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SIDS or Vaccine Induced Death? What Does the Evidence Say?

Did you know that according to the 2016 CIA World Factbook Infant Mortality Rate Country Comparison, a whopping 56 countries have lower infant mortality rates than the US? That number is up from 2009 when only 34 countries had lower rates.

The CDC recognizes that the skyrocketing IMR (infant mortality rate) in the US has been a trend for quite some time. In fact, this 2008 CDC study, Recent Trends in Infant Mortality in the United States reveals, “The US infant mortality rate is higher than those in most other developed countries, and the gap between the US infant mortality rate and the rates for the countries with the lowest infant mortality appears to be widening.” Comparing the 2009 and 2016 IMR data is frankly astounding. It clearly reveals that something the US is doing differently than other developed countries is causing our babies to die.

In 2011, Neil Miller and Gary Goldman published a study, (using the 2009 infant mortality data) in which they researched this phenomenon. One health policy in particular that differs among developed countries is the child immunization schedule. The US vaccination schedule requires more vaccines before age 1 than any other country. This correlation certainly calls for research which is exactly what Miller and Goldman set out to do. The Miller/Goldman study compared the data and concluded, “…nations that require more vaccine doses tend to have higher infant mortality rates.”

How exactly are babies in the US dying?

We know that babies in the US are dying, but what are they dying of? According to the CDC the third leading cause of infant death is SIDS. This 2005 study in Pediatrics states, “Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) makes up the largest component of sudden unexpected infant death in the United States.” This shouldn’t come as a surprise to most of us. Odds are, you know someone or have heard of someone who had a beautiful, perfectly healthy baby that tragically and suddenly died for a completely unexplainable reason. Those types of stories didn’t use to be very common, but these days we are hearing this heartbreaking tale far too often.

The National Institutes of Health defines SIDS as, “the sudden, unexplained death of a baby younger than 1 year of age that doesn’t have a known cause even after a complete investigation. This investigation includes performing a complete autopsy, examining the death scene, and reviewing the clinical history.” The NIH SIDS fast fact page includes, “Most SIDS deaths occur in babies between 1 month and 4 months of age.”

What you might NOT know, is that prior to 1969, the term “SIDS” didn’t even exist.  As a matter of fact, the term wasn’t coined until 1969 in response to rising unexplainable infant death. According to the Miller/Goldman study, prior to the advent of the national immunization campaign in the 60’s, what was then referred to as “crib death” was so infrequent that it wasn’t even listed in the infant mortality statistics. Referring to the national immunization campaign in the 60’s Miller/Goldman write, “For the first time in history, most US infants were required to receive several doses of DPT, polio, measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines…In 1973, the National Center for Health Statistics added a new cause-of-death category—for SIDS—to the ICD (international classification of diseases.)”

How did the government/pediatric medical community respond to exploding SIDS rates?

Miller/Goldman explain that, “In 1992, to address the unacceptable SIDS rate, the American Academy of Pediatrics initiated a ‘Back to Sleep’ campaign, convincing parents to place their infants supine, rather than prone, during sleep.”

All women who have become mothers since the 90’s know all about this. We are told relentlessly not to co-sleep, to ALWAYS place babies on their backs to sleep, remove all blankets and toys from cribs, no more crib bumpers, etc. But, have all of these precautions decreased infant mortality from SIDS? The CDC tells us that it has decreased the SIDS rate dramatically. Here is the CDC graph touting the success of the “Back to Sleep” campaign. It certainly appears effective.

Did SIDS rates really fall or are these statistics smoke and mirrors?

Unfortunately, a closer examination reveals that these CDC statistics are a blatant attempt to mislead the public through reclassification of deaths. Infant deaths that would have been categorized as SIDS prior to the Back to Sleep campaign began being classified in new categories, leading to the false public perception that unexplained infant mortality was actually decreasing.

Here is a CDC pie graph illustrating infant death in 2015. Notice there are now 3 “top” categories for SIDS (in actuality there are multiple new sudden unexplained death categories, but most deaths fall into these top 3):

This 2005 study in Pediatrics revealed, “ …for the period from 1999 to 2001 there was no significant change in the overall postneonatal mortality rate, whereas the postnatal SIDS rate declined by 17.4%. Concurrent increases in postneonatal mortality rates for unknown and unspecified causes and suffocation account for 90% of the decrease in the SIDS rate between 1999 and 2001.” (emphasis mine)

The CDC is clearly engaging in very manipulative and misleading behavior. The Miller/Goldman study includes this graph depicting the data. Notice that the overall infant mortality rate from 99-01 is relatively constant. Only the reported SIDS deaths decline, because they are being re-categorized.

This report published in Pediatrics in 2011 states, “Between 1984 and 2004, ASSB (accidental suffocation and strangulation in bedding) infant mortality rates more than quadrupled, from 2.8 to 12.5 deaths per 100,000 live births, which represents 513 infant deaths attributed to ASSB in 2004 compared with 103 in 1984.”

This article in Parenting magazine reveals one such case of “code shifting” leaving one to wonder just how underreported SIDS deaths have become. Melissa Haberzetti’s perfectly healthy, 3 month old son Jacob passed away in what the coroner originally assessed as a SIDS death. However, after the autopsy, the coroner changed Jacob’s cause of death to viral pneumonia, even though he had never exhibited any signs of illness. Melissa sought a second opinion from a SIDS researcher at Children’s Hospital in San Diego who agreed that the local coroner had incorrectly categorized an obvious SIDS death. He stated, “With viral pneumonia, infants don’t die suddenly without getting sick first…If one has a degree of pneumonia that can be seen only with a microscope, and then the infant dies, he dies with it, not of it.”

Now that we have established that the Back to Sleep campaign is not having an effect on SIDS death, let’s move on to what the CDC says with regard to SIDS and infant vaccination.

What does the CDC say about SIDS and vaccination?

The official CDC statement reads, “Babies receive many vaccines when they are between 2 to 4 months old. This age range is also the peak age for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), or infant death that cannot be explained. The timing of the 2 month and 4 month shots and SIDS has led some people to question whether they might be related. However, studies have found that vaccines do not cause and are not linked to SIDS.”

The CDC provides reviews of these studies, but upon examination a disturbing trend emerges. Many of the reviewers seem to have a conflict of interest. For example, in this report, reviewer Gina T. Mootrey works for the CDC Vaccine and Development Branch; in this study, two reviewers- Thea K. Fischer and Katrin S. Kohl, work for the CDC; this Immunization Safety Review conducted by the Institutes of Medicine states in its introduction, “Support for this project was provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…” Conflict of interest = unreliable conclusions.

Conversely, there are multiple independent studies linking vaccines to SIDS. Here’s a sampling:

This Torch study, Evidence Concerning Pertussis Vaccines and Deaths Classified as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, concluded that the DPT vaccine, “may be a generally unrecognized major cause of sudden infant and early childhood death, and that the risks of immunization may outweigh its potential benefits. A need for re-evaluation and possible modification of current vaccination procedures is indicated by this study.” What led Torch to come to this conclusion? The Miller/Goldman study explains, “Torch found that two-thirds of babies who had died from SIDS had been vaccinated against DPT (diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus toxoid) prior to death. Of these, 6.5% died within 12 hours of vaccination; 13% within 24 hours; 26% within 3 days; and 37%, 61%, and 70% within 1, 2, and 3 weeks, respectively. Torch also found that unvaccinated babies who died of SIDS did so most often in the fall or winter while vaccinated babies died most often at 2 and 4 months- the same ages when initial doses of DPT were given to infants.”

This study in the Journal of Pediatrics, Adverse Events following Haemophilus influenzae Type b Vaccines in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, 1990-2013 states, “VAERS received 29,747 reports after Hib vaccines; 5179 (17%) were serious, including 896 reports of deaths.[…] Sudden infant death syndrome was the stated cause of death in 384 (51%) of 749 death reports with autopsy/death certificate records.”

The study, “Unexplained cases of sudden infant death shortly after hexavalent vaccination,” published in Science Direct notes, “possible fatal complications after application of hexavalent vaccines.”

The 2011 study, “A modified self-controlled case series method to examine association between multidose vaccinations and death” concluded that based on a review of 300 sudden unexplained deaths occurring after a pentavalent or hexavalent vaccination, “a 16-fold increase after the 4th dose could be detected with a power of at least 90 percent. A general 2-fold risk increase after vaccination could be detected with a power of 80 percent.”

Equally telling, however, is the fact that the government program set up to compensate victims of vaccine injury (VICP) compensated parents over $60 million for SIDS deaths from 1990-1998. Records obtained from the NVICP by the Gannett News Service via the freedom of information act for a 4 month study show, “Of 253 infant death cases awarded more than $61 million by the US Court of Federal Claims in the 1990s under the compensation program, 224, or 86 percent, were attributed to vaccination with DTP, […] In these cases, mortality was originally attributed to SIDS in 90, or 40 percent, of them…Of 771 total claims filed by parents from 1990 through mid-1998, 660, or 86 percent, contained assertions that DTP was the cause of death. And 43 percent were classified by medical authorities at time of death as SIDS cases.” (John Hanchette and Sunny Kaplan, “Vaccination Nation: Children on the Frontline” Gannett News Service, 1998)

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…

Despite CDC efforts to trivialize the obvious correlation between the heavy handed US infant immunization schedule (primarily at the 2 and 4 month mark) and the corresponding spike of “totally unexplainable” infant deaths ruled as “SIDS” in the exact same months, the evidence is clear. In my opinion and (more importantly) in the opinions of numerous doctors and scientists, the CDC’s attempt to sell the concept of “correlation does not indicate causation” has fallen flat. Renowned neurosurgeon, Dr. Russell Blaylock sums up the CDC/vaccine/SIDS relationship perfectly in his preface to Neil Miller’s book “Vaccine Safety Manual,” “In order to avoid admitting that the sudden stoppage of breathing by a baby within hours to weeks of these vaccines was due to the vaccines, the vaccine defender merely created a new disease a gave it the incredible name of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), which is like naming it the ‘Baby Mysteriously Die of Anything but a Vaccine Injury Syndrome’ (BMDAVIS).”

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Ethical Guidelines for Clinical Trials Prevent Many Vaccines From Being Adequately Tested For Safety

The CDC (Centers for Disease Control), the WHO (World Health Organization), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) are considered by most Americans to be the most credible, trusted sources of “unbiased” information regarding disease, medical treatment, and the safety of pharmaceuticals. Your doctor and the entire medical community base their decisions about your care on recommendations from these organizations, which are theoretically based on the studies brilliant, highly-qualified scientists perform for these organizations. These organizations publicly publish this information so that anyone who wishes to educate themselves can do so.

That is precisely what millions of Americans, including myself, are now doing when it comes to the subject of vaccine safety. Unfortunately we are finding that these “trusted” recommendations are not adding up with the information provided by their own sources and many times are blatantly at odds with this publicly published information. I’m going to clearly demonstrate that to you today.

The focus of this article is the following claim publicly stated by the CDC:

“Before vaccines are approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), they are tested extensively by scientists to ensure they are effective and safe.”

How do scientists test vaccine safety?

There are 3 phases in prelicensure vaccine safety testing as described by the FDA. According to the FDA, “Clinical trials are conducted according to plans that FDA reviews to ensure the highest scientific and ethical standards. The results of the clinical trials are a part of FDA’s evaluation to assess the safety and effectiveness of each vaccine.” Herein lies the rub.

What are the highest scientific standards when it comes to determining safety?

According to the NIH, randomized double blind placebo control studies are the “gold standard.” The NIH goes on to state that, “RDBPC studies remain the most convincing research design in which randomly assigning the intervention can eliminate the influence of unknown or immeasurable confounding variables that may otherwise lead to biased and incorrect estimate of treatment effect.”

The problem is, most vaccine studies are not RDBPC due to the ethical standards that must be maintained.

The fact is most vaccine safety clinical trials do not and cannot use a placebo in the truest sense of the word. According to the CDC’s own glossary of terms, a placebo is, “a substance or treatment that has no effect on human beings.” In the case of vaccine testing, a true placebo would have to be an injectable substance that is completely inert, such as saline solution for example. However, that is NOT what is predominantly used in vaccine trials.

If they aren’t using true placebos, what are they using?

According to the 2013 WHO Expert Consultation on the Use of Placebos in Vaccine Trials, the following replacements are used in lieu of a true placebo:

    • “In place of a placebo, a vaccine against a disease that is not the focus of the trial is given to participants who do not receive the trial vaccine.”

Or, an “add-on” vaccine can be used:

    • “In this design, the trial vaccine or placebo product is mixed with an existing vaccine not studied in the trial, and the subjects are given either (a) the trial vaccine mixed with the existing unrelated vaccine or (b) the combination of a placebo and the existing unrelated vaccine.”

Yes, you read those correctly! These vaccines are not being tested for safety against substances that are known to be safe. They are tested against other vaccines which contain the same or similar toxic ingredients common to all vaccines. Some trials are performed using “add-on” vaccines as a placebo. In these cases, potentially everyone in the trial is injected with the actual vaccine being tested! It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that these methods are unacceptable when the goal is to ascertain safety.

The WHO freely admits this:

“A methodological disadvantage, however, is that trials using these types of placebos provide a less perfect control. It may be difficult or impossible to assess fully the safety and reactogenicity of the trial vaccine, although its efficacy can usually be assessed satisfactorily.” (emphasis mine)

(Reactogenicity is the ability of the vaccine to cause adverse reactions.)

“Methodological disadvantage!?” That’s the understatement of the century!

Let’s look at some very disturbing clinical trial data for a few of the vaccines the CDC recommends. Each vaccine is linked to its package insert so that you can read this information for yourselves:

Engerix B Hepatitis B vaccine (Recombinant) GlaxoSmithKline

“Ten double-blind studies involving 2,252 subjects showed no significant difference in the frequency or severity of adverse experiences between ENGERIX-B and plasma-derived vaccines…All subjects were monitored for 4 days post-administration.”

This study doesn’t prove that this vaccine is safe. Plasma derived vaccines were used in the control group instead of a placebo. It demonstrates that this vaccine doesn’t cause any more or any worse adverse effects than other vaccines cause- at least within the 4 day time frame the subjects were monitored.

This vaccine is given to babies on their very first day of life whether they are at risk for Hep B or not. Only babies born to Hep B positive mothers are at risk for Hep B. For millions of babies this vaccine is a completely unnecessary risk that provides them with absolutely zero benefit.

Infanrix (DTaP) GlaxoSmithKline

Table 4, on page 18 shows that Infanrix was not compared to a placebo, it was compared to the whole cell DTP vaccine.

According to WHO, acellular vaccines (like Infanrix) were introduced “to address the adverse reactions observed with whole cell vaccines…” This WHO report also notes that acellular vaccines have replaced whole cell vaccines in industrialized countries. However, due to the increased cost of acellular vaccines, the whole cell is still used in many developing countries. This vaccine is being tested against a control vaccine that we already know to be more dangerous than the type of vaccine being studied!

**Note figure 8.1 on page 18: “Pregnancy Category C Animal reproduction studies have not been conducted with INFANRIX. It is not known whether INFANRIX can cause fetal harm when administered to pregnant women or can affect reproduction capacity.”

Despite this information listed in the product packaging, the CDC routinely recommends the DTaP vaccine to pregnant women. You can read about that on the CDC’s website in their article, Pregnant? Get Tdap in your 3rd trimester.

The CDC recommends either the BOOSTRIX vaccine or the Adacel vaccine (both DTaP) to pregnant women. While BOOSTRIX is rated one category safer than Adacel (Category B),the packaging still notes, “A developmental toxicity study has been performed in female rats at a dose approximately 40 times the human dose (on a mL/kg basis) and revealed no evidence of harm to the fetus due to BOOSTRIX. Animal fertility studies have not been conducted with BOOSTRIX. There are no adequate and well controlled studies in pregnant women. Because animal production studies are not always predictive of human response, BOOSTRIX should be given to a pregnant woman only if clearly needed.”

Still feeling safe? Still feeling like the CDC has your back?

GARDASIL- Merck

“In 7 clinical trials (5 Amorphous Aluminum Hydroxyphosphate Sulfate [AAHS]- controlled, and 1 uncontrolled), 18,083 individuals were administered GARDASIL or AAHS control or saline placebo on the day of enrollment, and approximately 2 and 6 months thereafter, and safety was evaluated using vaccine report cards (VRC)- aided surveillance for 14 days after each injection of GARDASIL or AAHS control or saline placebo in these individuals.”

In these Gardasil trials, there actually WAS a control group which was given a true saline placebo. However there was another (much larger) control group given AAHS, which is the adjuvant in the Gardasil vaccine (the toxic portion that triggers immune response.) According to the insert, 15,706 subjects received Gardasil, 13,023 received AAHS and 594 received the placebo. However, they did not compare the three groups separately; they combined the AAHS and placebo group together and compared them to the Gardasil group. This means that the whole Gardasil vaccine was tested primarily against an injection containing its own toxic ingredients and determined to be “safe.”

Furthermore, 40 deaths occurred in the entire study which were broken down by cause. When you subtract the number of deaths that were due to car wrecks, overdoses/suicides and gunshot wounds, and compare the number of subjects who died: 18 subjects who were given either Gardasil or AAHS died and only 1 who had been given the placebo died.  Think about that! Subjects who received Gardasil or AAHS instead of placebo, died at a rate of 18 to 1!

Why Don’t Scientists Use Appropriate Placebos in Trials?

The “gold standard” in clinical trials cannot be implemented because the use of a placebo in many cases is unethical. The purpose of the 2013 WHO Expert Consultation on the Use of Placebos in Vaccine Trials was to detail the guidelines placed on the ethical use of placebos in vaccine trials. If using a traditional, inert placebo in the control group doesn’t “add any risk of serious or irreversible harm,” then clearly there is nothing unethical about using it. But what about when it does?

For example, according to WHO reports, in 2008 rotavirus was responsible for about 5% of all child deaths globally, with 90% of these deaths occurring in Africa and Asia. In a 2011-12 clinical trial in India for a new rotavirus vaccine, 2/3 of the infants received the test vaccine while 1/3 got a saline placebo injection. At the time, two approved oral rotavirus vaccines were already available. Not giving 1/3 of the Indian children in the trial a vaccine already known to be effective against rotavirus, constituted a human research violation that would not have been allowed in the US. Allowing preventable harm to occur in the name of research is unethical.

This means, for very legitimate ethical reasons, using true placebos according to the “gold standard” of clinical testing is not feasible. However, this in no way negates the fact that due to ethical constraints, it is impossible to accurately assess vaccine safety in many cases. It is also unethical to fail to provide this information to parents when discussing vaccine safety.

It crosses the line of unethical and meanders into the territory of illegal, when this information is intentionally censored from vaccine education sheets given to parents in the pediatrician’s office (as well as from conversations with your pediatrician) assuring that vaccines are “extensively tested for safety” knowing full well that safety and reactogenicity are “difficult or impossible to assess” by their own publicly published standards.

The next time someone tells you that vaccines have been proven safe in numerous extensive studies you can tell them that information is blatantly false, and the CDC, WHO, NIH, and FDA know it. Vaccines cannot be both adequately and ethically tested for safety.

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If Everything You Know About the Civil War Era Comes From A Textbook, You Don’t Know Diddly About the South

I’m going to let you all in on a secret. If everything you know about the Civil War Era comes from a textbook, you don’t know diddly squat about the South- and you’re confused about the North as well.

Reading between the lines in our textbooks, after all of us colonists got together and told Mother England where she could stick her taxation without representation and formed a lovely little nation of our own, something odd happened. Apparently, in the years following, us brand new Americans divided ourselves into two factions and split geographically. All of the ignorant, bigoted, white supremacists congregated south of the Mason Dixon Line and the enlightened, equality- minded, civil rights warriors gathered to the north of the line. Then, the loathsome southern crew all planted plantations full of cotton to give all of our legions of slaves something menial to do. Next, they built gigantic plantation houses for the women folk to traipse around in while wearing poofy dresses and sipping mimosas. All the while, the northerners made honest livings in factories waiting for Abraham Lincoln to come along and trounce some morality into that southern rabble.

Not so much. There are two things you need to know:

1. Your history book lied to you about the Civil War.

2. The Mason Dixon Line is a geographical boundary, not a moral one.

Your History Book Lied to You About the Civil War

Lincoln was not a “great emancipator” sending in Union troops to “make men free,” and the South wasn’t fighting primarily to be able to keep slaves. By the way, up to this point in history, slavery was a worldwide societal norm among all cultures. Humanity was finally beginning to “wake up” and slavery was on its way out in multiple civilizations around the globe- none of which resulted in massive Civil Wars. The South, though wrong in their general acceptance of the morality of slavery, was fighting overreaching authority of the federal government.

While slavery did play a part in the Civil War, it was not in the moral capacity that our history books so often paint it. Instead, the disagreement over slavery was an economic and political one. Federal laws leading to the increasing southern unrest date back 30 years prior to the Civil War which was fought from 1861-1865.

In 1828 and 1832, Congress passed tariff legislation which benefited the North’s industrial economy while damaging the South’s agricultural economy. The South produced raw materials and imported manufactured products. The southern economy was built on agriculture and many were dependent on slave labor to run the massive plantations that supplied raw materials to the factories in the north. These tariffs gave northern manufacturers an enormous advantage by decreasing foreign competition. The bulk of the South’s raw materials now went to the North instead of abroad, yet taxes were levied on the North’s finished products which made them, to a large extent, unaffordable in the South. This resulted in the South paying the bulk of federal taxes, while the taxes were spent predominantly in the North. When South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun held a convention to nullify this law, President Andrew Jackson actually threatened to send troops to enforce it, but the Compromise of 1833 resulted in lowering the taxes for a period of four years and an altercation was avoided.

If you think our most recent presidential election was contentious, you’ve never read about Lincoln’s. Lincoln was backed exclusively by big industry in the North. In the 1860 election, he won with only 39% of the popular vote and not a single electoral vote from the South. The first thing Congress did when they met after the election was to pass the Morrill Tariff, which was the highest tariff in US history. The following quote is from the Northern British Review, Edinburgh, 1862, “…All Northern products are now protected: and the Morrill Tariff is a very masterpiece of folly and injustice. No wonder then that the citizens of the seceding States should feel for half a century they have sacrificed to enhance the powers and profits of the North; and should conclude, after much futile remonstrance that only in secession could they hope to find redress.”

Lincoln never saw the Civil War as an opportunity to bring about justice or free slaves. Lincoln’s single, intention throughout the Civil War was to hold the Union together. In his 1862 letter to Horace Greely of the New York Tribune, Lincoln famously wrote, “ My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all of the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union…” This letter can be viewed in its entirety at abrahamlincolnonline.org.

Now, whether or not you believe that the South had a constitutional right to secede, or if Lincoln was justified in his many questionable tactics to hold the Union together is a whole separate can of worms. But, if you find yourself sympathizing with the modern day “Calexit” movement, the least you can do is avoid being a hypocrite and admit that you actually have more in common with the Confederacy than you thought.

Most important lessons to take away: If you are ignorant of true Civil War history and engage in or applaud the ripping down of confederate monuments in a misguided protest of slavery or racism, expect opposition from individuals who aren’t ignorant of true Civil War history who have respect for these monuments to great men who put their lives on the line to fight federal government overreach. This is no way means they are racist or that they are sympathetic to the institution of slavery- much less fascist.

The Mason Dixon Line Is A Geographical Boundary, Not A Moral One

The South is not now nor has it ever been any more or less “racist” than the North.

Seriously. This old, tired, inaccurate stereotype of the South as a geographical collection of diversity hating, white supremacists doesn’t even have a historical leg to stand on. The North is not immune and has its own historically documented list of embarrassing and abhorrent racist sentiment.

According to the 1860 census, there were 451,021 slaves counted in states and territories that would make up the Union during the Civil War. This was an increase from the 1840 census 20 years earlier. Historian Douglas Harper notes, “The North failed to develop large-scale agrarian slavery, such as later arose in the Deep South, but that had little to do with morality and much to do with climate and economy.”

The North didn’t exactly have an attack of conscience and decide to emancipate all their slaves immediately following the Revolutionary War. The British helped out with that in tactics Lincoln later used on the South. Douglas Harper writes, “Since the North saw much longer, and more extensive, incursions by the British troops, its slave population drained away at a higher rate than the South’s. At the same time, the governments in northern American states began to offer financial incentives to slaveowners who freed their black men, if the emancipated slaves then served in the state regiments fighting the British… When the Northern states gave up the last remnants of legal slavery, in the generation after the Revolution, their motives were a mix of piety, morality, and ethics; fear of a growing black population; practical economics; and the fact that the Revolutionary War had broken the Northern slaveowners’ power and drained off much of the slave population…The business of emancipation in the North amounted to the simple matters of, 1. determining how to compensate slave owners for the few slaves they had left, and, 2. making sure newly freed slaves would be marginalized economically and politically in their home communities, and that nothing in the state’s constitution would encourage fugitive slaves from elsewhere to settle there.”

We’re not done with Lincoln yet. While he opposed slavery, Lincoln did not believe in racial equality in any way, shape, or form. The following quote is from the fourth Lincoln-Douglas debate (the full transcript can be viewed at this National Park Service link.)

“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, not qualifying them to hold office, not to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

The most violent race riot in history actually occurred in Manhattan as a protest to the Union’s draft policy. Freed blacks were exempt from the draft, while whites had to pay $300 to buy their way out of it. Poor whites who couldn’t afford to buy their way out of the draft rioted for four days. This horrific riot resulted in the deaths of as many as 120 people, the lynching of at least 11 blacks, and the assault of many more. 4,000 troops from Gettysburg put down the uprising.

The North was full of raced based legislation in the years immediately post Civil War. The North had segregation laws. Free black men were not allowed to vote in all northern states and some states required that a black man own property in order to have the right to vote. In some states, blacks weren’t allowed to hold public office or testify against a white person in court. Many northern states had restrictions on the number of free blacks that could enter the state while some barred them from entering altogether.

Most important lesson to take away: The “racist, white-supremacist, Southerner” is an ignorant stereotype perpetuated by those who wish to divide the country along a racist boundary that never existed.

Racism has never been a geographical phenomenon. During the Civil Rights movements of the 60’s, we all joined together to promote equality and the vast majority of the population has been united in that endeavor ever since.

Today, white or black supremacist groups and terrorist organizations such as the KKK, BLM, Antifa, and the Black Panthers are all fringe groups. These groups are small in number with loud mouths and violent, attention- getting tactics. The mainstream media love to perpetuate the false narrative that large swathes of the United States population sympathizes with one group or another, and this propaganda is not arbitrary. It’s about time we all recognized this divisive propaganda for what it is- an orchestrated effort to divide us.

Step away from the monuments- the ghosts of the Confederacy are not your foes.