What William Thorpe Wants

It has happened again. Another late night quasi-secret removal of American history has occurred. This time it was the remnants of "Silent Sam" on the University of North Carolina campus.

Fox News reported:

"The first and largest piece of the remnants of a Confederate statue known as "Silent Sam" is lifted before being transported to the bed of a truck early Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2019 on the campus of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C. The last remnants of the statue were removed at the request of UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt, who also announced her resignation in a move that increases pressure on the system's board of governors to give up on plans to restore the monument."

No sooner had the dust settled from the heinous act when William Thorpe showed up wearing an imitation Union uniform while advocating to replace "Silent Sam" with a Union monument.

In an interview with CBS17.Com Thorpe declared:

"We've been bombarded by this (Confederate statue) for 105 years, so for the next 210 years, how about the Union soldier," Thorpe said. "We're here to bring light, and to bring love of America — love of its mission, and love of the University of North Carolina."

In a nutshell Thorpe advocates an "erase and replace" policy which will remain 2 years for everyone 1 year of "oppression". I really hate to disappoint him but at the rate history is being erased and rewritten, there isn't going to be an America in 210 years.

In order to determine the destiny of a nation, one must look to the past and it's obvious that Mr. Thorpe has absolutely no desire to do that. 

For instance, if Thorpe were alive in the War, he most likely would be wearing the same ragged clothes after he made it into Union lines as he did before he made it to them. His health and nutrition would have fared worse at the hands of his liberators and though some African-Americans were allowed to fight, he most likely would have been assigned to tasks involving manual labor.

Come with me , on a journey through the eyes of loyal Union men whose stories documented in the newspapers of the time, their views and attitudes towards "negroes".

From the New York Times, a report from Cairo, Illinois , Tuesday June 11, 1861:

"It was told me yesterday that Gen. PRENTISS had in charge a contraband chatte -- genus African -- which had paddled itself over the Ohio in a dance, and demanded protection at the hands of the Government. In company with some friends I visited the stranger, whom I found to be as African as possible, but whose status, according to his own statement, was that of a chattel whose ownership was vested in itself. In short he claimed to be a free negro, who had descended the Mississippi some weeks since in a flatboat, in company with several while men, but whose return had been seriously delayed by the desire for his services, without his consent, which is so strong a trait in the characters of our Confederate brothers. The white men in company with him, who were politically under strong suspicion in Mississippi, he saw whipped in the most brutal manner, and one of them almost scalped. He, fearing his own fate, managed to escape, swam a river, and by adroit dodges made good his retreat to Cairo, where he is now in the service of Uncle Sam, and a genuine type of negro felicity. In answer to the question as to whether he felt a disposition to fight, he replied with a grimace that would have done discredit to "Julius:" "Laws, no massee! his nigger is not a fightin' nigger! he's a runnin' nigger!"

The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society contains this revealing account of George Prentice's (editor of the Louisville Journal) opposition to the recruitment of negroes into the Union army:

An article published in The Guardian newspaper ("How the end of slavery led to starvation and death for millions of black Americans" June 6, 2012) describes the fate of emancipated slaves:

"...neglected by union soldiers or faced rampant disease, including horrific outbreaks of smallpox and cholera. Many of them simply starved to death."

Mr. Thorpe , when praising his Union "heroes" is woefully ignorant of "The Devil's Punchbowl". 

Often labeled a "concentration camp", Distinguished Magazine describes the situation as follows:

"During the Civil War, thousands of slaves were freed and the wave to ‘emancipate slaves’ was strong. The liberation of slaves was a difficult affair to put up with and hence, unhappy and angry men of the army decided to recapture these freed slaves and put them in concentration camps or labour camps. One of these camps was located in Natchez, Mississippi, and was known as Devil’s Punchbowl. This camp came into existence when a huge number of freed slaves migrated from the plantations towards the north, in search of safe haven. The soldiers unable to cope up with the idea of treating their ‘properties’ as human beings, took all these freed slaves captive in Natchez. It was found that the number of slaves held was more than ten times the town’s population. Naturally, there was a huge swell of population overnight and management of the town was in chaos. After the Union troop was asked to manage this chaotic state of the town’s people and captive slaves the camp was built and the slaves were walled off. The Union troops’ primary target was to find a solution for dealing with the slaves, no matter how impenitent or merciless it was.

The camp was built in a deep dark cavern like pit surrounded by thick concrete walls and covered with green trees at the top. It was the perfect place, in the heart of Nature, for the Army to enslave people and carry out their regime of torture. The men were forced to undergo heavy labour throughout the day while the women and children were simply locked up behind the walls. Every slave, man, woman or child, was starved and kept in the worst of hygiene conditions. The slaves died of torture by starvation and exhaustion. After the slaves were dead, the soldiers kept their bodies to rot inside the camps. They never cleared or buried the bodies. Instead, they provided the inmates with shovels to bury their slave brothers and sisters inside the camp. Such conditions along with the camp’s location and the climate of the region contributed to the outbreak of several diseases that infected and killed the slaves. One of the major diseases contributing to the fatality was Smallpox. Smallpox alone killed over 3000 slaves in a camp that had about 20000 slaves dying in a year."

Mr. William Thorpe now has a conundrum. He has no respect for the Confederate dead; But does he really want to worship the army that created one of the world's first concentration camps and killed, tortured and starved over 20,000 of his people? Does he really want a monument to them erected and protected for 210 years?

The truth is that William Thorpe most likely doesn't care. In true post-apartheid South African fashion he's more interested tearing down the memory of honorable soldiers, even if that means praising a faction of sanctimonious people who tried to eliminate his entire race from the face of the earth.