Institute for Truth, Letters

The Honorable Mark P. Warner
Governor of Virginia
State Capitol, 3rd Floor
Richmond, VA 23219

Dear Governor Warner:

Simone Weil wrote in her very powerful and memorable book, The Need for Roots,

"No other method exists for acquiring knowledge about the human heart than the study of history coupled with experience of life, in such a way that the two throw light upon each other. It is our duty to apply this food to the mind of youth, the mind of Man. But it must be a truth-given food. Facts must not only be covered, so far as one is able to verify them, but must be shown in their true perspective relatively to good and evil."

For long years now, but especially since the 1960’s, America’s historic ground and the culture which sprang therefrom, have been under siege. In every generation there arises the disaffected, those put off by the existing culture with its values, beliefs, order, and history. With pride and arrogance they deem themselves the "great lights" who can provide a better way to order the culture. The establishment of the new order requires of necessity that the old order, the prevailing order, be destroyed. This can be done by means of violent overthrow or it can be done without such resort. One such method was devised by Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist. If the West is to captured for a new order, he opined, then it will first be necessary to change the existing culture. Such a change said Gramsci would require a "long march through the institutions" to bring about conversion and transformation. This march is underway. Many of our key institutions of influence to have come under this sway of the disaffected, by those of the liberal and radical left. Holding command of these key institutions such as education, media, and entertainment, they have been turned into conduits for the transmission of revolutionary ideas, beliefs, and values markedly different from those of our founding, and inimical to our well-being presently and long termly. One has only to look back over the past forty years to see evidence after evidence of profound and negative changes which have left virtually nothing socially and culturally untouched or unchanged. But this sea of changes is not without grave peril. Rowland Berthoff writes:

"The history of American society strongly suggests that if men subvert or abandon the values embodied in a well-ordained institutional structure, and so dismantle the social foundations for cultural achievement and spiritual serenity, they proceed at their own peril."

To abandon our founding beliefs and values so long woven throughout the fabric of this nation and its institutions, to dismantle our social and cultural foundation, is to destroy our past and with the destruction of the past, our future. Ms. Weil reminds us that the destruction of the past is one of the greatest of all crimes. She tells us why.

"The future brings us nothing, gives us nothing. We possess no other life, no other living sap than the treasures stored up from the past."

America’s foundation, its way of life, those beliefs and values such as liberty, law, justice, sacredness of life, and faith in God rests upon some three thousand years of history. The roots of this nation are traceable from Mt. Sinai to Jerusalem, to Greece, to Rome, and on to Britain. And from these, by way of our ancestors, the roots took lodging upon these shores. Who now but fools, intellectual adolescents, would set about to dismantle, to destroy so rich a patrimony which has made us the greatest nation on earth and part of the greatest civilization yet known to man--Western civilization? And furthermore, no man or group of men can in one brief lifetime acquire that rich and abundant wisdom, knowledge and experience we have beneficially inherited from those gone before. I say that whatever the disaffected may contrive as a substitute will never reproduce the high civilization and order that constitutes America.

We thinking Americans must not allow our rich past and heritage to be effaced. Our entire culture and way of life are inextricably bound up with our past. A culture is not a "scissor and paste" project. As Thomas Sowell, the brilliant black scholar, has wisely written:

"Cultures exist to serve the vital practical requirements of human life--to structure a society so as to perpetuate the species, to pass on the hard-earned knowledge and experience of generations past and centuries past to the young and inexperienced, in order to spare the next generation the costly and dangerous process of learning everything all over again from scratch through trial and error-- including fatal errors."

So to lose the past is to lose those customs, traditions, beliefs, principles, values, and the great lessons and learnings which only experience can provide, the standards which have given us our commonality, our consensus, our guidance, our stability, and our order thereby providing national vitality, endurance, health, strength, success, prosperity, and continuity. Should these be measurably weakened or supplanted, our culture will become fragmented, confused, and given to growing disorder which already is in evidence. Furthermore, we will not be adequately equipped to press with certitude and success into the future. Arthur M. Schlesenger, Jr. once said:

"For history is to the nation rather as memory is to the individual. As an individual deprived of memory becomes disoriented and lost, not knowing who he has been or where he is going, so a nation denied a conception of its past will be disabled in dealing with its present and its future."

Someone else remarked that those who would forsake the past to press into the future will awake to find themselves with a future past. We must then stop the rootless, abstract, historically disconnected idealogues who have given themselves to strike this nation’s past, to resettle America on some yet unknown and uncertain foundation and course which, should it succeed, will put the nation in the irreversible way of ruin and death.

Now let me say that not only is our national history being deconstructed, filtered, altered, degraded, and vilified at the hands of the disaffected revisionists, but that of the states as well. This is particularly true of the South. The issue of slavery provides a classic and timely illustration of that declared in the foregoing. For some time now, a body of blacks, though not representing the black community at large I am inclined to believe, have given themselves to emotional and demanding outcries that the Confederate flag be removed from display over state houses of government, from National Guard symbols, that Confederate History Month not be recognized by official state proclamation, and such like. And, of course, there is the recent incident in the General Assembly of this state where black members refused to join in the salute and pledge to the flag of Virginia after learning that a white female member of the Daughters of the Confederacy was the author of the pledge. Supposedly the black representatives found this revelation highly disturbing as it conjured up memories made delicate and painful by the enslavement of their ancestors by whites. If the remembrances of slavery, now so long removed, are indeed so yet evoking of the unpleasant and producing of such emotional turmoil and discomfort, then one must ask why there is such a rush by blacks to establish museums throughout America, Virginia, as well, that the history of blacks in America, to include their enslavement, be recounted. Will not the presentations dealing with slavery keep the dolorous recollections fresh in the minds of the present generation and those of the future as well? And what of Black History Month? I must say candidly that I believe this expressed black sensitivity concerning the Confederacy has much to do with the advancement of their political and personal agendas. But I am pressed to ask just how far are we to permit these historically denuding and dismantling practices to be carried? What if blacks demand the removal of offending photographs and historical accounts of the Confederacy from state used textbooks as being too traumatic for black students? What of a demand to close all state museums and historical sites having to do with the Confederacy, or to have removed from Monument Avenue and other locations all relative statues and monuments? Suppose the demand arises that school children not be required to learn or recite words from the Declaration of Independence, because it long denied to blacks the equality which it proclaimed to be the God given standing of all men. Incidently a black Maryland legislator has already made this demand. What if a demand be made to sequester the Declaration for reason that a slave holder was the drafter, or the U.S.Constitution because some of its constitutors and signers were slave holders? I am bound to say that expressed sensitivities, whether they be real or feigned, can never be, must not be, permitted to serve as the grounds for historical tampering. We all possess sensitivities, but if those in governing positions use such as the basis for setting aside portions of history found objectionable by individuals and groups, over time it will lead to historical fragmentation, and with fragmentation, the loss of true understanding of who we are. This in turn destroys cultural continuity which prevents generational connection and cultural and national perpetuation. A nation which loses its history loses itself.

I turn now to another side of the issue of slavery, which I have learned, is little known. When the issue of slavery is raised, it often is accompanied by castigation of the South and the white man as slave holder, abuser, and trader. To study the true history of slavery is to come away with a much different understanding of the institution and those associated with it. Below are some facts I think you will find both interesting and informative.

Slavery is one of the oldest and most widespread institutions on earth. It can yet be found thriving in various parts of the world. Peoples of all races and nationalities have been the subjects of slavery. German tribesmen captured by the Mongols were sold in Asian slave markets. The Manchus took slaves from China, Korea, and Mongolia. Greek slaves served in Egypt. Barbarosia pressed thousands of Chrisians into slavery. Africans enslaved Africans. African chieftains made alliances with slave traders to supply their fellow countryman for assorted commodities. The Ottoman Turks demanded that the defeated Hungarians send ten percent of their population each decade to serve as slaves. Germans, Gauls, Celts, and Jews were enslaved by the Romans. The Nazi’s resorted to slave labor. While the white man was one of the principal players in the slave trade, it was the white man who brought the practice to legal end. (Indebted to Dr. Thomas Sowell, the author of Race and Culture.)

Anthony Johnson, an enterprising African who arrived in America in 1622, had by 1651 become an importer of black and white indentured slaves. (Encyclopedia Americana)

Not all blacks in America were enslaved. In 1790 non-slave Negroes numbered 59,557. By 1860 the number had risen to 488,070. (The Negro in the Making of America by Benjamin Quarles.)

There were free blacks who owned black slaves. William Goings of Nacogdoches, a weathly land speculator in Texas, employed nine slaves and several whites in his blacksmith shop. Cyprian Ricaud, a free black, owned an estate with ninety-one slaves in Iberville Parish, Louisiana. In l830, seventeen Negroes in Parish plantation owned more than thirty-two slaves apiece. Martin Donatto owned seventy-five. (The Negro in the Making of America by Benjamin Quarles.)

Northern states held the monopoly on the lucrative slave trade. Merchant shippers from New York, New England, and Rhode Island participated in the rapidly expanding transatlantic slave trade. They imported slaves as regular merchandise for plantations of the South. (Encyclopedia Americana)

Merchant firms such as Woolfolk, Saunders and Overly of Maryland, and Franklin and Armfield of Virginia facilitated the flow of human traffic from the suppliers of the North and border states to the markets in the South. (Encyclopedia Americana)

Because of chronic labor shortages, black slaves were used as well in the North. They performed not only unskilled labor, but were taught a variety of trades. (The Negro in the Making of America by Benjamin Quarles.)

The Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1850. In 1859 the Act was upheld as constitutional by the United States Supreme Court. This was done under the Stars and Stripes.

Missouri, as a slave state, became a member of the Union in 1820. The black slave owners in Hannibal supported the North as the Emancipation Proclamation freed only those slaves in the states of rebellion. Throughout the 1840’s and 1850’s slave dealers in Hannibal sold slaves to the cotton and sugar plantation owners in the South. This was done under the Stars and Stripes.

President Franklin Pierce, the 14th head of our nation, sent a detachment of Marines to Boston to arrest Anthony Bevins who fled from his Virginia owner in 1854. Bevins was apprehended, placed on a dispatched vessel, and returned to Virginia. This was done under the Stars and Stripes.

White slavery too existed in the colonies of the new world. There existed not only indentured servitude, but involuntary servitude. In the late 16th century, the English Parliament gave magistrates the authority to enslave the British poor for service "beyond the seas." The Transportation Act of 1718 formalized this work of enslavement for the stated purpose of deterring would-be criminals, and to supply needed labor to the colonies. (Convicts and the Colonies by A.G.L. Shaw.)

More than 600 Scottish troops captured at the Battle of Worcestor were shipped as slaves to Virginia in 1651. (They Were White and They Were Slaves by Michael A. Hoffman II.)

The disciplinary and revenue laws of early Virginia made no distinction between Negros and whites in bondage. (Statues at Large of Virginia, Vol. 1 pp. 174, 198, 200, 243, 306.)

Hundreds of thousands of whites in colonial America were owned outright by their masters. They were auctioned in the same manner as blacks. (White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados by Hilary McDonald Beckles.)

White slaves were transported in the holds of ships as the blacks. Up to half typically died in transit. White slaves experienced discomforts and sufferings in the crossings paralleling the cruel hardships experienced by Negroes during the notorious "Middle Passage". (Labor in America, A History by Foster Rhea Dulles).

White slavery was the historic base upon which Negro slavery was constituted. Hilary Beckles wrote:

"...the important structures, labor ideologies and social relations necessary for slavery already had been established within indentured servitude "white servitude" and in many ways came remarkably close to the ideal type of chattel slavery which later became associated with the African experience."

Separation of white slave families occurred as with black families.

Between February 12, 1732 and December 20, 1735, the South Carolina Gazette printed 110 wanted notices for fugitive black slaves and 41 for white fugitive slaves. (They Were White and They Were Slaves by Michael A. Hoffman II.)

Some very important observations are to be gathered from the foregoing data selected from the wealth of information available. First of all, slavery has left its scars on most of the world’s ethnic groups in the course of history. Blacks thus have no corner on the institution of slavery. Resultingly, they have neither grounds nor right to demand nor expect special treatment, political favor or reparations. For some blacks, slavery is the principal spearhead for gaining personal, political, and financial harvests. Should they lose enslavement by whites as an issue, much of their foundation for political leverage and demands for special considerations and advantages would be seriously eroded or destroyed. Consequently slavery, with all its attendant evils, must be kept a burning issue before whites that their sense of guilt, shame, and desire to make amends be kept as fuel for the fire unless it suffer extinquishment. The noted and respected Booker T. Washington, himself born into a slave family, notes pointedly and condemningly of aggrandizing blacks who are ever seeking to play the slavery issue for all it is worth.

"There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs--partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs."

Secondly, slavery was not confined to the South but operated as well in the North. Third, some slaves were transported on merchant vessels flying the U.S. flag. Does this not provide grounds for blacks to cease giving pledge to the national colors? Should like treatment be afforded the U.S. flag and that of Virginia? Should the U.S. flag be hauled down and made anew for reason of its link to slavery on both land and sea? Fourth, blacks are but one ethnic group which has suffered under the burden and injustice of slavery. In the course of history, most ethnic groups have experienced slavery which some are yet experiencing. Fifth, blacks have set about to gather, to preserve, and to make public their roles and contribution in the building of America. Their museums will as well portray their services and sufferings as slaves. This is as it should be. There is no question the orientation of their museums will prove emotionally disturbing both to blacks and whites. Yet this is an intimate part of our history as a people. As such we need to face this dark hour of our past, learn the lessons, forgive one another, advance morally, and go on together for the common good, made not weaker and divided by past failures but stronger and more united. Likewise the blacks must grant the South to preserve the history of the Confederacy, to include its symbols and annual month of recognition.

In conclusion, let me say with a tone of urgency that all benighted assaults on the history of this nation, to include the South for reason of its link to slavery,must be brought to an end forthwith. And why do I say forthwith? I have already alluded to the fact that destruction of a nation’s history is the avenue to the destruction of the nation. Already in America one can graduate from 78 percent of our universities and colleges without being required to take a single course in U.S. history. The rave today is multiculturalism. But what will be the long term outcome for America and our way of life when our people know about other civilizations but remain ignorant of their own? Let me share a deeply troubling illustration. Alvin Schmidt reports that in 1995 a billionare alumnus of Yale University donated $20 million with the stipulation that it be used to develop courses in Western history and culture. The gift was returned. Then there are the assaults on the history and heritage of the South. The Confederacy and slavery are the focal points. But the time has come for all thinking and loyal Americans to rise to the defense and preservation of all that constitutes our history as a people, to include that of the Confederacy and slavery. This is not the history just of the South, but equally of the North and thus of these United States. It is not just the history of whites but the history of all Americans. These mindless forays into our past to strike what offends or agitates cannot be allowed to continue. The crucial nature of history must be seen as putting it above and beyond mere sensitivities. Nations and cultures cannot remain viable, strong, and enduring by the assuaging of sensitivities which would be an unending, mounting, and deleterious undertaking, but by the diligent preservation and faithful conveyance of our history to future generations. Only by such preservation can we Americans know our history with fullness and truth, replete with all its moments of light joined by those of blemish. So armed we shall grow and mature together personally, racially, and culturally, be better furnished in mind and heart to live peacefully and productively in the present, and to forge into the future with boldness, confidence, and sound knowledge as one people, bound by one spirit, possessed with a common vision, and stalwalt in purpose. May God grant it to be so.