Land Control as Mind Control; J. Chodes

by John Chodes Old Policies Still Plague Us THEFREEMAN IDEASON UBERTY Land Control as Mind Control Crop Research as War Research The year is 1862. The North battles des perately against the seceded South, which is the world's largest cotton producer. The Confederacy shuts off this vital commodity to the North, since it is critical for uniforms, blankets, tents, bandages, and other sup plies. The South also shuts offrice and sugar cane, for food, to the Union armies. Without these basic commodities Washington's war effort is severely hampered. Congress creates a new federal agency, the Department of Agriculture, to solve these lifeand-death issues. In voting for this new agency, Senator Joseph Wright of Indiana stated its purpose clearly: "The cot ton crop of the South cannot reach Northern spindles. Agriculture must furnish a sUbs~i tute by the production of upland cotton In the Ohio Valley. The sugar and molasses of the South have ceased to come forward to the North and agriculture must remedy the difficulty by the rapid production of the Chinese and African cane." 1 Mr. I. Newton, the first Commissioner of the Agriculture Department, echoed this sentiment as soon as this agency became a reality. "The culture of cotton has lately attracted much attention to the free states, especially in Illinois, owing to the rebellion and the consequent scarcity of the staple.

Last summer, as a matter ofexperiment, 300 to 1,000 pounds of cotton were raised per acre, by many farmers in Illinois. This department will take early and active mea sures to induce farmers in Kentucky, Mis souri, Southern Illinois, Indiana, and Kan sas-all of which states will undoubtedly produce cotton-to tum their attention to the culture of this important staple.,,2 By 1864 the Commissioner reported that cotton, in Illinois, showed a 40 percent increase and "Sorghum and Imphee [sugar cane substitutes] and the dissemination of the seeds of these plants by the Agriculture Department has been worth millions of dol lars to the country, especially to the middle and western states. ,,3Mr. Chodes is the Communications Director for Also: "Flax fiber can, by mechanical,the Libertarian Party of New York City. Can a Southern farmer's alleged racist values be transformed into "progressive"

thinking (by Washington's standards) through changes in what he plants? Can the development of new strains of crops, which can flourish despite extremes in temperature, re-educate that same farmer away from being an extremist (by Washing ton's standards) in his thinking? The answers are "yes" and this story shows how the federal government's poli cies concerning supposed Southern racism at the end of the Civil War directly relate to major contemporary infringements on prop erty rights that are constantly in the head lines today. The legislative mechanism set in motion to end racism in the 1860shas never stopped. It is still expanding and today we can see the consequences in several ways: in the ever-expanding government attacks on urban and rural property rights through illegal, unconstitutional direct confiscation and forced control of land use. And in the colossal subsidies to agriculture that have pushed up prices and pushed out most small farmers and created a gigantic, nationalized, monopolistic "agribusiness."

Let us begin our story at the beginning. 93 94 THE FREEMAN • FEBRUARY 1995 chemical or other means, be converted into flax cotton of a substitute quality for use as a substitute for cotton in the mills of our country. The vast amount invested in the mills (nearly $100 million) and the absolute necessity of production . . . (create) the strongest claim upon the attention of the people and the government.,,4 Gradually a national policy emerged to break the North's dependence on cotton: "During the continuance of the War of the Rebellion, a great augmentation of the wool demand has attended the fitting out of more than a millionof armed men, whose clothing is almost exclusively of wool. And when the war is over, men who have been accus tomed to flannels and woolen garments in the field will, from choice, if not from necessity, continue their use in the work shop and on the farm." And "King Cotton has been dethroned, and his sudden toppling from his place of pride will not only destroy his political prestige, dim materially the luster of his commercial fame and detract from his industrial importance, but other textile products will be patronized, experi mented upon and their use rendered fash ionable. ,,5 All this represented the opening phase of federal control of agricultural output by commanding farmers what to plant.

Educational research was another sur prising area that the Department of Agricul ture would investigate: "Every farmer should aim to be instructed . . . because knowledge is power and it is the highest wisdom of political economy to invest largely in schools.... the farmer should have taste to appreciate and enjoy the beau tiful in nature and art. ,,6 Could "appreciat ingart and beauty" be a metaphorical policy statement about converting racist farmer's minds? Education as War Research Where did the Agriculture Department find the biologists, chemists, and scientists needed to find cotton and sugar substitutes? This was an era when most Americans only had grade school educations. In response to this as well as for scientists for weapons research, Congress enacted a gigantic national-scale college level educa tion program. The Morrill Act granted 30,000acres of federal land to each state in the Union for each Congressman, for train ing in "agricultural and mechanic arts."

Several legislators saw the dangerous, anti-democratic precedent that the Morrill Act was setting and argued against its pas sage. Senator George Pugh of Ohio: "It is as much a violation of our duty to invade the province of our state governments under the head of donations as it would to invade it by force and violence.,,7 Senator James Mason of Virginia added: "Sir, to my conception, it is one of the most extraordinary engines of mischief, under the guise of gratuities and donations, that I could conceive would originate in the Sen ate. It is using the public lands as a means of controlling the policy of the state legisla tures. . . . it is doing it in the worst and most insidious forms-by bribery, and bribery of the worst kind; for it is an unconstitutional robbing of the treasury for the purpose of bribing the states.,,8 When originally enacted, the Agriculture Department and the Morrill Act seemed to be two separate entities. But they would be connected: "The agriculture and mechanic colleges are destined to be powerful co adjutors in the legitimate work of this de partment [Agriculture]. . . . elevating the vocation of the farmer and giving him sci entific as well as practical instruction in his pursuits. ,'9 Land Control as Mind Control It was 1865. The Civil War was over.

There seemed to be no more need for new crop research .. Yet, while Reconstruction had begun, the war wounds had not healed. The rebels, although defeated, still believed in "The Cause" and that "The South will rise again!" This caused great concern in Washington, which nowfocused on how to re-educate the rebels so that they would never again se cede.

LAND CONTROL AS MIND CONTROL 95 Senator Charles Sumner of Massachu setts: "Such is the mood in the South now, that education willenter into every measure of Reconstruction. ,,10 General Lorenzo Thomas testified before a Congressional Committee concerning the postwar attitude of the former rebels. Sen ator Robert Baldwin asked him: "Do you have any reason to believe that the rebels still entertain hopes of another outbreak?" Thomas: [They plan to] "do all in their power to involve the United States in a foreign war, so that if a favorable opportu nity should offer itself, they might tum against the United States. . . . their desire is to re-establish the Southern Confedera cy. ,,11 Representative Ignatius Donnelly of Min nesota said: "The great bulk of the people of the South are rude, illiterate, semi-civilized . . . and. . . republican government, resting on intelligent judgement of the people, [is] an impossibility." 12 This meant education controlled by Washington. It meant federal money for new schools, creating new "progressive"

textbooks and nationalizing existing South ern school systems. Congressional Recon struction policy forced new constitutions on all the former rebel states, including the provision for tax-supported free schools, to be supervised forever by the federal gov ernment. Senator Charles Sumner again: "Shall the Southern states still be controlled by the men and the policy that have already brought ruin and disgrace, poverty and star vation upon them; or shall they adopt the policy of the enlightened states of the North . . . and secure universal education and free schools with their inevitable accompani ments of enterprise, equality, wealth, tem perance, morality, religion, public, private, and domestic happiness." 13 Simultaneously Washington formulated another re-education plan for the South. Congress saw in the word "cotton" the living metaphor for why the war began and why the spirit of rebellion would not be extinguished. Cotton endlessly reminded Southerners of the philosophies that drove them to secede: slave labor, states' rights, restrictions of government power, and free trade. These views had been repudiated as the postwar United States became a cen tralized, protectionist world leader. Thus, cotton would have to be diffusedamong new crops and its geographic position trans formed to end Southern "reactionary" per spectives.

This statement indirectly says that cotton caused the rebellion: "In the reorganization of the Southern states, it is believed that the great mistake of the past, the concentration of labor mainly upon a single branch of a singlegrand division of productive industry, (cotton) will be avoided. This mistake has cost that section one-half the wealth it might have attained and may have led to the sacrificein war of the remainder. . . . diver sification must be applied to reorganized Southern agriculture. . . . cotton will never again overshadow and dwarf other interests essential to permanent success in agricul ture. ,,14 During the war a Confiscation Act al lowed the military to take the property of "traitors." Cotton plantations were expro priated since cotton was held responsible for the rebellion. Representative Justin Morrill of Ver mont: "[The Confiscation Act] proceeds from the assumption that the insurrection is incited by a faction in the slave states, holders of the vast proportion of the prop erty and slaves in these states, that this property and these slaves constitute the incentive and form the material base of the rebellion; and that therefore it becomes the right and the duty of the nation, from the height of its extreme authority, to award the penalty of condemnation of estates and forfeiture of control of persons to those who conspire against the government and make war on its authority." 15 The Commissioner of the Agriculture Department allegorically stated the need to diffuse Southern crops to transform South ern minds: "[In] the great Chinese Empire, hundreds of thousands have perished mis erably because of the failure, in certain sections, of the rice crop, on which alone 96 THE FREEMAN • FEBRUARY 1995 they depend for subsistence. This enforces most emphatically the wisdom of diversity of agricultural products. ,,16 The master plan for enforced geographic crop redistribution came from a new section of the Agriculture Department. It was eu phemistically called the Division of Orni thology and Mammology. Its stated objec tive was to "enable our farmers to select the crops best suited to their localities . . .

agriculture and biology must be studied from the geographic standpoint. . . . our aim is to explain the distribution of animals and plants by means of knowledge of the conditions which govern this distribu tion.,,17 Was racism one condition which governed this distribution? To fulfill this grand plan, the Morrill experiment stations and the Agriculture De partment once again fused their operations but now on a permanent basis: "National legislation has been proposed [The Hatch Act] to extend the work of experimental agriculture, establishing it in every state. . . believing that the Department of Agriculture can become a vitalizing center, for a more general cooperative effort for the promotion of agricultural science ... I have endeav ored . . . to organize a branch of this de partment to take charge of the returns from these colleges and (experiment) stations and to collate and distribute the information obtained for the benefit of all interested parties. ,,18 Cotton, Abandoned Land, and Refugees Congress developed five simultaneous policies to erase "cotton" from the South ern mind.

1. Cotton would be raised by non-South erners in the South. 2. Southerners would be forced to plant new "mentally noninflammatory" crops. 3. The South would be repopulated with Northerners to defuse racism and rebel lion. 4. The South would be repopulated with European immigrants. 5. "Racists" would be deported to North ern states to live with "progressive" ideals. To administer this all-encompassing na tional program, an appendage to the War Department was created: The Freedmen's Bureau. Supposedly it had the great human itarian objective of helping the emancipated slaves develop the skills to survive in a competitive marketplace. But this new agency's full title gives a truer picture of its role in the ongoing saga of cotton, land, and racism: "The Bureau of Freedmen, Abandoned Lands and Refu gees." This shows the extent of its jurisdic tion; over four million ex-slaves and over tens of millions of whites (the "refugees"

supposedly displaced by the war). The "Abandoned Lands" referred to the mil lions of acres of private property illegally confiscated as abandoned when the Union army forcibly captured it or evicted or killed the owners. Thousands of Southerners were accused of being traitors and convicted without a jury trial, then jailed or executed and their property seized. The Freedmen's Bureau became a reality in the final stages of the war and its wide spread powers were completely unconstitu tional during peace time. Senator James Doolittle of Wisconsin, in voting for it, said: "This whole bill is a kind of war measure, a war necessity. If peace existed in these states, no one pretends that we could exercise any such powers (confis cation) either over the people of these states or over the property within these states. It is of necessity, temporary in character." 19 Yet the Freedmen's Bureau existed for many years beyond the end of the war. In fact, as we shall see, its demise is uncertain because it was partially funded without Congressional approval or taxpayer knowl edge.

Senator Thomas Hendricks of Indiana showed· the dangers that this new agency posed: "I don't believe that the Congress of the United States has the power to take charge of a portion of the community . . . such a power would swallow up a very large LAND CONTROLAS MIND CONTROL 97 extent a ve,ry important portion of the pow ers enjoyed by the states. (Mr. Hendricks read section two of the Freedmen's Bureau bill:) 'The Commissioner shall have author ity ... to create departments of freedmen. ' A new division of the country! ... the states are to be cut up and to be placed under the charge of commissioners . . . here is a government within a government . . . inde pendent of the states and almost indepen dent of the ordinary machinery of the federal government, there shall be a government established for the control of the inhabitants of a particular class . . . the colored people that may become free, to be under the super vision, to a large extent, of these superin tendents. And yet they are to be free!,,2o The Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau was Oliver Otis Howard, a Union army general. Here he describes his agen cy's enormous power: "The law establish ing the bureau committed it to 'the control of all subjects relating to the refugees and freedmen from rebel states' . . . this almost unlimited authority gave me great scope and liberty of action ... legislative,judicial, and executive powers were combined in my commission . .. (I controlled) all aban doned land solely for the purpose of assign ing, leasing or selling them to refugees and freedmen ... of the nearly 800,000acres of farming land and about 5,000pieces of town property transferred to the bureau by (the) military . . . enough was leased to produce a revenue of nearly $400,000. ,,21 General Howard is talking about this one year only. Another report showed that an nual revenues generated were over $2 mil lion. By today's standards that is more like $2 billion.

This power also extended, unconstitu tionally, into the North. The brutality of martial law and the confiscation of property reached into the Union in peace time. Sen ator Hendricks: "I believe (The Freedmen's Bureau) has extended its jurisdiction over the states not within the provision of the law. 1believe Kentucky [a Union state] has been brought within the scope of its gov ernment, when the law did not contemplate it and did not allow it. I believe the District of Columbia has been a province within its government and control and 1think the law did not contemplate or allow that . . . this irresponsible sub-government . . . (is) upon the people of the entire United States by a body of men protected by the military power of the government." (Mr. Hendricks dis cussed the eighth amendment of the Freed men's Bureau bill; court martial tribunals for citizens, in peace time, in all states of the Union:) "Now that peace is restored, now that there is no war, now that men are no longer under military rule, I want to know how such a (military) court can be orga nized; how is it that a citizen can be arrested without indictment and brought before of ficers of this bureau without a trial, tried without the forms which the Constitution requires. ,,22 Replanting as Re-Education Reforming the Southern mind meant re placing cotton with new crops. John Stokes, Commissioner of the Agriculture Depart ment said: "The distribution, under the special appropriation of $50,000, to be ex pended in seeds for the Southern states, was promptly and fully made in accordance with the views and intentions of Congress, through specific agents, sent through the Southern states, postmasters, prominent citizens and the officers and agents of the Freedmen's Bureau . . . these states can produce every article grown in the higher latitudes . . . [and] cotton, sugar, hemp, rice. ,,23 Under a false and ironic sentiment of charity, Congress passed a resolution "For the Relief of the Destitute of the Southern and Southwestern states." This actually reflected the forcing of new crops into those states: "This resolution proposes to em power the Secretary of War to issue supplies of food (and also seeds) to prevent starva tion and extreme want among all the classes of the people of the Southern and South western states, where a failure of the crops or other causes have occasioned wide spread destitution; the issues are to be made through the Freedmen's Bureau. ,,24 This 98 THE FREEMAN • FEBRUARY 1995 Baling cotton in the Old South is misleading since cotton and tobacco, not food, were the main crops of the South. This is verified by Representative Fernando Wood of New York, in his comments about this resolution: "In a recent visit I made to the Southern states. . . during which I made it my duty to observe the Southern people in a very large portion of the Atlantic South ern states, I saw no such destitution as has been described. I saw no class of people ...

who would make application to Congress for alms or would acknowledge themselves as paupers and dependents upon the General Government for aid or support.' ,25 Repopulation as Re-Education A vast Northern population was trans planted into the South to farm cotton and "non-racist" crops. This required far reaching brute force. It meant breaking up the huge cotton plantations. into fragments for small-scale individual family farming. Representative George Julian of Indiana: (There is an) "Incompatibility of this system of land monopoly with the wellbeing and safety of Republican institutions and (we) should doom it to immediate annihilation. ... who can doubt that if the 200 or 300,000 honorably discharged soldiers now in the North were settled on the forfeited estates in Tennessee, Arkansas, Virginia and wher ever our armies occupy . . . form a reserve corps to our army. . . such a population. . .

would stand as abreakwater against (which) any returning tide of rebellion might dash itself in vain.,,26 This required indicting Southerners as traitors and confiscating their property. John Henderson of Missouri grasped the consequences: "I have no objection to con fiscating the property of the rebel . . . let it be done when guilt has been established under the forms ofjudicial investigation. . . if we depart from (the Constitution's) just restraints, no man can tell the excesses of the future . . . in the plenitude of power today, we may deny mercy to others; to morrow we ourselves may cling in vain to the horns of the altar. . . the inventor of the guillotine, we are told, was so forced to test the merits of his own invention.' ,27 LAND CONTROL AS MIND CONTROL 99 Mass Nationalization The Freedmen's Bureau became the cen tral agency for this mass nationalizing of Southern and Northern property. By the 1890s "nearly 2 million of farms of 80 acres each in the United States had been given away by the government. ,,28 Census data demonstrates the efficiency of confiscation·and the breaking up of large plantations. In the South Atlantic states in 1860there were 301,940farms. By 1900 this had been transformed into 962,295farms. In 1860 there were 370,373farms in the South Central states. By 1900 this had become 1,658,166farms.29 Presented another way, the census data showed how confiscation was responsible for drastically reducing the size of property holdings. In 1860 the average number of acres per farm was 352.8, in the South Atlantic states. This had been reduced to 108.4 by 1900. In the South Central states, in 1860,that figure was 321.3. By 1900it had dropped to 155.4.30 President Andrew Johnson pointed out the consequences when the military is given the power to confiscate property without civil restraint: "The power thus given to the Commanding Officerover all the people. . .

is that of an absolute monarch. He alone is permitted to determine what rights of per sons or property . . . it places at his disposal all the lands and goods in his district and he may distribute them without let or hindrance to whom he pleases. Being bound by no state law, and there being no other law to regulate the subject, he may make a criminal code of his own, and he can make it as bloody as any recorded in history.... Ev erything is a crime which he chooses to call so and persons are condemned who he pronounces to be guilty ... he may arrest his victims wherever he finds them, without warrant, accusation or proof of probable cause.... Congress [has authorized] mili tary jurisdiction over all parts of the United States containing refugees and freedmen [with] ... no limitation in point of time, but will form a permanent legislation of the country. ,,31 Confiscation as Bill of Attainder Permanent confiscation of a traitor's property is unconstitutional. It is a Bill of Attainder, a medieval legal weapon that destroys both property and civil rights. It was an inherent part of the Confiscation Act.

Senator Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania illu minated the process: "Shall we go back to the doctrine of forfeiture which marks the Middle Ages? ... The number engaged in the rebellion [is] equal to one-half of the whole population of the Confederate states; say 4 millions ... if so, to strip all this vast number of people of all their property . . . will reduce them at once to absolute pover ty. . . . if there was anything calculated (to make them) forever hostile to us, it would be the enactment of such a law . . . [The Constitution provides that] 'The Congress has power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture, ex cept during the life of the person attained.' Here is an attempt to deprive a large class of persons of all their property without any arrest, without any presentment by a grand jury, without a trial by a petit jury, without indeed any trial at all in any court ... Bills of Attainder forfeited [traitors'] estates and corrupted the inheritable blood of the chil dren and heirs (by compelling them) to bear the disgrace attendant upon such flagitious crimes ... one of the strongest incentives to prosecute treason has been the chance of sharing in the plunder of the victims.,,32 Immigration as Re-Education To disperse dangerous Southern "reac tionaries, " some of their confiscated land was to be resettled by European immi grants. This began with new legislation, The Immigration Act of 1864. Senator John Sherman of Ohio introduced it this way: "The bill provides for the appointment . . .

of an officer to be styled the Commissioner of Immigration, [who will] collect ... in formation in regard to . . . the wants of agriculture . . . and to disseminate such 100 THE FREEMAN • FEBRUARY 1995 information throughout Europe ... [He] is to make contacts with different railroad and transportation companies for transportation tickets to be furnished to the immigrants to enable them to proceed in the cheapest and most expeditious manner to the place of their destination, or where this is undeter mined by the immigrant, to the place where his labor will be most profitable.,,33 Justin Morrill saw a darker side to this bill: "We import everything else, now we have come to the importation of men. [There is] an apprehension in the public mind that this was another species of slavery. ',34 Senator Reverdy Johnson of Maryland showed how the immigrant was locked into staying on a specific property for a definite period: "The Immigration Act ... says to the man in Europe. who wishes to come to the United States but has not the means of coming of his own, [that Washington will advance him the fare] to be paid back within 12 months; and shall be a lien at all times upon any real estate which he may acquire, so as to constitute it in the nature of a mortgage. "35 Barnas Sears, the General Agent for the Peabody Education Fund, observed this Southern immigration: "The tide of immi gration into (Texas) is constantly swelling.

While I was there, every steamer that ar rived was crowded with immigrants . . . they came from almost every part of Europe . . . the Germans are the most numerous . . . large communities of them are settling in the Western portions of the state. ,,36 By the 1870s immigration reached tidal wave proportions. "Net immigration of the last 8 years: 2,792,383.,,37 "The era of substantial progress for the South may indeed be said to have com menced with the termination of the war, which obliterated the system of compulsory labor and the monopoly of production of great landed proprietors . . . the division of lands into small tracts . . . (will) attract the immigration which is the invigorating life of states. ,,38 Justin Morrill also pointed out that en forced immigration would further distort the power balance between the federal and state governments. The Bureau of Im migration, Morrill said, would "encourage migration from the populations of Europe, by the authority of the general government, the distribution of which is contemplated by this bill to be made in all sections of the country . . . without the slightest refer ence to consulting the states upon the sub ject. ,,39 Relocation as Re-Education Another way to transform the Southern racist mind away from the siren song of cotton, was to relocate them in the North.

General John Eaton of the Freedmen's Bu reau, and later Commissioner of the Bureau of Education, noted: "Cairo (Illinois) ... served as a portal through which thousands of poor whites and negroes were sent into the loyal states as fast as opportunities offered for providing them with homes and employment. Many of these became perma nent, residents . . . [Those who refused to work] were kept under military surveillance and guided authoritatively toward some def inite means of self-support . . . the educa tional influences of the change was notice able and most important . . . Returning South, after perhaps a year's absence, to the neighborhood of their former homes . . . [the] transformation through living in the midst of the industries of the North was really very great. They had made the dis covery that the possession of a vast property and the ownership of slaves . . . was not essential either to self-respect or social standing. ,,40 Senator Charles Buckalew of Pennsylva nia presented the other side. The Freed men's Bureau, he said, "contemplates the distribution of this population [refugees and former slaves] throughout the whole coun try and in our Northern states . . . [They] may object to such an exertion of power or rather a perversion of power by this gov ernment . . . I think the proposition, upon the mere statement of it, ··is so monstrous, and in its effects, so pernicious, that it ought to receive no favor or indulgence from this body.,,41 The Foundation for Economic Education Irvington-on-Hudson, New York 10533 Tel. (914) 591-7230 Fax (914) 591-8910 February 1995 Social Security P oliticians love it because it buys votes and re-elections. They fear it because it may spell defeat and ruin to those who dare to question its meaning and reflect upon its conse quences. It raises all kinds of political double-talkers who falter every time it is merely mentioned.