Thursday

                    Brief History of America

This is a brief history of the United States for the last 153 years. I will be hitting just the high spots.  We ain't perfect.

In 1853 the Republican Party was formed for the prime purpose of abolishing slavery. In 1860 the Republican nominee for President was elected in the person of Abraham Lincoln. At the time there was 15 “slave” states and 15 “free' states. In 1861 11 of the 15 slave states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. The four slaves state that did not join the Confederacy was Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware and Maryland.

President Lincoln declared that a divided nation was intolerable and asked for volunteers to form an army to prevent this division by force of arms if necessary and war was declared on the Confederacy. He had no trouble forming several gigantic armies.

After two years the Union army had not been doing well in the field of combat, both sides were aghast at the slaughter. The press in the northern states began a campaign to allow seceding states to form their own country but the slaughter had to stop. After this campaign gained steam President Lincoln declared that now is was not just a war to preserve the Union, it was a war to free the slaves. This made it a war of conscience rather than patriotism. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation which freed the slaves “in those states in rebellion”. This was just a meaningless gesture because it was unenforceable and did not free the slaves in those four slave states that did not join the Confederacy making it prejudicial. Those four states continued to buy, sell and trade slaves during the entire Civil War. The Union armies that came through the Confederate states and were joined by slaves were slowed down making them more vulnerable and gave the armies more mouths to feed...it was untenable.

The Union armies defeated the Confederacy because it became not a war of combat skills but a war of attrition, meaning the Union had more men and material than the Confederacy and a lot more manufacturing ability.

The Army of Northern Virginia, General Robert E Lee commanding, surrendered in the spring of 1865 and the other armies of the Confederacy surrendered soon thereafter.

The greater majority of Confederate soldiers interviewed after the war said that they fought because they felt they had they right to secede and/or they were being invaded...90% of all battles was on Confederate soil. Slavery was not an issue with the rank and file soldier. This war cost the lives of about 680,000 Americans more than all other wars combined.

In December of 1865 the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified outlawing slavery in the United States and its possessions.

The freed slaves were disenfranchised because they were not citizens but the ratification of the 14^th Amendment in 1868 stating that those born on American soil or naturalized were citizens, including freed slaves...but they still could not vote.

In the summer of 1870 the 15^th amendment was ratified certifying that all citizens could vote...except women. In some states the freed slaves were kept disenfranchised by poll taxes and literacy testing.

Women could not vote until the ratification of the 19^th amendment in 1920 in spite of 100 years of complaints and demonstrations by inspired leaders like Lucretia Mott and others.

Around the turn of the century the Republican William McKinley administration engaged the United States in the Spanish-American War to “protect American businesses”. It is from this war that Puerto Rico became a United States possession. McKinley was assassinated at the beginning of his second term.

During the Democratic Woodrow Wilson administration ground troops were sent to what was then known as WW1 in Europe. It was most of Europe against Germany and a few other countries. So what else is new.

For the next 20 years the United States sent a variety of ground troops (mostly Marines) to dirty little insurgencies mostly in Nicaragua, Haiti among other places in the Caribbean.

During the Great Depression Democratic nominee Franklin Roosevelt was sworn in as President in April of 1933. In 1939 he made a famous speech saying that the United States “would never be involved in a European War” meaning we were isolationists, then Pearl Harbor happened in December of 1941 and everything changed.

The first encounter of American troops against the Germans was at Kasserine Pass in North Africa. The Americans were nearly wiped out, but they learned something...the value of a swift tank attack.

The first major attack against the Japanese army/marines was at Guadalcanal, the US Marines prevailed in a rout.

The war dragged on until the summer of 1944 when allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy in northern France and headed east toward Germany. Roosevelt was still President and the end was in sight.

In the spring of 1945 Germany surrendered and in the summer the Japanese surrendered after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Roosevelt died in April of 1945 and did not witness the surrenders but he knew victory was coming. Harry Truman became President.

Five years later the Democratic Harry Truman administration sent ground troops to South Korea because they were being invaded by North Korea and South Korea was a member of SEATO. This war ended in a truce at the 38^th parallel in 1953 and remains that way to this day.

In 1955 President Dwight Eisenhower sent military advisers to South Vietnam and so did his successor President John Kennedy. Democratic President Lyndon Johnson increased the United States involvement into what was really a civil war by a factor of 20. Ground forces, combat aircraft, bombers and naval support was going full bore...except they were afraid of killing civilians. We did not prevail because our leaders did not allow the use of total war rather than a type of police action like we did in Korea. A waste of American lives and I deeply resent it.

In 1973 Republican President Richard Nixon mercifully ordered the withdrawal of all US troops from South Vietnam.

Republican President Herbert Bush sent ground and air forces into Kuwait and Iraq to drive the invading Iraq army out of Kuwait. It was a short war with a minimum of American casualties.

Republican President George Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq to depose dictator Saddam Hussein. Saddam was executed but this war was way more involved than what his father was involved with. We still have troops on the ground there and there is no end in sight. Included in his tenure was the terrorist attack of 9/11, the worst in American history.

Democratic President Barak Obama advocated the vast allowance of undocumented aliens into the USA and appears to favor the Muslims but there may be an end in sight. I do not believe that either Hillary or Donald are Muslim devotees...but we shall see. This may be the worst people available for the most powerful office in the world since Bush and Gore...I have friends on the left that agree we are in deep doodoo either way. I am concerned.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow