Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel. Reviewed by Wes Burnett I found a new hero in American history, perhaps strong enough to replace Robert E. Lee, although not near as well known. I found this hero buried in the pages of "Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Freemen" by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, a fascinating and enlightening history of the great war for southern independence, which the author refers to as the American Civil War.

Actually, after reading this excellent work, which serious historians of that period will find well documented and packed with terrific bibliography for further research, I have discovered a truth that was withheld from me all these many years by the myths we southern boys were taught. In fact, that great hero of the south, none other than General Robert E. Lee, was among the leaders who doomed the effort for southern liberation by his insistence of using the "West Point" tactics for defense.

Early in the conflict, other voices clamoring for an "irregular" or guerrilla warfare method were smothered out by the "professional" soldiers taking charge of the Confederate government and military. Instead of using the tactics that served George Washington and the American colonists so well in that earlier fight for liberty, Jefferson Davis and the other West Pointers held their ground and demanded, and got, huge armies modeled on the same basic pattern as the U.S. Hence, two big armies matching wits and power on the battlefield, doomed the southern effort for sheer lack of numbers, finances and fire power.

Hummel points out that there were exceptions, such as Gen. Bedford Forrest in the western campaign, but mostly the southern war effort relied on big field armies. Forrest and scattered other "raiders" understood the "hit and run" tactics and put them to great use, and had this method been employed throughout the south, Hummel insists that the northern armies would have been bogged down helplessly in the midst of angry and belligerent southern sympathizers.

As it was, too little of this tactic was employed, and millions of lives were lost as a result. Political aftermath But the most damaging impact of this great conflict was the political aftermath which resulted in bigger, more intrusive centralized government. Hummel paints a clear and precise picture of how the "Radical Republicans" who were responsible largely for Lincoln's election, used the power of government to suffocate opposition to their political agenda. That agenda included of course, abolition of slavery, but in the end, the big government which ignored constitutional restraints, implanted a new form of government over both the north and the south.

That new form of government was and is the national socialism under which we now suffer.

Readers of this outstanding historical book will also discover that socialism was even stronger in the south than in the north, and that the centralized bureaucracy of the CSA was more demanding and more tyrannical than the north. That myth-busting reality will shatter many good ole southerners, but reading the facts can not make it any different.

But who is this new hero I mentioned earlier?

Early in the CSA formation, Vice President Alexander Stephens began to complain publicly and privately about the "necessity of war" actions by the new government. Responding to violations of liberty by the Davis led government, here's what Stephens said:

"Constitutional liberty will go down, never to rise again on this continent, I fear" (page 262).

The CSA had suspended habeas corpus, just as Lincoln had done, and Stephens lamented about that act: ... "is the worst that can befall us. Far better that our country should be overrun by the enemy, our cities sacked and burned, our land laid desolate, than that the people should thus suffer the citadel of their liberties to be entered and taken by professed friends." Among the acts of tyranny by government in the south was the imposition of a passport system (so much for the right of travel), shut down unfriendly newspapers and in Richmond seized all privately owned firearms (so much for the Second Amendment).

So, in the fight for liberty, southerners were in fact subjected to the very government tyranny for which they said they were rebelling. The myth dies hard.

The Radical Republicans won, of course, and through their power in congress, quickly instituted those dreaded and well documented "Reconstruction Acts." Hummel lists a few of the big government legacies implemented in those days: 13th and 14th amendments, eliminating the separate sovereignty of states and making them in fact subdivisions of the federal government; creating military districts in the south, which today are the same geographic borders for the federal court system; created the federal department of education, thereby stripping local control of education; and created "one nation under bigger government" (page 328).

Before 1861 this nation endured quite successfully with little or no internal taxation. Because of that war, a series of internal taxes were retained, and eventually the basis of today's income tax came from Lincoln's imposed model.

As Hummel states so well, "Insofar as the war was fought to preserve the union, it was an explicit rejection of the American Revolution" (page 351). Hummel quotes William Appleman Williams: "Put simply, the cause of the Civil War was the refusal of Lincoln and other northerners to honor the revolutionary right of self-determination -- the touchstone of the American Revolution."

Amen to that brother, amen to that.

This book is a must-read for those who want to understand how America has slid from its ideals and principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence into today's national socialistic state of affairs.