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8 , THE WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN A Newspaper Devoted to the Advocacy of the Jeffersonian Theory of Government. PUBLISHED BY THOS. E. WATSON and J. D. WATSON Editors and Proprietors Austell Building, Atlanta, Ga. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE - . $i oo PER YEAR. Advertising Rates Furnished on Application. Entered at Postoffice, Atlanta, Ga., January 11, I()O7, as second class mail matter ATLANTA, GA., THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1907 At Last it is to be Called the Cibil War and Not the War of the 'Rebellion. For publication in the first number of the New York Watson Magazine the Socialist book-writer, Mr. W. J. Ghent, offered a most interesting article entitled “The Butcheries of Peace.” Tn this, he compared the loss of life in the various battles of the Civil War to the annual slaughter which we endure at the hands of our corporation bosses who operate our pub lic roads for their private profit. ' As often as it became necessary for him to refer to The Civil War, it pleased Mr. W. J. Ghent to call it The War of the Rebellion. I told him that no such term could be used in my magazine, and I struck it out. The term was never correct. It was always used more as an expression of sectional hatred than of historical description.. Alexander H. Stephens was quite accurate in calling this great conflict “The War be tween the States.” It bore to a greater extent the character of a war between the states, North and South, than of a civil war, dividing the people throughout the country. During the month of January 1907, Con gress was asked to admit to the pension rolls all of those who had served ninety days in the military or naval service of the union in The Civil War. The usual phraseology of “War of the Rebellion” had been used in the original draft of the bill. The entire South owes a vote of thanks to Senator Carmack, of Tennessee, for his cour age in making a successful stand against this insulting epithet. It was he who moved to strike out “War of the Rebellion” and to sub stitute “Civil War.” Senator Money, of Mississippi, suggested that the strife between the North and South should be described as the war between the states. Said he: “It was in no sense a civil war. It was a war between sovereign states.” Mr. McCumber and others dissented from Senator Money’s view and recalled the fact that “in Kentucky, Missouri, and other border states, the population was divided, sending men to both sides, so that it was in the strict est sense, a civil war.” Nevertheless, Senator Money was absolute ly correct in his contention that it was a war between sovereign states. While it is true that some of the individual citizens of Georgia, the Carolinas, Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia and other Southern states joined the Union Army and fought beneath the old flag, yet it is also a fact that each state of the South which went into the Southern Confederacy THE WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN. acted in its capacity of sovereign state, voting itself out of the union by state action. Had there been in each state throughout the union a division of the people into two great warring factions, one for the government and the other against it, the war would have been both a rebellion and a civil war. But, inas much as each state which made up the South ern Confederacy went into it by state action and as a state organization, just as they had gone into the Union itself or into the old Con federation, the conflict was between Southern states going out of the union and those North ern, Eastern and Western states which re mained in the union. The mere fact that thousands of Southern people fought against the Southern Confed eracy has no more to do with changing the character of the war than the action of the Tories during the Revolutionary War had to do with the true character of that struggle for independence. Consequently, it would really have been bet ter had Senator Money’s term of “War ‘be tween the States” been accepted. But the fact that Senator Carmack could secure the adoption of his designation “Civil War” as a substitute for the old false and in sulting term, “War of the Rebellion,” is suffi cient to gratify the whole South. Really, it is a wonder that Southern Sena tors and representatives have so long submit ted to what was so palpably untrue and offen sive. M * A Curious Literary Forgery. As our readers know, we have been publish ing for some time, one after the other, the sketches in that rare old book, “Georgia Scenes.” One of these sketches published some time ago is called by the author “Geor gia Theatrics.” It is usually alluded to in conversation as the sketch in which a Lincoln County man who was “jist sein how I could ’a’ fout.” Perhaps, there is no one of the sketches in “Georgia Scenes” better known than this. The old people will tell you that the hero of the story was a man by the name of one of whose grandsons is now a minister of good standing in one of the great religious denominations of the state. To my utter surprise, I received soon after the publication of “Georgia Theatrics,” a letter from Mr. S. A. Black, of Manhattan, Kans., in which he says, in the postscript to a letter upon other subjects: “Since writing the above, I picked up the Weekly Jeffersonian of January 10, and read ‘Geeorgia Theatrics.’ After a little time it began to sound familiar. I went back to my bookcase and picked up the Life of Col. David Crockett, written by him self. On page 256 begins the story of the man fighting out in the bushes. Then clear through to the finish it is word for word as you published in January 10, Weekly Jeffer sonian. You claim those Georgia Scenes were written by Judge Longstreet, while Crockett’s life was written by himself. Judge Longstreet says this happened in Georgia and Crockett says it happened on his trip from Tennessee to Texas in 1835. Now which is true? The stories are exactly alike, names and all” Strange as it may seem, Mr. Black’s state ment is true. I have looked the matter up in my copy of David Crockett’s Autobiography and on the page cited by Mr. Black I find the beginning of exactly the same story as is told in Judge Longstreet’s Georgia Theatrics. Now who can explain this? Judge Long street’s book was published in 1840. Previous to the publication of these sketches in book form, they had been printed in one of the Ga zettes of the state in 1839. David Crockett was killed in the Alamo in 1836. His Journal was published after that time, but just when I am not at present able to say. My copy of the Life of David Crockett, by himself, was published by A. L. Burt of New York, but there is no copyright date-mark, nor is there any date anywhere in the book to show when it was published. This of itself is suspicious. The name of the Editor who prepared the pa pers of David Crockett for publication it not given. Just how much padding was given to his Journal it would be impossible to say. If any of the readers of the Jeffersonian has a copy of the early editions of the Autobiog raphy of David Crockett we would be glad to have them examine the book and see wheth et these first editions contain this story whose authorship is thus drawn in question. It is incredible that Judge Longstreet would have dared to purloin bodily a story from a recent ly published life of a man so interesting to all the South as David Crockett of Tennessee. On the other hand, Georgia Scenes has always been a local book. It has had no national rep utation. Therefore it is not a violent pre sumption that an editor should have conceived the idea of adding to the interest of the Crock ett diary by cribbing from an unknown book like “Georgia Scenes” the story of the man who was out in the bushes showing to himself how he could ’a’ fout. At all events, Mr. Black has unearthed a very curious case of literary forgery. * M M Col. Bill Farmer, One of the Old Guard. In the year 1889, I was a namby-pamby Democrat —prepared to believe that a partly name was a holy talisman, a nomination suffi cient to turn a black billy-goat into a snow white lamb. To be anything but a namby-pamby Dem crat was foreign to my plans and purposes. I was a Reformer, all right, but I was going to drive the burglars out of my father’s house and was going to get the reformers inside the dear old Democratic party. To this effect I was making ardent, fool harangues in all the adjacent regions wherever a dozen or so curious listeners could be assem bled. The burden of my little song was: Bad men, it is true, have come into the par ty and have had things pretty much their own way: but we must drive these bad men out, put the good men in control, and thus get re form inside the Democratic Party. Oh, I had it figured out very convincingly, I assure you. At the same time, I was against Railroad) abuses and wanted to cure them with govern ment control. No government ownership for me. Well, sir, in the course of my careering