Exploiting the Cause - History repeats itself

Photo: Sarah Caroline Bell Watie "Sallie" (Mrs. Stand Watie) c. 1870

TheTownCrier

We hear about it every day.
A corrupt congressman goes to jail for bribes.
A contractor in Iraq is a big campaign donor, creates a company, makes millions from government contracts but can't seem to get supplies to our troops.
We send billions of dollars to fund raisers every year, and find out that only 5% of the money is actually going to the "cause".
And then there were the Hurricane Katrina scams to the tune of billions of dollars of tax dollars. And Jack Abramoff....
It never ends.

The following passage is from a letter written by my grgrAunt to her husband General Stand Watie near the end of the Civil War. After years of fighting, the war had cost them their homes, land, businesses. By now they were refugees in Texas, often hungry and thirsty, watching clan members die daily from wounds or disease.

Several times “Sallie”, as Stand referred to her, writes and struggles with the harsh truth that even in time of war, her own people (the Cherokee) and those fighting on their side in this war, would profit from it by withholding supplies from troops and instead selling them.

It appears there has always been travesties for profit and those who would exploit faithful allies for a dollar in every human struggle. While the peasants find a cause worth dying for, the political operatives exploit everyone in their wake and give ammunition and aid to the enemy.

Be careful who you support, be careful who you fund. Be careful of those to whom the almighty dollar is sacred. They will destroy your noble cause and never bat an eye as they count what used to be your money.

Mrs. Watie ( “Sallie” Sarah Caroline Bell) to Stand Watie Lamar Co. Tx.
May 21, 1865. (Stand Watie would be the last general to surrender along with my grgrgrandfather, Col. James Madison Bell, brother of “Sallie” on June 23, 1865.)

My—(dear Husband)

“We all feel disappointed at not hearing from you as one week has passed and no word yet we hear all kinds of rumors and none satisfactory to us.

I hear that they have set a price on several of there heads and you are included; that is the rumor I do not want people to believe it for some of them would be after it.

I hear that Cooper will not give you any supplies. if he does not I believe that they all are speculating of it and I hope that the last of them will sink. I do not want you to do any thing of that kind I would live on bread and water rather than have it said you had speculated of your people. I believe you have always done what you thought best for your people and I want it to die out - that bad belief.

if I thought you was working for nothing but to fill your pocket it would trouble me a great deal but I know it is not else it would have been filled before this time. I know that you are capable of making a living any where if we are let alone after the war is over. [snip]

Thanks to the Univ. of Oklahoma for the preservation of these letters.



Photo: Sign at spring rally in support of illegal aliens. (these fools don't even know their own history and some expect they will care about ours??? PULEEEEZE.)