Claudine Gay Want’s to Purge White Slave Liberators

(December 31, 2023) In 2020 current Harvard President Claudine Gay commissioned a Task Force on Visual Culture and Signage to recommend changes to “spaces whose visual culture is dominated by homogeneous portraiture of white men.” Annenberg Hall has been one of her chief targets because twenty of the twenty-three portraits now gracing its walls are of white men. Moreover, the Hall was originally funded between 1865 -1868 to honor the 136 Harvard students and graduates who died fighting for the North during the Civil War. Among the portraits still there is one of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw who led the 54^th Massachusetts Black Infantry regiment depicted in the film Glory, even though most of its volunteers were not from Massachusetts. No portraits of Harvard graduates or students who fought for the South have ever been allowed in the Hall.

Instead of removing portraits of white men who fought to end slavery, Claudine Gay might reward them by compensating their descendants. Given the accumulated interest that should be applied to the overdue bill, the award should amount to a generous share of Harvard’s endowment. 

Alternately, she could resign her office and drive off into the obscurity that an academic imposter and racist deserves. 

My latest two books are novels. In the first, Firepower: The Greatest Spy Story Never Told, a family secret leads the North to tardily deploy the repeating rifle, an obviously superior weapon and monopoly for the Union side.

The second one is Pat and Tom: A novel of Confederate generals Pat Cleburne and Tom Hindman. Although from an obscure hometown, the two quickly demonstrate leadership capabilities before pushing to arm black volunteers for the Confederate armies. One is killed in battle and the other murdered.

Nikki’s Folly

(December 29, 2023) At a campaign stop in New Hampshire yesterday Nikki Hayley failed to identify slavery as the cause of the Civil War. The cultural elite treated the omission as if it were the greatest offence by a Republican since January 6, 2021. To have the final word, media commentator Brianna Joy Gray predictably read excerpts from the 1861 Mississippi Declaration of Causes for Secession to prove that the Civil War was “all about” slavery. She might also have read from the Confederate constitution that legalized slavery, but that document also cites other causes. It prohibited deterrence tariffs, outlawed government subsidies for private industry, and forbade public works spending. 

Since people don’t always do what they say, she might also have cited what the Yankee politicians did. Regarding tariffs, for example, they raised them. On the eve of the Civil War tariff rates averaged 19% but for the next fifty years they averaged 45%. That was particularly hard on the South’s economy because her exports paid for the imports. When Uncle Sam was taking 45-cents of every dollar of imports he was sharply cutting the value of American exports that our trading partners could buy. Given zero tariffs, for example, when our trading partners sell us $300 million in imports, they can buy $300 million of our exports, most notably cotton. If the tariff is 45% however, they can only pay us $165 million. That translates to lower prices for cotton and lower incomes for Southerners—black and white.

Nonetheless, Nikki’s greater folly has been appealing to the media elite’s bigotry. In a country already saturated with misandry she threw more wood on the fire: “If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.” Well, Ms. Hayley, urinating on my boots and calling it rain is not going to win you the election. Although pandering to the mainstream media likely explains your sharp rise in the polls, it’s a Faustian Bargain. You are only a temporary obstacle that they are casting in front of Trump in hopes of tripping him into a campaign ending mistake of some kind. They will discard you like the urine-soaked boots of a homeless man in the general election.    

My latest two books are novels. In the first, Firepower: The Greatest Spy Story Never Told, a family secret leads the North to tardily deploy the repeating rifle, an obviously superior weapon and monopoly for the Union side. 

The second one is Pat and Tom: A novel of Confederate generals Pat Cleburne and Tom Hindman. Although from an obscure hometown, the two quickly demonstrate leadership capabilities before pushing to arm black volunteers for the Confederate armies. One is killed in battle and the other murdered.

Andrew Klavan on Israel

(December 16, 2023) Not until last week did Andrew Klavan voice even a hint that he  is aware that the mob destruction of Confederate iconography since 2015 might have been a leading indicator of the antisemitism following the October Hamas attacks. I seldom miss an Andrew Kalavan Daily Wire YouTube show. His insights are inspirational.

But he should not be surprised that the cultural elite are antisemitic. They disdain the Western Culture upon which Southern society is based. It is doubtful that any Southerner alive today learned that slavery was morally correct. Many of us, however, were taught that selected Confederate leaders merit respect as do the common soldiers who were chiefly defending their homeland.

Robert E. Lee took full responsibility for his army’s failure at Gettysburg. When he rode out to meet the survivors of Pickett’s Charge he did so in the presence of soldiers of every rank and took the blame. Contrast that with the evasion of responsibility for the Afghanistan debacle by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Staff Chief Mark Milley, and President Joe Biden. Lee’s conduct merits respectful remembrance whereas Austin’s, Milley’s, and Biden’s warrant only shameful recollection.

Southerners have a long history of  disproportionate military contribution to the USA. Even after she was conquered by the North, the South gave her sons to postbellum wars more readily than did young men from other parts of the country.  That conduct justifies respect for Confederate iconography. Even Ben Shapiro—a Daily Wire co-founder— once remarked that some of the tanks that freed WWII concentration camps flew the Confederate flag.

Since then Klavan and Shapiro have (as far as I know) failed to support Southern traditions even though other Daily Wire hosts have condemned mob destruction of Confederate statuary, if merely on the grounds of respecting tradition. Michael Knowles and Matt Walsh are examples.

While their Jewish Heritage amplifies their rage over the present antisemitism, Klavan and Shapiro might have better combatted it if they had added their voices to the few media leaders who condemned the cultural genocide that the elite have forced upon the South.

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Surprise Christmas Gift for Union Armies

(December 14, 2023) An order for 10,000 Spencer Repeating Rifles on 26 December 1861 gave the manufacturer the necessary backlog needed to finance a high volume production factory. Prior to that the units had to be hand made thereby resulting in high per unit costs.

There is good reason to question why it took so long to get the order. The Spencer could shoot seven times faster than the conventional muzzleloader of the era. Demonstrations that inventor Christopher Spencer gave to the Navy resulted in an order for 750 rifles only a month and a half after the war started. Similarly a few months later Spencer demonstrated the weapon for then General-in-Chief George McClellan who quickly appointed three officers in the Army of the Potomac to evaluate the weapon. In November 1861 they all gave it a thumbs-up.

But the Army’s ordnance chief, General James Ripley, was hostile to repeaters. He complained that they would cause soldiers to waste ammunition—a ridiculous objection considering the faster firing rate, proven time and again after they got deployed.

The real reason for Ripley’s foot dragging is the focus of my Firepower spy novel. The plot connects the dots of real events and genuine historical figures to reveal a Ripley family secret that the Confederate Secret Service used to manipulate the Union Ordnance Chief.

What was that secret? Why was it so powerful? Why has it never been discovered until now? Why did Ripley get forced to order 10,000 rifles the day after the Civil War’s first Christmas?  Read Firepower: An American Civl War Spy Novel for the answers.