Hal Shurtleff

Director and Co-Founder of Camp Constitution.

“Juneteenth”: Republicans End Slavery, and a pivotal incident 2 days after Lincoln’s Day of Fasting

The following is reposted with permission from American Minute:

 

American Minute with Bill Federer

“Juneteenth”: Republicans End Slavery, and a pivotal incident 2 days after Lincoln’s Day of Fasting

Read American Minute

During the Civil War, on March 30, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer … continue reading …

Download as PDF …

Lincoln stated:

“Whereas, the Senate of the United States devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God in all the affairs of men and of nations,

has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for national prayer and humiliation; and

… Whereas, it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow

yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history: that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord;

… And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisement in this world,

may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people?

… We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity.

We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.

… But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us;

and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.

Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

… Now, therefore, in compliance with the request and fully concurring in the view of the Senate,

I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30TH DAY OF APRIL, 1863, as a Day of National Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer.

… And I do hereby request all the people to abstain on that day from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.
… All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high and answered with blessing no less than the pardon of our national sins and the restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace.
… In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this 30th day of March, A.D. 1863, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-seventh. Abraham Lincoln. By the President: William H. Seward, Secretary of State.”

Lincoln’s National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer was observed APRIL 30, 1863.
Two days later, a freak accident occurred which altered the course of the war. One of the South’s best generals was accidentally shot by his own men.
Lt. General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson was considered one of the greatest tactical commanders in history.

He refused to let his men give ground at the First Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861, standing there “like a stonewall.”

Often outnumbered, sometimes 2 to 1, Jackson successfully fought the Shenandoah Valley Campaign:

  • Battles of McDowell (May 8, 1862);
  • Front Royal (May 23, 1862);
  • Winchester (May 25, 1862);
  • Port Republic (June 9, 1862);
  • Seven Days Battles (June 25-July 1, 1862);
  • Second Battle of Bull Run (August 28-30, 1862);
  • Antietam (September 17, 1862);
  • Fredericksburg (December 11-15, 1862); and
  • Chancellorsville (April 30-May 2, 1863).
Stonewall Jackson wrote to Colonel Thomas T. Munford, June 13, 1862:

“The only true rule for cavalry is to follow the enemy as long as he retreats.”

Jackson advised General John D. Imboden (Robert Underwood and Clarence C. Buel, eds. Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. New York: Century Co., Vol.2, p. 297):

“Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow; for an army routed, if hotly pursued, becomes panic-stricken, and can then be destroyed by half their number.

The other rule is, never fight against heavy odds, if by any possible maneuvering you can hurl your own force on only a part, and that the weakest part, of your enemy and crush it.

Such tactics will win every time, and a small army may thus destroy a large one in detail, and repeated victory will make it invincible.”

The day after Lincoln’s Day of Fasting was observed, April 30, 1863, the Battle of Chancellorsville began, May 1, 1863.
Outnumbered two to one, Stonewall Jackson’s 60,892 Confederate troops successfully attacked the flank of 133,868 Union troops.

The Union suffered a devastating 17,197 casualties to the Confederate 13,303.

At the end of the day, May 2, 1863, Jackson surveyed the field and returned to camp at twilight.

Suddenly, one of his own men shouted, “Halt, who goes there,” and without waiting for a reply, a volley of shots were fired.

Two bullets hit General Jackson’s left arm and one hit his right hand.

Several men accompanying him were killed, in addition to many horses.

In the confusion that followed, Jackson was dropped from his stretcher while being evacuated.

His left arm was mangled, became infected, and had to be amputated.

General Robert E. Lee wrote to Jackson:

“Could I have directed events, I would have chosen for the good of the country to be disabled in your stead.”

General Lee sent the message through Chaplain B.T. Lacy:

“He has lost his left arm but I my right … Tell him that I wrestled in prayer for him last night … as I never prayed for myself.”

Jackson’s injuries resulted in him contracting pneumonia.

Growing weaker, Jackson said, May 10, 1863:

“It is the Lord’s Day; my wish is fulfilled. I have always desired to die on Sunday.”

A few moments before he died, as he was losing consciousness, Jackson said:

“Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.”

Jackson had previously told General John D. Imboden (“Stonewall Jackson at the Battle of Bull’s Run,” New York Times, May 3, 1885):

“My religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death.

I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. … That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave.”

Many historians speculate what would have happened if Stonewall Jackson had not been shot.

He most certainly would have been at the Battle of Gettysburg two months later, which conceivably would have resulted in a Confederate victory, changing the entire outcome of the war.

Jackson’s death was difficult to reconcile, as he was exemplary in faith and virtue.

He did not fight to defend slavery, but rather he fought to defend his home state of Virginia from the war of Northern Federal aggression.

Jackson was personally against slavery, having arranged to free the slaves he inherited from his wife’s estate.

Beginning in 1855, Jackson participated in civil disobedience every Sunday by teaching a Colored Sunday School class at the Lexington Presbyterian Church.

This was against the law, as a Virginia statue forbade teaching slaves to read, especially after Nat Turner’s rebellion. Nevertheless, Jackson regularly taught both slaves and free blacks, adults and children, to read the Bible.

The Revised Code of the Laws of Virginia (1819):

“Whereas it is common in many places for slaves to meet at religious meeting-houses in the night, or at schools for teaching them reading or writing, which if not stopped may cause considerable evil to the community;

Be it passed: That all meetings of slaves, or free negroes or mulattoes mixing with such slaves, at any meeting-house or school for teaching them reading or writing, either in the day or night, for any reason, shall be deemed an unlawful assembly.

And any officer of the law may have permission to enter the house to arrest or send off such slaves, and to punish them with up to twenty lashes.”

William M. Banks wrote in Black Intellectuals (1996):

“Literacy also threatened the control and surveillance network for slaves in the South …

Literate slaves … could forge the necessary papers and escape to the North …

Some slaveholders … ignored the statutes for economic reasons, realizing that literate slaves could handle record-keeping … Prohibitions were also ignored by pious masters who wanted their slaves to read the Bible.”

The Democrat Party has a history of enslaving blacks.

Democrat Senator Jefferson Davis from Mississippi became the President of the Confederacy. He stated:

“African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political blessing.”

Democrat state legislatures passed Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, enforcing segregation, intimidating black voters, prohibiting blacks from learning to read and write, making it a crime for blacks to own weapons. Southern Democrats participated in the KKK.

The Republican Party was the first major political party to have abolition of slavery in its party platform, June 18, 1856:

“This Convention of Delegates … are opposed to … the extension of Slavery into Free Territory …

With our Republican fathers, we hold it to be a self-evident truth, that all men are endowed with the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that the primary object and ulterior design of our Federal Government were to secure these rights to all persons …

… Our Republican fathers … abolished Slavery in all our National Territory (with the Northwest Ordinance) …

It becomes our duty to maintain this provision … against all attempts to violate it for the purpose of establishing Slavery … We deny the authority of Congress … to give legal existence to Slavery …

It is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism—Polygamy, and Slavery.”

A Republican, Abraham Lincoln stated in Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857:

“Two weeks ago Judge Douglas spoke here on the … Dred Scott decision … He finds the Republicans insisting that the Declaration of Independence includes ALL men, black as well as white …

He boldly denies that it includes Negroes …

I protest against that …

Chief Justice Taney, in his opinion in the Dred Scott case, admits that the language of the Declaration is broad enough to include the whole human family, but he and Judge Douglas argue that the authors of that instrument did not intend to include Negroes …

I think the authors of that noble instrument intended to include all men …

Dred Scott, his wife and two daughters were all involved in the suit … Judge Douglas is delighted to have them decided to be slaves …

How differently the respective courses of the Democratic and Republican parties …

Republicans inculcate … that the Negro is a man; that his bondage is cruelly wrong …

Democrats deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to insignificance, the wrong of his bondage; so far as possible, crush all sympathy for him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against him.”

 

In 1861, Lincoln became the first Republican to be elected President. He addressed the Indiana Regiment, March 17, 1865:

“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

Lincoln proclaimed in his Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

 

General Ulysses S. Grant, who later was a Republican President, recalled in 1878 his thoughts when he heard the Civil War had started:

“As soon as slavery fired upon the flag it was felt, we all felt … that slavery must be destroyed. We felt that it was a stain to the Union that men should be bought and sold like cattle.”

 

Booker T. Washington wrote in The Story of My Life and Work, 1901:

“So far as I can now recall, the first knowledge that I got of the fact that we were slaves, and that freedom of the slaves was being discussed, was early one morning before day, when I was awakened by my mother kneeling over her children and fervently praying that Lincoln and his armies might be successful, and that one day she and her children might be free.”

A major turning point in the Civil War was the Battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862, the bloodiest day of fighting in American history with over 23,000 casualties.

The North was able to replace its fallen ranks by drafting European immigrants from crowded northern cities, but the South was agricultural and did not have the population base from which to draw new recruits. It was a war of attrition.

 

Republican President Lincoln met with his cabinet to draft the Emancipation Proclamation. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Portland Chase recorded Lincoln declaring:

“When asked what he meant, Lincoln replied:

‘I made a solemn vow before God, that if General Lee were driven back from Pennsylvania, I would crown the result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves.'”

 

The Emancipation Proclamation stated:

“I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief … do, on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three … publicly proclaim … that … persons held as slaves … are, and henceforward shall be, free …

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence … and … labor faithfully for reasonable wages …

And upon this act …

I invoke … the gracious favor of Almighty God.”

 

Lincoln rushed to push through Congress the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery before the war ended as his Emancipation Proclamation was issued using Presidential war powers which would eexpire once the war ended.

He also feared that after the war, the southern states readmitted to the Union might block the Amendment’s ratification and re-institute a form of slavery.

 

The 13th Amendment was passed by the U.S. Senate on April 8, 1864.

All 30 Republican Senators voted in favor of it, joined by 4 Democrats.

The U.S. House passed the 13th Amendment on January 31, 1865.

All 86 Republicans voted in favor of it, joined by 15 Democrats, 14 Unconditional Unionists, and 4 Union men.

Voting against the 13th Amendment were 50 Democrat Congressmen, joined by 6 Union men.

The 13th Amendment stated:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

 

Though not necessary, Lincoln added his signature to the 13th Amendment after the words “Approved February 1, 1865.”

 

Lincoln said in his Second Annual Message, December 1, 1862:

“In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free … We shall nobly save — or meanly lose — the last, best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain … a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.

 

Nearly a half-million died fighting in the Civil War which freed four million slaves.

To celebrate this victory of Republican abolition policies over the Democrat pro-slavery policies is “Juneteenth,” the day Union Major General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 from his headquarters in Galveston, Texas, June 19, 1865, announcing:
“The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves.”

Booker T. Washington was nine years old when the war ended. He remembered:

“There was more singing in the slave quarters than usual … Most of the verses of the plantation songs had some reference to freedom … Some man who seemed to be a stranger (a United States officer, I presume) made a little speech and then read a rather long paper …

After the reading we were told that we were all free and could go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks.

She explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying but fearing that she would never live to see.”

President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated, September 17, 1937:

“I came into the world 17 years after the close of the war between the states …

Today … there are still many among us who can remember it … It serves us little to discuss again the rights and the wrongs of the long 4-years’ war …

… We can but wish that the war had never been.

We can and we do revere the memory of the brave men who fought on both sides …

But we know today that it was best … for the generations of Americans who have come after them, that the conflict did not end in a division of our land into two nations.

I like to think that it was the will of God that we remain one people.”

At the Confederate Memorial in Arlington Cemetery, President Coolidge said, May 25, 1924:

“It was Lincoln who pointed out that both sides prayed to the same God.

When that is the case, it is only a matter of time when each will seek a common end.

… We can now see clearly what that end is.

It is the maintenance of our American ideals, beneath a common flag, under the blessings of Almighty God.”

Camp Constitution’s 16th Annual Camp Is One Month Away. Your Help is Needed

Camp Constitution 16th Annual Family Camp is two months away.  We return to the Singing Hills Christian Camp https://www.singinghills.net/ Plainfield, NH. from Sunday July 14 to Friday July 19, 2024.

We are close to a full house but still have a few rooms for families and room for unaccompanied minors.

Due to the fact that one of our largest supporters passed away earlier this year, we need to reach out to you to see if you can help cover the camp fees for a few families and campers.Donations may be made via our PayPal account accessed from our website’s homepage  https://www.campconstitution.net or a check payable to Camp Constitution and sent to Camp Constitution Director Hal Shurtleff 146 Powder Mill Rd. Alton, NH  03809

A full fee for those 13 and over is $300. and 12 and under $200.  Any donation will be greatly appreciated.

As we do every year, we have an excellent line-up of instructors.  Returning instructors include Pastor David Whitney of the Institute on the Constitution; Professor Willie Soon, world renowned astrophysicist and climate realist; Catherine White of The Constitution Decoded; Alex Newman, author and host of the Sentinel Report, and Rev. Steve Craft, Camp Constitution’s chaplain. Guest instructors  Julie Wilkinson who played the abortion nurse in the movie “Unplanned:  The Abby Johnson Story.” author Dr. Felecia Nace, and we are still awaiting confirmation from Tucker Carlson.

In addition to the classes, the camp will offer marksmanship courses, martial arts, hiking, basketball, volleyball, wiffleball, and optional field trip and swimming, chess, gaga and corn hole tournaments.  Campers and staff end the day with an evening campfire. Camp Constitution’s annual camp is a family camp open to entire families, unaccompanied minors, and, and unaccompanied adults. The cost for the week which includes lodging, meals and class handouts is $300 for those 13 and over. $200. For campers 12 and under, and three and under with parents are free. A link to the camp application:    https://campconstitution.net/camp-registration

Hal Shurtleff, Director
Camp Constitution

P.S.  Happy Flag Day


Christian Persecution in the United States: An Interview of Phil Zodhiates author of “Innocent The Price One Man Paid For Doing What Is Right.”

Camp Constitution’s Speakers Bureau is hosting author Phil Zodhiates in Maine and New Hampshire later this month.  We recently interviewed him about his experience that he wrote about in his book The Price One Man Paid For Doing What Is Right.  It proves that Chrisitan persecution isn’t something that happens in other countries but also in the United States. Phil helped a former lesbian turned Christian and her daughter that was being sexually abused by the mother’s former lesbian partner.  It landed him in jail for almost three years.   A more recent example of such persecution is the wave of violence unlashed at the nation’s faith-based Crisis Pregnancy Centers in, and the F.B.I.’s surveillance of Traditional Catholics.

For more info please visit RomansEight28.com and to order the book https://www.amazon.com/Innocent-Price-Paid-Doing-Right/

Phil’s Maine speaking engagement will be held at the First Parish Congregation Church   650 Center Rd. Lebanon, ME Friday June 28- 7:00 PM.  His New Hampshire engagement will take place at the Alton Community Church 20 Church St, Altoon, NH Saturday June 29-7:00 PM.  Both events are free.  Donations accepted.  These events will also have the Save the Persecuted Chistian’s banner display, and a presentation by one of its spokesmen Mr. William Brown.

A link to an audio version of the interview:  https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/shurtleffhal/episodes/2024-06-03T09_22_51-07_00

Tremble, hetero swine, when we appear before you without our masks: The “Gay” Manifesto from 1988

 

I first learned about this vile screed from my friend Warren Bradley, a retired Boston policeman back in 1988.  He was a subscriber to Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority newsletter, and it had reprinted this manifesto.  I didn’t believe that it was true.  I called the now defunct “Gay Community News” which was based in Boston and the man who answered confirmed that the paper did indeed publish it.  He told me that the author  was a “poet from Connecticut.”   I asked him if printing such things was a way to gain supporters for the homosexual cause.  He didn’t respond.

(First Published in Gay Community News, Feb. 15-21, 1987 and also put into the Congressional Record. Author – Michael Swift)

We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all male clubs, in your houses of Congress, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us.

Women, you cry for freedom. You say you are no longer satisfied with men; they make you unhappy. We, connoisseurs of the masculine face, the masculine physique, shall take your men from you then. We will amuse them; we will instruct them; we will embrace them when they weep. Women, you say you wish to live with each other instead of with men. Then go and be with each other. We shall give your men pleasures they have never known because we are foremost men too, and only one man knows how to truly please another man; only one man can understand the depth and feeling, the mind and body of another man.

All laws banning homosexual activity will be revoked. Instead, legislation shall be passed which engenders love between men.

All homosexuals must stand together as brothers; we must be united artistically, philosophically, socially, politically and financially. We will triumph only when we present a common face to the vicious heterosexual enemy.

If you dare to cry faggot, fairy, queer, at us, we will stab you in your cowardly hearts and defile your dead, puny bodies.

We shall write poems of the love between men; we shall stage plays in which man openly caresses man; we shall make films about the love between heroic men which will replace the cheap, superficial, sentimental, insipid, juvenile, heterosexual infatuations presently dominating your cinema screens. We shall sculpt statues of beautiful young men, of bold athletes which will be placed in your parks, your squares, your plazas. The museums of the world will be filled only with paintings of graceful, naked lads.

Our writers and artists will make love between men fashionable and de rigueur, and we will succeed because we are adept at setting styles. We will eliminate heterosexual liaisons through usage of the devices of wit and ridicule, devices which we are skilled in employing.

We will unmask the powerful homosexuals who masquerade as heterosexuals. You will be shocked and frightened when you find that your presidents and their sons, your industrialists, your senators, your mayors, your generals, your athletes, your film stars, your television personalities, your civic leaders, your priests are not the safe, familiar, bourgeois, heterosexual figures you assumed them to be. We are everywhere; we have infiltrated your ranks. Be careful when you speak of homosexuals because we are always among you; we may be sitting across the desk from you; we may be sleeping in the same bed with you.

There will be no compromises. We are not middle-class weaklings. Highly intelligent, we are the natural aristocrats of the human race, and steely-minded aristocrats never settle for less. Those who oppose us will be exiled.

We shall raise vast private armies, as Mishima did, to defeat you. We shall conquer the world because warriors inspired by and banded together by homosexual love and honor are invincible as were the ancient Greek soldiers.

The family unit-spawning ground of lies, betrayals, mediocrity, hypocrisy and violence–will be abolished. The family unit, which only dampens imagination and curbs free will, must be eliminated. Perfect boys will be conceived and grown in the genetic laboratory. They will be bonded together in communal setting, under the control and instruction of homosexual savants.

All churches who condemn us will be closed. Our only gods are handsome young men. We adhere to a cult of beauty, moral and esthetic. All that is ugly and vulgar and banal will be annihilated. Since we are alienated from middle-class heterosexual conventions, we are free to live our lives according to the dictates of the pure imagination. For us too much is not enough.

The exquisite society to emerge will be governed by an elite comprised of gay poets. One of the major requirements for a position of power in the new society of homoeroticism will be indulgence in the Greek passion. Any man contaminated with heterosexual lust will be automatically barred from a position of influence. All males who insist on remaining stupidly heterosexual will be tried in homosexual courts of justice and will become invisible men.

We shall rewrite history, history filled and debased with your heterosexual lies and distortions. We shall portray the homosexuality of the great leaders and thinkers who have shaped the world. We will demonstrate that homosexuality and intelligence and imagination are inextricably linked, and that homosexuality is a requirement for true nobility, true beauty in a man.

We shall be victorious because we are fueled with the ferocious bitterness of the oppressed who have been forced to play seemingly bit parts in your dumb, heterosexual shows throughout the ages. We too are capable of firing guns and manning the barricades of the ultimate revolution.

Tremble, hetero swine, when we appear before you without our masks.

Memorial Day Ceremony Alton, NH May 27, 2024

Due to the bad weather, the parade, service at Riverside Cemetery, and the service at Monument Square with the decorating of the monuments was canceled. This even was by hosted by the American Legion’s Claude R. Batchelder Post 72 in Alton, NH.  It was presided over by Commander Dave Hussey, Chaplain George Feeney played “Taps” and recited the Veteran’s Prayer. Russ Sample led us in singing “God Bless America, and the Lord’s Prayer.

 

 

 

James Garfield’s 1st Memorial Day Speech May 30, 1868

 

I am oppressed with a sense of the impropriety of uttering words on this occasion. If silence is ever golden, it must be here beside the graves of fifteen thousand men, whose lives were more significant than speech, and whose death was a poem, the music of which can never be sung. With words we make promises, plight faith, praise virtue. Promises may not be kept; plighted faith may be broken; and vaunted virtue be only the cunning mask of vice. We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue. For the noblest man that lives, there still remains a conflict. He must still withstand the assaults of time and fortune, must still be assailed with temptations, before which lofty natures have fallen; but with these the conflict ended, the victory was won, when death stamped on them the great seal of heroic character, and closed a record which years can never blot.

I know of nothing more appropriate on this occasion than to inquire what brought these men here; what high motive led them to condense life into an hour, and to crown that hour by joyfully welcoming death? Let us consider.

Eight years ago this was the most unwarlike nation of the earth. For nearly fifty years no spot in any of these states had been the scene of battle. Thirty millions of people had an army of less than ten thousand men. The faith of our people in the stability and permanence of their institutions was like their faith in the eternal course of nature. Peace, liberty, and personal security were blessings as common and universal as sunshine and showers and fruitful seasons; and all sprang from a single source, the old American principle that all owe due submission and obedience to the lawfully expressed will of the majority. This is not one of the doctrines of our political system—it is the system itself. It is our political firmament, in which all other truths are set, as stars in Heaven. It is the encasing air, the breath of the Nation’s life. Against this principle the whole weight of the rebellion was thrown. Its overthrow would have brought such ruin as might follow in the physical universe, if the power of gravitation were destroyed and

“Nature’s concord broke,
Among the constellations war were sprung,
Two planets, rushing from aspect malign
Of fiercest opposition, in mid-sky
Should combat, and their jarring spheres confound.” (From Milton’s Paradise Lost)

The Nation was summoned to arms by every high motive which can inspire men. Two centuries of freedom had made its people unfit for despotism. They must save their Government or miserably perish.

As a flash of lightning in a midnight tempest reveals the abysmal horrors of the sea, so did the flash of the first gun disclose the awful abyss into which rebellion was ready to plunge us. In a moment the fire was lighted in twenty million hearts. In a moment we were the most warlike Nation on the earth. In a moment we were not merely a people with an army—we were a people in arms. The Nation was in column—not all at the front, but all in the array.

I love to believe that no heroic sacrifice is ever lost; that the characters of men are molded and inspired by what their fathers have done; that treasured up in American souls are all the unconscious influences of the great deeds of the Anglo-Saxon race, from Agincourt to Bunker Hill. It was such an influence that led a young Greek, two thousand years ago, when musing on the battle of Marathon, to exclaim, “the trophies of Miltiades will not let me sleep!” Could these men be silent in 1861; these, whose ancestors had felt the inspiration of battle on every field where civilization had fought in the last thousand years? Read their answer in this green turf. Each for himself gathered up the cherished purposes of life—its aims and ambitions, its dearest affections—and flung all, with life itself, into the scale of battle.

And now consider this silent assembly of the dead. What does it represent? Nay, rather, what does it not represent? It is an epitome of the war. Here are sheaves reaped in the harvest of death, from every battlefield of Virginia. If each grave had a voice to tell us what its silent tenant last saw and heard on earth, we might stand, with uncovered heads, and hear the whole story of the war. We should hear that one perished when the first great drops of the crimson shower began to fall, when the darkness of that first disaster at Manassas fell like an eclipse on the Nation; that another died of disease while wearily waiting for winter to end; that this one fell on the field, in sight of the spires of Richmond, little dreaming that the flag must be carried through three more years of blood before it should be planted in that citadel of treason; and that one fell when the tide of war had swept us back till the roar of rebel guns shook the dome of yonder Capitol, and re-echoed in the chambers of the Executive Mansion. We should hear mingled voices from the Rappahannock, the Rapidan, the Chickahominy, and the James; solemn voices from the Wilderness, and triumphant shouts from the Shenandoah, from Petersburg, and the Five Forks, mingled with the wild acclaim of victory and the sweet chorus of returning peace. The voices of these dead will forever fill the land like holy benedictions.

What other spot so fitting for their last resting place as this under the shadow of the Capitol saved by their valor? Here, where the grim edge of battle joined; here, where all the hope and fear and agony of their country centered; here let them rest, asleep on the Nation’s heart, entombed in the Nation’s love!

(Camp Constitution’s motto is “Honor the Past….Teach the Present….Prepare the Future.”  https://www.campconstitution.net

 

Why Does The Lasker Foundation Refuse to Acknowledge Its Founders’ Racist Roots?

 

If you visit the Lasker Foundation’s website   https://laskerfoundation.org/ and click  “About Us.”  this is what you will find:

 

  “Our Mission

To improve health by accelerating support for medical research through recognition of research excellence, advocacy, and education.

What We Do

We celebrate the contributions of scientists, clinicians, and public servants who have made major advances in the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure, or prevention of human disease. Our programs educate the public and promote scientific collaboration, and we advocate for a healthier world through medical research.

The Legacy of Albert and Mary Lasker

Mary Woodard Lasker (1901–1994) was a champion of medical research. She and her husband, pioneer advertising executive Albert Davis Lasker (1880–1952), established a legacy of advocacy and philanthropy in support of science and health.

Mary Lasker was one of the country’s best known and most effective activists in the cause of increased public funding for medical research. For decades, she tirelessly persuaded the American public that the national investment in medical research would yield invaluable benefits for human health. Her simple warning was, “If you think research is expensive, try disease!” Mrs. Lasker’s early efforts focused on developing public support to advance research on cancer. She founded the Citizens Committee for the Conquest of Cancer and took her cause to Congress and the American public as a leading proponent of the National Cancer Act, which was signed by President Nixon in 1971. Her ardent advocacy for greater government funding of all the medical sciences contributed to increased appropriations for the National Institutes of Health as well as the creation of several NIH institutes.

Mary Lasker’s work transformed the medical research enterprise, which earned her the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. As a permanent monument to her efforts, in 1984 Congress named the Mary Woodard Lasker Center for Health Research and Education at the National Institutes of Health.”

But what you won’t find on the website is the fact that Albert Lasker was the main financial backer of the infamous and racist “Negro Project.”  He donated at least $20,000 (worth approximately $1/2 million today.)  The Negro Project was the brainchild of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood.  The goal of the Negro Project was to promote birth control among Blacks.  The project set up birth control clinics in the South.  Here is transcribed letter from Sanger to Dr. Clarence Gamble in 1939 mentioning Lasker’s role in the project:

 

Casa de Adobe Catilina Foothills Tucson, Arizona

November 26, 1939

Dr. Clarence Gamble

255 Adams St.

Milton, Mass

Dear Dr. Gamble:

It is good to know that you are better again and now we must all see that your ulcers must never again be worried. Miss Rose sent me a copy of the letter that Dr. Morris wrote to Mr. Lasker. I know a copy was sent to you. I am rather distressed the way the project is about to be handled, yet I believe there is nothing much I can do about it. None of my suggestions seem to get to first base these days and so the best thing to do is not to send them on, but I feel very sad over the lack of vision with which this Negro project is to be handled. Both Mrs. Rinehart and I put in a lot of thought on this and there is no doubt that if the first thousand dollars is wisely expended, we can depend upon a generous contribution for the future. I object strenuously to putting all of our eggs in one basket; in other words, to take either North or South Carolina as the nucleus. What I wish to see is the employment of an up and doing modern minister, colored, and an up and doing colored medical man, both to come to New York and train at the Clinic and at the Federation. Until they are oozing with birth control as well as population…. They should then be sent out to cover the South and as many cities and organizations and churches and medical societies as they can get before to preach and preach and preach! That should be the job for them both for at least six months. On a second round as a checkup, they would soon find what impression was made and after one year of education agitation among the colored people, we could then support a practical campaign for supplying the mothers with contraceptives.

Naturally, one would ask why North and South Carolina does not already give such information and supplies to their colored people, and while I have great respect for Dr. Cooper, Norton, Sibilis – I do not believe that this project should be directed or run by white medical men. The Federation should direct it with the guidance and assistance of the colored group – perhaps, particularly, and specifically formed for the purpose. I hope these few words will not cause you to worry but doubtless you have become philosophical and feel that those on the job at 501 had best run the show.

Ever my best regards.

Margaret

(Albert Lasker, Negro Project Funder)

Sanger’s racist roots have been well established from her own writing to her association with Nazis and Klansmen although she appeared to prefer the company of communists

In her December 10, 1939, letter to Gamble, Sanger wrote:

“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

Sanger’s contemporary apologists explain that her critics misinterpret her meaning. But her earlier words belie that contention. For example, in her book The Pivot of Civilization, she advocated for the “elimination of human weeds,” and for the sterilization of “genetically inferior races.” The fact that she enlisted the likes of white supremacist Lothrop Stoddard and Dr. Ernest Rudin, the man in charge of Nazi Germany’s forced sterilization program doesn’t help the case of her apologists.

The “Mrs. Rinehart” mentioned in the letter was none other than Mary Lasker.  Mary was married to art dealer Paul Reinhardt prior to her divorce and marriage to Lasker.  Mary was a close friend of Sanger who in 1938 became the president of Sanger’s Birth Control Federation of America renamed Planned Parenthood Federation.

(Mary Lasker giving Lyndon Johnson the 1966 Lasker Award.  Johnson, along with M.L. King, received the 1st Annual Margaret Sanger Award that same year.)

I discovered this information while researching the correspondence between Sanger and   Dr. Clarence Gamble housed at the  Harvard Medical School Library.  I published the letters in the book The Racist Roots of Planned Parenthood and its Legacy of Death which can be ordered here:  The Racist Roots of Planned Parenthood and Its Legacy of Death | campconstitution.net   or a free PDF here:  https://campconstitution.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Racist-roots-of-planned-parenthood-proof.pdf

Prior to the book’s publication, I reached out to the Lasker Foundation to see if they had a statement on the racist and white supremacist roots of its founders.  They never replied.  I have reached out a few times since with the same results.  Ironically, Gamble’s organization Pathfinder, at least acknowledges its founder’s racist roots not that it forced its leadership to end its founder’s vision: controlling the births of non-whites.  Even Planned Parenthood has felt the heat.  Due to exposure of Sanger’s racism, it has discontinued its Margret Sanger Award in 2015 and even renamed one of its abortion mills

Will the Lasker Foundation acknowledge the racist roots of its founders?  That is all up to the readers, especially those in the media.  I recommend that readers of this article contact the Lasker Foundation and perhaps sent them a link to this article and ask when they will come clean and denounce its racist roots.  The Lasker Foundation’s contact info:

Mailing Address:

405 Lexington Ave, 32nd Floor

New York, NY 10174

E-mail:  info@laskerfoundation.org

Telephone:  212-286-0222

Camp Constitution’s 16th Annual Family Camp is Less Than Two Months Away– Dr. Felecia Nace returns as an instructor

Camp Constitution 16th Annual Family Camp is less than two months away.  It will be held at  the Singing Hills Christian Camp https://www.singinghills.net/ Plainfield, NH. from Sunday July 14 to Friday July 19, 2024

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Felecia Nace who attended our 2020 camp and was the featured instructor at our 2024 Ladies “Spring Fling.” will return as an instructor at this year’s camp. Dr. Nace is the author of several books including book: Top-Down Confusion: Is Gray the New Pink in Education?  Dr. Nace is a former language arts teacher at the Montclair Public School District, NJ. She was also employed as an Education Specialist for 13 years at the New Jersey Department of Education, worked for five years as an adjunct professor at Mercer County Community College, English Department, and is currently the Executive Director of Partners 4 Educational Change, an education consulting firm.

Returning instructors include Pastor David Whitney of the Institute on the Constitution; Professor Willie Soon, world renowned astrophysicist and climate realist; Catherine White of The Constitution Decoded; Alex Newman, author and host of the Sentinel Report, and Rev. Steve Craft, Camp Constitution’s chaplain. Guest instructors  Julie Wilkinson who played the abortion nurse in the movie “Unplanned:  The Abby Johnson Story.”  We are awaiting confirmation from Tucker Carlson.

In addition to the classes, the camp will offer marksmanship courses, martial arts, hiking, basketball, volleyball, wiffleball, and optional field trip and swimming, chess, gaga and corn hole tournaments.  Campers and staff end the day with an evening campfire.

Camp Constitution’s annual camp is a family camp open to entire families, unaccompanied minors, and adults. The cost for the week which includes lodging, meals and class handouts is $300 for those 13 and over. $200. For campers 12 and under, and three and under with parents are free.  The camp offers an “Early Bird” discount of $50, per person by registering by May 1.   A link to the camp registration:  https://campconstitution.net/camp-registration/

Can’t attend but would like help a worth young person or family attend?  Consider making a donation earmarked for camp fee.  Donations may be made via our PayPal account accessed from our website’s homepage  https://www.campconstitution.net or a check payable to Camp Constitution and sent to Camp Constitution Director Hal Shurtleff 146 Powder Mill Rd. Alton, NH  03809


Black Conservative Pastor, Rev. Steve Craft, Goes Off on White Liberal School Committee Members

Rev. Steve Craft, chaplain for Camp Constitution, goes off on all white school committee in Sutton, MA-a small town in Central Massachusetts.  Like practically, all government schools across the United Stares, Sutton’s schools are promoting homosexuality, drag queen store hour, and the Marxist DEI and CRT.  These comments were made on Thursday May 9, 2024

 

             A transcript of Rev. Craft’s comments:

Everybody, look at me you see I’m not white. I’ve been black for 80 years and, won’t turn white no time soon.  I keep hearing all this talk about racism and transphobia and homophobe and all these phobias, and I saw that PowerPoint up there, but I didn’t see anything about Bible clubs up there.  I am a preacher, a preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and many of these parents in here don’t have opinions but they have principles because they love God and like I heard that brother over there say, and they want to know why straight white children are having this pumped down their throats about sodomy, about transgenderism.  About a boy that can come to school one day and be a boy and the next day he’s a girl.  That’s a lie from hell we have to come to reality there’s no truth in that nonsense.  It’s damnable, and as a minister of the Gospel. I encourage every parent in here to stand against this lie that’s been spewed out in the pits of hell because that’s where it comes.

God created male and female.  There’s no such thing as this trans nonsense.  That’s mental illness at worst and demon possession at best. You want to talk about all this race nonsense.  This is do with diversity, equity and inclusion and critical race theory.  I don’t see a black kid in this school, and I don’t even live here. I’m a grandfather.   (Right on brother.)  If you were teaching my grandkids about they could be a boy on Monday a girl on Tuesday and a combination of both on Wednesday, we have an issue.  Y’all that is real nonsense.  You can look at every person in this place.  Whatever side of they are on-all I see is male and female.  Where are the other 90 genders?   This is pure nonsense (amen).   What we have to understand that if we’re going to have compassion, if we’re going to come down for compassion and understanding for all then we have to look to those who don’t agree with this mess not because of an opinion but because of Biblical principles that say sodomy is wicked.

(Applause from the audience.)

Readers interested in having Rev. Craft speak to your group, or your school committee may contact me at (857) 498-1309 or  E-mail at campconstitution1@gmail.com 

Rev’s bio:

The Reverend Steven Louis Craft holds a Master of Divinity Degree from Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, MA and a Bachelor of Arts in Bible and Pastoral Counseling from Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri. He has completed Clinical Pastoral Education at Boone Hospital Center, Columbia, Missouri. Rev. Craft is a member of the American Correctional Chaplains Association and is ordained as a Correctional Chaplain with the American Baptist Churches, U.S.A.. He formerly served as Correctional Chaplain at the Pine Prairie Correctional Center, the Missouri State Penitentiary and the Moshannon Valley Correctional Center in Central Pennsylvania.

Reverend Craft is the co-author of Virtue and Vice: A Fascinating Journey into Spiritual Transformation. He is also the author of Morality and Freedom: America’s Dynamic Duo.   Rev. Steven is also a motivational and inspirational speaker on issues involving race, religion, politics, and culture from a Christian, Black American, Conservative perspective. As a flexible, multi-faceted speaker, Reverend Craft can compose his message to meet a variety of audiences, always promising an insightful and power-packed presentation.  His latest book America Home of the Free or Land of the Slave was just released. He currently serves as the chaplain, instructor and speaker for Camp Constitution, and a pastor of a house church in Lexington, MA

 

Tomorrow’s Children: A 1934 Movie Exposing Eugenics and Forced Sterilization

While doing research for The Racist Roots of Planned Parenthood and Its Legacy of Death, https://www.amazon.com/Racist-Roots-Planned-Parenthood-Legacy    I discovered this movie from 1934 “Tomorrow’s Children” which was an expose of forced sterilization laws in the United States.

This is from the movie’s description:

Please note the date of this movie. It is BEFORE the eugenics movement of Germany under Adolph Hitler, 1936 onward. That is because the eugenics movement started in America, and remains blight upon our history, and upon our present as well. Eugenics had its strongest hold in California, where forced sterilization was practiced with disturbing frequency. It was the eugenics practices of the US that inspired and encouraged Hitler to do the same. The shock and horror of Auschwitz and the Holocaust and of the hospital sanctioned murder of the “mentally defective”, forced eugenics mostly underground. Planned Parenthood is the only open manifestation of eugenics in the US today. But as one can see from the “Georgia Guidestones” and the statements of certain British royalty, dedicated elitist adherents of eugenics are still quite alive and secretly active today. If this movie seems a little tentative in its treatment of the subject of eugenics, remember when it was made. Unlike us, the writers and actors here did not have in hindsight the movie reels of emaciated bodies being bulldozed into trenches, or of the hastily abandoned crematoria surrounded fields full of ashes. The makers of this movie had foresight to warn us the best way they could, and the courage to go ahead with it. I’m sure many of them would live to witness the above-described horrors that lay in their future, and wished with regret that more would have listened.