Destroying the Republic: Jabez Curry and the Re-education of the Old South

Jabez Curry was an aristocratic Alabamian. In the ante-bellum South he had a distinguished career in both the Alabama Assembly and the United States Congress. He tirelessly advocated the principles of state sovereignty and limited Federal Governmental power. As an active promoter of education, he staunchly believed that this important function was entirely each state's responsibility and completely outside Washington's sphere. And yet, in the years following the Civil War, in a complete reversal of philosophy, Curry became the top executive of the Peabody Education Fund, the largest educational philanthropy of the 19th century, which united private Southern schools with the anti-Southern carpetbag state governments which were committed to eradicating the "culture of rebellion" from the minds of the ex-Confederates' children. By the 20th century, this plan had turned on itself and emptied out Northern children's minds as well. This transformed the US republic in the 21st century into an emerging dictatorship. * The War for Southern Independence and the problems of Reconstruction have been the subject of more than 20 articles and three monographs published by John Chodes. The Paradox of Jabez L.M. Curry: State Sovereignty to Federalized Schools led to the writing of the current work. In The Constitution and State Sovereignty, Mr. Chodes condensed the classic book by Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, which documents the fact that the United States Constitution was only ratified on the condition that secession would be an accepted alternative in case the Federal Government overstepped its mandated powers. Chodes's third monograph, The Union League: Washington's Klan, demonstrates that the federal government's agency, the Union League, equaled or surpassed the Ku Klux Klan in brutality toward Southern freedmen. Articles by Mr. Chodes, mostly relating to the history of the federalizing of Southern education, culture and property, have appeared in Chronicles, The Freeman, Social Justice Review, The New York Tribune, Southern Partisan, and Southern Events. Seven plays by John Chodes have been performed Off-Broadway in New York City. His nonfiction books include Bruce Jenner, a biography of the 1976 Olympic decathlon gold-medalist), and the award-winning Corbitt (a biography of the first African-American runner to compete in an Olympic marathon, and Chodes's mentor); Corbitt led Chodes to a position as technical advisor to Dustin Hoffman in the Paramount Pictures film, Marathon Man. Mr. Chodes has also written extensively for the Libertarian Party of New York, with over 100 articles, editorial replies and chapters published, promoting the "free market" in The New York Times, Chronicles, Reason, The Freeman, and on CBS-TV, NBC-TV, ABC-TV, and FOX-TV. His photographs have appeared in Newsweek, Track and Field News, Athletics Weekly (England), Long Distance Log, Town and Country, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Brooklyn Heights Press, The Phoenix, and the Brooklyn Record.