April 30, 2011 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
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Welcome to the Political Cesspool, known across the South and worldwide as the South's foremost populous conservative radio program.
And here to guide you through the murky waters of the Political Cesspool is your host for tonight, James Edwards.
And welcome, everyone, to the Political Cesspool Radio Program.
I am indeed your host, James Edwards.
It's Saturday evening, April 30th, and we are broadcasting to you on AM 1380, WLRM Radio, our flagship station in Memphis, Tennessee, as well as all of the affiliate stations of the Liberty News Radio Network, including our newest, AM 1600, WMQM, also, right here in Memphis.
And joining me on the air tonight is Keith Alexander, although we are nowhere near each other this evening.
This is a very special week for me.
This is the week during which my wife and I are celebrating our five-year wedding anniversary.
We were married on May 5th of 2006, and I'm calling in tonight from the end of the road, Key West, Florida.
That's where we are.
We are off the grid, the furthest you can go beyond the map, out here in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, Key West, Florida.
Keith Alexander up there in Memphis.
Keith, we're on the air together, but a world apart.
How are you tonight?
I'm doing great.
The wonders and mysteries and marvels of modern technology here on the Political Cesspool, James.
And most people just celebrate their anniversary for a day.
What is this going to be, a two-week celebration?
Well, it's going to be a week.
We got here.
We flew into Miami last night, made that nice drive over the Seven Mile Bridge, and then, of course, that long highway one that connects mainland Florida all the way out here to Key West, 90 miles from Cuba we are.
And we will be here until next Friday before flying home.
Of course, our anniversary is next, or this coming Thursday.
So anyway, very special week for me.
But of course, in addition to my obligations as a husband, I have obligations to my family as well, and that certainly includes our family of listeners.
So I'm calling in tonight just for a bit to co-host this first hour with Keith Alexander before handing off the rest of the program to Winston Smith.
And he's going to do a more than capable job of filling in for me.
And I'll tell you a little bit more about what he has in store for you later on this hour.
But first, despite all of the blessings that I am enjoying this week, many of our fellow Southerners, Keith, were not nearly as lucky.
People who have visited the Political Cesspool's website, thepolitical cesspool.org, will read that on Friday, before I left, I scheduled a post to appear on the Political Festival's website, which pretty much summarizes just the catastrophic devastation that so much of our region has experienced this week with flooding,
a series of tornadoes, historic tornadoes, the biggest string since 1974, I believe they said.
There's no way, Keith, that we could summarize everything that has happened in the South in terms of the severe weather over the course of the last week.
And it truly was three, four consecutive days of these terrible storms.
Massive loss of life.
The last time I heard, it was 300 confirmed dead and now rising.
Many more times that the number injured complete neighborhoods wiped from the map, and it is a big news story for now.
But I think, to say the least, you're not going to find every international corporation raising funds to help out the displaced and uh deceased Southerners, as you would if this had happened in you know, a place like Japan or uh other places Keith Well, it was a devastating blow, and our hearts go out,
and our prayers are with all of the people that were injured or lost lives or property or loved ones in this storm.
Of course, the South has always been subject to those type of storms.
I was looking at how the path of the tornado, and quite frankly, it reminded me immediately of Sherman's march to the sea and what happened in Georgia during the Civil War.
Yeah, those tornadoes were paled in comparison to the carnage wrought by the Yankee Army.
But still, I mean, if people go to our website, you just really can't, you can't exaggerate this story enough in terms of the severity of it.
We could talk for the entire program, and you still wouldn't be able to wrap your mind around it.
But I do encourage you to go to the PoliticalFestival.org, check out that blog entry about these storms.
And there at the bottom, I've included video from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, a great southern state, a great southern city there in Tuscaloosa.
And the damage there, if anyone had ever seen the 1996 movie Twister starring Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, it literally looks like a scene from that movie.
You had a F5 tornado.
The width of it spanned over a mile.
And this is going through barreling through downtown Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
The video of it, as I mentioned, is on the blog, just to give you an idea of what happened.
And this is just one city.
I mean, there were over six states that experienced similar size tornadoes.
Tennessee, Arkansas was thoroughly devastated.
Georgia, thereby the state line, Chattanooga, the Ringold, Georgia area, you know, equally devastating.
So folks, anyway, we're opening up the program tonight, making mention of this, because as I said, our heart is here in the South, being native-born Southerners and being based in Memphis, Tennessee.
You know, certainly when a damage like this afflicts your immediate family, we want to honor those who lost possessions or loved ones during this time and let them know that our thoughts and prayers are with them.
And even though we have a worldwide audience of listeners here on the Political Festival Radio Program, we ask that your thoughts and prayers also be with the South as we clean up and rebuild.
And Keith, we always do.
Yeah, that's right.
You know, we're also very fortunate to shift gears to have, I think it's five weeks rather than the normal four in which to celebrate Confederate History Month, which we always do here at the CESPO in April.
And this is being the last day of April.
I want to put the finishing touches on our commemoration and analysis of the American Civil War and particularly the Confederacy and its role.
Well, Keith, we will definitely get into that as this first hour continues.
As Keith mentioned, and I'm glad he segued into that.
This is indeed the last Saturday in April, so it is the last Saturday of Confederate History Month.
But of course, as we do, we encourage you to do also, and that is celebrate the sacrifices and gallantry of the South each and every day throughout the year.
But we always mark the occasion here on the radio with our special tribute.
Winston Smith will be dealing with that for an hour during tonight's second hour before moving on with something else he has planned for the third.
We are definitely going to leave our mark.
And it was sort of an anomaly that we had five Saturdays in April.
And we touched on the Confederacy each and every Saturday, as we always do during the month of April.
So that and much more is forthcoming tonight, ladies and gentlemen.
As I mentioned, I am in Key West, Florida this evening.
Keith Alexander holding down the Ford at home in Memphis, Tennessee.
He is there by his lonesome at the moment at WLRM Studios downtown.
And Winston Smith will be joined by Pastor John Weaver, a regular guest on the Political Festival.
They will be examining Confederate History Month in the second hour, and Winston is going to round out the show tonight with the Political Festival's all-time leader in number of appearances, Reverend Ted Pike.
So you've got two great guests and much more coming your way right after this.
Stay tuned.
Coming your way right after these messages.
Welcome back.
To get on the Political Cesspool, call us on James's Dime, toll-free, at 1-866-986-6397.
And here's the host of the Political Cesspool, James Edwards.
All right, everybody, welcome back to the show.
We're just getting things started this Saturday evening, April 30th, last Saturday of Confederate History Month 2011.
We hope that you have enjoyed our continuing coverage and will enjoy tonight's concluding coverage featured by Winston Smith and his guest, Pastor John Weaver.
As I mentioned, down in Key West, Florida tonight, I wish all of our listening audience could be here with me.
I regret that I can't join you or those of you who are in the Council of Conservative Citizens online chat, but the chat is still going on even in my absence.
And I encourage you to go check it out at cofcc.org.
Share conversation while listening to the show with other fans of the Political Festival from around the world.
And Keith, with that being said, I'd like to turn it over to you for our first topic of the hour.
Thanks, James.
What we're going to talk about, we're going to try to put a wrap, at least, on my comments on the Civil War and our commemoration, our annual commemoration in the month of April of the American Civil War and Confederate history.
Now, why is it important to talk about the Civil War and Confederate history today?
After all, that's now over 150 years ago that this happened.
Well, it's important primarily because the left insists upon using the Civil War and interpreting it and making it serve the purposes of the cultural and class revolution that they initiated really back in the 1930s and have been prosecuting relentlessly ever since.
They want you to think that the Civil War was about race, and everything that they say about it and everything that you hear about it in the mainstream media would lead you to believe that the Civil War was from start to finish 100% a crusade for racial equality and for the abolition of slavery.
In their comic book history, the South was for slavery and they were devils.
The North was against slavery and they were angels.
And it was cut and dry, that simple.
And that silly little line was regurgitated.
Well, it's regurgitated all the time, but it was certainly vomited back at us in last Sunday's commercial appeal.
Well, absolutely.
And in fact, we had two big articles about it.
In fact, we had another one.
You know, basically, Wendy Thomas's article, I think, was the most important one.
She is a black columnist who, quite frankly, has no journalistic talent whatsoever.
She wouldn't be on the staff of the Commercial Appeal or any other major newspaper, but for the fact that she's black and but for the fact that all of our elites, including those in the journalism profession, are worshipers at the Shrine of Political Correctness and they're going to do everything they can to boost the prospects of blacks.
Now, what the truth is about the Civil War and its causes is this.
Most Northerners, including its political leaders, were not particularly enamored of blacks and weren't willing to lead, to be led into sacrificing their sons, husbands, and fathers in a war to free blacks and to strike a blow for racial equality.
If it wasn't about slavery, what was it about?
And how do you argue this with people that have been brainwashed in the government schools or even the private schools and by the media generally into believing that the Civil War was all about slavery?
Well, the real reason for the Civil War was secession, which leads you to the question: well, what was secession about?
Well, secession was, first of all, the southern states attempting to secede from the federal union.
They were trying to get out of a loveless marriage in which they found that they were being abused, oppressed, and burdened by other sections of the country or the political and industrial and mercantile interests of other parts of the country so that they were never going to realize self-determination for themselves under that situation.
So they basically wanted out of the bargain.
Now, why did the South want to succeed?
It was political domination, which was permanent and oppressive.
Tariffs and tax policy were at the heart of it.
Now, the two main concepts you need to master in order to effectively debate with proponents of the slavery was the cause of the Civil War argument are two.
One, the Corwin Amendment, and two, the Morrell Tariff.
Now, the Corwin Amendment answers, I think, definitively the proposition that the war was about slavery.
The Corwin Amendment was the original 13th Amendment.
It was sponsored by Ohio Representative Thomas Corwin.
And what the Corwin Amendment said in its text was as follows: No amendment shall be made to the Constitution, that's the U.S. Constitution, which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere within any state with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held in labor or service by the laws of said state.
In other words, slavery was protected from any further legal interference, either by the Constitution, amendment of the Constitution, the passage of laws, or whatever.
That was going to be the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Of course, later on, after the Civil War broke out, the 13th Amendment was to abolish slavery.
The original 13th Amendment was to protect in perpetuity against the abolition of slavery.
Now, if slavery had truly been the cause of the Civil War, that would have settled it.
The Corwin Amendment was proposed during James Buchanan's presidency after the election of 1860, in which Lincoln won, but before he was inaugurated.
Now, Lincoln went to the unprecedented step in his first inaugural address of supporting the Corwin Amendment.
He cited such a provision to now be implied in constitutional law and said, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.
Just weeks prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, Lincoln penned a letter to each governor of every state in the Union asking them to support the Corwin Amendment.
So there goes the myth of Lincoln as a great emancipator who was motivated primarily, if not solely, by his tender regard for the slaves, the black slaves in the South.
It just wasn't true.
What he was interested in, what Lincoln was interested in, was preserving the Union.
Why was Lincoln so interested in preserving the Union if he wasn't interested in freeing the black slaves?
Well, the North had much more than just territory in mind when preserving the Union.
Loss of the southern states would mean loss of most tax revenues, of which over 90% were from the tariff that so burdened the South.
So now that we've established that slavery wasn't the cause, what was the real cause of the Civil War?
Well, the real cause was political domination and taxation, particularly tariff policy.
In the period before the Civil War, over 90% of the revenues of the federal government, the revenues used to operate and fund the federal government, came from tariffs.
Tariffs were duties or excises that were imposed upon imported goods, specifically imported goods on manufactured goods.
Now, the South had a totally separate and distinct economy from the economy of the North.
The North had some subsistence agrarianism, but they also had primarily a manufacturing and industrial economy.
The South had an agrarian economy based on exporting agricultural products.
Professor Alexander, let's pause right there, sir.
You can continue with your dictation right after this.
Stay tuned, everybody.
On the show and express your opinion in the political cesspool, call us toll-free at 1-866-986-6397.
Welcome back to the show, everyone.
I am sitting here in a hotel room in Key West, Florida, my legs propped up on the bed, reclining in a rocking chair, and all the while hosting a nationally syndicated radio program, even after all these years.
It still blows my mind, but not as much as these Bermuda shorts that I'm wearing would blow yours, let me tell you.
But listening to Keith Alexander the Great, you know, I love it when Keith transitions into Professor Alexander and basically presents a dictation on the program.
It reminds me, even as the creator and primary host of this show, when we've got a staff of co-hosts that possess the ability to present as Keith does, it reminds me of the purpose of this show altogether.
It's as if the political festival is a lighthouse in the middle of a dark sea on a black night, and Keith is the lighthouse keeper making sure that that eternal flame is well fueled, and he is certainly doing so tonight.
I mean, truly, though, take away a little bit of that sensationalism, although I do believe everything I just said was fairly accurate.
What we provide here, and I know we say it from time to time, and I know it's something that doesn't need to be said, you're going to get more truth in one segment of a program containing Keith Alexander as co-host than you are on a month of the Sean Hannity show.
And that's why you listen to the Political Festival, and that's why we're stronger than ever before.
We continue to crank out high-quality programming.
And anyway, Keith, that wasn't really on the written agenda, but every now and then I just got to let it flow.
You know, I got to let it flow from the heart, and that's what I'm feeling.
You're doing a great job.
And I want to turn it right back over to you.
Look, I appreciate those kind words, James.
Again, let's get back and revisit the purpose of this segment.
The purpose is, how do you counter the argument that the Civil War was about slavery?
It wasn't about slavery because of the Corwin Amendment sponsored by U.S. Representative Thomas Corrin of Ohio.
Ohio was a hotbed of what was then called copperhead sentiment.
In other words, northerners who sympathized with the South's right to secede.
In fact, quite frankly, after the election of Abraham Lincoln, there was a phony war period where people, quite frankly, couldn't get their minds around the idea that there were actually going to be war and bloodshed about the secession of the South from the Union.
Most people were in denial about it, both North and South.
The South wasn't prepared for war, and most people thought that just like the nullification crisis in the 1830s, there would be some blustering, and then there would be some type of political compromise, or else the South would simply be allowed to go its own way, just like the original 13 colonies had been allowed to go their own way eventually by England.
This was the foundation principle upon which the United States was based.
The fact or the idea that you could secede, that the people could choose to secede from their existing government and form another government that was more responsive to their needs or raise their ethics.
That was supposed to have been a constitutional right that was given to the states with or without cause.
They could come and go as they pleased as if they were militiamen, you know, to give a comparison.
Yeah, exactly.
And see, the thing about, well, that you don't hear now from the left that's in control of the discourse, you know, Tom Tsunick talks all the time about being masters of your own discourse.
That's right.
We're not masters of our own discourse.
But at the time, back in the 1860s, both Ohio, Maryland, and the Illinois state legislatures each ratified the Corwin Amendment.
And President Lincoln personally corresponded with the governors of every state in the Union, asking them to support the Corwin Amendment.
So consequently, where is all this great groundswell of abolitionist support to end black slavery and to bring freedom and the Jubilee Day to black people?
It just didn't exist at the beginning of the war at all.
Now, Since slavery wasn't the cause, what was the cause?
The cause was political domination, which primarily manifested itself in tax policy.
The tax policy of the United States since the beginning of the Republic was to run the federal government with tariff revenues.
Tariffs were charges put on imported goods.
The South had a totally distinct and different economy from the North.
The South depended on agricultural production and the exporting of that agricultural production, primarily cotton and tobacco, to Europe to make money.
The North was in the process of developing an industrial base.
They didn't have large swaths of fertile soil good for farming, so they didn't have large-scale farming operations.
They had to go another route.
Well, there was all sorts of agitation beginning in about 1824 regarding tariff rates.
The tariff of abominations was an attempt to raise the tariff rate to almost 50%.
That was beaten back by southern political power in the 1830s.
But then you had the Morrell Tariff of 1861.
It was sponsored by U.S. Representative Justin Smith Morrell of Vermont.
And it was passed after the 1860 presidential election.
And it was the brainchild of an economist, Henry Kerry, a then-famous and now-forgotten economist that blamed the panic of 1857 on the lack of a protective U.S. tariff.
He actually drafted the bill.
The Morrell Tariff raised tariff rates to approximately 50%, obviously a protectionist tariff or a protection tariff rather than a revenue tariff.
And what this did, when it was passed, it confirmed in the minds of the leaders of the South that our worst fears about the Lincoln administration are in the process of being realized.
We're going to be oppressed economically.
As I told you earlier, the South was paying footing 90% of the bill for the federal government.
The other 10% came from outside the South.
Now, what was this federal money being used for?
It was being used, at least when the Whigs and then their successors, the Republicans, were in power, to fund what were called internal improvements.
Railroads, turnpikes, and canals like the Erie Canal.
Now, to use an analogy, railroad builders back in the 19th century looked upon the public treasury in much the same way as professional sports franchise owners look at the public treasury today.
They thought that the public ought to pay for their capital improvements, just like the Memphis Grizzlies insisted that the city of Memphis build a new basketball arena called FedEx Forum when we already had a relatively new, obviously adequate for the purpose of watching basketball games arena called the Pyramid.
They were forced, the city of Memphis was forced.
They said, if you want to have a NBA franchise in Memphis, you're going to have to build this for us.
No negotiations.
Likewise, that's the type of tack and approach that railroad builders used in antebellum America and even after the Civil War regarding their capital stock.
Well, 80% of these internal improvements were located outside the South that was paying 90% of the total federal budget.
In fact, by the time of the Civil War, there was only one major East-West railroad in what was to become the Confederate States of America.
That was the Memphis to Charleston Railroad, and it had only been completed in 1857.
So basically, the South was being intentionally kept as a de facto colony and a backwater by the powers that be in Washington.
All the ferment about whether states were coming in to be free or slave, that was just a calculus as to which region of the country was going to hold the balance of power.
And by 1860, it was very clear that the South was going to permanently be in a position of minority status that would have no control over its economic destiny as long as there was this split among the two economies, the economy of the North and the economy of the South.
Now, here's a South declared independence for the same reasons as the original 13 colonies, self-determination and taxation.
They were locked into a union where they and their interests would be a perpetual minority, subject to the overlordship of a hostile elite that controlled the political power of the rest of the nation.
The abolition of slavery didn't change this.
You know, Red State America is still mocked, ridiculed, marginalized, and dominated by blue state America.
Turn on the news and listen to the top commentators.
Is that a red state or a blue state perspective that you're hearing, James?
Hang on right there, Keith, as people ponder that rhetorical question.
You know you're only going to get the red state perspective here on the political festival, to say the least.
We'll be back right after this.
Jump in the political says pool with James and the gang.
Call us tonight at 1-866-986-6397.
And here's the host of the Political Cess Pool, James Edwards.
All right, everybody.
Welcome back to the final segment of tonight's first hour.
Keep in mind that Political Festival co-host Winston Smith will be taking control of the reins for the remainder of the show with two great guests in the second and third hours, respectively, Pastor John Weaver and Reverend Ted Pike.
But first, we're going to wrap things up with Keith Alexander, who for the last couple of segments has been continuing his expert analysis of the cause of the war between the states, which he began last week on the program.
And I know we've been topped heavy on issues pertaining to the Confederacy during the month of April.
Of course, the reason for that is obvious.
It is Confederate History Month.
And while we maintain a little bit, if I may use this word, diversity in our programming during the month of April, it's not all southern-related issues.
We do certainly make a point to honor Confederate History Month by doing a special series such as this each and every year.
In a minute, Keith Alexander, you know, Keith is a veritable radio star.
He is a bona fide talk radio host on a very well-known radio program.
But even that being the case, Keith is still a talk radio junkie.
Unlike Keith, I get 100% of my news from the internet, unless I'm listening to this radio program.
I don't listen to other radio shows.
I don't read the newspapers.
I don't watch TV, at least when it comes to political television programming.
I just can't stand to listen to it, which is why the test pull is such a breath of fresh air.
But Keith loves it all.
He just eats it all up.
Keith, even though he's a talk radio star, called into another talk radio show as an anonymous caller.
That's how much of a junkie he is.
He's going to tell you that story, but first he's going to wrap up his thoughts that he was presenting to you the last couple of segments.
Keith, over to you.
Thanks, James.
You know, it's so important to talk about the Civil War, not because we're stuck in the past and want to relive and re-celebrate the lost cause, for example.
The reason it's important is because, as William Faulkner said, the past isn't history.
It isn't even past.
Basically, the Civil War and the conflict that gave rise to it and the ideological fissure or divide that gave rise to it is still alive and well in dominating American politics today, the red state, blue state divide between two parts of the country that obviously are unequally yoked and really don't belong together because we think so differently from one another.
That's all that I can make of it.
Now, let's talk again about the Corwin Amendment that was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that was passed by the United States Congress on March the 2nd, 1861, but has never been ratified by the states.
Three states have ratified it, and if it hadn't been for the onset of the Civil War, it obviously would have gone on and been ratified and made slavery permanently legal in the states that had had slavery when it was passed back in 1861.
Now, what a lot of people don't understand about secession is it didn't happen immediately.
People didn't go to bed one night and wake up the next morning and 11 southern states had seceded from the Union.
It took time.
It was in this kind of phony war period between the election of 1860 and Lincoln's inauguration and shortly after his inauguration.
In fact, four states didn't secede until after that inauguration.
Now, it's important to realize that the Corwin Amendment that was going to make slavery permanent was passed by the House of Representatives by a vote of 133 to 65 and in the United States Senate by a vote of 24 to 12.
And this was out the votes of seven southern states that had already succeeded.
So what that shows you is all this hogwash about how abolitionist the North was and how slavery was the animating cause of the Civil War was a bunch of poppycott.
People in the North did not want to free the slaves.
They were certainly not willing to go to war for it.
In fact, when the Emancipation Proclamation was read to fighting Joe Hooker's Union Army, the Army went into mutiny mode.
They said, this is not what we're fighting for.
We're fighting to preserve the Union, not to free the slave.
So you see, you've been sold a bill of goods about the cause of the Civil War.
Now, you need to also remember that the Civil War was fought basically on southern soil.
Most of the people in the rest of the nation weren't that concerned about it.
And abolitionists, people like Orestes Brownson and William Lloyd Garrison, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, they were the lunatic fringe of American leftist politics of the day, and most people considered them to be the lunatic fringe.
So consequently, that's not the reason.
Now, you need to be able to argue this effectively against all the people that have basically drunk the Kool-Aid provided by the mainstream media who believe that slavery was the cause of the Civil War.
Now, let me take a quick look at these notes here before I pass on to the next subject.
You need to remember also that the four states that joined the Confederacy later, Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, did so only after Abraham Lincoln called for troops to suppress the rebellion in the South.
They were faced with either contributing manpower to a war effort to crush their sister southern states or to secede from the Union so that they wouldn't have to contribute troops to this effort.
And that's what Virginia did.
That was Robert E. Lee's quandary.
That was what Tennessee did, Arkansas did, and North Carolina.
So consequently, this was a power play by Lincoln.
Lincoln wanted to keep the South in the Union by hook or crook, by fair means or foul.
And the reason was we were the money pot.
We were the gold mine.
We were the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that was financing the federal government for the rest of the nation and providing the money for internal improvements that were primarily assisting and developing the North, but not the South, James.
Well, Keith, listen, my friend, I want to thank you, not only for being in studio tonight in my absence, it's just weird not being able to look through the glass and see you over there in front of the microphone, but I know you're there, and I'm a few hundred miles away from you.
But I want to thank you for not just your contributions this week, not just your contributions over the last several years, but certainly for your contributions during our Confederate History Month series this year.
I think you have really added just another layer of depth to our coverage, and we would have been a little bit worse off without you.
And so thank you for bringing in your talent for that.
And I don't know if we have enough time left here.
Well, let me finish up, Ben, with a couple of comments on the Civil War and its causes.
Yeah, before you do that, I want to remind you, I know you've got that notepad in front of you.
Remind, because we gave the audience a teaser.
We've got to tell them about your story.
I've got it all written down, James, and it will be here just as fresh next week as it is this week.
That's what we'll do.
So with the final minute we have left, Keith, before we go into break, and Mr. Smith comes in, what do you have for the audience?
Well, one of the big reasons for people of the liberal persuasion to say that the Civil War was a good war is because they say it caused change that wouldn't have happened otherwise.
In other words, specifically the abolition of slavery.
Again, the facts just don't support this.
They didn't have a civil war in Brazil or the rest of the Western Hemisphere.
And the rest of the Western Hemisphere gradually got rid of slavery.
It was abolished in Brazil in 1895.
That was the last nation in the Western Hemisphere to have legalized slavery.
Now, why was this?
Harriet Beecher Stowe, the authoress of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which a lot of people, particularly of a literary bent, say was the true cause of the Civil War.
It was published in 1852 and just plucked at everybody's heart Strings, excuse me, about the plight of slaves in the South.
After the Civil War, she married a Floridian and moved to Florida.
Florida had been a state that had a lot of large plantations and had a sizable black population before the Civil War.
And she gradually came to the conclusion that the Civil War was totally unnecessary.
And it was unnecessary because the industrialists and other merchant interests had learned that wage slavery was in effect cheaper than chattel slavery.
When you had slaves, you had to provide them effectively with Obamacare style health insurance.
You had to care for them from cradle to grave, and they were not productive from cradle to grave.
They were not productive in their young years, and they were not productive in their old age.
But you were responsible for them legally.
Now, in wage slavery, you just pay them a wage and you forget about them.
You don't have anything to do.
If they get sick, that's on their dime.
If they need to go to, if they need clothing, that's their dime.
So consequently, Harriet Beecher Stowe had a change of heart herself after the Civil War.
Keith, that's all the time we have for this hour.
Stay tuned, everyone else.
Excuse me.
Winston Smith's coming up with a great program.
I'm signing off with Keith.
And remember, as I've learned down here, it's 5 o'clock somewhere.
I'll see you next week.
Stay tuned for Winston and enjoy the rest of the show.
They were jumping to views and shouting, Hallelujah!
Well, Harv hit the aisles dancing and screaming.
Some thought he had religion, others thought he had a demon.
And Harv thought he had a weed eater loose in his fruit and blooms.
He fell to his knees to plead and beg, and the squirrel ran out of his riches leg unobserved to the other side of the room.