Wavestar, my apologies for being testy. My time at work requires due diligence, and sometimes the brevity, and an increasing level of urgency to just get the thing submitted before the next emergency strikes, causes pungency to become boorishness. (I work in Emergency Management with a specialty in Weapons of Mass Destruction, often abbreviated to NDMS-WMD).

Most of the first submission was the result of research conducted in response to what are called "stipulations" during the Frankhouser case in Boston, Mass in 1987. Stipulations are facts which are agreed to by both sides in order to avoid presenting them at trial and going through unnecessary evidentary hearings on undisputed facts.

In Frankhouser's case, he was trying to present some background that would lessen the impact of his past Klan activities(which included refusing to testify during the HCUAA in the early 60's). He had also been involved in the Pontiac school bus bombings, the Jewelbox bombings in PA ghetto neighborhoods, and the Aerflot office bombing in the early sixties. At the time, I obtained the warrants for his arrest, he was the nominal head of the White Socalist Workers Party which was headquartered in Reading PA (in the "North"). Reading, PA has had a long history of German Bund associations which provided fertile ground for other racist/bigot groups, which as I noted before, had many of the same members.

In the course of researching the proposed stipulations, the prosecution team had to concede those issues in which such proof as the Congressional copy of the Act of Reconcilation, the northern Army of Occupation discipline records, and the written pleas from soldiers about to be shot (capital punishment was swift in those days, one plea went from trial to execution in three weeks).

It was a fascinating period of study which, as I noted above, is never studied by northerners or blacks, yet the record is there. I recently visited the home of Frederick Douglas in Anacostia, D.C in which the walls are covered with ingravings of the numerous Governors Senators and Congressmen elected in the ten years following the Civil War. Many had correspondance with him, and he occasionally chastised them for their graft and sexual license.

He points out in one letter that the Union Army does not head up the black units out of racism, but because the orders are transmitted by handwriting, and the black troops can't read. He further mentions that both his sons are officers in that army, and urges education on the complainants.

No one seems to ask the question how did all these blacks got elected to Federal office in the years following the Civil War, and how did they lose it after ten years of unobstructed sufferage? Ten years is a long time, and I cannot help but feel that here was a missed opportunity to attempt some form of moral reconstruction, which no one, defeated southerner, politically advantaged blacks or victorious northerners, took advantage of.

I have fought a war (Marines, Viet Nam '69) and it was my experience that no one combatant had a clear idea why they were fighting. Some fought because their buddies did, some because their parents raised them "right", others because the prison was the other alternative, or the uniforms could get girls or enhance their otherwise dull lives. SLA Marshall got the closest to my thoughts when he said that, they generally fight for their buddies on either side of the foxhole, and no one else.

Yet, we have individuals who have no doubts (and no clues) as to why these men fought for whatever side. I'm sure there were political, social, economic, and moral reasons for each and every action taken by either side. I'm also sure that some of these reasons were laudable and some were desispicable at the time. But I'm equally certain that those who have not seen the elephant, and portend the motives of those who fought many years before, submit themselves to the knowing glance of those who have.

As I stated in an earlier submission, it's on each individual to seek, find, and understand by themselves. Life's mysteries are not solved by a blue clicky thing.

Again Wavestar, my apologies. My assumptions were no less faultless than yours.