GLORY! April 9, 2024, Is the 159th Anniversary of Our Defeat of the Treasonous Southern Confederacy In the Civil War

By HERU BAR-CHANAN

“No regiment is to be seen in which there are not Negroes in abundance; and many of them are able-bodied, strong and brave fellows”

(Geoffrey Perret,?Lincoln’s War: The Untold Story of America’s Greatest President as Commander in Chief, p. 202.)

Tuesday, April 9, 2024, marks the 159th anniversary of the Union Army's defeat of the Treasonous Southern Confederacy in the American Civil War. On Sunday, April 9, 1865, which was also 13 Nisan 5625, the eve of the Passover, on the Hebrew Calendar, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union Army Lt. General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the bloody American Civil War after his Virginia Army was soundly defeated at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, thanks, in large part, to the fierce fighting of 5,000 Black Union Soldiers in that battle. In all, some 200,000 Black Men fought on the Union side in the American Civil War, including Freedmen from the Northern States, Black Sailors in the Union Navy, Black Soldiers from the Caribbean, South America, and Hawaii, and 144,000 formerly enslaved Black soldiers from the Southern Slave States.

Above: On Sunday, April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union Army Lt. General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, to effectively end the bloody American Civil War.

This is essentially a People's contest. On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men -- to lift artificial weights from all shoulders -- to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all -- to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.

PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN

July 4, 1861 Message to Congress

The Union's defeat of the Southern Confederacy broke the system of Chattel Slavery, Liberating some 4 million Black People, of African and Indigenous Black descent, who had been held in captivity in the Slave States of the American South for over eight Generations, a Generation being 30 years. That is 246 years, beginning with the Point Comfort Landing near Jamestown, Virginia, on August 24, 1619 JD / September 3, 1619 CE, of "20 and odd negars" on the English pirate ship The White Lion that was flying under the Dutch flag. White Men traded these twenty founding members of Anglo-Black America for some food. "At first, the Africans were indentured servants; by the 1700s, treachery had reduced them to Chattel Slaves" (Heru Bar-Chanan. GOD IS WITH US: Secret Knowledge of The Hand of God In Black America's Quest of Freedom, p. 13). The momentous event of the Union Army's defeat of the Treasonous Southern Confederacy in 1865 occurred in the sixth year of Anglo-Black America's Ninth Generation in this country. The Confederate States' principal motivation for attempting to secede from the Union and why they took up arms against The United States of America was clearly stated by Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens:

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. [Applause.] This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.?

ALEXANDER STEPHENS

Confederate Vice-President

'Cornerstone Speech,' March 21, 1861

According to the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities: "African-American soldiers played a key role in General Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House. On April 9, 1865, seventeen Union regiments advanced to the village of Appomattox Court House to prevent Confederate forces from escaping westward. Three of these were United States Colored Infantry Regiments from the 25th U.S. Army Corps (the 29th, 31st, and 116th). They were among the first units to come into the city from the west, and a number of Confederates surrendered to these regiments. The 8th, 41st, and 45th U.S. Colored Infantry Regiments were assigned to positions at the rear" (Appomattox Court House: African American Troops, https://www.aahistoricsitesva.org/items/show/20).

Above: The Battle Flag of the Virginia Army, under which Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his treasonous soldiers fought, a relic of The Lost Cause.

In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed. There is more involved in this contest than is realized by every one.?

PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN

--August 18, 1864?

Speech to the 164th Ohio Regiment

(White Union Soldiers)

The Southern Slave States attempted to secede from the Union to protect their institution of Chattel Slavery from which they derived massive profits from the forced, and unpaid, labor of the Black Americans whom they held in captivity. President Abraham Lincoln had the foresight to recognize that the intention of the Treasonous Southern Confederacy was to overthrow the Union and make this entire country a slave country. American Chattel Slavery was a unique form of bondage in World Civilization, because the American Chattel Slave system officially, "legally," academically, socially, and religiously, demoted Black, who had at first lived on an essentially equal footing with workers of European Descent, from the status of Human Beings to the status of Animal Property. The word 'chattel' is cognate with the word 'cattle'. Black Americans were worked, and disposed of, by White Slave owners in the same way that the Slave Owners worked, and disposed of, their cattle...often worse.

Above: Black Americans, in the system of Chattel Slavery, laboring in the cotton fields.

Chattel Slavery was race-based; the diverse captive laborers were primarily of Central and West African descent. A number of those Africans were Hebrews. The slave owners, for the most part, were elite White Men. Yet, the entire Southern economy benefitted from Chattel Slavery. The Northern Economy and the Western Global Economy benefitted as well. In cold-blooded legal terms, the Chattel Slave was classified as Animal Property, subject to being bought, sold, rented out, and disposed of, at-will. The slave owner exercised absolute authority over the poor Chattel Slave's life, liberty, labor, and offspring. America's captives were callously subjected to physical--and mental--trauma, and gross sexual abuse, as a normal way of life.??Such was the Peculiar Institution that the Treasonous Southern Confederacy took up arms to defend.

When the Southern Slave States took up arms against the United States Government in defense of their system of Chattel Slavery, they committed a principal act of Treason. The Southern Confederacy has been unduly romanticized in the American imagination; and, the reality of their treachery and Treason is almost never mentioned. The author of this article asserts that the Southern Confederacy should always be classified, and identified, as Treasonous; hence, his use of the term the Treasonous Southern Confederacy.

The American Civil War was a Holy War for the Black American Soldiers. Some 200,000 American Black Men fought in the American Civil War; 144,000 Black soldiers came from the Southern Slave States (Joseph T. Glaathar. Forged In Battle: The Civil War Alliance?of Black Soldiers and White Officers. New York, 1990).

The reality that the American Civil War was a Holy War to the Black Soldiers is evident by the Super-Human restraint that they showed in dealing with the Women and Girls of their vanquished Confederate enemies: "Union Army Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson was fascinated that the Black Soldiers had no interest in raping the women of their defeated enemy. This resonates with Bible Prophecy: '[The] hundred and forty four thousand...were not defiled with women' -- Revelation 14:3 & 4" (Heru Bar-Chanan. GOD IS WITH US: Secret Knowledge of The Hand of God In Black America's Quest of Freedom, p. 23).

This phenomenon marked an evolutionary and spiritual break with thousands of years of the common sexually violent wartime behavior of Human males toward the Women and girls of their vanquished enemies. The only other time that warring Human males were known to have spared the females of their vanquished enemies from rape is during the great Nat Turner Slave Revolt of 1831 in Southampton, Virginia (Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Nat Turner's Insurrection: An Account of America's Bloodiest Slave Revolt and Its Repercussions. 1861: The Atlantic Magazine). This phenomenon must be considered Prophetic.

According to the U.S. National Archives: "By the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men (10% of the Union Army) served as soldiers in the U.S. Army and another 19,000 served in the Navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war—30,000 of infection or disease. Black soldiers served in artillery and infantry and performed all noncombat support functions that sustain an army, as well. Black carpenters, chaplains, cooks, guards, laborers, nurses, scouts, spies, steamboat pilots, surgeons, and teamsters also contributed to the war cause. There were nearly 80 black commissioned officers...

"Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship."

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Above: A Company of Black Union Army Soldiers from the American Civil War.

...Black women, who could not formally join the Army, nonetheless served as nurses, spies, and scouts, the most famous being Harriet Tubman, who scouted for the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers" (https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war).

According to Historian David W. Blight: “The participation of the black soldier was perhaps the most revolutionary feature of the Civil War. Thousands of ex-slaves strutting down southern roads to do battle with their former masters was a sight that at the outset of the war few Americans expected to see, nor did many expect to witness a crack black regiment, recruited in northern communities by abolitionists, march through Boston Common to the cheers of twenty thousand on-lookers. By 1863 the war to save the Union had irrevocably become as well the war to free the slaves, and black soldiers came to symbolize their people’s struggle for freedom, a recognition of their humanity, the rights of citizenship, and a sense of belonging in a new nation” (David W. Blight,?Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee, p. 147). White Union Soldiers, U. S. Government Officials, and White Journalists questioned whether or not the "negro" had the courage to fight. Their question was answered once The Black Men went into action.

And then, there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation...

PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN

August 26, 1863?Letter to James Conkling

According to Civil War Historian Noah Andre Trudeau, stressing "how important the performance of the black troops in the coming fight would be," before the Battle of Port Hudson, on May 27, 1863, General William Dwight, Jr. had this to say of his Black Soldiers: "The negro will have the fate of his race on his conduct...I shall compromise nothing in making this attack" (Noah Andre Trudeau. Like Men of War: Black Troops In the Civil War 1862-1865, p.39). According to Trudeau, sent on a suicide mission, "[the] black troops fired their guns at an out-of-range target, all the while enduring a steady shelling and sniping that cost them casualties throughout the afternoon. Despite this bloody and terrifying initiation into the 'manhood' of combat, the spirit of these soldiers was unbowed" (Like Men of War, pp. 43-44).

A Soldier from the 23rd Iowa describes another unit of Black American Soldiers in action the next month at the Battle of Milliken's Bend, Louisiana, on June 7, 1863. According to Trudeau, "The attacking wave roiled along the levee to the point where the detachment of the 23rd Iowa had only just stepped into position." He goes on with an account of the action given by an Iowa soldier: "Both sides used their bayonets with effect. One member of the regiment and a rebel met and at the same instance plunged their bayonets into one another...Another rebel ran his bayonet through one of our men, and another of our men knocked his brains out with the butt of his musket" (Like Men of War, p. 55).

Above: An unidentified Black Union Soldier with his wife and two daughters (c. 1865)

As we commemorate our Ancestors' victory over the Treasonous Southern Confederacy, it is imperative that we remember that the Black Union Soldiers and Sailors not only fought to end Chattel Slavery, to save the Union, and to win the right of Black Americans to American Citizenship, they also fought specifically to vindicate the honor of Black American Women, and Girls, who, for over two centuries, had suffered the indignity, and the trauma, of gross sexual exploitation, and abuse, by White Christian males of the American South.

Above: Holy Soldiers of Company E, 4th United States Colored Troops (USCT) from the American Civil War. The author of this article identifies the American Black Men who fought in the Civil War as 'Gabriel's Army,' for they fought nothing less than a Holy War. The Hebrew name 'Gabriel' means "Warrior of God." This is the name of the Archangel who blows the Trumpet to announce Judgment Day.

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(c) 2018, 2019, 2020 by Horace Columbus Neal II aka Heru Bar-Chanan

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About the Author

HERU BAR-CHANAN (heh-ROO bar-kuh-NAHN) is one of the strongest and most prophetic of my several spiritual names. My Christian name is Horace Columbus Neal II. I was christened at First Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (C.M.E.) of Anchorage, Alaska 1964, by the Reverend Sylvester Grant. To the Glory of God, I have over a decade of experience teaching college-level Humanities courses, which include American Civilization I (Pre-Columbian era to the American Civil War) & American Civilization II (The Southern Reconstruction to The Modern Era), African American History, and African Literature.

My special research interests include but are not limited to, Black Liberation Theology, Classical Nile Valley Civilizations (and literature), Classical Judaica, Greco-Roman Antiquity, Antiquity of the British Isles, Indus Kush-Harappa Valley Antiquity, American Antiquity, Hebrew Mysticism, and Black American folklore (sacred and secular). My language interests are American Negro Dialect, Old Testament Hebrew, New Testament (Koine) Greek, Mdw Ntr, Swahili, and French. I am also the author of an amazing pamphlet titled,?God Is With Us: Secret Knowledge of The Hand of God In Black America's Quest of