Why Fort Sumter Was Defended From Federals By Patriots

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Fort Sumter and the Patriots that Defended It

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “I responded to a young man yesterday, who wrote me via Facebook, about his teacher teaching the bombing of Fort Sumter.  The bombing of Fort Sumter was being taught by the Lincoln lover in the classroom, as, of course, the evil that had manifested itself from the Confederacy and from the evil, despicable, racist slave owners that populated the City of Charleston.  Everyone in Charleston had a plantation, the young man was led to believe.”  Check out today’s Clip of The Day for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  I responded to a young man yesterday, who wrote me via Facebook, about his teacher teaching the bombing of Fort Sumter.  The bombing of Fort Sumter was being taught by the Lincoln lover in the classroom, as, of course, the evil that had manifested itself from the Confederacy and from the evil, despicable, racist slave owners that populated the City of Charleston.  Everyone in Charleston had a plantation, the young man was led to believe.  He asked me: Fort Sumter, is that a correct point of view, Mr. Church?

Of course, here’s what I did.  I told the young man, I said: This is what you do.  You go to the Abbeville Institute website.  Open a contact form up and ask the question.  I guarantee you that Brion McClanahan or whoever it is that gets the query will happily answer you.  They’ll point you in the right direction of something that you can cite to your teacher and use in class.  Here it is:

[reading]

My name is Gunther and I’m a 16-year-old sophomore in high school. I listen to your talk show every morning with my dad on my way to school.  [Mike: He talks about his teacher.] I have a question here. First it was when the Confederate Army had taken possession of Fort Sumter in South Carolina (by the way, my teacher covered it and made it sound like the Confederates who were just savages who had sunk the ship of supplies.) Then President Lincoln sent for his troops in the fort as a savior.  After seeing and hearing segments that you have preached about on Lincoln, can you please tell me the real story?

[end reading]

Mike:  I know there’s a book out there that has been written about this.  There are several that have been written, but I know that there is a book that McClanahan told me to get once upon a time.  I can’t recall the title and I don’t have it.  I did read an excerpt from it, so I do know a little bit about what happened, and I can also talk about this just briefly.  Very briefly, if you’re curious about this, it is a most interesting epoch in American history and it is a most interesting event.  What really did happen at Fort Sumter?

Well, put yourself into the position of the newly-independent free country of South Carolina.  Yes, it is true that the fortification was built by the federal army and it was built on behalf of the citizens of South Carolina and Charleston Harbor while they were citizens of the Union.  They’re no longer citizens of the Union.  The story is that the South Carolinians had sent a delegation to DC to actually go meet with Lincoln and work out an exchange of: Look, here’s what’s inside the fort.  We’re going to give this to you.  We’re actually going to buy the land from you.  In other words, work politically, work this out peacefully so there doesn’t have to be any altercation.

Of course, the story goes that Lincoln refused to see the commissioners because he knew that his force had been sent down to Charleston Harbor.  It is believed by many that he was hoping that there would be a confrontation and he could use that as an excuse to threaten the South Carolinians with a full invasion and force them to undo their recent secession and rejoin the Union.  That was the plan.  What is the sovereign country of South Carolina to do?  You have a foreign entity that is in your midst.  It is a ship of war.  It has soldiers on it.  You don’t know what their intentions are.  You have tried to ascertain this and they continue to encroach upon what is now your sovereign territory.  What were they to do?  If they didn’t defend the fort, then they may as well not have been independent.

I realize that’s a very, very brief summary and I’ve left lots of details out, but that’s the basic setup for Fort Sumter.  How much of that actually makes its way into an American classroom?  Probably not very much, I would think.  The storyline that is served up is that the bloodthirsty South Carolinians probably thought Morgan Freeman was on that ship and that’s why they started bombing it.

End Mike Church Show Transcript