Preparedness Notes for Sunday — August 23, 2020

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August 23rd is the anniversary of the declaration of the independent state of “Franklin” in Eastern Tennessee — bordering western North Carolina and Virginia — by the settlers there in 1784. Unfortunately, the Continental Congress rejected it, so the state of Franklin never became a reality.

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In 1833, Britain abolished slavery in the colonies and 700,000 slaves were freed. I can’t help but wonder; Had Abraham Lincoln allowed the political process to run its course, as it did in England, and slavery was abolished by the will of the people, as it would have been, rather than executive order, would we have the racial tensions we have today?

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SurvivalBlog Writing Contest

Today we present another entry for Round 90 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. A gift certificate from Quantum Harvest LLC (up to a $2,200 value) good for 12% off the purchase of any of their sun-tracking models, and 10% off the purchase price of any of their other models.
  2. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any of their one, two, or three-day course (a $1,095 value),
  3. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses, excluding those restricted for military or government teams. Three-day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
  4. DRD Tactical is providing a 5.56 NATO QD Billet upper. These have hammer forged, chrome-lined barrels and a hard case, to go with your own AR lower. It will allow any standard AR-type rifle to have a quick change barrel. This can be assembled in less than one minute without the use of any tools. It also provides a compact carry capability in a hard case or in 3-day pack (a $1,100 value),
  5. Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Resources (a $350 value),
  6. A $250 gift certificate good for any product from Sunflower Ammo,
  7. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses.

Second Prize:

  1. A Front Sight Lifetime Diamond Membership, providing lifetime free training at any Front Sight Nevada course, with no limit on repeating classes. This prize is courtesy of a SurvivalBlog reader who prefers to be anonymous.
  2. A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, that have a combined retail value of $589,
  3. A Three-Day Deluxe Emergency Kit from Emergency Essentials (a $190 value),
  4. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value).
  5. An assortment of products along with a one-hour consultation on health and wellness from Pruitt’s Tree Resin (a $265 value).

Third Prize:

  1. Three sets each of made-in-USA regular and wide-mouth reusable canning lids. (This is a total of 300 lids and 600 gaskets.) This prize is courtesy of Harvest Guard (a $270 value)
  2. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
  3. Naturally Cozy is donating a “Prepper Pack” Menstrual Kit.  This kit contains 18 pads and it comes vacuum-sealed for long term storage or slips easily into a bugout bag.  The value of this kit is $220.
  4. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC,
  5. A transferable $150 purchase credit from Elk Creek Company, toward the purchase of any pre-1899 antique gun. There is no paperwork required for delivery of pre-1899 guns into most states, making them the last bastion of firearms purchasing privacy!

Round 90 ends on September 30th, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how-to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.


14 Comments

  1. It’s hard to say what was actually possible in 1861 to prevent the Civil War/War of Northern Aggression. I’m not convinced that Lincoln had sufficient control of that tiger to stop it when he took the oath of office, nevermind the actual will to do anything to stop it. But one thing’s for sure, he did precious little to attempt to stop the rush to war. He could have stepped down from that platform and caught the next train to Montgomery to sit down with Jeff Davis and make an “honest Abe” effort to work things out, but he did not. The 700,000 slaves freed by the English were approximately matched by the six to eight hundred thousand Americans killed in the Civil War, depending on who’s counting.

    Lincoln’s biggest error, however, may have been an abject failure to plan for what to do with all those slaves after they were freed. We’re still paying the price for that plan to fail even today, with no end in sight.

    And yes, I know full well that there were other causations of the Civil War besides just the issue of slavery. The economic tyranny of the North was huge. I had kin who fought on both sides and some got killed proving whatever point they were trying to make, and I honor that commitment, no matter what it was. But anyone who thinks that slavery wasn’t a major cause is simply living in an alternative universe, not this one.

  2. There is a lot of money to be made by encouraging the racial divide. Those that control the organizations that create and/or amplify the fractures between the races know well how to manipulate and monetize society’s response. A few at the top benefit; the foot soldiers on the ground get nothing as they fight for a cause that must have a steady stream of real and perceived injustices to keep the revenue flowing. This side of the battle for racial equality will never go away and in my opinion doesn’t have anything to do with the civil war. Yes, we still have some work to do on race relations in some areas of the country. Reasonable men and women who sit down and talk find out that they really don’t have as many differences to work through as the media makes the gullible masses believe. Such reasonable approaches do not feed the monsters behind the scenes that need division and violence to thrive.

  3. Lincoln was beyond question the worst president this country has every had. He’s only been deified by the powers that be so they can propagandize us all into believing in a strong centralized government. I wonder how many people catch the sheer hypocrisy in the Gettysburg Address. We all memorized it in grade school but most of us missed the obvious.

    “…this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

    “…unless you’re one of those disgusting hillbilly southerners who talk funny and eat weird stuff like okra and pork rinds. We’re not talking about you.” THAT’S what the Gettysburg address was saying. All Southerners wanted was a government of the Southern people, by the Southern people, for the Southern people. Hopefully they’ll get it some day.

    And the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free a single slave in the six states and parts of two others that had sided with the north. Believing that the Civil War was about slavery is another lie we’re taught in schools to deflect us from the more obvious truth that the South deserved to have their own government if they so desired.

    1. St.Funogas… The War of Northern Aggression…The Emancipation Proclamation did not occur until 2 years AFTER the war began…. as I told my students when I taught—don’t let school get in the way of your education !!!

      1. ThoDan: You are correct to a point. But the folks that most wanted slavery to continue were the northern mercantilist class. It was they who profited most from slavery. Besides the fact that prior to 1808, the slave trade filtered through northern ports first, slavery kept the southern states from industrializing, For the most part it was taxes that forced the south ern states out of the union. The southern states were paying for roughly 80% of the costs of maintaining the government in Washington, DC.

        The southern states had already peacefully seceded by the time Lincoln took office. The northern merchantilist class was terrified of the free-trade zone that had been established by the Confederate Constitution. Lincoln was the tool of the northern merchantilists, bought and paid for by the northern railroad tycoons. Prior to his winning the election of 1860, Lincoln was their lobbyist in Washington, DC.

        There is a lot more to this story than we have been told. This is why revisionist history is so important, as long as it is being revised back to the truth of what actually happened.

        1. Prior 1808 isn´t 1860, it wasn´t the north who fired on Fort Sumter.
          That the protection and support of slavery was a major point for the cotton states, i was being told by more than one historian, AFAIK it was written in their constitutions.
          Historians not fairy tale tellers

          1. Historians not fairy tale tellers:
            It kind of depends on the historian and his or her political agenda. The main reason for the southern secession were the horrendous taxes being charged for everything, coming in and going out. It wasn’t called the “Tariff of Abominations” as a catchy slogan. Slavery was already dying on the vine and, left alone, would have ended of it’s own dead weight in short order. Socialism is always very expensive and the ultimate recipient of socialism is the slave. Socialism is Slavery.

            Prior 1808 isn´t 1860, it wasn´t the north who fired on Fort Sumter.:
            You are correct it wasn’t the north who fired on Fort Sumpter. However, the union forces were arming Fort Sumpter to the teeth, and in 1861 Fort Sumpter was a union fort on foreign soil. South Carolina had already peacefully seceded. So the union forces were an invading force on foreign soil. The purpose was to enforce the payment of tariffs at the point of a gun and to goad the south into firing the first shots. As an aside, the very same tactic that FDR used on the Japanese prior to our entry into WW2, enforce draconian sanctions and goad them into firing the first shots.

            Further, on the day the first shots were fired, there was a delegation from the Confederacy in Washington to negotiate for the assumption of their share of the national debt and for the peaceful turnover of those selfsame union forts that were on Confederate soil. It was indeed the War of Northern Aggression or the War for Southern Independence.

          2. Honestly german historians ´ve next to no political agenda in this ACW, except their personal reputation.

            Slavery was dying:
            Serfdom was dead in Europe while slavery took a very long time dying in the US, it was so in it´s death throes that the Royal Navy hunted down slave traders to the lands of dixie.
            1858 Slaves brought from Africa to the US, were interned in Sumter before they were transported to Liberia
            The tariffs were on imported goods.

            No they weren´t an invading force on foreign soil, they were an force stationed on what soil?
            Federal Soil the Fort was legally owned by the US not SC.
            So i don´t see any legal standing for taking Fort Sumter.

            Honestly the stupidity of firing and not blockading Fort Sumter bogles my mind, the south ´d thrown the gauntlet in the Unions Faceand then the Union grind down the south
            The men who fired on Fort Sumter slaughtered the Confederation

    3. “Lincoln was beyond question the worst president this country has every had.”
      30 years ago I would have said: You are plain wrong!
      20 years ago I might have said: That’s not quite right.
      10 years ago I possibly would have said: I’m not real sure about that.
      NOW I say: You are absolutely correct!

      I used to hear him called “Honest Abe”, but now I think of him as “Dishonest Abe”. Unfortunately very few Americans really know how he sunk the posterity of this great land.

  5. ummm i had people on both sides of the war too. the war did NOT start off about slaves but about 2 years into it became that very issue with the proclamation. but that wasn’t the real issue the real issue was keeping the union together. in the bigger picture we had the spanish american war coming WWI and WWII IF we had not been a complete union terrible things may have happened like NAZI germany taking over the known world IF Abe hadn’t saved the union we could all be speaking japanese and german right now. that said i would have fought for the south had i been there…

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