Happy 4th! Just how long did the sweet land of liberty last? Not nearly as long as you think.

(If you are from the north, just know that the victors write the history books, and they’re usually a bunch of liars. If you are from the north, you need to re-learn, for the first time, 19th Century American history. -nvp)

Following is cross-posted from our friend :


Francis Scott Key wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner”, which became the national anthem of the United States of America.

Patriotic Fun Fact

Francis Key Howard was an American newspaper editor and journalist. The grandson of Francis Scott Key and Revolutionary War colonel John Eager Howard, Howard was the editor of the Daily Exchange, a Baltimore newspaper sympathetic to the Confederacy. Just after midnight on September 13, 1861, he was arrested without a warrant at his home by U.S. Major General Nathaniel Prentice Banks on the direct orders of General George B. McClellan enforcing the policy of President Abraham Lincoln. (In his book he writes that he was told by the arresting officer that the order had come from Secretary of State William Seward.)

The basis for his arrest was the writing of an editorial printed in his newspaper that was critical of Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, of the declaration by the Lincoln administration of martial law in Baltimore, and of the imprisonment without charge of Baltimore mayor George William Brown, sitting U.S. Congressman Henry May, all the police commissioners of Baltimore, and the entire city council.

Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus in Maryland had already been declared unconstitutional by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney (Howard’s great-uncle by marriage) in Ex parte Merryman, but Lincoln had ignored the federal court ruling. Howard was initially confined to Fort McHenry, the same fort his grandfather Francis Scott Key saw withstand a British bombardment during the War of 1812, which inspired him to write “The Star-Spangled Banner”, which would become the national anthem of the United States of America. He was then transferred first to Fort Lafayette in Lower New York Bay off the coast of Brooklyn, then Fort Warren in Boston.

He wrote a book on his experiences as a political prisoner completed in December 1862 and published in 1863 titled Fourteen Months in American Bastiles, two of the publishers selling the book were then arrested. Howard commented on his imprisonment,

When I looked out in the morning, I could not help being struck by an odd and not pleasant coincidence. On that day forty-seven years before my grandfather, Mr. Francis Scott Key, then prisoner on a British ship, had witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry. When on the following morning the hostile fleet drew off, defeated, he wrote the song so long popular throughout the country, “The Star-Spangled Banner”. As I stood upon the very scene of that conflict, I could not but contrast my position with his, forty-seven years before. The flag which he had then so proudly hailed, I saw waving at the same place over the victims of as vulgar and brutal a despotism as modern times have witnessed.

Happy Independence Day, everybody!

16 thoughts on “Happy 4th! Just how long did the sweet land of liberty last? Not nearly as long as you think.”

      1. Nowhere in my post did I say Lincoln was a great man, or a great president. We are a nation beset with awful men, and awful presidents. All things considered, Lincoln was one of the best.

        If you’re upset that Lincoln suspended habeus corpus in 2 states, OK, that’s cool, fine. Right now, as we speak, there is no habeus corpus with us. You just think there is. At any time the government will throw you in jail, put on a show trial, and destroy you. Right now they’re engineering a complete economic disaster to make digital currency the only way to “solve” it. You will own nothing and you will be happy.

        Now you can har har and joke. But I’m a realist. Which means I’m not one of those “elected Catholic monarchy” supporting types. Why? We have an elected Catholic papacy and boy, that turned out well, huh? People en masse make stupid decisions. Always have, always will.

        The world is imperfect, because we are imperfect. Among presidents, Lincoln was far better than anything we had in the 20th century. By far. I’m a realist. You’re, well, you’re the actual butt of your own joke. A mid-range, room temp IQ thinking at surface-level.

          1. That’s all of responses. Mark got rid of one deliberately provocative, one-note antagonist poster, and another one just materialized in its place.

            This site must’ve caught someone’s eye.

          2. I try to approve most comments. Sometimes I’m slow. Sometimes I delete.

      2. Pretty amazed the good Catholic who runs this site would not only allow such a naked insult, but would dismiss my response.

        To MICoyote, I never said Lincoln was a great president. But he’s greater than any president in the 20th and 21st centuries. Suspending Habeus Corpus might for 2 states might seem horrifying to you until you realize that if you lived under a Catholic Monarchy, even an elected one, your rights would be drastically different and your experience might be a lot worse.

        Remember, gang: Catholics are flawed people too.

        Off you go.

        1. That’s a good point to remember: the people of God killed the Messiah they were waiting for. Just because they followed the true faith didn’t mean they were holy or some of the Gentiles weren’t righteous.

  1. Not a popular sentiment here, but the more I read about the War Between the States, the more I realize that particular war started the ballooning of American government and in some ways was the death knell for the original plan of the United States. My Confederate ancestors (one of whom died at Malvern Hill) may have seen this at some level, or more likely they were just fighting to defend their North Carolina farms.

    Lincoln was a politician above all else. I don’t dislike him, but it’s important to see both sides of his character. I wish he had survived because Reconstruction would have been so much better with his leadership, that is the opinion of many historians anyway.

    Of course so many other factors are working now to destroy what is left of the FUSA, not the least of which is the general decline in morality. The type of democratic republic established by the founders relied on the morality of the MALE PROPERTY OWNERS who voted on behalf of their families. Nothing like whatever it is we have today with illiterate entitled irresponsible emotional train wrecks casting votes based on selfish motives or adrenaline or because a candidate panders to their group. We are doomed, but as I recently heard a great priest remind us, our help is in the Name of the Lord Who made heaven and earth, not in any individual leader or party. I just want to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God at this point, no worthier goal.

  2. I’ve met many trads who hate Lincoln and romantize the Confederacy. I always laugh. Do you know what it would take to get this county to go back to God? A president like Lincoln who would ban abortion and enact anti-sodomy laws nationwide. A president who would and pray to Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ publicly and tell the Jews, Muslims and others to shut up when they complain about the separation of Church and State. A president who would once the inevitable civil war breaks out, trample all over the civil rights of the enemies of this country and God and use the military to crush them and burn their cities to the ground. The only way this county stays together in the future is if we get another Lincoln. The alternative is the US fracturing into numerous smaller countries following an even bloodier civil war.

    Sometimes I think that trads are so used to losing that they are drawn to other losers throughout history, like the Confederacy. Have you ever stopped to think that maybe good prevailed in the end in the American Civil War? War is hell, laws are broken and rights trampled on. What else is new?

    And that maybe our battle is not yet over and in the end we will be victorious? Why are trads hitching their wagon to the losers of history when we know we win in the end?

    1. This is an interesting take. I look at it from a different perspective. So called “Traditional Catholics”, are on the whole, people who look deeper into issues than most “normies” and are often people with a sympathy for traditional agrarian societies (like the Vendee or the Confederate States) seeing in them kindred spirits who suffered the wrath of progressive, metropolitan, statist interests.
      (I believe Marx was a big fan of both the French Revolution AND the means by which Lincoln liberated the slaves, the man couldn’t get enough death, blood and suffering evidently. (He must have really loved W.T. Sherman.))

      1. But the Vendeans didn’t own slaves… why does everyone keep on overlooking this?

        I think they only thing the Vendeans and the Confederates had in common was their agrarian society.

        The Vendeans were faithful Catholics who fought a counterrevolution against a Freemasonic government who overthrew the rightful Catholic Monarch of France. Not only did they fight for a moral cause and unfortunately lose, but many parts of this war could be now classified as genocide.

        The Confederates were mainly Protestants supporting a Freemasonic state that supported slavery succeeding from another Protestant Freemasonic state that was trying to end slavery. Both of which declared independence from a monarch who broke away from the Catholic Church, but that’s a whole other topic. The Confederates not only lost, but lost fighting for an immoral cause. I’m not denying that there were not atrocities committed by Union troops, but there was not genocide committed against the Confederates. And not only did the Union not commit genocide, they even let the the former Confederate States put up statues of their war heroes. When have we seen this in history before?

        It is unfair to say that the Vendeans were comparable to the Confederates.

        And as for Sherman’s March, avoid as many civilian casualties as you can, but I’m sorry, cities, farms and infrastructure that support the war effort (and can be rebuilt) are definitely fair game in war.

        1. I didn’t write that the Vendee were comparable morally to the Confederates, (though their people may have been and there were Catholics in the South at that time) that their treatment by similar forces arrayed against them can bring about similar sympathies. It is kind of like an underdog situation.
          (I dare not say David versus Goliath.)
          You may want to brush up on Catholic Just War Theory. I doubt it allows for genocide and the destruction of the means for civilians to feed themselves.
          Unfortunately slavery is still with us and is probably a permanent element of the human condition. If leftist states seceded for any reason I’d pop the champagne corks and set aside a month to celebrate no longer having to deal with their debauchery and stupidity.

    2. The point is, that the U.S. Constitution and it’s founding principles, despite a handful of good ideas, ultimately stands in the way of what is Truthful and right, and therefore at it’s core is seductively problematic. Hence why it is fated for destruction and replacement.

      And what ‘good’ prevailed due to the “civil war” which is an odd thing to call it as the South was not seeking control of the federal government, but seccession, and slavery was just a minor technicality issue that neither side cared about one way or the other?

      Frankly, I suspect America’s rebellion against the Crown had no good basis, and that despite the “freedom of speech (and error)” harping, those natives against it were not offered the same respect and slandered, threatened and silenced by the Revolutionaries, but what else is new?

      1. Johnno, why did the Confederate States and their leaders secede? Was it so that they could just focus on their simple farming lifestyles and be left alone? No, it was to fight to be able to keep and spread slavery into new territories and make tons of money even if 99% of the population didn’t own slaves. This revisionist view of the Civil War that neither side really cared about slavery is just ridiculous. It’s more of a sore loser version of history: “Yeah, the North won, but we didn’t even care about slavery anyway, so hah! Joke’s on you!” Was slavery the one and only issue in the Civil War? No. Were there slave owners in the North who wanted to keep slavery? Sure. But you can’t argue that slavery was a non issue especially towards the end of the war.

        And the good prevailing at the end of the Civil War was the millions of souls and their descendants who were freed from the shackles of chattel slavery. How is this not a good thing? How could you look at this part of history and say that God wanted these people to remain enslaved and that what, it was His permissive will that allowed the end to slavery and that He really wanted the Confederates to win? It’s just a ridiculous thought.

        And I completely agree with you on the Constitution being fated for destruction and replacement. But again let me ask you, if states on the West Coast tried to secede from the US following a nationwide ban on all
        abortions, how is this any different from what the Confederate States did? And would a new Lincoln like president be justified to fight a civil war against these states to keep them in the union and stop them from refusing to follow this new national law?

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