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1865 (January) Congress adopts the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to abolish slavery.
1865 (January) After meeting with freed slaves in Savannah, Georgia - in what became known as the Savannah Colloquy - General William T. Sherman responded to their pleas for land. In January he issued his famous Field Order 15 setting aside a huge swath of abandoned land along the Georgia and South Carolina coast for black families on forty acres plots. He also said that army mules no longer in use would be offered to Black farmers. This is likely where the "Forty Acres and a Mule" legend began. Sherman never stated whether this was to be a permanent or temporary land acquisition.
1865 (March) Congress establishes the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau) providing for the allocation of “unoccupied land” to freedmen (not to exceed 40 acres) – rather than 40 acres as requested, Congress allowed the Freedmen’s Bureau to sell only 5 to 10 acre tracts of land to freed slaves.
1865 (May) President Johnson announces his Reconstruction Plan. The plan calls for the Southern States to abolish slavery but does not offer a role for Blacks in Reconstruction. The southern states are to determine the role of Blacks themselves.
1865 (June) Some 40,000 freed slaves were settled on what was referred to as "Sherman's Land" on some 400,000 acres of land in Georgia and South Carolina. Much of this land was for rice cultivation. The Freedmen created their own government, denied white access to the area and cultivated their land.
1865 (Summer) President Johnson reverses Sherman's Field Order 15 by ordering that virtually all plantation lands given to freed slaves be returned to the original plantation owners.
1865 (October) A reluctant General O. Howard, Chair of the Freedmen's Bureau assigned the task to tell freed slaves in Georgia and South Carolina that they must return the land they had settled on to the original owners. Some 2,000 Blacks came to the local church on Edisto Island to hear his comments. Howard said the freed slaves need to "lay aside their bitter feelings. and to become reconciled to their old masters." They responded "No, never!" "Can't do it!" "Why, General Howard, do you take away our lands?" Petitions by Blacks were drafted to protest betrayal. The first stated: " General, we want Homesteads, we were promised Homesteads by the government. If it does not carry out the promises its agents made to us...we are left in a more unpleasant condition than our former....You will see this is not the condition of really free men." (Eric Foner & Joshua Brown Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction)
Originally posted by Hamjoe
Racism will never go away only because TPTB will not let it.. people get shot and kill ever day, people starving, homeless, jobless, where i live a black man cut out his white GF and baby's hearts put them in a sack and walked in the local police station with it.. That ever make the CNN? .. It just makes me sick how the brain washing corporation big banker .corrupt government owned news boob tube crap gets ever one all worked up and keeps the race issue going and going..we are all human beings it is the year 2013 past is the past.. The whole damn world is just nuts....
Government Caught Paying Protesters After Trayvon Martin Shooting To Create Race War
(JW) Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained documents in response to local, state, and federal records requests revealing that a little-known unit of the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Community Relations Service (CRS), was deployed to Sanford, FL, following the Trayvon Martin shooting to help organize and manage rallies and protests against George Zimmerman.
JW filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the DOJ on April 24, 2012; 125 pages were received on May 30, 2012. JW administratively appealed the request on June 5, 2012, and received 222 pages more on March 6, 2013. According to the documents:
March 25 – 27, 2012, CRS spent $674.14 upon being “deployed to Sanford, FL, to work marches, demonstrations, and rallies related to the shooting and death of an African-American teen by a neighborhood watch captain.”
March 25 – 28, 2012, CRS spent $1,142.84 “in Sanford, FL to work marches, demonstrations, and rallies related to the shooting and death of an African-American teen by a neighborhood watch captain.
March 30 – April 1, 2012, CRS spent $892.55 in Sanford, FL “to provide support for protest deployment in Florida.”
March 30 – April 1, 2012, CRS spent an additional $751.60 in Sanford, FL “to provide technical assistance to the City of Sanford, event organizers, and law enforcement agencies for the march and rally on March 31.”
April 3 – 12, 2012, CRS spent $1,307.40 in Sanford, FL “to provide technical assistance, conciliation, and onsite mediation during demonstrations planned in Sanford.”
April 11 – 12, 2012, CRS spent $552.35 in Sanford, FL “to provide technical assistance for the preparation of possible marches and rallies related to the fatal shooting of a 17 year old African American male.”
Originally posted by TDawgRex
reply to post by frazzle
I knew my 4x’s Great Grandfather was a good guy. Yes, he waged war in a totally ruthless manner, but all in the effort to get it over with as quickly as possible.
He tried to do the right thing, but was over-ruled eventually. Hmmm, sounds familiar.
A U.S. soldier who participated in the Iraq war has written a resignation letter lashing out at the U.S. war policy.
Brandon M. Toy wrote in a letter published by Common Dreams on Tuesday that he was “misled” by the U.S. military when he joined it a decade ago.
“At the time of my enlistment, I believed in the cause. I was ignorant, naïve, and misled,” he wrote.
Originally posted by TDawgRex
reply to post by frazzle
I totally agree with you. Rarely do the rank and file want war though.
But I've always found that when given a crappy task, the best way to do it is get it over as quickly as possible, and hopefully well enough so that you don't have to do it again.
That is also why I am against the various current wars. It's become business as usual. Technically, the U.S. hasn't been in a war since 1945. But tell that to the Servicemembers and their families and chances are you'll get a fat lip.
Didn't Eisenhower warn us about this? I believe he did.
Source
“Gentlemen, n*****s and cotton caused this war, and I wish them both in Hell.”
Originally posted by TheRedneck
reply to post by frazzle
And I mostly agree with you, sir. I just could not allow that one thing go go unchallenged.
The history of the black population in America is a cornucopia of misinformation, misrepresentation, and outright lies. The Democratic Party (I am a true independent btw) spent 100 years trying to promote white supremacy; the Civil War which is so credited for freeing slaves was started by the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln. 100 years later, the Democratic Governor of Alabama, George C. Wallace, stood in front of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa blocking the admission of two black people, after making the statement "segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever" earlier in his inaugural speech. Yet, today, who gets the vast majority of black votes? Democrats.
The Confederate Battlejack Flag is continuously touted as a symbol of slavery, despite the fact that it flew over a nation that was fighting not for slavery, but for their right to exist in a state of freedom from the tyranny of the Federal government. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in America; it ended slavery in the South. The only reason slavery is considered the cause of the war was that Lincoln was in danger of losing re-election in 1864 because he was losing the war, and he used the issue to energize citizens to support him. The flag is a symbol of my ancestors' willingness to fight and die for their home and their beliefs, and a symbol of my cultural heritage. But propaganda has labelled it otherwise to make it a hated symbol, despite the fact that it is a symbol of a culture as precious to me as a black man's culture should be to him... and based on the number of allusions I see to Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, George Washington Carver, Malcolm X, and others, a culture that is precious to black people.
Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, et.al., have continually drummed up issues of hatred and racism where none existed prior to their arrival. The only possible purpose (assuming they are sane) is that these so-called leaders are leading their followers backward into history instead of forward into the future... all for their own monetary profit and egocentric desires. They still speak of slavery, although slavery in the United States stopped a century and a half ago, so long removed that no one alive today even knew anyone who was a slave or owned a slave. Precious few can even say they had direct experience with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.
Even the Black Panthers have followed the time-tested path of the KKK. Just as the KKK evolved after the Civil War from a vigilante justice organization into a white supremacy organization, the Black Panthers are evolving from a racial justice group to a black supremacy group. Just as the KKK became an outcast impotent group of irrelevants, so will the Black Panthers. The problem is that, just as the KKK stirred up racial tensions during their demise, so will the Black Panthers.
Somewhere along the way we as a nation have to come to realize that there is no "black America" or "white America"... there is just America. The color of skin is irrelevant to anything other than a superficial description. There really is no difference between black and white, save the differences that people have been taught by the proponents of racism mentioned by name above.
Somewhere along the way we need to stop worrying about superficial things and concentrate on the similarities between us and not the differences. I want to read about the sheer genius of George Washington Carver right there beside the brilliance of Nikola Tesla and the tenacity of Benjamin Franklin. I want to learn about Rosa Parks as I also learn about Susan B. Anthony. I want to know more about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert E. Lee.
I want the truth... not black truth, not white truth... the truth.
When we all get to that point... we'll finally be whole.
Sorry for the rant.
TheRedneck
Originally posted by TheRedneck
reply to post by frazzle
That is a realization I came to quite some time ago. But it goes against human nature. Human nature is to control and force others to do one's will... send busses to make kids go to the right school, pass laws requiring special treatment based on skin color to "make up" for past errors, make certain words socially toxic so people never get together to talk.... and even worse, make sure to control every national conversation to make sure no one gets "offended" and nothing gets solved.
In other words, throw them all together by law, make laws to put nerves on end, and make it impossible to communicate with each other... that's like mixing saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur.... you don't get Jello.
We can stop it... but apparently we don't want to.
Originally posted by TheRedneck
reply to post by frazzle
I really hate to burst your bubble, but I don't think all the showcasing is designed to expose racism as much as it is designed to increase racism. The administration has failed, and they need someone for the people to blame... why not each other?
The recent circus (I'm not even going to say the names I am so sick of hearing about it) has been warped by the MSM to be about race and only race. There are people I can talk openly with about politics and religion that I simply can't talk to about that mess. At least one thread on this very site is about the loss of a friendship over the results of a Florida trial.
That's beyond sad.
There are a few conversations on ATS which are doing some good and allowing people to talk out their differences and see their similarities, but ATS is not reality. ATS is the best of the best, and far removed from the typical squabbling which happens in America every day.
But... the longest quest begins with a single step... may ATS be the ground for that first step.
TheRedneck
opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...
In March 1865 Tennessee Unionists chose Brownlow to succeed Andrew Johnson as governor. Though he never explicitly renounced his anti-abolitionist beliefs, he further antagonized Tennessee Confederates by working with Congressional Republicans to pass the 14th Amendment, which allowed Tennessee to rejoin the Union and avoid Radical Reconstruction.