constitution. It doesn't matter about the limitation on the federal government. He is saying the government of the United States has any and all rights which they choose to enforce in war. Now let me continue. "To take their lives, their homes, their lands, their everything. War is simply power unrestrained by Constitution. To the persistent secessionist, why death is mercy, and the quicker he or she are disposed of, the better." Did you hear what General Sherman said? The man who marched to the sea, that devastated the South, that burned, killed, butchered, raped, pillaged, destroyed everything in his path. He said the federal government has the right to do whatever it wants to do.

It can confiscate the land of a civilian, it doesn't matter. It can shoot a civilian, it doesn't matter. The federal government can do whatever it wants to do and he says to the secessionist, death is mercy and the quicker I can kill him, the better off I'm going to be. Now I want you to note something. Sherman was not talking about soldiers in the heat and the rage of battle killing soldiers. But rather he was talking about killing civilians, men, women, and children. And according to General Sherman, Southerners deserve to die. All Southerners deserve to die. And the quicker the better. Now in case one thinks that I am exaggerating the interpretation of this statement, that Sherman believed that all Southerners deserve to die, men, women, and children, five months later, in a letter dated June 21, 1863, to Secretary of War Stanton, Sherman wrote, "There is a class of people, Southerners, men, women, and children,

who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order." And he wrote that to Secretary of War Stanton. "There is a class of people, men, women, and children, who must be killed." Secretary of War Stanton replied to Sherman's letter stating thus, "Your letter of the 21st of June has just reached me and meets my approval." But Secretary of War Stanton say, kill him. I won't restrain you. And by the way, there was on the part of the North unrestrained slaughter in the South, not just of soldiers, but of civilians, men, women, and children together. In a letter to General Philip Sheridan, who was as bad as Sherman, Sherman wrote this, "I am satisfied that the problem of this war consists in the awful fact that the present class of men who rule the South must be killed outright rather than in the conquest of territory.

A great deal of it yet remains to be done, that is, a killing. Therefore, I shall expect you on any and all occasions to make bloody results." Now here was Sherman writing to General Sheridan saying, there's a class of people that just has to be killed. And the more that are killed the better, the quicker they're killed the better. And I expect you as a general under me to make bloody results. You kill the Southerners. Senator Benjamin F. Wade from Ohio was no lover of the South. Yet in 1860 he said this, "I do not blame the South for seceding.

Contrast with Robert E. Lee's Christian Character

Lee forbade vengeance, prayed for the North, and showed kindness to former enemies, exemplifying a spirit of reconciliation rather than hatred.

Now, I want to just, I can't develop everything, but I want to just take the time to contrast and compare the attitude of General Robert E. Lee. There is such a vast difference, not only between the attitudes, but also the actions of North and South. Do you realize, and I did not have time to bring this today in the exact quotes, but when the Northern armies were wreaking such havoc and committing such atrocities in the south, murdering children and women, civilians. When some of the southern soldiers got north, they wanted it to be a payback time. You know what General Lee said? "You will not descend to the level of our adversaries. You will not render vengeance for vengeance. He said any man in this command who violates the rules of war shall be shot." You're not going to do it. I'm not going to allow it. And of course, he did not. But let me give you the attitude of Robert E. Lee. Here's what he said. "I have fought against the people of the North because I believe they were seeking to wrest from the South its dearest rights.

But I have never cherished toward them bitter or vindictive feelings, and have never seen the day when I did not pray for them." Now you compare that to burn them, hang them, kill them. And he says, I fought against those people because they were seeking to destroy my dearest rights. Yet I've never cherished a bitter or vindictive spirit against them, and there's never been a day when I would not pray for them. One day during the war, as his men were scouting the numbers of the Union Army, one of his subordinates all of a sudden realized the vast multitude of the Union forces which lay before them, and he exclaimed in bitter tones, "I wish all those people were dead!" To which General Lee replied, "How can you say so, General? Now, I wish they were all at home, attending their own business, and leaving us likewise to do the same." He didn't want them dead. He said, I just want them to leave us alone. Let them go home. Take care of their business. We'll go home and take care of our business. One day at White Sulphur Springs, General Lee was expressing his grief at finding Southern young people so bitter against the North. He was then asked by one of his young female admirers if he did not feel resentment toward the North. At this, Lee paused and with a low voice replied, "I believe I may say, looking into my own heart, and speaking as in the presence of God, that I have never known one moment of bitterness or resentment." After another pause, he continued, "When you go home, I want you to take a message to your friends. Tell them from me that it is unworthy of them as women, and especially as Christian women, to cherish feelings of resentment against the North.

Tell them that it grieves me inexpressibly to know that such a state of things exists, and that I implore them to do their part to heal our country's wounds." He came out a gracious man. On another occasion when General Lee was at White Sulphur Springs, the rumor spread that General Grant and Mrs. Grant had secured reservations there and were expected to arrive in a few days. And one of the young girls whom Lee had befriended had become tired of hearing the admonition to be kind and to be courteous to the North, and she appealed directly to General Lee to get his views. And she looked at General Lee and she said, "Well, General Lee, they say General Grant is coming here next week. What would you do then?" Her boldness so mortified her friends, one of them who said, any one of us would have gladly slain her on the spot. But Lee was unperturbed by the question, and he responded, "If General Grant comes, I shall welcome him into my home, and show him all the courtesy that is due to him as from one gentleman to another, and try to do everything in my power to make his stay here agreeable." To General Lee, anything else would have been unthinkable, because he was a Christian first and a gentleman second. When Lee was president of Washington College, which later became Washington and Lee College, he was seen by the Reverend William Jones speaking at his gate with a stranger to whom, before parting, General Lee gave some money. Reverend Jones inquired who the stranger was. "One of our old soldiers," replied Lee. "To whose command did he belong?" Pastor Jones asked. "Oh," said Lee, "he was one of those who fought against us, but we're all one now and must make no difference in our treatment of them."

And you find Lee always taking care of not only his own troops, but any old soldier, even a northern soldier who was in a desperate state and needed anything. Lee would always be kind and gracious to a soldier.

Northern Racial Prejudice Against Blacks

Northern states passed laws barring black immigration, voting, and education, and treated free blacks as an inferior caste, often worse off than slaves.

Northerners were notoriously biased and prejudiced against the blacks. If one thinks that the war was over slavery, and that the North was eager to receive the freed slaves, one better go back and examine some of the historical facts, as well as some of the laws that were passed. You see, even after the blacks had gained their freedom, they were still viewed as an economic threat to white labor, and the North resented any competition from the blacks. New Jersey passed a law forbidding the importation of slaves into the state, and said white took this action because they said so that white labor may be protected. Here's New Jersey saying we don't need blacks up here. Now the reason we don't need blacks is so that white labor may be protected.

Now the racial bigotry of the northern population against black workers had the effect of barring blacks then from social and economic advancement, thus increasing the poverty of the blacks. One commentator in that particular time stated that free blacks in the North would have been better off as slaves in the South. And by the way, Northern and English abolitionists all took note of the fact that the slaves in the South were far better treated than even the freed blacks in the North and even a lot of white workers in the North. So, Professor McMaster of the University of Pennsylvania stated this concerning the freed blacks of the North. "In spite of their freedom, they were a despised, proscribed, and poverty-stricken class." The authors of the biography of William Lloyd Garrison said it like this. "The freed colored people were looked upon as an inferior caste to whom their liberty was a curse and their lot worse than that of the slaves." The freed blacks in the north. You remember William Lloyd Garrison? He was the ardent abolitionist. He was the one who had the paper of the Liberator. And here the authors of his biography are saying that the blacks were far better off in slavery in the South than they were freed in the North. Because the labor market was so controlled in the North. Not only that, education to the blacks was denied in the North as well.

Connecticut passed a law declaring that non-resident blacks could not attend public schools. You say, well why? Let me finish it out. Connecticut passed a law declaring that non-resident blacks could not attend public schools because it would tend to the great increase of colored people in this state. Connecticut is just simply saying, we don't want blacks up here. We're not going to educate them. They can't come into this state. New Jersey passed one of the first laws that prohibited free blacks from entering into that state.

Massachusetts went a little further. It passed a law that allowed flogging of blacks who came into the state and remained there for longer than two months. And if you didn't leave, you were flogged again. In 1863, Indiana's constitution said this, "No Negro or mulatto shall come into or settle in this state." Illinois in 1853 enacted a law to prevent the immigration of free Negroes into this state. Illinois in 1862, remember the war was being fought now. You think the war was fought over slavery? In 1862, Illinois passed by an overwhelming popular vote an amendment to the state constitution declaring, quote, "No Negro or mulatto shall immigrate or settle in this state." They didn't want the blacks in the north. You remember the series I did where we are and how we got here? I pointed out how the abolitionists literally hated the blacks. Oregon's 1857 Constitution provided that no free Negro or mulatto not residing in this state at the time of adoption of the Constitution in the state of Oregon shall come, reside, or be within this state.

So in 1857, Oregon said, all the blacks that are here now, which would have been extremely few, may stay. But after we adopt this Constitution, no black not only cannot come and settle in the state of Oregon, you cannot even come into the state. There is a great deal of bigotry and prejudice and racial hatred in the north of the blacks. Now, one of the things the northern people really feared was this, and one of the backlashes of the Emancipation Proclamation was they were afraid that those freed blacks now were going to flood into the northern states. And so to alleviate this fear, President Abraham Lincoln in his message to Congress in December of 1862 said this, "But why should emancipation south send free people north? And in any event, cannot the north decide for itself whether to receive them?" And this is what Lincoln said. If we freed the blacks down south, why should they flood up north? But even if they did, the states can determine for themselves whether or not they will receive them.

Forced Conscription and Abuse of Blacks by the Union Army

Official records show blacks were captured and forced into Union service, used as cannon fodder, and subjected to rape and murder by Northern soldiers.

And I'm going to prove it to you. What Lincoln meant was this. The more blacks we can get killed, the less whites will be killed. If you don't think that's the correct interpretation, others stated the same truth more clearly than Lincoln did. The Republican governor of Iowa stated publicly that he would prefer, and by the way, I'm giving a direct quote. I'm not trying to be ugly. I'm giving a direct quote. The Republican governor of Iowa stated publicly that he would prefer to sacrifice the lives of niggers rather than those of his best and bravest white youths.

In 1864, General John A. Black Jack Logan, an extreme Republican and the post-war commander of the G.A.R., the Grand Army of the Republic, told an audience in Springfield, Illinois that he would rather six niggers be killed than one of his brave boys. Now let me tell you, there has been a lot said about the North having 180,000 Blacks who fought under the United States flag against the South. Well, a lot of them did, but most people don't know why they did or how they did. For instance, according to the laws of war, listen carefully, I'm quoting, "according to the laws of war, all the property of rebels is forfeited to the treasury of the country. And slave property is subject to the same liability as other property to be appropriated for war causes." So therefore, the invading army then began to seize the slaves and conscript them into service as war property. They were the property of the southern rebels, and thus they were confiscated and forced into the northern army. General David Hunter, issued the following order from Hilton Head, South Carolina, quote, "all able-bodied colored men between the ages of 18 and 50 within the military lines of the Department of the South who have had an opportunity to enlist voluntarily and refuse to do so shall be drafted into the military service of

the United States to serve as non-commissioned officers and soldiers in the various regiments and batteries now being organized in the department." Now, by the way, what I'm about to give you is from the official records. What I'm about to give you is not what some individual said or saw. You will find this in the official records of the war. So here, General Hunter is saying those blacks who have been given the opportunity to voluntarily enlist and did not, they are now going to be drafted and forced to fight.

Now these orders and the following accounts certainly explain why 180,000, if it was that number, of blacks bore arms against the South. In a letter to General Ulysses S. Grant, General John A. Logan wrote, "that a major of colored troops is here with his party capturing negroes with or without their consent." Did you hear that? "A major of colored troops is here with his party capturing negroes with or without their consent." "So I'm obliged to force them. The matter of collecting the colored men for laborers has been one of great difficulty. They must be forced to go." In the words of General Rufus A. Saxton, "men have been seized and forced to enlist who had large families. And on one occasion, three boys, one only 14 years of age, were seized in a field where they were at work and sent to a regiment without the knowledge of their parents."

In the official records it also says, "on some plantations the wailing and screaming were loud." That is when the Yankee troops went to capture the blacks to force them into the military. Says "on some plantations the wailing and the screaming were loud and the women threw themselves into despair on the ground. On some plantations the people took to the woods and were hunted up by the soldiers." "I doubt if the recruiting service in this country has ever been attended with such scenes before." So literally they were being hunted down and forced into the service. So it was not uncommon then for these black soldiers to be forced into the front lines by the bayonets of the Union soldiers behind them. One Northern soldier is quoted as saying, quote, "I used to be opposed to having black troops.

But when I saw 10 cartloads of dead niggers carried off the field yesterday, I thought it better they should be killed than I." They were really interested in the blacks, weren't they? Another soldier commented that "this treatment has created a suspicion that the government has not the interest of the Negroes that it professed. And many of them sighed yesterday for the old fetters as being better than the new liberty." What is the soldier saying? Here are black soldiers conscripted, forced to fight in the northern army, crying and sighing to go back to their southern masters. So they're beginning to get the picture the North really is not interested in the blacks at all. So the northern soldiers then viewed the slaves as enemy property, and thus they were to be confiscated, they were to be used, and of course since many times the blacks fought along with the southern soldiers and helped defend the plantations, when the Union soldiers came into town since there would be no southern men there, white men to fight, they would take their vengeance out on the blacks who stayed to protect the property.

Let me give you this quote. The official records of the war published by the United States government are literally filled with the accounts of robbery, rape, and murder endured by the Southern blacks at the hands of their supposed liberators. J. T. K. Hayward testified that Northern soldiers were committing rapes on the Negroes and such like things and no punishment or none of any account had been meted out to them. In the tiny towns of Athens, Alabama, Northern soldiers under the command of Colonel John B. Turchin, and Turchin was a wicked, wicked man, but under the command of Colonel John B. Turchin, attempted an indecent outrage on a servant girl and quartered themselves in the Negro huts for weeks, debauching the females. This account also tells of the gang rape on the person of a colored girl. Now this is from the official records. Here's Colonel John B. Turchin letting his Union soldiers rape and murder the black women.

After the fall of Richmond, General Grant was notified of a number of cases of atrocious rape by these men had already occurred. Their influence on the colored population is also reported to be bad. General Saxton wrote the following report to the Secretary of War Stanton on the 30th of December, 1864. Listen, "I found the prejudice of color and race here in full force. And the general feeling of the army, now you're talking about the Union Army, the Northerners. And the general feeling of the army of occupation was unfriendly to the blacks." "It was manifested in various forms of personal insult and abuse. In depredations on their plantations, stealing and destroying their crops and domestic animals, and robbing them of their money. The women, that is the black women, were held as legitimate prey of lust." That's from the official record. Also there were eyewitness evidence. Nora Canning of Savannah, Georgia told how the dead baby of one of the family's slave women was dug up by northern soldiers looking for buried treasure. When the body was found, the body was carelessly cast aside to rot in the sun because there was no treasure found.

Dr. Daniel Tresvant, respected citizen of Columbia, South Carolina, testified and once again, I'm quoting, I'm not trying to be unkind. I'm not trying to be ugly, but I'm giving you the language. Dr. Daniel Trezvant, a respected citizen of Columbia, South Carolina, testified how one old Negro woman who, after being subjected to the most brutal indecency from seven Yankees, so seven men raped her, from seven Yankees was that the proposition of one of them to finish the old bitch was put into a ditch and held underwater until her life was extinct. In a letter that was discovered in the streets of Columbia, South Carolina after Sherman's bummers passed through, the letter was written by Lieutenant Thomas J.

Blacks Traded for Cotton by Union Officials

Emancipated slaves were taken from plantations and traded back to Southern planters for cotton, revealing Northern hypocrisy.

Here is what the official record says. "A commission is now in session in the West with Maj. Gen. McDowell at its head investigating the conduct of Maj. Gen. Curtis and other Republican officials in conducting their military operations so as to secure the largest amount of cotton possible for their own private benefit. One of the richest revelations made is in reference to the trading off of Negroes for cotton."

"The specification alleges that Negro slaves had been taken from the plantations upon the pretense of giving them freedom under the President's emancipation edict, and thus used as a substitute for coin. It has been fully proven before the investigating court. The officer charged with this lucrative speculation was Colonel Hovey of Illinois, formerly the principal of the State Normal School at Bloomington." So they were going to the plantations, taking the Negroes, saying you're free, then take them to another plantation and trade them for cotton.

Conclusion: The True Symbol of Hate is the Stars and Stripes

Weaver concludes that the Confederate flag represents hatred only of those who destroy the Republic, and that the Stars and Stripes is the real symbol of wicked hatred.

Now let me just tell you, everywhere you go, everywhere you turn, inevitably some black or some ignorant white is saying the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of hatred. The Confederate battle flag was not a symbol of hatred against the North. It was not a symbol of hatred against our union. It was not a symbol of hatred against our Constitution. It was not a symbol of hatred against blacks. The truth of the matter is, if you say the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of hate, the only thing it could be a symbol of hate of is a hatred of those who would destroy our country, our Constitution, our Republic, our culture, and our lives. And that kind of hate, dear friend, is not unbiblical. It's not ungodly.

It is rather commended in scripture. "Ye that love the Lord hate evil." Let me tell you. Let me repeat this. There was no slave ever brought into this country under the Confederate battle flag. Every slave was brought into this country under the Stars and Stripes or some foreign nation. It was the Stars and Stripes that invaded the South. The Confederate battle flag did not invade the North. It was the Radical Republicans under the Stars and Stripes that tried to destroy the Union and tried to destroy the Constitution. It was the Radical Republicans under the Stars and Stripes that wanted to destroy Southern culture and Southern society. It was the Stars and Stripes that wanted to reconstruct the South to be like the North. No, if there is a flag that symbolizes and epitomizes hatred, a wicked ungodly hatred, it would not be the Confederate battle flag, it would be the Stars and Stripes. And by the way, it's that same Stars and Stripes today that is trying to institute the New World Order and destroy not only the states, but the nation as well.

If the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of hatred, it's only a symbol of hatred against those who destroy everything that we believe in and hold dear and sacred. Let's pray. Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, we ask you to help us. Enable us, Lord, to understand history. Enable us, Lord, to be able to sort out the facts. Enable us, Lord, to learn what truth is and stand with that truth and for that truth whether anyone else hears it, knows it, or understands it or not. Give us grace to fulfill Your Word when You say, "and having done all, stand." May we in the name of Jesus Christ stand for what's right. In Thy name we pray, Amen.

Study Guide

Major Themes

Northern Aggression and Hatred

Summary: The North, not the South, was the source of sectional animosity and violent rhetoric, calling for the extermination of Southerners.

Evidence: Quotes from Wendell Phillips, Senator Jim Lane, and General Sherman advocating killing Southerners.

Moral Superiority of Southern Leadership

Summary: Robert E. Lee exemplified Christian forgiveness and gentlemanly conduct, in stark contrast to Northern leaders' bloodthirstiness.

Evidence: Lee's statements about praying for the North and welcoming General Grant.

Northern Hypocrisy on Race

Summary: The North professed to fight for black freedom but enacted racist laws and treated free blacks worse than slaves.

Evidence: State laws barring black immigration and voting, and quotes from Northern politicians expressing dislike for blacks.

Union Army Atrocities Against Blacks

Summary: Northern soldiers forcibly conscripted blacks, used them as human shields, and committed widespread rape and murder.

Evidence: Official records of forced enlistment, gang rape, and murder of black women and children.

The Confederate Flag as a Symbol of Righteous Resistance

Summary: The flag represents hatred only of those who would destroy the Constitution and Southern culture, which is a biblical hatred of evil.

Evidence: Weaver's concluding argument that the flag symbolizes opposition to tyranny, not racial hatred.

Key Arguments

Sectional hatred was Northern in origin

Summary: Weaver argues that animosity existed before the war and was perpetuated by Northern leaders who called for Southern extermination.

Evidence: Quotes from Phillips, Lane, and others; historical context of English regional differences.

The North waged total war on civilians

Summary: Sherman and other generals explicitly targeted Southern civilians, with approval from the highest levels of government.

Evidence: Sherman's letters to Stanton and Sheridan advocating killing men, women, and children.

Robert E. Lee's character refutes the hate narrative

Summary: Lee's Christian forbearance and refusal to seek vengeance demonstrate that the South did not harbor the hatred attributed to its flag.

Evidence: Lee's quotes about praying for enemies and welcoming Grant.

The North was more racist than the South

Summary: Northern states had laws excluding blacks, and contemporary observers noted worse conditions for free blacks in the North.

Evidence: State constitutions, de Tocqueville's observations, and British correspondents.

Black Union soldiers were forced to fight

Summary: Official records show blacks were conscripted, hunted down, and used as cannon fodder, contradicting the narrative of voluntary liberation.

Evidence: Orders from General Hunter, letters from Logan and Saxton, and soldier testimonies.

The Stars and Stripes is the true symbol of hate

Summary: Weaver concludes that the Union flag represents the forces that sought to destroy the South and now promote a New World Order.

Evidence: Closing remarks linking historical Union actions to contemporary federal overreach.

Scripture References

Psalm 97:10

Context: Weaver cites 'Ye that love the Lord hate evil' to justify hatred of those who destroy the country and Constitution.

Ephesians 6:13

Context: Weaver alludes to 'and having done all, stand' in his closing prayer, urging steadfastness for truth.

Historical References

Wendell Phillips speech at Henry Ward Beecher's church, 1862

Context: Phillips called for confiscation of Southern land and the hanging or exile of 347,000 slaveholders.

Senator Jim Lane speech, Washington D.C., summer 1863

Context: Lane expressed desire to see every white man in South Carolina in hell and Democrats killed.

Quincy, Illinois Republican newspaper

Context: The newspaper advocated a 'judicious slaughter' of Democrats at the polls.

General William T. Sherman's letters, 1864

Context: Sherman wrote to Stanton and Sheridan that Southerners must be killed and to make 'bloody results'.

Robert E. Lee's post-war conduct

Context: Lee's statements and actions at White Sulphur Springs and Washington College showing forgiveness.

Northern state laws against blacks

Context: Laws in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Indiana, Illinois, Oregon barring black immigration, voting, and education.

De Tocqueville's 'Democracy in America'

Context: Observations that racial prejudice was stronger in free states than in slave states.

Official Records of the War of the Rebellion

Context: Accounts of forced conscription of blacks, rape, and murder by Union soldiers.

Trading of emancipated slaves for cotton

Context: Investigation into Union officials trading freed blacks back to planters for cotton.

Important Quotes

This war was primarily a social revolution.

Significance: Wendell Phillips' statement used by Weaver to argue the war aimed to transform Southern society, not just preserve the Union.

I would like to live long enough to see every white man in South Carolina in hell and the Negroes inheriting their territory.

Significance: Senator Jim Lane's quote illustrating extreme Northern hatred toward the South.

The government of the United States has any and all rights which they choose to enforce in the war.

Significance: Sherman's assertion of unlimited federal power, used to show Northern tyranny.

I have never cherished toward them bitter or vindictive feelings, and have never seen the day when I did not pray for them.

Significance: Robert E. Lee's words demonstrating Christian forgiveness, contrasted with Northern hatred.

If General Grant comes, I shall welcome him into my home, and show him all the courtesy that is due to him as from one gentleman to another.

Significance: Lee's graciousness toward his former enemy, highlighting Southern honor.

The North dislikes the Negro even more than the South does.

Significance: British correspondent's observation used to argue Northern racism.

The damn niggers, as a general rule, prefer to stay at home. Particularly after they found out that we only wanted the able-bodied men. And to tell you the truth, the youngest and the best looking women.

Significance: Union lieutenant's letter revealing exploitation and abuse of blacks, supporting claims of Northern hypocrisy.

Discussion Questions

How does the sectional animosity described by Weaver challenge common narratives about the Civil War?

Context: Weaver argues that hatred originated in the North and was rooted in pre-colonial differences.

What do the quotes from Northern leaders reveal about the war's aims beyond preserving the Union?

Context: Phillips, Lane, and Sherman called for social revolution and extermination.

In what ways does Robert E. Lee's character serve as a counterpoint to the 'symbol of hate' accusation?

Context: Lee's forgiveness and refusal to seek vengeance are contrasted with Northern rhetoric.

How does the evidence of Northern racial laws and attitudes affect the claim that the war was fought to free slaves?

Context: Northern states barred black immigration and voting, and observers noted worse conditions for free blacks.

What are the implications of the forced conscription and abuse of blacks by the Union Army?

Context: Official records show blacks were hunted, forced to fight, and subjected to atrocities.

Is it valid to label a flag as a symbol of hate based on historical context, and how should Christians evaluate such symbols?

Context: Weaver concludes the Confederate flag represents righteous hatred of evil, while the Stars and Stripes symbolizes wickedness.

Applications

Discernment in Historical Narratives

Summary: Believers should examine historical facts rather than accept popular narratives, especially regarding the Civil War and its symbols.

Evidence: Weaver's extensive use of primary sources to counter the 'symbol of hate' claim.

Righteous Hatred of Evil

Summary: Christians are called to hate evil, including tyranny that destroys constitutional republics and godly culture.

Evidence: Weaver's citation of Psalm 97:10 and application to the Confederate flag.

Standing for Truth

Summary: Believers must stand for truth regardless of opposition, as exhorted in Ephesians 6:13.

Evidence: Weaver's closing prayer urging steadfastness.

deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | clean_readable_transcript | 2026-06-04T20:33:08Z

deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | weaver_study | 2026-06-05T21:58:49Z

Clean Transcript

Is The Confederate Flag a Symbol of Hate? Part 2

Clean readable transcript. This view follows the Commentary.net cleaned segment text while preserving timestamps for audio follow-along.

Most people do not understand the sectional animosity that even still exists in this country today. And may I point out the fact the sectional animosity existed even before the people came over to this country. You'll find that those who came from the northern part of England and those who came from the southern part are quite different. And you'll also find those who came from Scotland and Wales and Ireland, the Scotch-Irish, that is those Scots who went down to Ireland and then came over here, you're going to find that there was a great sectional dislike between themselves and those people of Northern England. So the sectionalism was basically in the people before they ever came to this country. And consequently, you have a lot of the Scotch-Irish who settled in the South. And of course a lot of those from Northern England settled then in the North and a lot of the sectional hatred and ill will continued. And so let me just demonstrate to you today that the hatred and the ill will in this country was basically on the part of the North.
#1 | 0:00 to 1:07 | cleaned
Wendell Phillips, in a speech delivered at Henry Ward Beecher's church in 1862, had this to say concerning the land and the territory of the Confederated States. Listen to what he says. He says, "This land is ours, confiscated, guaranteed. Its title given to the soldier who has finished his service. Give it to the black man who is willing to take it. Plant a state under the guarantee of the Union, employ free labor upon that fertile soil, and commence again the civil machinery, the organization of a state."
#2 | 1:07 to 1:41 | cleaned
Then he continues, "I know it seems like an absolute barbarian conquest. I allow it. I don't believe there will be any peace until 347,000 slaveholders are either hung or exiled." At this point, cheers rose up. He says, "History shows no precedent of getting rid of an aristocracy like this except by the death of a generation."
#3 | 1:41 to 2:07 | cleaned
Now what in the world was Wendell Phillips saying? He's saying the only way that we're going to salvage anything is if we kill an entire generation of people in the South. Again, on January the 23rd, 1863, the New York Tribune quoted Wendell Phillips as saying this, and this is very revealing by the way, his first sentence in this quote is this, "This war was primarily a social revolution. This war was primarily a social revolution. The war can only be ended by annihilating that oligarchy which formed and rules the South and makes the war by annihilating a state of society."
#4 | 2:08 to 2:51 | cleaned
"The whole societal system of the Gulf states must be taken to pieces." So here Wendell Phillips is saying, look, we are in a social revolution and what we're going to do is we're going to revolutionize the South. We're going to reconstruct them. By the way, that's what reconstruction was all about, trying to train the South to form and to act and to think like the Northerners. Now, Kansas Republican Senator Jim Lane was a tad more specific than Wendell Phillips.
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When he said in his speech delivered in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1863, he said this.
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Now, remember, this is a senator. Senator Jim Lane said, "I would like to live long enough to see every white man in South Carolina in hell and the Negroes inheriting their territory." Loud applause. "It would not wound my feelings any day to find the dead bodies of rebel sympathizers, that is Democrats, pierced with bullet holes at every street and alley of Washington." Applause. "Yes, I would regret this."
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Now listen, wait a minute. What did he just say? "It would not wound my feelings any day to find the dead bodies of rebel sympathizers pierced with bullet holes in every street and alley of Washington. Yes, I would regret this. For I would not like to witness all this waste of powder and lead. I would rather have them hung and the ropes saved. Let them dangle until their stinking bodies rot and fall to the ground piece by piece." Laughter and applause.
#8 | 4:00 to 4:30 | cleaned
That was a United States Senator. Wanting to live long enough to see every white man in South Carolina in hell. By the way, I want you to understand something about a lot of the old timers in the South. My father-in-law, for instance, he would always vote Democratic. A lot of the old timers, they would always vote Democratic. And today you'd say, who in the world would want to vote Democratic?
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You've got to remember back during the war of northern aggression, the Democrats were basically the good guys. It was the Republicans who were the bad guys. And consequently a lot of the old timers refused to have anything to do with the Republicans simply because they remembered and they knew their history. They knew what the Republicans did to the South. Of course today, the Republicans and the Democrats are both bad guys. See? But it was the Democrats who were basically for states' rights. It was the Democrats who were wanting to salvage and save the Union. And so, Senator Jim Lane says he'd like to see all the Democrats pierced with bullet holes in every street and alley in Washington.
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Now, the Quincy, Illinois Republican stated this. Now, remember, here's a newspaper coming out of Illinois, and here's the quote. "Every Republican knows that nothing so good could happen to this country, nothing that would be of such advantage as a general and judicious slaughter of the Democrats at the polls. Every Republican ought to take a bayonet to the polls for the purpose of assisting the Federal Army in the work of killing Democrats." Now that was published in the Illinois Whig Republican. Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, another Radical Republican, said this concerning the South. "Hang the leaders! Crush the South! Arm the Negroes! Confiscate the land!"
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"Our generals have a sword in one hand and shackles in the other. The South must be punished under the rules of war. Its land confiscated. These offending states were out of the Union and in the role of a belligerent nation to be dealt with by the laws of war and conquest." So here's another Congressman saying hang the leaders, crush the South. Now, Congressman Joshua Giddings stated publicly that he looked forward to the time, quote, "when the torch of the incendiary shall light up the towns and cities of the South to blot out the last vestiges of slavery," end quote. What did Congressman Giddings want? He wanted every home, every plantation in the South burned out. Major General William T.
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Sherman, a man that no southerner should ever forget, by the way. Major General William T. Sherman wrote from Vicksburg on January 31, 1864. Listen carefully. Here's what General Sherman said. "The government of the United States has any and all rights which they choose to enforce in the war."
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Now let me just stop there. Think about that statement. "The government of the United States has any and all rights which they choose to enforce in the war." It doesn't matter about the Constitution. It doesn't matter about the limitation on the federal government. He is saying the government of the United States has any and all rights which they choose to enforce in war. Now let me continue.
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"To take their lives, their homes, their lands, their everything. War is simply power unrestrained by Constitution. To the persistent secessionist, why death is mercy, and the quicker he or she are disposed of, the better." Did you hear what General Sherman said? The man who marched to the sea, that devastated the South, that burned, killed, butchered, raped, pillaged, destroyed everything in his path. He said the federal government has the right to do whatever it wants to do.
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It can confiscate the land of a civilian, it doesn't matter. It can shoot a civilian, it doesn't matter. The federal government can do whatever it wants to do and he says to the secessionist, death is mercy and the quicker I can kill him, the better off I'm going to be.
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Now I want you to note something. Sherman was not talking about soldiers in the heat and the rage of battle killing soldiers. But rather he was talking about killing civilians, men, women, and children. And according to General Sherman, Southerners deserve to die. All Southerners deserve to die. And the quicker the better. Now in case one thinks that I am exaggerating the interpretation of this statement, that Sherman believed that all Southerners deserve to die, men, women, and children, five months later, in a letter dated June 21, 1863, to Secretary of War Stanton, Sherman wrote, "There is a class of people, Southerners, men, women, and children,
#17 | 9:01 to 9:46 | cleaned
who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order." And he wrote that to Secretary of War Stanton. "There is a class of people, men, women, and children, who must be killed." Secretary of War Stanton replied to Sherman's letter stating thus, "Your letter of the 21st of June has just reached me and meets my approval." But Secretary of War Stanton say, kill him. I won't restrain you. And by the way, there was on the part of the North unrestrained slaughter in the South, not just of soldiers, but of civilians, men, women, and children together. In a letter to General Philip Sheridan, who was as bad as Sherman, Sherman wrote this, "I am satisfied that the problem of this war consists in the awful fact that the present class of men who rule the South must be killed outright rather than in the conquest of territory.
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A great deal of it yet remains to be done, that is, a killing. Therefore, I shall expect you on any and all occasions to make bloody results."
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Now here was Sherman writing to General Sheridan saying, there's a class of people that just has to be killed. And the more that are killed the better, the quicker they're killed the better. And I expect you as a general under me to make bloody results. You kill the Southerners. Senator Benjamin F. Wade from Ohio was no lover of the South. Yet in 1860 he said this, "I do not blame the South for seceding.
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For the men of that party about to take the reins of government in their hands are her mortal foes, and stand ready to trample her institutions under their feet." Now here was another Yankee senator who realized that the Radical Republicans were the mortal foes of the South, and they were going to do everything they could to destroy the South.
#21 | 11:29 to 11:51 | cleaned
Now, I want to just, I can't develop everything, but I want to just take the time to contrast and compare the attitude of General Robert E. Lee. There is such a vast difference, not only between the attitudes, but also the actions of North and South. Do you realize, and I did not have time to bring this today in the exact quotes, but when the Northern armies were wreaking such havoc and committing such atrocities in the south, murdering children and women, civilians. When some of the southern soldiers got north, they wanted it to be a payback time. You know what General Lee said?
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"You will not descend to the level of our adversaries. You will not render vengeance for vengeance. He said any man in this command who violates the rules of war shall be shot." You're not going to do it. I'm not going to allow it. And of course, he did not. But let me give you the attitude of Robert E. Lee. Here's what he said. "I have fought against the people of the North because I believe they were seeking to wrest from the South its dearest rights.
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But I have never cherished toward them bitter or vindictive feelings, and have never seen the day when I did not pray for them." Now you compare that to burn them, hang them, kill them. And he says, I fought against those people because they were seeking to destroy my dearest rights. Yet I've never cherished a bitter or vindictive spirit against them, and there's never been a day when I would not pray for them. One day during the war, as his men were scouting the numbers of the Union Army, one of his subordinates all of a sudden realized the vast multitude of the Union forces which lay before them, and he exclaimed in bitter tones, "I wish all those people were dead!"
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To which General Lee replied, "How can you say so, General? Now, I wish they were all at home, attending their own business, and leaving us likewise to do the same." He didn't want them dead. He said, I just want them to leave us alone. Let them go home. Take care of their business. We'll go home and take care of our business. One day at White Sulphur Springs, General Lee was expressing his grief at finding Southern young people so bitter against the North. He was then asked by one of his young female admirers if he did not feel resentment toward the North. At this, Lee paused and with a low voice replied, "I believe I may say, looking into my own heart, and speaking as in the presence of God, that I have never known one moment of bitterness or resentment." After another pause, he continued, "When you go home, I want you to take a message to your friends. Tell them from me that it is unworthy of them as women, and especially as Christian women, to cherish feelings of resentment against the North.
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Tell them that it grieves me inexpressibly to know that such a state of things exists, and that I implore them to do their part to heal our country's wounds." He came out a gracious man. On another occasion when General Lee was at White Sulphur Springs, the rumor spread that General Grant and Mrs. Grant had secured reservations there and were expected to arrive in a few days. And one of the young girls whom Lee had befriended had become tired of hearing the admonition to be kind and to be courteous to the North, and she appealed directly to General Lee to get his views. And she looked at General Lee and she said, "Well, General Lee, they say General Grant is coming here next week.
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What would you do then?" Her boldness so mortified her friends, one of them who said, any one of us would have gladly slain her on the spot. But Lee was unperturbed by the question, and he responded, "If General Grant comes, I shall welcome him into my home, and show him all the courtesy that is due to him as from one gentleman to another, and try to do everything in my power to make his stay here agreeable." To General Lee, anything else would have been unthinkable, because he was a Christian first and a gentleman second. When Lee was president of Washington College, which later became Washington and Lee College, he was seen by the Reverend William Jones speaking at his gate with a stranger to whom, before parting, General Lee gave some money. Reverend Jones inquired who the stranger was. "One of our old soldiers," replied Lee. "To whose command did he belong?" Pastor Jones asked. "Oh," said Lee, "he was one of those who fought against us, but we're all one now and must make no difference in our treatment of them."
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And you find Lee always taking care of not only his own troops, but any old soldier, even a northern soldier who was in a desperate state and needed anything. Lee would always be kind and gracious to a soldier.
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Now I'm just pointing out the fact. If the leaders of a country demonstrate an attitude, then very obviously it must be the attitude of at least that party and probably their people whom they represent. And here all the congressmen and senators were saying kill the southerners, destroy them. I'm just simply pointing out folks, if you're going to say that the confederate battle flag is a symbol of hate, what hatred does it symbolize? Certainly it does not symbolize hatred of the Union which I pointed out last week. It does not symbolize hatred of the Constitution which I pointed out last week. It does not symbolize hatred of the South toward the North. If the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of hate, the only thing it can be a symbol of hate concerning is the fact that it's a symbol of hate against those who would destroy our Republic, our Constitution, and our culture. Let me go thirdly. It was the North who hated the black race.
#29 | 17:14 to 18:24 | cleaned
Northerners were notoriously biased and prejudiced against the blacks. If one thinks that the war was over slavery, and that the North was eager to receive the freed slaves, one better go back and examine some of the historical facts, as well as some of the laws that were passed. You see, even after the blacks had gained their freedom, they were still viewed as an economic threat to white labor, and the North resented any competition from the blacks. New Jersey passed a law forbidding the importation of slaves into the state, and said white took this action because they said so that white labor may be protected. Here's New Jersey saying we don't need blacks up here. Now the reason we don't need blacks is so that white labor may be protected.
#30 | 18:25 to 19:19 | cleaned
Now the racial bigotry of the northern population against black workers had the effect of barring blacks then from social and economic advancement, thus increasing the poverty of the blacks. One commentator in that particular time stated that free blacks in the North would have been better off as slaves in the South. And by the way, Northern and English abolitionists all took note of the fact that the slaves in the South were far better treated than even the freed blacks in the North and even a lot of white workers in the North. So, Professor McMaster of the University of Pennsylvania stated this concerning the freed blacks of the North. "In spite of their freedom, they were a despised, proscribed, and poverty-stricken class."
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The authors of the biography of William Lloyd Garrison said it like this. "The freed colored people were looked upon as an inferior caste to whom their liberty was a curse and their lot worse than that of the slaves." The freed blacks in the north. You remember William Lloyd Garrison? He was the ardent abolitionist. He was the one who had the paper of the Liberator. And here the authors of his biography are saying that the blacks were far better off in slavery in the South than they were freed in the North. Because the labor market was so controlled in the North. Not only that, education to the blacks was denied in the North as well.
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Connecticut passed a law declaring that non-resident blacks could not attend public schools. You say, well why? Let me finish it out. Connecticut passed a law declaring that non-resident blacks could not attend public schools because it would tend to the great increase of colored people in this state. Connecticut is just simply saying, we don't want blacks up here. We're not going to educate them. They can't come into this state. New Jersey passed one of the first laws that prohibited free blacks from entering into that state.
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Massachusetts went a little further. It passed a law that allowed flogging of blacks who came into the state and remained there for longer than two months. And if you didn't leave, you were flogged again. In 1863, Indiana's constitution said this, "No Negro or mulatto shall come into or settle in this state." Illinois in 1853 enacted a law to prevent the immigration of free Negroes into this state. Illinois in 1862, remember the war was being fought now. You think the war was fought over slavery? In 1862, Illinois passed by an overwhelming popular vote an amendment to the state constitution declaring, quote, "No Negro or mulatto shall immigrate or settle in this state." They didn't want the blacks in the north. You remember the series I did where we are and how we got here? I pointed out how the abolitionists literally hated the blacks. Oregon's 1857 Constitution provided that no free Negro or mulatto not residing in this state at the time of adoption of the Constitution in the state of Oregon shall come, reside, or be within this state.
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So in 1857, Oregon said, all the blacks that are here now, which would have been extremely few, may stay. But after we adopt this Constitution, no black not only cannot come and settle in the state of Oregon, you cannot even come into the state. There is a great deal of bigotry and prejudice and racial hatred in the north of the blacks.
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Now, one of the things the northern people really feared was this, and one of the backlashes of the Emancipation Proclamation was they were afraid that those freed blacks now were going to flood into the northern states. And so to alleviate this fear, President Abraham Lincoln in his message to Congress in December of 1862 said this, "But why should emancipation south send free people north? And in any event, cannot the north decide for itself whether to receive them?" And this is what Lincoln said. If we freed the blacks down south, why should they flood up north? But even if they did, the states can determine for themselves whether or not they will receive them.
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In other words, we don't want them. Now, New Jersey in 1807 barred blacks from voting. Connecticut in 1814 barred blacks from voting. Rhode Island in 1822 barred blacks from voting. Pennsylvania in 1838 barred blacks from voting. And an interesting thing is this, the free blacks that were in the northern states suffered a decline according to the census figures from 1790 to 1830. The free black population in New York City went from 2.13% down to 0.57%, just a little more than a half of 1%. Now why, if the North really loved the blacks and the blacks were really free up North, why did the population of the blacks go from 2.13% down to nearly a half of 1%?
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Let me tell you why. Dr. Edgar McManus declared that many, if not the larger percentage of the blacks, had been kidnapped by the Yankees into forced migration, that is, they were kidnapped and sold back as slaves again. And New York City alone, in one year, there was more than 33 cases that are documented where the blacks were kidnapped, free blacks, and sold back into slavery by the northerners. William H. Seward, who was the Secretary of State in 1858, declared this, "The white man needs this continent to labor in and he must have it." John Sherman, who was the brother of William T. Sherman, made this declaration April 2, 1862.
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Remember now the war was going on. And some people want to say, well, the war was fought to free the slaves. No, no, that was not why it was fought. But here's what John Sherman said, April 2nd, 1862. "We do not like the Negroes. We do not disguise our dislike. As my friend from Indiana, Mr. Wright, said yesterday, the whole people of the Northwestern states are opposed to having many Negroes among them and that the principle of prejudice has been engraved in the legislation for nearly all of the Northwestern states." What did he say? They don't like the blacks. We don't want them here.
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And all you've got to do is look at each state's constitution. Because we passed laws saying they cannot come into this state. During the war, General John A. Dix proposed to remove a number of escaped slaves from Fortress Monroe to Massachusetts. And the governor of Massachusetts went ballistic. He objected, stating "the northern states are of all places the worst possible to select for an asylum for Negroes."
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Don't send them up here. We don't want them.
#41 | 27:18 to 27:20 | cleaned
Now let me tell you something. This is not just Southern views. These are Northerners that are speaking. Charles Francis Adams, who is a Northerner himself, has written a book, which is an exceedingly good book, "When in the Course of Human Events." But on page 132 of that book, he gives us a smattering of the British attitude toward the war when he quotes several British observers. Let me give you this quote. "In the words of a North British review in 1862, free Negroes are treated like lepers in the North. Another British correspondent, who traveled to America to learn about the attitudes in both the North and the South towards the conflict, wrote in an article entitled 'The Outlook of War,' 'Everybody still professes to disapprove of slavery. Of course, so as the cant of the day runs, Slavery is a very dreadful thing and everybody, the South above all, would be glad to see it abolished. But slavery has nothing to do with the present war. The North dislikes the Negro even more than the South does.'
#42 | 27:21 to 28:34 | cleaned
"He is out of court and any attempt to get up sympathy on his behalf is irrelevant to this present question." So here the British were saying the North dislikes the blacks. They don't want them. And if the North tries to come to us and say, give us some sympathy, they said, you're out of court. We're not even going to look at you. So ridiculous is your position.
#43 | 28:35 to 29:00 | cleaned
In his book, "Democracy in America," de Tocqueville, the French writer says this. Listen carefully. "Though the electoral franchise has been conferred on the Negroes in all the free states, that is, they have a right to vote. If they come forward to vote, their lives are in danger. Negroes may serve by law on juries, but prejudice repels them from that office. They have separate schools, separate hospital wards, and separate galleries in the theaters."
#44 | 29:01 to 29:34 | cleaned
"In the South, it is quite different with the Negro. Undoubtedly, the prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the states that have abolished slaves than in the states in which slavery still exists. White carpenters, white bricklayers, and white painters will not work side by side with the blacks in the North, but do it almost in every southern state, unless northern men among their workmen oppose it."
#45 | 29:35 to 30:02 | cleaned
Did you hear what he said? In the North? White laborers would not work beside a black laborer. But in the South, he said, in all Southern states, they do it, unless there happens to be a Northerner down there who opposes it. Do you realize that many of the blacks today who think that the North was really interested in their liberation and their freedom, if they really found out what happened, they would be greatly horrified.
#46 | 30:03 to 30:36 | cleaned
Even a northern newspaper writing to Union troops in 1864, just a year before the war ended, voiced their alarm at how the Union troops were treating Southerners in their pillage, rape, and terror. Listen to what this northern newspaper said. "Old men and women and children, the infirm, the sick, and the innocent driven from their blazing homes," that's what the North was doing to the civilians in the South, burning them out. Now listen, "old men and women and children, the infirm, the sick and the innocent, driven from their blazing homes, gathering in hopeless misery around some dying campfire, shivering, starving, shelterless. Did you feel an impulse prompting you to aid in carrying out, in carrying anguish and desolation and extermination throughout the South? Listen, merely to give immediate emancipation to a race who were a thousand times happier as you found them than as you would leave them." Here's a northern newspaper saying you're down there murdering innocent people, sick people, to emancipate a race who were a thousand times happier as they were than when you freed them.
#47 | 30:38 to 31:56 | cleaned
Listen to what President Abraham Lincoln said, "I thought that whatever Negroes could be got to do as soldiers leave just so much less for white soldiers do in saving the Union." Now let's think this through just for a moment. Lincoln said, "I thought that whatever Negroes could be got to do as soldiers leave so much less for white soldiers do in saving the Union." Now when you read that it sounds like, well what Lincoln is wanting is for some black soldiers to take over some mundane tasks which would free some of the white soldiers for fighting. That is not what Lincoln meant.
#48 | 31:57 to 32:38 | cleaned
And I'm going to prove it to you. What Lincoln meant was this. The more blacks we can get killed, the less whites will be killed. If you don't think that's the correct interpretation, others stated the same truth more clearly than Lincoln did. The Republican governor of Iowa stated publicly that he would prefer, and by the way, I'm giving a direct quote. I'm not trying to be ugly. I'm giving a direct quote. The Republican governor of Iowa stated publicly that he would prefer to sacrifice the lives of niggers rather than those of his best and bravest white youths.
#49 | 32:39 to 33:18 | cleaned
In 1864, General John A. Black Jack Logan, an extreme Republican and the post-war commander of the G.A.R., the Grand Army of the Republic, told an audience in Springfield, Illinois that he would rather six niggers be killed than one of his brave boys.
#50 | 33:20 to 33:38 | cleaned
Now let me tell you, there has been a lot said about the North having 180,000 Blacks who fought under the United States flag against the South. Well, a lot of them did, but most people don't know why they did or how they did. For instance, according to the laws of war, listen carefully, I'm quoting, "according to the laws of war, all the property of rebels is forfeited to the treasury of the country. And slave property is subject to the same liability as other property to be appropriated for war causes." So therefore, the invading army then began to seize the slaves and conscript them into service as war property. They were the property of the southern rebels, and thus they were confiscated and forced into the northern army. General David Hunter, issued the following order from Hilton Head, South Carolina, quote, "all able-bodied colored men between the ages of 18 and 50 within the military lines of the Department of the South who have had an opportunity to enlist voluntarily and refuse to do so shall be drafted into the military service of
#51 | 33:39 to 35:00 | cleaned
the United States to serve as non-commissioned officers and soldiers in the various regiments and batteries now being organized in the department." Now, by the way, what I'm about to give you is from the official records. What I'm about to give you is not what some individual said or saw. You will find this in the official records of the war. So here, General Hunter is saying those blacks who have been given the opportunity to voluntarily enlist and did not, they are now going to be drafted and forced to fight.
#52 | 35:00 to 35:35 | cleaned
Now these orders and the following accounts certainly explain why 180,000, if it was that number, of blacks bore arms against the South. In a letter to General Ulysses S. Grant, General John A. Logan wrote, "that a major of colored troops is here with his party capturing negroes with or without their consent." Did you hear that? "A major of colored troops is here with his party capturing negroes with or without their consent."
#53 | 35:35 to 36:14 | cleaned
"So I'm obliged to force them. The matter of collecting the colored men for laborers has been one of great difficulty. They must be forced to go." In the words of General Rufus A. Saxton, "men have been seized and forced to enlist who had large families. And on one occasion, three boys, one only 14 years of age, were seized in a field where they were at work and sent to a regiment without the knowledge of their parents."
#54 | 36:15 to 36:43 | cleaned
In the official records it also says, "on some plantations the wailing and screaming were loud." That is when the Yankee troops went to capture the blacks to force them into the military. Says "on some plantations the wailing and the screaming were loud and the women threw themselves into despair on the ground. On some plantations the people took to the woods and were hunted up by the soldiers."
#55 | 36:44 to 37:07 | cleaned
"I doubt if the recruiting service in this country has ever been attended with such scenes before." So literally they were being hunted down and forced into the service. So it was not uncommon then for these black soldiers to be forced into the front lines by the bayonets of the Union soldiers behind them. One Northern soldier is quoted as saying, quote, "I used to be opposed to having black troops.
#56 | 37:07 to 37:40 | cleaned
But when I saw 10 cartloads of dead niggers carried off the field yesterday, I thought it better they should be killed than I." They were really interested in the blacks, weren't they? Another soldier commented that "this treatment has created a suspicion that the government has not the interest of the Negroes that it professed. And many of them sighed yesterday for the old fetters as being better than the new liberty." What is the soldier saying?
#57 | 37:40 to 38:06 | cleaned
Here are black soldiers conscripted, forced to fight in the northern army, crying and sighing to go back to their southern masters. So they're beginning to get the picture the North really is not interested in the blacks at all. So the northern soldiers then viewed the slaves as enemy property, and thus they were to be confiscated, they were to be used, and of course since many times the blacks fought along with the southern soldiers and helped defend the plantations, when the Union soldiers came into town since there would be no southern men there, white men to fight, they would take their vengeance out on the blacks who stayed to protect the property.
#58 | 38:06 to 38:54 | cleaned
Let me give you this quote. The official records of the war published by the United States government are literally filled with the accounts of robbery, rape, and murder endured by the Southern blacks at the hands of their supposed liberators. J. T. K. Hayward testified that Northern soldiers were committing rapes on the Negroes and such like things and no punishment or none of any account had been meted out to them. In the tiny towns of Athens, Alabama, Northern soldiers under the command of Colonel John B. Turchin, and Turchin was a wicked, wicked man, but under the command of Colonel John B. Turchin, attempted an indecent outrage on a servant girl and quartered themselves in the Negro huts for weeks, debauching the females. This account also tells of the gang rape on the person of a colored girl. Now this is from the official records. Here's Colonel John B. Turchin letting his Union soldiers rape and murder the black women.
#59 | 38:56 to 39:59 | cleaned
After the fall of Richmond, General Grant was notified of a number of cases of atrocious rape by these men had already occurred. Their influence on the colored population is also reported to be bad. General Saxton wrote the following report to the Secretary of War Stanton on the 30th of December, 1864. Listen, "I found the prejudice of color and race here in full force. And the general feeling of the army, now you're talking about the Union Army, the Northerners. And the general feeling of the army of occupation was unfriendly to the blacks."
#60 | 40:00 to 40:31 | cleaned
"It was manifested in various forms of personal insult and abuse. In depredations on their plantations, stealing and destroying their crops and domestic animals, and robbing them of their money. The women, that is the black women, were held as legitimate prey of lust." That's from the official record. Also there were eyewitness evidence. Nora Canning of Savannah, Georgia told how the dead baby of one of the family's slave women was dug up by northern soldiers looking for buried treasure. When the body was found, the body was carelessly cast aside to rot in the sun because there was no treasure found.
#61 | 40:31 to 41:14 | cleaned
Dr. Daniel Tresvant, respected citizen of Columbia, South Carolina, testified and once again, I'm quoting, I'm not trying to be unkind. I'm not trying to be ugly, but I'm giving you the language. Dr. Daniel Trezvant, a respected citizen of Columbia, South Carolina, testified how one old Negro woman who, after being subjected to the most brutal indecency from seven Yankees, so seven men raped her, from seven Yankees was that the proposition of one of them to finish the old bitch was put into a ditch and held underwater until her life was extinct. In a letter that was discovered in the streets of Columbia, South Carolina after Sherman's bummers passed through, the letter was written by Lieutenant Thomas J.
#62 | 41:15 to 42:02 | cleaned
Myers to his wife in Boston, Massachusetts. And here is what Lieutenant Myers wrote, quote, "The damn niggers, as a general rule, prefer to stay at home. Particularly after they found out that we only wanted the able-bodied men. And to tell you the truth, the youngest and the best looking women. Sometimes we took off whole families and plantations of niggers by way of repaying secessionists. But the useless part of them we soon managed to lose. Sometimes in crossing rivers, sometimes in other ways."
#63 | 42:02 to 42:37 | cleaned
What did he just say? We kill them. Ones we didn't want, we killed.
#64 | 42:38 to 42:43 | cleaned
Now let me give you this one, and I'll try to draw this thing together for you. Some of the black slaves who were supposedly emancipated by Lincoln's proclamation of January 1, 1863, and Lord willing one day in the not so distant future, I want to bring several messages exposing the Emancipation Proclamation. But several blacks who thought themselves freed by this Emancipation Proclamation found themselves, are you listening, traded back to southern planters for cotton. In other words, the slaves who had gotten to the northern soldiers, some of them used the blacks as money.
#65 | 42:44 to 43:29 | cleaned
Here is what the official record says. "A commission is now in session in the West with Maj. Gen. McDowell at its head investigating the conduct of Maj. Gen. Curtis and other Republican officials in conducting their military operations so as to secure the largest amount of cotton possible for their own private benefit. One of the richest revelations made is in reference to the trading off of Negroes for cotton."
#66 | 43:30 to 43:58 | cleaned
"The specification alleges that Negro slaves had been taken from the plantations upon the pretense of giving them freedom under the President's emancipation edict, and thus used as a substitute for coin. It has been fully proven before the investigating court. The officer charged with this lucrative speculation was Colonel Hovey of Illinois, formerly the principal of the State Normal School at Bloomington." So they were going to the plantations, taking the Negroes, saying you're free, then take them to another plantation and trade them for cotton.
#67 | 43:59 to 44:33 | cleaned
Now let me just tell you, everywhere you go, everywhere you turn, inevitably some black or some ignorant white is saying the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of hatred. The Confederate battle flag was not a symbol of hatred against the North. It was not a symbol of hatred against our union. It was not a symbol of hatred against our Constitution. It was not a symbol of hatred against blacks. The truth of the matter is, if you say the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of hate, the only thing it could be a symbol of hate of is a hatred of those who would destroy our country, our Constitution, our Republic, our culture, and our lives. And that kind of hate, dear friend, is not unbiblical. It's not ungodly.
#68 | 44:34 to 45:28 | cleaned
It is rather commended in scripture. "Ye that love the Lord hate evil." Let me tell you. Let me repeat this. There was no slave ever brought into this country under the Confederate battle flag. Every slave was brought into this country under the Stars and Stripes or some foreign nation. It was the Stars and Stripes that invaded the South. The Confederate battle flag did not invade the North. It was the Radical Republicans under the Stars and Stripes that tried to destroy the Union and tried to destroy the Constitution. It was the Radical Republicans under the Stars and Stripes that wanted to destroy Southern culture and Southern society. It was the Stars and Stripes that wanted to reconstruct the South to be like the North. No, if there is a flag that symbolizes and epitomizes hatred, a wicked ungodly hatred, it would not be the Confederate battle flag, it would be the Stars and Stripes. And by the way, it's that same Stars and Stripes today that is trying to institute the New World Order and destroy not only the states, but the nation as well.
#69 | 45:28 to 46:52 | cleaned
If the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of hatred, it's only a symbol of hatred against those who destroy everything that we believe in and hold dear and sacred. Let's pray. Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, we ask you to help us. Enable us, Lord, to understand history. Enable us, Lord, to be able to sort out the facts. Enable us, Lord, to learn what truth is and stand with that truth and for that truth whether anyone else hears it, knows it, or understands it or not. Give us grace to fulfill Your Word when You say, "and having done all, stand." May we in the name of Jesus Christ stand for what's right. In Thy name we pray, Amen.
#70 | 46:52 to 47:43 | cleaned

deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | clean_readable_transcript | 2026-06-04T20:33:08Z

Is The Confederate Flag a Symbol of Hate? Part 2

John Weaver | Freedom Ministries

John Weaver argues that the Confederate battle flag is not a symbol of hate, but rather a symbol of resistance against those who sought to destroy the South's republic, constitution, and culture. He contends that sectional animosity originated in the North, citing inflammatory statements by Northern politicians and generals calling for the extermination of Southerners. Weaver contrasts the vengeful Northern attitude with the graciousness of Robert E. Lee. He further asserts that the North harbored deep racial prejudice against blacks, passing laws to exclude them and treating freed blacks worse than slaves, while the South was more integrated. He claims that black soldiers were forcibly conscripted by the Union and that Northern troops committed atrocities against Southern blacks. Weaver concludes that if any flag symbolizes hate, it is the Stars and Stripes, not the Confederate battle flag.

Introduction: Sectional Animosity Originated in the North

Weaver claims that sectional hatred existed before colonization and was primarily on the part of the North, rooted in differences between settlers from Northern England and Scotch-Irish.

Northern Leaders Called for Annihilation of the South

Quotes from Wendell Phillips, Senator Jim Lane, and others show Northern politicians and newspapers advocating for the killing, hanging, or crushing of Southerners.

General Sherman's Policy of Extermination

Sherman stated that the government has unlimited rights in war and that Southern men, women, and children must be killed or banished, with approval from Secretary Stanton.

Contrast with Robert E. Lee's Christian Character

Lee forbade vengeance, prayed for the North, and showed kindness to former enemies, exemplifying a spirit of reconciliation rather than hatred.

Northern Racial Prejudice Against Blacks

Northern states passed laws barring black immigration, voting, and education, and treated free blacks as an inferior caste, often worse off than slaves.

Forced Conscription and Abuse of Blacks by the Union Army

Official records show blacks were captured and forced into Union service, used as cannon fodder, and subjected to rape and murder by Northern soldiers.

Blacks Traded for Cotton by Union Officials

Emancipated slaves were taken from plantations and traded back to Southern planters for cotton, revealing Northern hypocrisy.

Conclusion: The True Symbol of Hate is the Stars and Stripes

Weaver concludes that the Confederate flag represents hatred only of those who destroy the Republic, and that the Stars and Stripes is the real symbol of wicked hatred.

Is The Confederate Flag a Symbol of Hate? Part 2

John Weaver | SermonAudio

Lecture Metadata	Details
Speaker	John Weaver
Source	SermonAudio
Media ID	111302115534
Subject	Civil Government
Course	Civil Government: Power, Nations, and Constitutional Order: Where We Are & How We Got Here
Genre	Sermon
Date	2002-11-13
Dictation Name
Book	Book 020: Is The Confederate Flag a Symbol of Hate? — Chapter 2
Source Timed Segments	70

Lecture Guide

Outline

Introduction: Sectional Animosity Originated in the North: Weaver claims that sectional hatred existed before colonization and was primarily on the part of the North, rooted in differences between settlers from Northern England and Scotch-Irish.
Northern Leaders Called for Annihilation of the South: Quotes from Wendell Phillips, Senator Jim Lane, and others show Northern politicians and newspapers advocating for the killing, hanging, or crushing of Southerners.
General Sherman's Policy of Extermination: Sherman stated that the government has unlimited rights in war and that Southern men, women, and children must be killed or banished, with approval from Secretary Stanton.
Contrast with Robert E. Lee's Christian Character: Lee forbade vengeance, prayed for the North, and showed kindness to former enemies, exemplifying a spirit of reconciliation rather than hatred.
Northern Racial Prejudice Against Blacks: Northern states passed laws barring black immigration, voting, and education, and treated free blacks as an inferior caste, often worse off than slaves.
Forced Conscription and Abuse of Blacks by the Union Army: Official records show blacks were captured and forced into Union service, used as cannon fodder, and subjected to rape and murder by Northern soldiers.
Blacks Traded for Cotton by Union Officials: Emancipated slaves were taken from plantations and traded back to Southern planters for cotton, revealing Northern hypocrisy.
Conclusion: The True Symbol of Hate is the Stars and Stripes: Weaver concludes that the Confederate flag represents hatred only of those who destroy the Republic, and that the Stars and Stripes is the real symbol of wicked hatred.

Major Themes

Key Arguments

Sectional hatred was Northern in origin

Weaver argues that animosity existed before the war and was perpetuated by Northern leaders who called for Southern extermination.

Quotes from Phillips, Lane, and others; historical context of English regional differences.

The North waged total war on civilians

Sherman and other generals explicitly targeted Southern civilians, with approval from the highest levels of government.

Sherman's letters to Stanton and Sheridan advocating killing men, women, and children.

Robert E. Lee's character refutes the hate narrative

Lee's Christian forbearance and refusal to seek vengeance demonstrate that the South did not harbor the hatred attributed to its flag.

Lee's quotes about praying for enemies and welcoming Grant.

The North was more racist than the South

Northern states had laws excluding blacks, and contemporary observers noted worse conditions for free blacks in the North.

State constitutions, de Tocqueville's observations, and British correspondents.

Black Union soldiers were forced to fight

Official records show blacks were conscripted, hunted down, and used as cannon fodder, contradicting the narrative of voluntary liberation.

Orders from General Hunter, letters from Logan and Saxton, and soldier testimonies.

The Stars and Stripes is the true symbol of hate

Weaver concludes that the Union flag represents the forces that sought to destroy the South and now promote a New World Order.

Closing remarks linking historical Union actions to contemporary federal overreach.

Scripture References

Psalm 97:10: Weaver cites 'Ye that love the Lord hate evil' to justify hatred of those who destroy the country and Constitution.
Ephesians 6:13: Weaver alludes to 'and having done all, stand' in his closing prayer, urging steadfastness for truth.

Historical References

Wendell Phillips speech at Henry Ward Beecher's church, 1862: Phillips called for confiscation of Southern land and the hanging or exile of 347,000 slaveholders.
Senator Jim Lane speech, Washington D.C., summer 1863: Lane expressed desire to see every white man in South Carolina in hell and Democrats killed.
Quincy, Illinois Republican newspaper: The newspaper advocated a 'judicious slaughter' of Democrats at the polls.
General William T. Sherman's letters, 1864: Sherman wrote to Stanton and Sheridan that Southerners must be killed and to make 'bloody results'.
Robert E. Lee's post-war conduct: Lee's statements and actions at White Sulphur Springs and Washington College showing forgiveness.
Northern state laws against blacks: Laws in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Indiana, Illinois, Oregon barring black immigration, voting, and education.
De Tocqueville's 'Democracy in America': Observations that racial prejudice was stronger in free states than in slave states.
Official Records of the War of the Rebellion: Accounts of forced conscription of blacks, rape, and murder by Union soldiers.
Trading of emancipated slaves for cotton: Investigation into Union officials trading freed blacks back to planters for cotton.

Important Quotes

This war was primarily a social revolution.

Wendell Phillips' statement used by Weaver to argue the war aimed to transform Southern society, not just preserve the Union.

I would like to live long enough to see every white man in South Carolina in hell and the Negroes inheriting their territory.

Senator Jim Lane's quote illustrating extreme Northern hatred toward the South.

The government of the United States has any and all rights which they choose to enforce in the war.

Sherman's assertion of unlimited federal power, used to show Northern tyranny.

I have never cherished toward them bitter or vindictive feelings, and have never seen the day when I did not pray for them.

Robert E. Lee's words demonstrating Christian forgiveness, contrasted with Northern hatred.

If General Grant comes, I shall welcome him into my home, and show him all the courtesy that is due to him as from one gentleman to another.

Lee's graciousness toward his former enemy, highlighting Southern honor.

The North dislikes the Negro even more than the South does.

British correspondent's observation used to argue Northern racism.

The damn niggers, as a general rule, prefer to stay at home. Particularly after they found out that we only wanted the able-bodied men. And to tell you the truth, the youngest and the best looking women.

Union lieutenant's letter revealing exploitation and abuse of blacks, supporting claims of Northern hypocrisy.

Discussion Questions

[Question]

How does the sectional animosity described by Weaver challenge common narratives about the Civil War?

[Context]

Weaver argues that hatred originated in the North and was rooted in pre-colonial differences.

[Question]

What do the quotes from Northern leaders reveal about the war's aims beyond preserving the Union?

[Context]

Phillips, Lane, and Sherman called for social revolution and extermination.

[Question]

In what ways does Robert E. Lee's character serve as a counterpoint to the 'symbol of hate' accusation?

[Context]

Lee's forgiveness and refusal to seek vengeance are contrasted with Northern rhetoric.

[Question]

How does the evidence of Northern racial laws and attitudes affect the claim that the war was fought to free slaves?

[Context]

Northern states barred black immigration and voting, and observers noted worse conditions for free blacks.

[Question]

What are the implications of the forced conscription and abuse of blacks by the Union Army?

[Context]

Official records show blacks were hunted, forced to fight, and subjected to atrocities.

[Question]

Is it valid to label a flag as a symbol of hate based on historical context, and how should Christians evaluate such symbols?

[Context]

Weaver concludes the Confederate flag represents righteous hatred of evil, while the Stars and Stripes symbolizes wickedness.

Applications

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