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Cruz you represent Texas not Tenn.

Forrest’s testimony before Congress.

In 1871, Gen. Forrest was called before a congressional Committee. Forrest testified before Congress personally over four hours .

Here’s part of the transcript of Forrest’s testimony to that 1871 hearing:

“The reports of Committees, House of Representatives, second session, forty-second congress,” P. 7-449.

“The primary accusation before this board is that Gen. Forrest was a founder of The Klan, and its first Grand Wizard, So it shall address those accusations first.”

Forrest took the witness stand June 27th,1871. Building a railroad in Tennessee at the time, Gen Forrest stated he ‘had done more , probably than any other man, to suppress these violence and difficulties and keep them down, had been vilified and abused in the (news) papers, and accused of things I never did while in the army and since. He had nothing to hide, wanted to see this matter settled, our country quiet once more, and our people united and working together harmoniously.’

Asked if he knew of any men or combination of men violating the law or preventing the execution of the law: Gen Forest answered emphatically, ‘No.’ (A Committee member brought up a ‘document’ suggesting otherwise, the 1868 newspaper article from the “Cincinnati Commercial”. That was their “evidence”, a news article.)

Forrest stated ‘...any information he had on the Klan was information given to him by others.’

Sen. Scott asked, ‘Did you take any steps in organizing an association or society under that prescript (Klan constitution)?’

Forrest: ‘I DID NOT’ Forrest further stated that ‘..he thought the Organization (Klan) started in middle Tennessee, although he did not know where. It is said I started it.’

Asked by Sen. Scott, ‘Did you start it, Is that true?’

Forrest: ‘No Sir, it is not.’

Asked if he had heard of the Knights of the white Camellia, a Klan-like organization in Louisiana,

Forrest: ‘Yes, they were reported to be there.’

Senator: ‘Were you a member of the order of the white Camellia?’

Forrest: ‘No Sir, I never was a member of the Knights of the white Camellia.’

Asked about the Klan :

Forrest: ‘It was a matter I knew very little about. All my efforts were addressed to stop it, disband it, and prevent it....I was trying to keep it down as much as possible.’

Forrest: ‘I talked with different people that I believed were connected to it, and urged the disbandment of it, that it should be broken up.’”

The following article appeared in the New York times June 27th, “Washington, 1871. Gen Forrest was before the Klu Klux Committee today, and his examination lasted four hours. After the examination, he remarked than the committee treated him with much courtesy and respect.”

Then we have Fort Pillow.

Fort Pillow

More than fifty Union soldiers that were present at this battle who gave sworn testimonies contradicting these findings first presented in the press.

LT Van Horn’s report makes no mention of any “massacre” or misconduct on the part of Forrest or his men and was for a time a prisoner himself, reporting “I escaped by putting on citizen’s clothes, after I had been some time their prisoner. I received a slight wound of the left ear”

LT Van Horn reported that “Lieutenant John D. Hill, Sixth U. S. Heavy Artillery, was ordered outside the fort to burn some barracks, which he, with the assistance of a citizen who accompanied him, succeeded in effecting.” This accounts for the barracks allegedly burned by Confederates in which wounded Union soldiers were supposed to have perished.

Union officers were in charge of burials and made no such report of living burials.

The report of Lieutenant Daniel Van Horn, Sixth U. S. Colored Heavy Artillery confirmed this in which he reported: “There never was a surrender of the fort, both officers and men declaring they never would surrender or ask for quarter.”

“Some of our men were killed by both whites and Negroes who had once surrendered”

Numbers 16. Report of Lieutenant Daniel Van Horn, Sixth U. S. Colored Heavy Artillery, of the capture of Fort Pillow - Federal Official Records, Series I, Vol. 32, Part 1, pp. 569-570

HDQRS. SIXTH U. S. HEAVY ARTILLERY (COLORADO,

Fort Pickering, Memphis, Tenn., April 14, 1864.

COLONEL: I have the honor to submit the following report of the battle and capture of Fort Pillow, Tenn.: At sunrise on the morning of the 12th of April, 1864, our pickets were attacked and driven in, they making very slight resistance. They were from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry

Major Booth, commanding the post, had made all his arrangements for battle that the limited force under his command would allow, and which was only 450 effective men, consisting of the First Battalion of the Sixth U. S. Heavy Artillery, five companies of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, and one section of the Second U. S. Light Artillery (Colorado, Lieutenant Hunter.

Arrangements were scarcely completed and the men placed in the rifle-pits before the enemy came upon us and in ten times our number, as acknowledged by General Chalmers. They were repulsed with heavy loss; charged again and were again repulsed. At the third chargee Major Booth was killed, while passing among his men and cheering them to fight. The order was then given to retire inside the fort, and General Forrest sent in a flag of truce demanding an unconditional surrender of the fort, which was returned with a decided refusal.

During the time consumed by this consultation advantage was taken by the enemy to place in position his force, they crawling up to the fort. After the flag had retired, the fight was renewed and raged with fury for some time, when another flag of truce was sent in and another demand for surrender made, they assuring us at the same time that they would treat us as “prisoners of war.”

Another refusal was returned, when they again charged the works and succeeded in carrying them. Shortly before this, however, Lieutenant John D. Hill, Sixth U. S. Heavy Artillery, was ordered outside the fort to burn some barracks, which he, with the assistance of a citizen who accompanied him, succeeded in effecting, and in returning was killed. Major Bradford, of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, was now in command. At 4 o’clock the fort was in possession of the enemy, every man having been either killed, wounded, or captured.

There never was a surrender of the fort, both officers and men declaring they never would surrender or ask for quarter. [emphasis added, ed.] As for myself, I escaped by putting on citizen’s clothes, after I had been some time their prisoner. I received a slight wound of the left ear. I cannot close this report without adding my testimony to that accorded by others wherever the black man has been brought into battle. Never did men fight better, and when the odds against us are considered it is truly miraculous that we should have held the fort an hour. To the colored troops is due the successful holding out until 4 p. m. The men were constantly at their posts, and in fact through the whole engagement showed a valor not, under the circumstances, to have been expected from troops less than veterans, either white or black.

The following is a list of the casualties among the officers as far as known: Killed, Major Lionel F. Booth, Sixth U. S. Heavy Artillery (colored); Major William F. Bradford, Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry; Captain Theodore F. Bradford, Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry; Captain Delos Carson, Company D, Sixth U. S. Heavy Artillery (colored); Lieutenant John D. Hill, Company C, Sixth U. S. Heavy Artillery (colored); Lieutenant Peter Bischoff,* Company A, Sixth U. S. Heavy Artillery (colored). Wounded, Captain Charles J. Epeneter, Company A, prisoner; Lieutenant Thomas W. McClure, Company C, prisoner; Lieutenant Henry Lippettt, Company B, escaped, badly wounded; Lieutenant Van Horn, Company D, escaped, slightly wounded.

I know of about 15 men of the Sixth U. S. Heavy Artillery (colored) having escaped, and all but 2 of them are wounded.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, &c.,

DANIEL VAN HORN,

2nd Lieutenant Company D, Sixth U. S. Heavy Artillery (colored).

Lieutenant Colonel T. H. HARRIS,

Assistant Adjutant-General

Source Library of Congress; Congressional Investigation held by John Sherman.

Wow, Ted pulls a Beto !

Ted is obviously not interested in another White House run. Because he has just lost the South. And he’s found yet another way to make it more difficult to get re-elected.

I guess Beto O’Rourk really scared him in the last election!

There’s been Democrat Governors of Tennessee in recent years, who could have done it, but they didn’t. I say let the next Democrat Governor deal with it. After all, Forrest was a Democrat.

Ted Cruz should have stayed out of this.

Forrest had 65 black confederates who served under him during the war. After the war, retired Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest was an outspoken advocate for the civil rights of the freedmen in postwar Tennessee.This advocacy and his popularity with the Memphis black community were resented by some of white community.

In 1875 he was invited to address a meeting of the Independent Order of Pole Bearers, an early black civil rights organization in Memphis. Before speaking he was presented with a bouquet of flowers. He said:

"Ladies and Gentleman, I aceept the flowers as a memento of reconciliation between the white and colored races of the Southern states...."

"I came here with the jeers of some white people, who think I am doing wrong. I believe I can excert some influence and do much to assist the people in strengthening fraternal relations and shall do all in my power to elevate every man, to depress none. I want to elevate you to take positions in law offices, in stores, on farms and wherever you are capable of going...."

"You have a right to elect whom you please, vote for the man you think best, and I think, when that is done, you and I are freemen. Do as you consider right and honest in electing men to office."

"I did not come here to make you a long speech, although invited to do so by you. I am not much of a speaker, and my business prevented me from preparing myself. I came to meet you as friends and welcome you to the white people.

"I want you to come nearer to us. When I can serve you I will do so. We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment. "Many things have been said about me which are wrong, and which white and black persons here, who stood by me through the war, can contradict."

"Go to work, be industrious, live honestly and act truly, and when you are oppressed I'll come to your relief. I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for this opportunity you have afforded me to be with you, and to assure you that I am with you in heart and in hand." (Prolonged applause.)

After the speech Forrest thanked the young black woman for the bouquet and kissed her on the cheek.

When Forrest died in 1877, Memphis newspapers reported that his funeral procession was over two miles long. The throng of mourners was estimated to include over 3,000 black citizens of Memphis.

I mailed the below essay to Governor Bill Lee. Way too many folks seek to burnish their morality and political careers by attacking those who lived into and through important periods in history. A special thank you to FLT-bird for your posts

The Constitution and the Confederacy

The tragedy of the Civil War highlighted the consequences of ignoring the central principles that established the unique character of our nation. In the Constitutional Convention, our Founding Fathers displayed an unparalleled ability for principled actions rather than domination by the typical cynical avarice and duplicity expected of a political class. The Convention to write the Constitution was formed on May 25, 1787. It completed a draft on August 6. On September 15, 1787 a completed Constitution was engrossed. Therefore, in just over two months they completed a draft, and just over one month was then required for deliberations producing a document they could forward to the Continental Congress and colonies for ratification.

The outcome represented an extraordinarily perilous experiment placing primary faith in the inherent natural liberties of imperfect individuals judiciously constrained by a limited government; a government requiring members to recognize the dilemma of their own imperfection. Since the founding of the colonies and for all time Americans would be defined as sovereign individuals who found their identity in exercising pre-existing intangible liberties accompanied by the hazards and uncertainties of these personal freedoms. Their ethnicity, gender, class, and race would always be secondary expressions of humanity. The limited nature of federal government was emphasized by the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution which says, “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution or prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”.

Here was a perfection of human wisdom seldom, if ever, equaled. However, the Constitution would not have been ratified if James Madison had not emphasized states retained sufficient sovereignty to secede. Slavery was retained, but as a dying institution when the Constitution was approved it seemed a not intractable issue to settle. The philosophical doctrines consulted for founding this country already placed master and slave on the same metaphysical plain. Following the Declaration of Independence, the country had already seen five of thirteen colonies abolish slavery. However, it would await future debates because settlement was encumbered by Northern economic interests, as well as the supposed profits of Southern planters.

After the Convention, the invention of the cotton gin in 1794 revived slavery and made it appear genuinely lucrative. Only appearance was possible, because the basic needs for all slaves were provided for even though only about half labored on a plantation and they without incentive to be productive. Slavery disappeared from the Northern states because indentured servitude and European hardships, such as the Irish Potato Famine, provided a cheap source of labor for factories and farms.

Faced with the same exigencies, the persistence of William Wilberforce caused the most ordinary men of Britain to find positions needed to abolish slavery in 1833. Here was a roadmap to follow. By selecting the best reasoned arguments and proposals, politicians could have arrived at an antebellum equivalent of a Nash equilibrium and final settlement.

For five decades politicians ignored these precedents. Instead they focused on policies accommodating commercial motives and succumbed to the infallibility and intransigence of abolitionists and planters who forced an estrangement between North and South. The manifest imperatives created by the Declaration of Independence saying, “all men are created equal” and a Constitution formed by “the people” found little support in deliberations. Latter politicians never achieved the nobility to deal effectively with secession and state’s rights as they applied to slavery. Through their dereliction of duty these fire-eating miscreants of both persuasions stumbled us into the Civil War. They forced the establishment of armies, that through the application of brutal power, resolved these issues, but without resort to reason, contemplation, or mutual understanding.

If the issues had been settled politically, the outcome would have been a foundation agreed to by all parties; a peaceful transition not requiring Lincoln’s vision for a “new birth of freedom”. The application of military force, as the supreme recognized authority, caused the parties to arrive at a destination, and the stronger imposed its will on the weaker. The Constitution was amended to abolish slavery, but the issues of states’ rights and secession were never addressed beyond the dictates imposed by a faction of the victors. Therefore, the mutuality of a settlement was never achieved. We live with an impoverished understanding of the last two issues. The United States lost the Civil War and much of the destiny envisioned by our Founding Fathers remains unrealized.

Our Civil War, which should never have occurred, became the bloodiest conflict our country ever endured. What began as a war to preserve the Union, regardless of slavery, was fought to the last ounce of human endurance and abolished slavery. Great men like Grant, Lee, Meade, Sherman, Johnston, Gordon, and Chamberlain, and their soldiers and sailors should always be honored for having resolved what should have been political issues. Monuments North and South testify to the sincerity and suffering of those Americans who endured the catastrophe of this needless struggle.

A most relevant summation of that tragedy and what should be honored comes to us from Ulysses Grant and Joshua Chamberlain. Grant said of Appomattox, “I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse. I do not question, however, the sincerity of the great mass of those who were opposed to us”.

When Joshua Chamberlain received the Confederate surrender he said, “Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond;—was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured?”

These sentiments align with the direction Lincoln provided Grant and Sherman at City Point. Petersburg was under siege and Sherman had marched through Georgia to the sea and into the Carolinas. As the Civil War reached its concluding phase, Lincoln directed the soldiers of the South be given the most liberal and honorable terms. He intended them to go home with their horses to plow and with their guns to shoot crows. Lincoln would approach Reconstruction by looking for orderly state governments formed after the pattern of Arkansas and Louisiana with coexisting military districts, and without interference by the radicals of his own party. He was determined to thwart malicious designs and implement a general amnesty. He would establish lasting value to this terrible conflict through policies of mutual conciliation commensurate with the agony all Americans had just endured.

Grant, remembering Lincoln’s encouragement before his assassination, had seen enough of this disastrous suffering. He would not abide the morally and intellectually bankrupt to reinsert themselves for reprisals overturning the terms of Appomattox. The Confederate officers would not be tried for treason so long as they observed the terms of their parole. Later when Andrew Johnson rebuked William Sherman for including political terms in the surrender document offered Joseph Johnston, he left intact the military provisions Grant offered Lee. Grant later told Johnson that his amicus curiae brief would be accepted, or he would resign as General of the Army. As a result, all who served, both Confederate and Union, have been defined as American veterans by sentiment and federal law.

After Lincoln’s assassination the governments of Arkansas and Louisiana were abolished as the Radical Republications gave full vent to vindictiveness emboldened by a military victory leaving the South prostrate and bankrupt. Viewing a totally broken Confederacy, these harpies imposed a limitless, repressive Reconstruction. Those severe provisions allowed KKK terrorists and their supporters a prominent place in the post war South. As there was for Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, there would be no Marshall Plan for the South with its 4,000,000 freed blacks whose freedom proved a precious talisman lacking instructions.

The clearest example in the twentieth century of the consequence for such actions is the Treaty of Versailles. Wilson’s Fourteen Points, which Germany embraced in asking for an armistice, were disregarded in development of the treaty. France and Britain were shattered by the war and imposed a crushing retribution on a prostrate Germany that gave rise to National Socialism and WW II.

How different was the outcome of the Confederate surrender from the vision Lincoln gave in his second inaugural address proclaiming “malice toward none and charity to all”. At the war’s end there were important constituencies ready to embrace his offer. Had Lincoln lived Robert E. Lee, as the most revered man in the former Confederacy, would have been a consummate ally by setting an example for renewed citizenship. His submission to the Union could have spread a good infection of moral courage to an extensive following as Lincoln sought to implement his vision. The Reconstruction actually imposed disregarded Lincoln and crushed Lee’s and similar influences.

I found two quotes exampling Lee’s attitude. “I have heard the indictment and made up my mind to let the authorities take their course. I have no wish to avoid the trial the government may order”. In discussion with a pastor he said, “Doctor there is a good old book which I read, and you preach from, which says, ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you’. Do you think that your remarks this evening were quite in the spirit of that teaching? I have fought against the people of the North because I believed they were seeking to wrest from the South 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.”

Note these dearest rights did not include slavery which Lee opposed, because Lincoln had already said at his first inauguration, “the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service”. Lee’s determination, and that of most Southerners, was to resist the northern states if they attempted the to use the federal government to impose their political aspirations through military occupation of the South.

Fewer than one in a hundred would be motivated to defend slavery. But all believed even a most restrictive meaning for states’ rights would preclude the federal government from military conquest. When the Cotton States formed a Confederacy, Virginia initially rejected the session ordinance but passed it when Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers and assigned a quota to Virginia. The other Border States followed similar decision processes. Only when Lincoln ordered the Emancipation Proclamation after Antietam to prevent intervention by Great Britain and France did it become a war to abolish slavery.

For 1,500 days, Americans killed Americans until over 700,000 had died in battles, hospitals, and prisons. The men in blue and grey uniforms created an environment for winning the war, but then moral and intellectual dwarfs in suits blundered away the opportunity to secure the lasting peace. There was no one in authority to say, “Oh my God. What have we done to ourselves?” Mao Tse-tung, echoing Sun Tzu, stated “It can therefore be said that politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed”. After the years of bloodshed and Lincoln’s assassination, there would be no ‘new birth of freedom” as the political war was lost for the United States.

The Stars and Stripes and Stars and Bars decorating the graves of those who gave their lives would not elicit inspired statesmanship. This national catastrophe would not prompt consideration of first principles and the vision members of the Constitutional Convention saw for continually unfolding promises of individual freedom. Instead blacks were freed, women remained encumbered and disenfranchised, Jim Crow and segregation prospered, and state and local governments lost strength as bulwarks protecting individual liberties.

The juvenile outbursts we currently suffer seek to refute the gifted scholarship of historians such as Douglas Southhall Freeman, Bruce Catton, and Shelby Foote who are among the most revered writers enlightening us to the Civil War. This reincarnation of the Radical Republicans from 150 years ago would ignore first principles and rewrite history to force subservience to a newly popular morality banishing the Confederate battle flag and the Americans who served under it fighting the Northern invasion. Here a multitude of Facebook and Twitter posts form a tapestry of celebrated rhetoric without anchor to analysis derived from legitimate spiritual beliefs or moral philosophies.

These people construct a pretense of morality in opposition to the classic liberal principles which formed the basis for our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. This fashionable consensus encompasses those deciding the existence of Americans who served the Confederacy inflicts emotional damage on them, and those who adjust their beliefs to validate these dilutional perceptions of wounded virtue. The instigators reside as fragments of a swarm trading away adulthood and dignity for prestige without accomplishments. The subservient parties receive effortless addictive compassion as the drug of choice. This novel moral superiority only requires fabricating disgust for themselves and for a country that has reverenced all who served. Buttressed by premeditated ignorance, both ideologically possessed factions shelter within a joyous cacophony of mutually supportive orations validating the oppressions of their own making.

This theater of dilutional relationships proves not only personally futile but provides the opportunity for politicians become patricians to accumulate a useful constituency. As a swarm of acolytes and petty bureaucrats tear at our national heritage, a political class at all levels of government stands ready to offer responsive administrative laws and rules. These creations supposedly provide supportive emotional and physical security, but actually become putrescent encumbrances. A person’s liberty then relies upon ascribing to membership within race, ethnicity, class, and gender groups and allowing elected and self-appointed leaders to define rights.

These policies, cherished by sinister and credulous alike, inject patricians and their mandarins with ever greater powers to compel a subservience of citizens never intended by our Constitution. They not only compel, but often entice people into thankful acceptance of membership within a Gulag of dependency.

Political power then resides with individuals occupying the throne of their own lives and giving pronouncements they consider good and true; pronouncements emerging from their catalogue of enchanting insights. These people, self-proclaiming their mental/moral excellence, validate an implicit fiduciary relationship in which they are predestined to care for everyone. These people suffer a mental disorder where their reason falls in love with itself, and their insights are worshiped as absolutes. No comparison need be made to anything outside, and certainly they can never be constrained by those they rule.

Achievement of success in this political realm then confronts all people with ever narrowing boundaries for exercising inherent needs for independence and mutually agreed voluntary cooperation. True compassion, true leadership would arise from understanding how very few individuals cannot create, encourage, explore, repair, analyze, develop, build, cooperate, serve and/or teach, and become heroic as they exercise their intangible natural liberties.

The Constitution stands in the path of those embracing this fiction of an infallible direction of human activity. If the greatness of Robert E. Lee, who opposed both session and slavery and went South to share the miseries of his fellow Virginians, can be subverted into a latter-day definition of treason, then the road is open to disparage the creation of our country. The achievements of the Continental Congresses must be obscured if a political class can fully exercise their arrogance and pride.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and many more Founding Fathers were slave holders, because slavery was allowed in all thirteen colonies when the Declaration of Independence was written. The monuments in Washington D.C. do not commemorate an association with human imperfection. They testify to the extraordinary achievements in producing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Civil War monuments to Union and Confederate soldiers and sailors testify to the extraordinary sincerity, suffering, and courage of those who served. They also remind us of the enormous failures of politicians to avert the war, to properly value the sacrifices made, and then to derive so little from the ashes of destruction.

Freedom apart from the inherent individual freedoms written into our founding documents is a fraud. We should always choose the hazards and uncertainties of personal freedom over Faustian like bargains exchanging the essence of the human spirit for illusions of government benevolence.

This country needs “a new birth of freedom” if we are to keep faith with the Constitution as the embodiment of the American ideal. Ronald Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the blood stream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same”. Now it is our turn.

John Adams by David McCullough

George Washington: Patriot and President by Douglas Southhall Freeman

Personal Memoirs by Ulysses S. Grant

The Civil War: A Narrative by Shelby Foote

A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton

R. E. Lee a Biography by Douglas Southhall Freeman

Selected Civil War Papers of Major General Joshua Chamberlain by Mark Nesbitt

Recollections and Letters of Robert E. Lee by Son Captain Robert E. Lee

A History of the English Speaking Peoples: The Great Democracies by Winston S. Churchill

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung edited by Foreign Languages Press

The Liberal Mind by Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., M.D

. Constitutional Convention (United States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Convention_(United_States)

Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787: Thursday, May 31 by James Madison http://teachingamericanhistory.org/convention/debates/0531-2/

The Federalist Papers https://www.thefederalistpapers.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/The-Complete-Federalist-Papers.pdf

Slavery in the United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States

Nash Equilibrium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium

Cotton gin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin

William Wilberforce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wilberforce

Slavery Abolition Act 1833 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833

The Confederacy is Formed (February 4, 1961) https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=imgurl%3ahttp%3a%2f%2fslideplayer.com%2f3745653%2f13%2fimages%2f22%2fThe%2bConfederacy%2bIs%2bFormed.jpg&view=detailv2&iss=sbi&rtpu=%2fsearch%3fq%3dforming+confederacy&form=IEQNAI&selectedindex=0&id=http%3A%2F%2Fslideplayer.com%2F3745653%2F13%2Fimages%2F22%2FThe%2BConfederacy%2BIs%2BFormed.jpg&mediaurl=http%3A%2F%2Fslideplayer.com%2F3745653%2F13%2Fimages%2F22%2FThe%2BConfederacy%2BIs%2BFormed.jpg&exph=0&expw=0&vt=0

Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Secession_Convention_of_1861

Grant, Lee, Parole, and Treason https://gravitron5.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/grant-lee-parole-treason/

Grant Protects Lee from Treason Trial www.civilwarprofiles.com/grant-protects-lee-from-treason-trial/

Confederate Soldiers Are Considered U.S. Veterans Under Federal Law-Truth! https://www.truthorfiction.com/confederate-soldiers-are-considered-u-s-veterans-under-federal-law/

Confederate Soldiers – American Veterans by Act of Congress https://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/04/03/confederate-soldiers-american-veterans-by-act-of-congress/ https://www.veteranstodayarchives.com/2011/04/14/confederate-soldiers-are-american-veterans-by-act-of-congress/

Radical Republican https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Republican

Were Confederate Generals Traitors? http://walterewilliams.com/were-confederate-generals-traitors/

Shall We Defend Our Common History? https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/shall-defend-common-history/

The Case Against Liberal Compassion https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/the-case-against-liberal-compassion/

America’s Cold Civil War https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/americas-cold-civil-war/

stuff it el cubano ...not your heritage dude

Ted, “don’t criticize what you don’t understand”, as the lyrics go.

I guess he’s GIVEN UP on trying to fool us into thinking that he’s actually with us.

Like most here, I supported him until Trump showed up, and holy crap, I had NO CLUE just who I was supporting - and I’ve voted for this guy in Texas. He certainly had me fooled.

Now that all of the problems of Texas have been taken care of, he has time to worry about Tennessee?

Not sure who’s ring your kissing here, but really - C’mon Ted.

By the way, since you apparently haven’t shaved since the Gillette razor commercials went tranny, there ARE other razors you can use without bowing to the lgbtq mafia.

ToughBlade that Brett Favre advertises for, Harry’s, and some others too.

Don’t cut yourself!

It’s fascinating to me that the reactionary hatred of Ted Cruz is so deep that defending a Democrat who made it his business to kill and oppose Republicans is now defended.

NBF was a Democrat and hated Republicans.

Ted Cruz is one of our nation’s greatest conservatives.

I’m glad he is my senator and he is again correct on this matter.

There is a book which I foolishly loaned someone, and never saw it again. The org. Forrest started was taken over by haters and MADE INTO the KKK. Forrest accepted Christ, adopted a black child and even did some preaching of the gospel in his later years. I doubt the high KKK office business. He was out before it morphed into that.

Lyin’ Ted.

He puts his hand on the Bible, and he LIIIIES......

Cruz/Haley 2020 ... the jackass yankee ticket ...

Cruz looks and is starting to act like this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUci1EP9xHM

I can’t see me sending him money again.

Hey Lyin’ Ted, I’ll make a deal with you.

If you get KKK Grand Dragon Robert C Byrd’s name removed from all roads, bridges, buildings, cemeteries, parks, airports, and waterways in the state of WV, then I’ll listen to your ideas about General Nathan Bedford Forrest.