One year ago today: November 18, 2022, human resources, my eye.
Five years ago today: November 18, 2018, Castle Rock, every 30 years.
Nine years ago today: November 18, 2014, $60k per year, in Hawaii.
Random years ago today: November 18, 2015, one is too many.
My longest-term readers know an interruption means action over here. The Friday blog is written on Saturday and the Reb is due out of the hospital. The pets have been my focus and part of that is because I have no aptitude for being a caregiver. I shopped for basics and that meant mainly pet food that rang up $123. The pets, the dogs first, take 48 hours to adjust. According to the Reb, I'm the only person they will leave the house with unless she shunts them out the door. The snag to day is that although we knew she'd be out of the hospital, they did not say when. So I took to raking more leaves. Three hours.
We got home still morning and I've got a case of the sniffles from the Tennessee Sneezing Library. That's where people with communicable diseases who never learning to cover their mouths when coughing go to spread their diseases. Those are the only strangers I've been within 15 feet of. I picked something up, that's all that the Reb needs is the potential for getting a cold on top of things.
By noon, still no Reb, so we opted for the big siesta. Ah, finally, around 4:30PM. She's home with a cast this big. Now we have a curious situation. 100% of my caregiver experience is with pets and not people. And usually pets I can lift. This means I'm only temporary help. I'm able to make small meals and bake, but that's not going to suffice and not for very long.
I've begun a new book written by Jefferson Davis. He discusses his views on the situation before the Civil War and makes it quite clear that slavery was not the issue. By far, this is the most detailed personal account I've ever read and it is an real eye-opener concerning the crap we've been told in the history books. If I have time later, I'll specify things he points out that are more than relevant today. For now, just the things that shock or impress me, since the Southern viewpoint is largely suppressed to the point of blanket censorship.
The Constitution makes it clear only free White men can be citizens, so any contrary "laws" and doctrines that purport otherwise have absolutely no sway when it comes to the way the States became united. Congress has only the powers delegated to it in the Constitution and the ownership of African slaves was not mentioned. However, since the slaves were property, Congress was tasked with the obligation to support property owners of any kind. The booklet is privately published with no ISBN number, so you may have to be patient to see it until I get back to my scanner.
Be assured the issue is very complex, but not by itself. It is complicated by northeastern politicians (same as today) constantly trying to angle every law, tariff, tax, rule, or guideline in a manner that benefits them over the rest of the country. Hence, one of the primary causes of the Civil War was taxes which favored the industrial north and fell mainly on the agricultural south, who were often the final consumers. Worse, many of the abolitionists were fakes, says Davis. They pretended to be anti-slavery but only where the South was concerned. Most slaves were brought in by orthern merchants on northern ships.
This is where the "Missouri Compromise" gets attention. Once again, the issue was not the slaves. By the early 1800s most "slave" states already had legislation pending to end the practice, but until then, Congress was obligated by conditions of joining the Union that they would protect private property.
The country was growing and expanding west. Any citizen was free to move west and take with him any of his possessions. However, the agitators from the New York and New Hampshire areas managed to get a line beyond which Southeners who owned slaves were not able to settle with their slaves. The fact this was enforced by the Federal government, was proof to the South that the North intended to use their majority of one state to surrender State rights to the Federal government. And that was not part of the deal when they joined the Union. Now, the same faction was trying to prevent the south from gaining new states out of the new territories of the Louisiana Purchase. The conflict was not about slavery, but professional troublemakers in the north pushing to have limits placed on southern expansion for their own benefits. They knew what would happen to their precious factories if the south ever got rich enough to begin their own industrialization.
Davis also gives many examples of how the northeast states were using less-than-ethical means as a deliberate policy of gaining advantabes for themselves, which persists to this day. For example, where Statehood was granted to territories where sufficient people had a common purpose, a new political party in Washington (called Democrats) were pushing Federal laws than the common purpose had to fit their definitions only.
