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WASHINGTON, DC, April 10, 1865 (FNS)-The Civil War ended yesterday with the surrender of General Lee's Confederate Forces to Ulysses S. Grant, the Union Commander, at Appomattox.
Although most observers are generally happy with the surrender, many of President Obama's most loyal supporters are livid with the Commander-in-Chief because of the concessions he made in order to obtain the future support of the Southern Senators who will rejoin the body when the next Session begins.
At a media event this morning, Press Secretary Dick Timoneous expressed the President's hope that the formerly Confederate Members of Congress are looking forward to changing the political culture and steering the Nation in a better direction:
"It's time for the opposition to realize that what really matters is putting America first. The President is certain that by offering some concessions now, Southern Senators will look beyond their own parochial interests and do their part to move this process forward."
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Ohio Congressman Zebidiah Kucinich summed up the anger from the left: "We won the war, for God's sakes, which is a mandate if I ever saw one, and yet the first thing the President orders when putting together surrender terms is to take the issue of ending slavery off the table.
It makes no sense, especially when we know that these former Confederates will never support the President's agenda. To make it even worse, we know the President will make more concessions later on down the road in order to try and get any opposition votes he can."
Reached in Charleston by telegraph, former Confederate Senator Beauregard DeMint told this reporter that: "Appomattox will be Obama's Waterloo! He can never be allowed to destroy the foundation of our Southern economy-and if he tries, we'll use the 10th Amendment to protect the interests of our States...and Freedom."
Disaffected leftist voters, who were already upset over Obama's failure to close the Union detention facility at Andersonville, as he had promised he would during his Presidential campaign, have become even more vocal recently as the Union Army has appeared to block Administration efforts to end the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that has caused thousands of urgently-needed Black soldiers to be discharged during the War.
All of this, combined with the President's recent actions in failing to end slavery, have led to an "enthusiasm gap" between voters in the President's Party and those on the other side, emboldening his opponents in the upcoming midterm elections.
Southern voters, who have seen the end coming for some time, have been organizing into "Coffee Parties" in an effort to protect their economic interests-but they chafe at the notion that there is a racial component to their concerns.
In a recent speech to an enthusiastic Kentucky crowd, Senate candidate Roger Weightman ("Old Flintlock") Paul was heard to say: "Our only interests are in protecting the agricultural economy of the South, and the Constitutional values that were handed down to us from our God; that requires us to keep slaves in places like Mississippi, but it has nothing to do with racism."
Members of the crowd, sporting the robes and hoods that have recently begun to take over as the preferred uniform of the "Coffee Party", echoed Paul's comments, including a large, florid, gentleman who appeared to be using laudanum at the time of our interview; he chose to remain nameless, but told me this about the slaves he had met: "Slaves are uppity, but not as blacks. They're elitist. They think they're smarter and better than everybody else. That's what they were taught. It's like they're Harvard men."
Political strategists, including Senator Sumner of Massachusetts, have urged the President to become more bold in his negotiating tactics, and to take more control over the weekly media cycle: "The President is enormously popular when he gives speeches, he clearly has a mandate, and now that the telegraph can quickly spread his message there is no reason why the Coffee Party, who, after all, represent a minority of the Nation, should be allowed to drive every single element of the political conversation-especially if all the President ends up doing is watering down the abolition of slavery to the point where nothing is accomplished at all."
In a related story, pressure continues to mount on the Administration after the unprovoked firing of an Agriculture Department official who was "framed" by Confederate media interests; the official, who gave us an exclusive interview in Washington yesterday, reports that she has already been told that she could make enough money suing for wrongful discharge to purchase her own "Seward's Folly" if she wanted-in fact, the act of suing for wrongful discharge, currently a novel legal concept, may become known as a "Sherrod Suit" if the former official chooses to move forward with this new form of litigation.
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