A“…Douglas persuaded President Lincoln to use Negroes in the Union Army during the Civil War and then employed his eloquence to recruit them. His two sons were among the first to join. But, when the war ended, Douglass quickly became disillusioned at the course of events and soon was calling emancipation a ‘sham’.”
Frederick Douglass 16 Nov 1969, Sun Asbury Park Press (Asbury Park, New Jersey) Newspapers.com
In the midst of nineteenth century chess, 1861 https://century-in-chess.blogspot.com/p/1861.html around the time period when treacherous Northern chess associates, under their bizarrely polarized extremist political influences and allegiances to the very racist North, read in the Richmond Dispatch from Thursday, October 24, 1861 “A meeting of the members of the Club will be held at their Room, over J.P. Duval's Drug Store, THIS EVENING, (Thursday) 24th inst., at 8 o'clock. Mr. Morphy has kindly consented to be present.”.
From there, the wild accusation grew and multiplied. Mr. Paul Morphy, the national superstar of chess was rewritten as Public Enemy #1, and soon to be written completely out of history as a “mad man” by Northern chess circles, and those suckers who believed them. Who says that White Supremacists do not mix Chess (or any sport for that matter) with their bitter political biases?
Richmond Chess Club 24 Oct 1861, Thu Richmond Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia) Newspapers.com
Richmond Dispatch Richmond, Virginia Thursday, October 24, 1861:— Richmond Chess Club. — A meeting of the members of the Club will be held at their Room, over J.P. Duval's Drug Store, THIS EVENING, (Thursday) 24th inst., at 8 o'clock. Mr. Morphy has kindly consented to be present.
This tiny reference to Mr. Morphy attending a so-called “confederate” chess club… but there's not a thing printed therein, associated with “politics”! So how this got blown out of proportion by Northern Newspapers polarized by extremist Civil War propaganda, from attending the “Richmond Chess Club” … to labeled a “rebel” and “bitter secessionist” is utterly beyond reason!
The report soon made it's rounds in Northern newspapers and the grapevine of war vendetta gossip.
Hence reads The Buffalo Commercial, Buffalo, New York, Saturday, November 02, 1861:— A Bad “Move.” — It is reported in a Richmond paper that Mr. Paul Morphy, the famous chess-player, “has kindly consented to be present” at the meeting of a rebel chess-club in the Confederate capital. The Evening Post thinks that this is the worst movement that Mr. Morphy has made, and he need not be surprised to find himself check-mated at the end of the game. It is not a safe “opening.”
Threats and cruel defamation against Mr. Paul Morphy ensued for the following decades by his own so-called countrymen. Till the modern day, history books are littered with false reports of a supposed, so-called mental madness of Paul Morphy who more rationally speaking, escaped from the bitter vitriolic harassment of the Unionist mob and retired to a quiet life in New Orleans.
Some would claim the “righteous North” led by Abe Lincoln, fought the Civil War to “end slavery.” But Frederick Douglass became quite disillusioned with the white man's self-righteous fables,… as it always is, white men fight wars for wealth, high power maneuvers and plunder of real estate and natural resources. Never justice.
The Northern Chess Associates found themselves a disgruntled bunch that Morphy refused to throw his blind support to, and aggressively back Northern political agendas… over Lincoln's overreaching grasp on tax revenue and territory, while the war on the pitiable Indigenous first nations tribes continued for years after the war ended! And, millions of former slaves would die of starvation and disease, post-war. Certainly, Lincoln's intent for the war was neither to end slavery, nor “spread democracy” but rather, to hold the territory and its tax revenue, aka, the “Union” together.
Mr. Paul Morphy 24 Nov 1861, Sun The Era (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
So read the long ensuing threats on Paul Morphy by Northern associates, from The Era London, Greater London, England Sunday, November 24, 1861:— Mr. Morphy, of whose whereabouts so much curiosity has been expressed, has turned up at last, apparently in attendance of the rebel Court at Richmond. The Richmond Dispatch of the 24th inst. invites the members of the Chess Club to meet on that evening, at their room, as Mr. Morphy has kindly consented to be present. We hope we shall soon have Mr. Morphy “en prise.” —Philadelphia Evening Bulletin
White supremacist Chess elitists won't tell their readers the real reason why the rumors about Mr. Morphy began and continue to circulate by White Supremacists.
