“The Myth of the Myth of the Lost Cause”

Myth? What Myth?

By Bill Vallante
wildbill4dixie@yahoo.com

If you like “Civil War” history but haven’t been paying attention these last 20 years or so, the “Lost Cause”, has now become a “Myth” – at least according to most contemporary historians and self-proclaimed experts. Ever since Alan Nolan’s 1991 book, “The Myth of the Lost Cause” the historical literary field has witnessed an avalanche of similar books, each desperately trying to be unique in its own way, and each seeking to prove that the cause for which the South claimed to have fought and indeed, the heroic struggle itself that most people, until the last 20 years, believed that the South put up, are nothing more than myths.

Wikipedia, not known to be the best and most reliable of sources, nonetheless defines accurately what I am getting at and what is the target of this paper:

“The Lost Cause is the name commonly given to a literary and intellectual movement that sought to reconcile the traditional white society of the Southern United States to the defeat of the Confederate States of America in the Civil War of 1861–1865.[1] Those who contributed to the movement tended to portray the Confederacy's cause as noble and most of the Confederacy's leaders as exemplars of old-fashioned chivalry, defeated by the Union armies not through superior military skill, but by overwhelming force. They also tended to condemn Reconstruction.”

So then, the “Lost Cause” has become a myth – so sayeth the “Myth of the Lost Cause Mythologists.” Why do I refer to them as such? Because in destroying one myth or what they claim is a myth they haven’t done much more than replace it with another myth, and a particularly bad myth at that!

A more detailed look at what the “Myth of the Lost Cause Mythologists” contend:

- They contend that: Slavery was the real cause of the war. The South fought for the right to keep others in bondage and anything else is a lie or distortion perpetrated in the post war period by former Confederates who were ashamed of their actions and who were trying to make themselves look good, or, by neo-Confederates today seeking to whitewash the Confederate cause and who themselves are most probably racists.

-They contend that: After the war Southern writers wrote the history of the war and brainwashed Americans, north and south into believing that the South really fought for states rights and not slavery, and that it lost its heroic fight only because it was overwhelmed by superior numbers.

-They contend that: After the war, Southern writers convinced America that before the Yankee attack everything was moonlight and magnolias in the South and that all the slaves were happy.

-They contend that: Southern generals weren’t really as good or as noble as everyone says they were. This myth was invented by Southern writers to steal the glory from Yankee generals, who, led by Massa Linkhorn and company, gave us “a new nation,” for which we should all be eternally thankful. (even though the cost of creating that “new nation” was nearly 700000 dead and nearly half a million maimed),

- Most mythologists contend that the Southern soldier was one or more of the following: overrated, ignorant, misled, apathetic, a frequent deserter, a poor soldier, and that his heart was not really in the fight. If he did, at times, show enthusiasm for his cause, it was only because he hoped one day to hit the lottery and be able to afford to buy a gaggle of slaves – thus, even if he did not own slaves, he was fighting for the hope that one day he would.

-They contend that: 50000 Southerners fought bravely for the North…err, well, they used to say 50000 but a few years ago they upped the figure to 100,000, and more recently, that figure has climbed to 300,000. (soon the numbers will reach a point where it will appear that there were more Southerners in the Union army than there were males in the entire South.)

-They contend that: Southern writers wrote out the black man’s participation in the war on the Union side in order to promote “white supremacy.” To correct this injustice, “Myth of the Lost Cause Mythologists” now inform us that the black man was actually instrumental in winning the war for the Union, that slaves ran away in vast hordes to the Union lines, that “the slaves freed themselves”, and that those who could not make it to the Union lines worked feverishly to subvert the Southern war effort. (There is no mention of any black participation on the Southern side as “Myth of the Lost Cause Mythologists” do not believe in such things any more than they believe in little green men. Well, actually, a lot of them do believe in little green men but not in black men supporting the South.)

-They contend that: The Planters, who were slave owners and werry werry bad men, dragged the rest of the South into seceding and into a war that it really did not want. This resulted in a lack of enthusiasm for the war that was reflected in the attitude of the Southern civilian population, whose women begged their men to desert and who frequently rioted because they were sick of the war and sick of not having any food.

-They contend that: Reconstruction was a wonderful time of social progress and of wonderful “interracial democracies,” snuffed out by those evil Southern white supremacists and that Reconstruction was a great idea, but it did not go far enough. (stick the word “interracial in front of anything these days and it is automatically a good thing. I wonder if an “interracial” case of cholera is a good thing?).

But it’s all ok now, because the “Myth of the Lost Cause Mythologists” are going to make it all better and fix America’s collective memory. Like the Union army before them, they will go “trampling through the vintage” to stomp out the “grapes of wrath.” The Republican-led Union army gave America a new nation, whether America wanted it or not, and the “Myth of the Lost Cause Mythologist” will give America a new “memory” - whether it wants it or not.

Glory, Glory Halleluiah.

About those Post War Southern Writers

There was no subversive plot on the part of Southern post-war writers to steal America’s historical “memory.” In 1865 the South recognized that its bid for independence had failed. It laid down its arms, and its citizens agreed to return to the Union and be good citizens of that political entity. They and their descendents have been faithful to their word, as evidenced by the fact that ever since 1865, whenever America has needed volunteers to go off and get killed in some far off hellhole, it is always Southerners who are the first to volunteer. Anne Coulter referred to them as “America’s Warrior Class.”

Nowhere in the terms of surrender however, did it specify that Southerners had to grovel and to humbly beg for forgiveness. Nowhere did it say that they had to admit to wrongdoing and then accept slander or insults. Nowhere was it written that they could not defend themselves. Self-defense, whether against physical or verbal attack, was and still is everyone’s right. In the post war period Northern writers took it upon themselves to cast the South as the proverbial villain in some kind of demented passion play. Southern writers responded and that’s all there is to it. And if they wrote better and presented a better argument than their northern counterparts, well, maybe, just maybe, it’s possible that they indeed had the better argument, and that in a day and age that had yet to see mass brainwashing in either the public schools or the national parks or, had yet to encounter the most nauseating of popular terms, “the teachable moment,” maybe, just maybe, an American public that was still able to think independently, logically and critically, actually bought those arguments - because those arguments actually had something to offer!

About Slavery as some kind of sin or high crime

Yes, the South had slavery. So what? It was in America for 240 years before Sumter was fired upon, it had been practiced worldwide since the dawn of recorded history by nearly every people on the planet, it was legal and protected by the Constitution, and the Yankees had no problem with it until they stopped making a profit from it and, until they began a determined campaign to secure a majority in Congress in order to be able to pass legislation favorable to their states – legislation I might add that also happened to be detrimental to the Southern states. Further, I don’t see anyone making demands for apologies or expressions of regret on other countries that have practiced slavery. The only one I see getting hit with demands is America, specifically white America and specifically the American South. And I do not see those today who whine about slavery of the past doing anything about it where it exists in the present (in Africa, and in a manner far more brutal than any 19th century white planter could have conceived of). I can’t say exactly what the reason for this might be except to postulate, as someone else did, that slavery of the past is remunerable for reparations in the present, while slavery of the present is not.

Whatever the reasons, I will not jump on the insanity bandwagon and start apologizing on behalf of past peoples for doing what was common and quite the norm in their time. As I’ve said before, more and more I grow convinced that for the past 20 or 30 years, someone has been putting “stupid pills” in America’s water supply. When I majored in history as an undergraduate 40 years ago, such moralizing, sermonizing, and apologizing were not to be found, and judging past peoples by using contemporary standards was considered to be the province of the fool. A student majoring in history who displayed such behavior would have been told by his professors to find another major. Today, the professors do it!

Newsflash – those who demand such apologies and expressions of regret are the demagogues, the race baiters and those who have something to gain by issuing such demands. Those who comply with such demands are the cowards, the fools, the idiots, those who are afflicted with self-loathing and those who have something to gain by demonstrating abasement. I refuse to play in this game. Charley Reese, former journalist for the Orlando Sentinel, once said that “the people of the past don’t owe anyone an apology. They, like us, fell out of the womb into a society that, like all societies, had pre-existing customs and mores. They played the cards that God dealt them the best way they knew how and that’s all that you can expect of them. It’s our play now, and the pot is the future.” I stand with Mr. Reese on this one. And I will not budge for anyone. I don’t do apologies, I don’t do sorry, I don’t do “reconciliation” (another word that has been battered to death in recent times), and I don’t do “stupid pills” either.

About Slavery as the “Cause” of the War

The war itself was not caused by slavery. The war was caused by the invasion of 11 states who sought the same right as their forefathers sought – the right to be governed by something which had the consent of those that it governed. Those states, not counting 2 others, Maryland and Missouri, who were prevented by military force from even discussing secession, had determined that they were not safe in the Union and therefore had decided to pursue their own course independent of their northern neighbors. Those northern neighbors, governed as they were by a relatively new political party bent on consolidation of the American system, could not find it in their hearts to part with those states, and so, launched an invasion of them. That’s your cause of the war in a nutshell.

I would say that the South had plenty of reason not to feel safe. Some Northern idealists had cheered 30 years earlier when Nat Turner mutilated and murdered 61 white men, women and children. Even greater numbers of sanctimonious reformers proclaimed John Brown, whose plans, if successful, would have made Turner’s exploits look like a church picnic, to be a saint. Brown’s expedition was financed by 6 well-heeled and wealthy northerners, all belonging to a party that, in the words of one prominent Republican, Wendell Phillips, was a “party of the North pledged against the South.” [1]

If anyone wanted war, it wasn’t the South. “All we ask is to be left alone.” It was a cry echoed by numerous Southerners throughout Dixie between 1861 and 1865, from the highest official and general, to the lowest private and civilian. It was heard coming from the mouths of Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, Patrick Cleburne, Mary Chestnut, Judah Benjamin and countless others. Had the North left the south alone to go its own way, there would have been no war, no nearly 700000 dead and no nearly half a million maimed.

To you “Myth of the Lost Cause Mythologists”, I say flat out – if you want to know what the cause of the war was, look into the mirror and you’ll see it staring back at you. It was caused by the invasion of sovereign states by a bunch of boobs like you who just couldn’t leave well enough alone. The desperate fight that the South put up was a noble one and a courageous one, and until recently that fact was acknowledged by anyone with a modicum of common sense and a passing amount of literacy. And though it failed, I have no doubt that those who conducted the defense against that invasion would say that despite its failure, it was well worth the effort to try and rid themselves of meddling, petty tyrants like yourselves.

(to be continued)
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[1] “The “Secession, State and Liberty,” David Gordon, Editor, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, (U.S.A. and London (U.K.), Copyright, 1999, 4th Paperback Printing, 2009, page 27

The Misery Profiteer

Dr. A. H. Krieg

Of all the bad people in the world, the worst are those who profit from the misery of other through exploitation and extorting funds from them by fabricating fear. The largest and most profitable organization in this endeavourer is the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) located in Montgomery Alabama.

SPLC has as of October 2009 a bank balance of $199,951,946.00; say that’s just under $200 million. And all that money is required to fight evil Americas and to bring about equality for all, foolish me, I thought the Constitution and Bill of Rights served that purpose. One would think that if SPLC were really interested in poverty and the plight of the oppressed that they would distribute all those funds to poor people. But I digress, that money is sorely needed to keep SPLC directors and lawyers living in the gratuitous lifestyle they have become accustomed to. Morris Dee’s first law partner Millard Fuller made all that abundantly clear when he said; “Morris Dees and I from the first day of our partnership shared an overriding purpose; to make a pile of money” It’s not about the poor, or the law, its about making money using the poor and minorities as the stick for profit from their misery.

If you are really interested in finding out exactly what sort of dirt bag Dees is, look him up on Goggle, Civil Case CIV 2114 Alabama, Maureen Bass Dees Appellant, Morris Dees Appellee. The string of extramarital engagements is endless even his own stepdaughter at 16 was not spared his arduous attention and including also males.

Morris Dees who is listed as chief trial council had a 2009 anual income of $ 303,936.00, plus $44,484.00 for a grand total of $438,420.00, Richard Cohen President and CEO, $299,588.00 plus $44,892.00 for a grand total of $344,480.00 In fact the payroll of working management employees of which there are 11 total out at $2,026,482.00 which means an average income of just over $ 186,000.00 per working board member about 5.5 times the national average income. All this just to fight hate! But again I find myself in a conundrum after all these people are trying to do good, aren’t they? Well I guess that I just did not know that doing good is that profitable, had I realized that at an earlier age I would have joined in at SPLC and would now also be earning six times the average American income. Does Julian Bond who is paid nothing and is prominently listed as first on the board of directors realize all this? But then poor Julian is not a member of the chosen, like Cohen, Levick, Levine, Dees, Brownstein, Potok, Bauer and Holiday, so that probably accounts for it.

The invention of SPLC list of whom they consider potential terrorist is extensive including such scary people as Congressmen Dr. Ron Paul, and Paul Brown, World Net Daily publisher Farah, columnist Michelle Bachmann. Radio and TV hosts Glen Beck, Judge Andrew Napolitano, in fact almost anyone who opposes Morris Dees’ warped ideas of America and Americans is found on his site, listed as a danger to America. A telling issue is an award granted in 1984 to the Montgomery Advertiser (AL) for journalism for an article exposing unethical fund raising by SPLC.

How does this fund razing scam work? In 1987 SPLC sent out a letter implying that they had forced the United Klan’s of America to pay $7 million to the mother of lynch victim Michael Donald, the facts are that SPLC paid her $51,874.70, kept the balance of collected funds as well as the funds from the solicitation letter. Naturally the fact that the United Klan’s of America never had $ 7 million is not mentioned anyplace.

Pamela Summers another disgruntled former employee of SPLC as reported in the Montgomery Advertiser said, “What they are doing in the legal department is not done for the best interest of everybody [but] is done for the sole, overriding goal to make money. [Many] associate the SPLC with going to court. And that’s why they get money. And they don’t go to court” The amount of litigation by SPLC is minute when compared with their purse, additionally most cases litigated remain unresolved only a small number have ended in a profitable outcome for SPLC.

The next question is, is SPLC racist? Since it’s founding in 1971, 39 years ago SPLC has hired a total of two black staff lawyers both quit stating that they were unhappy working there. Of 13 former black employees the Montgomery Advertiser interviewed 12, all of them complained about racial problems during their employment. In an article in Harpers Magazine entitled “The Church of Morris Dees”, November 2000, it sited that the entire legal staff of SPLC resigned over Dees’s refusal to address such issue as poverty, homelessness, voter registration and other issues.

Why should you even care? In 1986 four staff lawyers resigned from SPLC. Randall Williams who had started Klanwatch ® in 1981 was one of them. He stated, “We are sharing information with the FBI, the police, undercover agents. Instead of defending victims we are more of a snoop outfit, an arm of law enforcement.” The problem here of course is that SPLC has an ulterior profit motive to invent as many as possible hate mongers in order to inflate their coffers by the mostly Jewish fools who send them money. I do not think it unrealistic to say that 30% of the organizations listed by SPLC have less than ten members and of the individuals listed 80% are benign.

Such cases are SCV, (Sons of Confederate Veterans) and LOS, (League of the South). To claim either of these organizations as a potential threat to society and America as SPLC does can only be considerd stupid. LOS members have run in the last three presidential races, many are professors and doctors, and none have ever advocated any violence to anyone. SCV are a historic organization that tries to preserve Southern Heritage, they are non-political and both organizations have Jewish, as well as black members. Just because Dees and his troop of psychopaths disagrees with them does not make them bad.

One of the major problems with SPLC is the fact that the FBI as well as numerous police department avail themselves, for fees, of politically and socially tainted information from SPLC that with a broad brush paints anyone and everyone not PC and in concurrence with Dees and co. as potential terrorists. In fact a large part of SPLC budget is paid for by such services contracted for by government employees trying to maintain their Cultural Marxist political status.

Stephan Bright another former SPLC official told USA Today, ”Dees is a fraud who has milked a lot of very wonderful, well intentioned people.”

You surely all remember the black church burning issue that was so hotly contested in the lamestream media, all the false information was propagated by SPLC as announced in Washington by Dees in April of 1996 when he stated, “Those [Black] churches that have been burned in the South were certainly burned by racists” The lie was picked up by the FBI and after a long investigation of over 900 church burnings in Southern states the FBI and BATF concluded that the almost all were destroyed by their own parishioners in effort to collect on fire insurance policies, the lamestream media that had prominently featured the church burning issue all failed to report that it was a hoax from SPLC, that they all continue to quote as a paragon of virtue.

Dr. Krieg is an author, columnist, and inventor and member of LOS.

A Response to a Yankee

Bellow, a recent response of mine to a Yankee. The other side of the conversation is self evident:

"A rational man when faced with situations that have gone terribly wrong, as we in this country unquestionably have, seeks to find out where the mistake that led to the wrong occurred; firstly to try and understand how to fix it; secondly to learn from that mistake so that it can be avoided again.

History, true history and not some myth made up to justify ignoble actions or support some currently peddled ideology, is the primary source of identifying a nation's mistakes as well as it's laudable actions. The purpose is not to "hate" or to accuse the descendants of those who made the mistake of wrong doing.

The term "Yankee" refers to a historical foe of the Southern United States, the Confederacy, and those descendants of the historical Yankees who still feel the action against the Confederacy was appropriate, justified, and led to a better situation for all the people of the once "United" States. (We call Southerners who feel the North's action in the Civil War was appropriate or justified, "scalawags".) Neither term is one of endearment, and in some people, does rise to the level of "hatred".

I, myself, cannot respect the judgment of anyone who feels denying the right of secession to the Southern States was appropriate or laudable, when the very act that formed the "United States" a mere 90 years earlier was secession from Great Britain and claimed as the right of all and any people in the Declaration of Independence:

"— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government."

Nothing of which I am aware could be more hypocritical than the armed invasion of the South to prevent secession from standing. The facts are that the very reason we are where we are today is because of this grievous mistake: the abandonment of the rights of the states to limit the power of their central government and the act of enforcing that denial of rights by force. This also resulted in the murder of 350,000 southern soldiers who were only trying to defend the right or their states to secede, and 50,000 Southern civilians who were "collateral damage" at the hands of people like Sherman and Sheridan (if this latter fact is not too irrelevant for your consideration). The only tools of the states in controlling the central government are 1) secession, 2) threat of secession, and 3) nullification.

You may feel that dwelling on these issues from the past is pointless and you consistently refer to your desire to "live in the present" and deal with the future. But what you fail to realize is that the present as well as the future are the products of the past and its results in the present; and that if the future is to be made a better place, we must understand and correct the path that led us to today's unacceptable governmental situation.

As to your contention that Southerners are not belittled or looked down upon by the Northern United States and the West Coast, are you so accustomed to the belittlement and disparaging characterizations of Southerners that you don't even notice them (particularly since they are not directed at you)? Do you go to movies, do you listen to the news, do you read novels? Tell me the last time in any of these venues have you seen a Southerner, other than a scalawag like Jimmy Carter, portrayed in a positive light? Why are Southerners always portrayed as stupid, racist, red necks, and white trash?

But don't just accept my observations; listen to what a Harvard scholar, Professor Eugene Genovese had to say in the recent Massey Lectures at Harvard:

"Eugene Genovese, a distinguished historian of the South--a northerner and a man of the left--has been a rare voice in criticizing this purge of the Southern tradition from the academy (Academia). In the Massey Lectures given at Harvard, he had this to say: 'Rarely these days, even on southern campuses, is it possible to acknowledge the achievements of the white people of the South...To speak positively about any part of this southern tradition is to invite charges of being a racist and an apologist for slavery and segregation. We are witnessing a cultural and political atrocity--an increasingly successful campaign by the media and an academic elite to strip young white southerners, and arguably black southerners as well, of their heritage, and, therefore, their identity. They are being taught to forget their forebears or to remember them with shame.'

"This condition is not going to change overnight. Those who created it are tenured, and will dominate in higher education for at least a generation-- and even longer since they are disposed to hire and tenure only their own. Even so, there are many scholars in America and abroad who take inspiration from the Southern tradition, and many others who are open to what it has to teach. Students too are open. Many feel they are somehow encountering on campus a profound intellectual and spiritual disorder, but they do not know how to think about it." -- Professor Donald Livingston, Abbeyville Institute, Tenured Professor of Philosophy, Emory University

This process is better known around the world as "cultural genocide" and if you are unaware of its presence in the United States, you are either ill informed, uncaring, or not listening."


SWR's Roy Norris
Deo Vindice
Conquered but Never Defeated
http://www.southernwarroom.info/

Community and Heritage

By David Ware

“The South was always proud and independent and believed with the Founding Fathers, that centralized and powerful government invariably slides into tyranny. But the North, less proud, less conscious of national tradition, less independent, less manly in many ways, craves the dictator’s hand, the tyrants force, for many of its people have come from nations whose people were subjected to and dependent on government. It may be, in the future, that it will be the South who will prevent, for many long decades, the collapse of American Freedom into Caesarism.” Taylor Caldwell, from “Captains and the Kings”

It has been said that the Southerner is the last of America’s people to know who they are and where they come from. This is because the people of the South have a deep and devout attachment to their heritage and community. They are able to trace their ancestry back to the War to Prevent Southern Independence, the Revolutionary War and beyond. Their parents, grandparents, great grandparents, great-great grandparents and great-great-great grandparents knew one another. They loved their land and home place. Names were given to the homes of Southerners: My family had Windsor, Sunnyside, Hard Bargain, Plumsite, Lombardy, Pinewoods, Bellevue and others. These were the places where our ancestors raised their families with other like minded people to be self responsible, productive members of a cohesive community.

This relationship is a complex connection between people, their land and nature. All neighbors are included in an intense personal bond to ancestors, the self, family, the land and its inhabitants. Arts to the Southern people more to do with hospitality, hunting, fishing, conversation and vegetable gardening than with rock concerts and the signing bonuses of professional athletes . Their definition of “mind your own business” is forged by a mutual respect for the rights and property of the individual.

Tied to the love of the dollar, the Yankees are Nomads wandering to advance “careers” and to always position themselves to make as much and spend as little money as possible. They typically have no heritage that they know of, bluster on about forgetting the past and “planning” for the future. They are self proclaimed soothsayers who predict their future based on government programs, laws and bailouts. To them, a community is complete because they are in it. They believe that the tyrannical forces of planning, zoning, building regulations, taxes and laws perpetuate true community. They prefer to live in a subdivision with a guard at the gate craving the “dictators hand” of homeowners associations , their idea of connection to nature has to do with lawn care and walking the dog. Freedom, to the Yankee mentality, is the elimination of self responsibility and worry and a plethora of fast food choices, Costcos and WalMarts.

Their mindset wants cell phones with no cell towers, electricity with no generating plants, gasoline with no oil refineries, airplanes with no airports and less taxes with more government spending. This makes perfect sense to their culture that teaches that you spend to save, borrow to get out of debt and kill for peace.

We Southern people must cure ourselves of Republican and Democrat Part thinking. We have no friends in either major party. We do our ancestors a disservice to pay homage to these people as they and their policies run counter to everything our ancestors stood for. We need to pay more attention to our complete heritage starting with the hospitality of Pocahontas, the brilliance of Jefferson, the example of Washington, the perseverance of Calhoun, the chivalry of Lee, the determination and valor of Jackson and most of all to the idea that we are descended from the heirs of limited government, individual freedom and personal responsibility.

We should cease supporting wars of foreign aggression. Our ancestors fought to be left alone and we, of all people, should respect that desire when it unfolds against our military and political presence. We are descended from people that knew the pain and dismay of having our homes and families devastated by an unprincipled aggressor. How can we support efforts to bend foreign countries under the heavy foot of the U. S. might while lamenting the same thing when it was done by the same mentality against our people?