New Books and Videos on Civil War Causes and Vietnam Truth
My latest book, The Morril Tariff and its Precedents, can now be purchased on Amazon.com for $15.95. It covers the history of protectionist tariffs from the Henry Clay “American System” Tariff of 1824 through the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 and beyond. The politically correct narrative of the Civil War commonly presented by media and academia is that the Civil War was a Northern crusade against slavery. This is propaganda by exaggeration and especially omission. Had the Morrill Tariff not been passed by the US Congress in 1861, there would probably never have been a Civil War. The Morrill Tariff had come as the culmination of over 37 years of North-South tariff wars, which sacrificed Southern economic prosperity for the benefit of Northern industry. Moreover, more than 80% of the tax burden fell on the South, while more than 75% of public infrastructure and other spending benefited northern and western states. This had led to points of constitutional crisis and secession threats from 1824 through 1861.
Yet this battle between Southern Free Trade and Northern Protectionism has been overshadowed by propaganda narratives. There was some relief from 1913 to 1921 under the administration of Woodrow Wilson, but by the beginning of the Great Depression in 1930, The Smoot-Hawley Protectionist Tariff worsened the Depression with unemployment peaking near 25% in 1933. Free Trade did not win out until the administrations of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. The US remained an increasingly low-tariff Free Trade nation through 2025. The Trump administration introduced selected high tariffs in 2026 to negotiate many allegedly unfair foreign tariffs and trade practices down and to concentrate vital defense industry resources and production in the US. However, high tariffs have had an unfortunate record in US history.
October 23, 2026. $15.95—including 57 photos, images, political cartoons and posters.
April 10, 2025, $35.00. I was honored to be one of 32 authors contributing to this book compiled and edited by Vietnam Veterans for Factual History. I have two chapters plus some scattered inputs in the book. Two of these authors are Vietnamese and one is Cambodian. Also available on Amazon.com.
You may also purchase my two other full books on Amazon.com
Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You, 2009 hardback, 2018 paperback $12.95
The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths. January 7, 2011. paperback $16.80.
On the Vietnam War, I have two videos on YouTube speaking to the Atlanta Vietnam Veterans Business Association:
June 12, 2012:
Leonard M. Scruggs, USAF Vietnam War Veteran - “Lessons from the Vietnam War" - Atlanta Vietnam Veterans Business Association. About 49 minutes.
April 3, 2018
Mike Scruggs: Vietnam War Lessons: Truths The Media Never Told You - Atlanta Vietnam Veterans Business Association. About 59 minutes. The Ongoing Battle for Historical Truth.
In 2024, the Atlanta Vietnam Veterans Business Association produced a 47-minute documentary video. I was honored to have five parts of this, slightly over five minutes.
Civil War Issues
One of the best and most scholarly books on the Civil War is To Live and Die in Dixie; The Struggle Continues, by Seventeen Southerners, edited by Frank B. Powell, III, and published on January 1, 2014. It was a presentation of the Sons of Confederate Veterans under the leadership of then Commander, R. Michael Givens. It can be found on Amazon.com, but it is currently out of stock. It includes 27 essays by some the best known and most scholarly Southerners writing on Civil War issues. I was honored to be one of Seventeen Southerners and wrote on the Morrill Tariff. My new book has expanded the content by about 70%. Pro-southern scholarship has been severely suppressed in this generation’s renewed Reconstructionist mania and political correctness. However, you may be able to read it on openlibrary.org:
To Live and Die in Dixie by R. Michael Givens | Open Library
A good source of unapologetic Southern history and culture is Shotwell Publishing in Columbia, South Carolina. Shotwell Publishing.
The Times Examiner in Greenville, South Carolina, Welcome - The Times Examiner, is a weekly online publication addressing many local, regional, national, and international issues. Subscription is free, and it usually publishes on Wednesday. It has been the independent conservative voice of Upstate South Carolina for 32 years, but its influence covers much of North and South Carolina with extended following in conservative circles. It has an excellent website with a Search Engine.
My archive on the Times Examiner contains more than 500 articles and can be accessed directly at Mike Scruggs - The Times Examiner.
We are in an ongoing battle for historical truth. In fact, we are in an ongoing battle for truth across almost every issue. Science is, or should be, an ongoing search for truth. Most important, we are in an ongoing battle for spiritual truth. Truth has its enemies, often organized enemies. We need to be able to discern truth from lies, from subtle lies, and from propaganda. We need to distinguish wishful thinking, fashionable trends, and political correctness from reality. I am going to close with ten of my favorite quotes on truth.
“At a time when liberty is under attack, decency under assault, the family under siege, and life itself is threatened, the good will arise in truth; they will arise in truth with the very essence and substance of their lives; they will arise in truth never shying from the Standard of Truth, never shrinking from the Author of Truth.”—South Carolina Revolutionary War patriot Henry Laurens, President of the Continental Congress from November 1. 1777 to December 9, 1778.
“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.”—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Truth crushed to the earth shall rise again; the eternal years of God are hers.”
—William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
“Thinking something does not make it true. Wanting something does not make it real.
”—Michelle Hodkin, American author
“Wisdom is found only in truth.”—Johann Goethe ((1749-1832)
“You will know them by their fruits.”—Matthew 7:16.
“Without Truth there can be no freedom.”—A Russian Cossack proverb. Politically, it is also important in reverse: Without freedom, truth is suppressed.
“Without courage there cannot be truth, and without truth there can be no other virtue.”—Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). Scott’s most famous romantic work, Ivanhoe, is credited with instilling a strong sense of chivalry in Southern culture.
“It behooves the New South, in dismissing the animosities of the past, to see to it that they retain all that was true in its principles or ennobling in its example…Will you bury the history whose years are those of the God of Truth?”
—Rev. Robert L. Dabney, Confederate Chaplain and Stone Wall Jackson’s Chief of Staff, on June 15, 1882, Commencement at Hampden Sidney College in Virginia.
“Aslan is on the move.”—from C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), meaning that Christ’s Truth and Kingdom are on the move and triumph is inevitable, appointed by the God of All Truth.
Mike Scruggs is the author of two books: The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths; and Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You, and over 600 articles on military history, national security, intelligent design, genealogical genetics, immigration, current political affairs, Islam, and the Middle East. 
