History Of The United States

"Communities, by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: "We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began, so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished."

"There is something pathetic in seeing Americans almost daily besmirching unconsciously their ideals and their traditions — all thanks to a faulty education. The Founding Fathers would turn in their graves if they could hear themselves called "Democrats"; America indeed was never a democracy, and never will be . . . unless we make "democracy work," and replace, within the framework of a "pure democracy," our legislation by the Gallup Poll. Those who have been taught the wrong interpretation may ask their money back from the schools where they have wasted their adolescence. And the textbooks which preach a spurious democracy may still provide us with fuel in cold days to come."

"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."

"For the founders, the laws of nature and of nature’s God — accessible to all rational humans — supply the sufficient ground for [the] republican morality necessary to make self-government work. Demanding, as [Douglas] Wilson seems to do, that public officials proclaim their personal faith in Christ is neither wise, nor moral, nor American, nor Christian."

"About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers."

"We can not overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the sum of common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government. When they found, after a short trial, that the confederacy of states, was too weak to meet the necessities of a vigorous and expanding republic, they boldly set it aside, and in its stead established a National Union, founded directly upon the will of the people, endowed with full power of self-preservation and ample authority for the accomplishment of its great object."

"Autocracy declares the divine right of kings; its authority cannot be questioned; its powers are arbitrarily or unjustly administered."

"I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too — great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men...I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise...In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests.They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was "settled" that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were "final;" not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times."

"The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence, were the general principles of Christianity, in which all those sects were united, and the general principles of English and American liberty, in which all those young men united, and which had united all parties in America, in majorities sufficient to assert and maintain her independence. Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system."

"[[Thomas Jefferson|[Thomas] Jefferson]] spoke for all the most prominent members of the revolutionary generation in urging posterity not to accept their political prescriptions as sacred script. It is richly ironic that one of the few original intentions they all shared was opposition to any judicial doctrine of " original intent." To be sure, they all wished to be remembered, but they did not want to be embalmed."

"Being good gentlemen of the Enlightenment, the Founders thought that the demise of slavery would come about naturally. Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, all believed that somehow slavery would disappear."

"The achievements of women's rights movements, for instance, were real and important, but you cannot understand them if you do not first understand the founding fathers’ achievement in establishing a system of government based on the guarantee of rights."

"They were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us."

"We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"

"As to the doctrine of slavery and the right of Christians to hold Africans in perpetual servitude, and sell and treat them as we do our horses and cattle, that, it is true, has been heretofore countenanced by the Province Laws formerly, but nowhere is it expressly enacted or established. It has been a usage, a usage which took its origin from the practice of some of the European nations, and the regulations of British government respecting the then-colonies, for the benefit of trade and wealth. But whatever sentiments have formerly prevailed in this particular or slid in upon us by the example of others, a different idea has taken place with the people of America, more favorable to the natural rights of mankind, and to that natural, innate desire of liberty, with which Heaven, without regard to color, complexion, or shape of noses-features, has inspired all the human race. And upon this ground our constitution of government, by which the people of this Commonwealth have solemnly bound themselves, sets out with declaring that all men are born free and equal, and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have it guarded by the laws, as well as life and property, and in short is totally repugnant to the idea of being born slaves. This being the case, I think the idea of slavery is inconsistent with our own conduct and constitution; and there can be no such thing as perpetual servitude of a rational creature, unless his liberty is forfeited by some criminal conduct or given up by personal consent or contract."

"This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free."

"Slavery in this country, I have seen hanging over it like a black cloud for half a century."

"Every measure of prudence... ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States."

"They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak; They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think; They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three."

"During slavery, "Americans built a culture of speculation unique in its abandon," writes the historian Joshua Rothman in his 2012 book, "Flush Times and Fever Dreams." That culture would drive cotton production up to the Civil War, and it has been a defining characteristic of American capitalism ever since. It is the culture of acquiring wealth without work, growing at all costs and abusing the powerless. It is the culture that brought us the , the and the . It is the culture that has produced and undignified working conditions. If today America promotes a particular kind of low-road capitalism — a capitalism of poverty wages, and ; a winner-take-all capitalism of stunning disparities not only permitting but awarding financial rule-bending; a racist capitalism that ignores the fact that slavery didn’t just deny black freedom but built white fortunes, originating the black-white wealth gap that annually grows wider — one reason is that American capitalism was founded on the lowest road there is."

"Where slavery exists the republican Theory becomes still more fallacious."

"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood. I had as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed, it might be done."

"To Americans, that some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men by violence and murder for gain, is rather lamentable than strange. But that many civilized, nay, christianized people should approve, and be concerned in the savage practice, is surprising; and still persist, though it has been so often proved contrary to the light of nature, to every principle of Justice and Humanity, and even good policy, by a succession of eminent men, and several late publications."

"Many in the south once believed that slavery was a moral and political evil. That folly and delusion are gone. We see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world."

"If there breathe on earth a slave, Are ye truly free and brave? If ye do not feel the chain, When it works a brother's pain, Are ye not base slaves indeed, Slaves unworthy to be freed?"

"The information of Timothy Biggs threw the Lords Proprietors into apprehensive confusion. These were dangerous times for everyone engaged in colonization. Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia had almost seemed to set a pattern for revolts. The Davyes-Pate Rebellion in Maryland, although little more than a Sunday afternoon affair, had been considered so serious that its leaders suffered death by hanging. And in London there were whispers that the King's Government were mentioning proprietary colonies in the same breath with Quo Warranto, the legal writ sometimes employed to revoke charters."

"The last public levy was 297 lbs. (of tobacco) per poll, and the great levy the year before has given occasion for malignant spirits to mutter, and may cause some to mutiny, "for the common people will never be brought to understand the just reason of a public charge, or will they ever believe that the expense is for their own preservation." Since General Davis and Pate were hanged the rabble have been much appalled. Now enjoy peace among themselves, though never body was more replete with malignancy and frenzy than our people were about August last, and they wanted but a monstrous head to their monstrous body. The greatest revolution has occurred in Virginia affairs, for as their rebellion was grounded upon madness and folly, so the wheel has turned again as wonderfully and swiftly in the submission of all the chief rebels…"

"As Bacon's Rebellion entered its radical phase, Bacon tried to spread the revolutionary movement to the neighboring colonies, each of which had severe and often similar grievances against its government and the Crown. At the height of Bacon's Rebellion, in September 1676, sixty persons, led by William Davyes and John Pate, assembled in Calvert County, Maryland, to declare their opposition to crushing taxation and to Lord Baltimore's disfranchisement of the freemen. They also declared their refusal to swear to a new loyalty oath proposed by the proprietor. They refused to obey the governor's order to disband on promise to consider their grievances in the next Assembly, pointing out that the manipulated Assembly no longer represented the people. But the death of Bacon caused the quick collapse of the embryo Davyes-Pate rebellion, and Davyes and Pate were hanged after being denounced as traitors. The governor observed with satisfaction that the people were now suitably "terrified." The threat was over, but the governor wrote in warning to Lord Baltimore that never had a people been "more replete with malignancy and frenzy." Apparently, the Maryland regime had had a close call. The result increased the bitterness in the colony against the proprietor."

"Morale, discipline and battleworthiness of the U.S. Armed Forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at any time in this century and possibly in the history of the United States."

"The struggle for Vietnam, a poor South-East Asian country the size of California, comprising mountains, jungles and paddies which enchant twenty-first-century tourists but were uncongenial to twentieth-century Western warriors, lasted three decades and cost between two and three million lives. In the eyes of the world, and even those of the communists’ Chinese and Soviet armourers, for the first twenty years it was a marginal affair. During its last phase, however, the war seized the imagination, roused the dismay and indeed revulsion of hundreds of millions of Western people, while destroying one US president and contributing to the downfall of a second. In the wave of youthful protest against authority which swept many countries in the 1960s, rejection of old sexual morality and an enthusiasm for the joys of marijuana and LSD became conflated with lunges against capitalism and imperialism, of which Vietnam appeared an exceptionally ugly manifestation. Moreover, many older Americans who lacked sympathy for any of those causes came to oppose the war because it was revealed as the fount of systematic deceits by their own government, and also seemed doomed to fail."

"When I arrived in country, my battalion had been in heavy fighting for weeks. There was only one platoon sergeant left in the entire rifle company, which usually had four or five E7's. I was only an E-6, but immediately became a platoon sergeant. We were in contact every day. The heavy casualties continued, and we received new "fills" of riflemen right out of Basic every four to five days. But you can't replace experienced troops or NCOs like that without destroying unit cohesion, morale, and competency. To clear the enemy out of the Delta, the 9th Division needed to be pulled out, rebuilt, and replaced by at least two American divisions, but that wasn't going to happen. So, the young men in the 9th were left down there to bleed and die. It was truly tragic."

"George, without doubt, the Army will be blamed for any failures in the Vietnam War."

"We underestimated the willingness of these peasants to pay the price. We won every set piece battle. Westy believes that he never lost a battle. We had absolute military superiority, and they had absolute political superiority, which meant that we would kill 200 and they would replenish them the next day. We were fighting the birth rate of a nation."

"Erosion of the law on CBW will facilitate assimilation. That is why the controversy regarding the legal status of herbicides and the sensoy irritant agents, such as CS and the tear gases, has been so important. Largely as a result of their employment by the United States and allied forces in Indo-China, and subsequently by their adversaries, CS weapons are now the furthest advanced toward assimilation of all CB weapons. But the Vietnam-related efforts to reduce, through R&D, the technical and operational limitations of CS weapons, and to increase their military utility and attractions for regular combat forces, has inevitably meant a weakening of at least the technological constraint on the assimilation of all types of CB weapons. This, it should be noted, was by no means an unintended consequence of the use of CS, and herbicides as well, in Vietnam. During an interview, the U.S. Army Chief Chemical Officer was utterly explicit on this point: the Vietnam war provided a much needed opportunity for him to demonstrate the value of his wares to the Army at large, and for the Chemical Corps to secure that combat role which would enhance its status and protect it from bureaucratic repression in Washington. CS employment chemical crop destruction and chemical defoliation were only three of many CBW proposals put forward by the Chemical Corps for the Vietnam war."

"After nine months, I was wounded by shrapnel in my knee and back from an RPG and sent to the rear area. They wanted to reassign me to a mechanized unit, but I wouldn't have that. I wanted to go back to the Riverine Force. Someone else had my job by then, so they put me in a different regiment, but still leg infantry. While all that was going on, they lost my paperwork. Rather than sending me home after my last three months, my new regiment thought I was new in country, and I ended up staying for another ten months. I didn't say anything, because I hated to leave those kids out there on their own with no leadership."

"Since 1975, more than 40,000 Vietnamese are believed to have been killed and about 60,000 others maimed by what is known as unexploded ordnance — land mines, artillery shells, cluster bombs and the like that failed to detonate decades ago. Quang Tri Province alone, along the border that once divided Vietnam into North and South, is said to have been more heavily bombed than all of Germany was in World War II."

"William "Wild Bill" Guarnere, Brothers in Battle: Best of Friends: Two WWII Paratroopers from the Original Band of Brothers Tell Their Story (2007) by William Guarnere and Edward Heffron with Robyn Post. New York: Berkley Caliber, p. 231-232"

"Largely as a result of their employment by the United States and allied forces in Indo-China, and subsequently by their adversaries, CS weapons are now the furthest advanced toward assimilation of all CB weapons. But the Vietnam related efforts to reduce, through R&D, the technical and operational limitations of CS weapons, and to increase their military utility and attractions for regular combat forces, has inevitably meant a weakening of at least the technological constraint on the assimilation of all types of CB weapons. This, it should be noted, was by no means an unintended consequence of the use of CS, and herbicides as well, in Vietnam."

"When they started drafting for Vietnam in the late sixties, my son Gene was about twenty. He enlisted in the Army to go to the 101st Airborne like his pop. By that time the 101st Airborne had changed from paratroopers to an airmobile division. They were trained as paratroopers, too, but instead of being jumpers they were used to fly and rappel down from helicopters. I got my son billy exempt from duty. I knew what it was all about, and I wasn't about to send both sons. I told them Billy had to stay home and take care of me. I lied, but I'm glad I did it. That conflict was a mess, just like Iraq. Decisions are made with no common sense, and our kids go, they give their all, and they give their lives. Thank God Gene came back alive. He came home, and we never talked about it. You never talked about it in those days. He said, "How in the hell you done it, Pop, I'll never know." He got married and had six children. Billy had three children. Today I have twenty-two grandchildren and great-grandchildren. With Vietnam, I finally understood what my parents went through. My wife and I were worried every minute, and it was hard keeping Frannie calm. When you lose a kid, that stays with you forever. At that time, America was an entirely different country from what it was during WWII. When I went to war, we had good government, good leaders. They had common sense. Today, nobody has common sense. You mix politics and religion, you got trouble. America gets worse, not better. No common sense, no patriotism. Everybody was trying to get their kids out of going to Vietnam, trying everything. They sent them to live in Canada. They laughed at you because you sent your kids. An entirely different generation."

"The Vietnam vet, the average vet who did no killing, is suffering an agony of guilt and torment created by society's condemnation. During and immediately after Vietnam our society judged and condemned millions of returning veterans as accessories to murder. At one level many, even most, of these horrified, confused veterans accepted society's media-driven, kangaroo-court conviction as justice and locked themselves in prisons of the worst kind, prisons in their mind. A prison whose name was PTSD."

"By the summer of 1968, when the Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago, the Cold War modus vivendi had largely been shredded. Reporters felt that they were being used to publish the White House’s lies about the progress of the war in Vietnam, and they struck back. Even before the Convention began, the Times, the Wall Street Journal, CBS, and NBC had run stories saying that the war was unwinnable, in contradiction to what the Johnson Administration was telling the public. So when the Convention was being planned—Lyndon Johnson did not attend, having withdrawn from the race in March, but he was very much in charge—pains were taken to incommode the news media as much as possible."

"In coming to the Pentagon with his plans in May 1975, Coppola told Public Affairs officials that his initial script would need considerable work, especially the end, which he considered “surrealistic.” While recognizing that the screenplay had considerable problems, the officials forwarded it to the Army with the recommendation that the service should work with the director so that the completed film “will be an honest presentation.” The Army found little basis to even talk to Coppola, responding that the script was “simply a series of some of the worst things, real or imagined, that happened or could have happened during the Vietnam War.” According to the service, it had little reason to consider extending cooperation “in view of the sick humor or satirical philosophy of the film.” Army officers pointed to several “particularly objectionable episodes” which presented its actions “in an unrealistic and unacceptable bad light.” These included scenes of U.S. soldiers scalping the enemy, a surfing display in the midst of combat, an officer obtaining sexual favors for his men, and later smoking marijuana with them. The military probably could have lived with at least some of these negative incidents if put in what it regarded as a realistic and balanced context. But, from the initial script onward, the Army strongly objected to the film’s springboard which has Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) sent to “terminate with extreme prejudice” Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) who has set up an independent operation and is waging a private war against all sides. The Army said Kurtz’s actions “can only be viewed as a parody on the sickness and brutality of war.” The service maintained that in an actual situation, it would attempt to bring Kurtz back for medical treatment rather than order another officer to “terminate” him. Consequently, the Army said that “to assist in any way in the production would imply agreement with either the fact or philosophy of the film.”"

"You know you never defeated us on the battlefield," said the American colonel. The North Vietnamese colonel pondered this remark a moment. "That may be so," he replied, "but it is also irrelevant."

"The greatest indignity heaped upon the soldier waited for him when he returned home. Often veterans were verbally abused and physically attacked or even spit upon. The phenomenon of returning soldiers being spit on deserves special attention here. Many Americans do not believe (or do not want to believe) that such events ever occurred. Bob Greene, a syndicated newspaper columnist, was one of those who believed these accounts were probably a myth. Greene issued a request in his column for anyone who had actually experienced such an event to write in and tell of it. He received more than a thousand letters in response, collected in his book, Homecoming."

"Ultimately, they may have been vindicated. The containment policy that they were an instrument of has been successful. Now the Russians themselves will concede the evils of communism. Hundreds of thousands of boat people attest to the disastrous nature of the North Vietnamese regime. Now the Cold War has ended in victory. And from one perspective we were no more defeated in Vietnam than U.S. forces were in the Philippines or at the Battle of the Bulge. They lost the battle but won the war. And the war was worth fighting. Perhaps we can see Vietnam from that perspective now, and I believe that there is truth and healing in that perspective. But for most Vietnam veterans this "victory" comes more than two decades too late."

"Morse revealed that U.S. warships were on patrol in Tonkin Bay nearby during the shelling of two islands off the North Vietnamese coast on Friday, July 31, by South Vietnamese vessels. Morse said our warships were within three to eleven miles of North Vietnamese territory, at the time, although North Vietnam claims a twelve-mile limit. Morse declared that the U.S. "knew that the bombing was going to take place...[and] charged that the presence of our warships was "bound to be looked upon by our enemies as an act of provocation.""

"The Vietnam veteran's belief in the justice of his cause and the necessity for his acts was constantly challenged and ultimately bankrupt when South Vietnam fell to an invasion from the North in 1975. A dim foreshadowing of this form of trauma can be seen in World War I, when the war ended without the unconditional surrender of the enemy, and many veterans bitterly understood that it wasn't really over, over there. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War it might legitimately be argued that we did not lose in Vietnam any more than we lost in the Battle of the Bulge: we got pushed back for a while, but ultimately we won the war. But today such a perspective is small consolation to the Vietnam vet. For the Vietnam veteran there is no walking Flanders Field, no reenactment of D Day, no commemoration of Inchon, or any other celebration by grateful nations whose peace and prosperity was preserved by American blood and sweat and tears. For too many years the Vietnam veterans knew only the defeat of a nation they fought and suffered for and the victory of a regime that many of them believed to be evil and malignant enough to risk dying to fight against."

"We also had, at our disposal, an AC-47 “Gabby” aircraft—a twin-engine Douglas DC-3 in civilian life. We used it to circle above the enemy’s suspected hiding places and play scary funereal music over the loudspeakers to cause them to run away in terror or at least to keep their troops awake all night. If the weather conditions were just right, some of these airplanes were equipped with a kind of movie projector that would shine big dragons or other frightful things onto low-hanging clouds. A downside of these tactics was that they could cause any friendly South Vietnamese troops in the neighborhood to run away also."

"By the end of 1970, people had almost forgotten about Vietnam (although Americans continued to die there for five more years), partly because they were seeing and reading much less about it. The networks understood that most viewers did not want to see images of wounded soldiers or antiwar protesters or inner-city rioters. They also understood that the government held, as it always had, the regulatory hammer."

"As one of our interviewers... says... once you kill a sitting president in high noon in Dealey Plaza and blow his head off, you're not going to go back to normal... After Kennedy was killed, and nobody asked... what was Kennedy's real policy on Vietnam? Well... he was going to pull out of Vietnam. He was very clear about it, and that's what people get confused. Johnson, Lyndon Johnson, who took over the office went right to war quickly. He went to a far more aggressive posture of Vietnam, which resulted in more-- It was a lie, another lie, and that war was a disaster... Unfortunately, the same forces that made that war happen continued in our life, and they controlled us and pushed us into another war and another war and another war... we propagandize an enemy, make him far bigger than he is, and I don't know what we're fighting. We're just fighting because the military needs to keep going and needs to be funded..."