The Meeting of Boat and Berg

Meeting of Boat and Berg: Understanding the Place of Slavery in the Civil War

By Valerie Protopapas

All of us know—or think we know—about many matters especially with regard to popular history. Frequently our knowledge is the result of oft-repeated truisms that reflect more the opinions of the reporter than the facts of the matter. Therefore, if we are wise, when we are about to have our beliefs challenged, we will at least try to recognize the “wobble” in our own “mental lens” through which we view the matter under discussion. If we do not, we often disregard facts that challenge—or embrace myths that validate our own viewpoints. Until we recognize what constitutes fact and what opinion, we are not only at a disadvantage in a debate, but we may never come to know the truth. Nowhere is the issue of “preconceived” knowledge more flagrant and ubiquitous than in that period of history known as the American “Civil War.” And, frankly, no more forceful attitudes exist in this matter than those surrounding the issue of slavery and the part it played in that great tragedy. But I would like to challenge those beliefs and notions through the use of an allegory.

Who does not recognize the name and know the story of the mighty British liner Titanic? And, if asked, how many know what it was that sank that great ship? On April 14^th, 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank within hours killing over 2,000 people. It is a disaster which still haunts the minds of men, very much as does the great disaster we call—erroneously—the American Civil War. And just as in the matter of that war, the cause of that sinking is far more complex than a piece of ice carried on an ocean current into the Great Circle Route used by Atlantic shipping. To begin with, the berg did not seek out the Titanic. Unlike the German U-boat that only three years later sent another great British liner to the bottom, Titanic’s nemesis was a mere creation of nature without means or motive to render any ill in and of itself. Yet, the meeting of boat and berg on that black April night was both the end and the beginning of events that in the end, dwarfed both participants.

Those who are familiar with the story of the Titanic know that there were numerous events and circumstances—many of which were insignificant at the time—that led to the disaster. Whether it was the high-carbon steel used in the hull which became brittle in cold water (the Atlantic that night was 28 degrees) or the hubris that had developed among those sailing these new leviathans (Captain Smith had said several years earlier that he could not imagine any situation in which a modern ocean liner could sink!) or physical events that were unique to that night (the North Atlantic was flat calm without any swell which  ordinarily would have identified the presence of an iceberg to the lookouts long before any contact), all combined to produce that “night to remember.” Yet, when most people are asked “who or what was to blame,” the vast majority identify the iceberg. Indeed, the name and thing that was Titanic and a piece of frozen water that soon melted back into the sea are irrevocably linked in history to the point at which most people will accept no other answer. What happened to the Titanic? She struck and ice berg and sank.

And just as the accepted answer to the question “what sank the Titanic” is “an iceberg,” so, too, the accepted answer to the question of “what caused the Civil War” is “slavery”—or at least it is today. Historians in the past did not hold that opinion. Matters of ongoing sectional conflict, religion, culture, politics and economics were at times variously considered as leading to the breakup of the Union in 1861. Of course, slavery was a part of all these issues—but not the fundamental or primary issue, much less the only issue which led to war. In fact, that particular claim can be laid to rest immediately with the consideration of two circumstances, one at the beginning and the other almost at the end of the war. The first was the introduction of the original 13^th Amendment called the Corwin Amendment after Ohio Republican Thomas Corwin which was submitted on March 2^nd, 1861 to the Congress in an attempt to forestall the secession of the Cotton States threatened after the election of Abraham Lincoln. The Amendment forbade any attempts to amend the Constitution to empower the Congress to "abolish or interfere" with the "domestic institutions" of the states, including "persons held to labor or service" (a direct reference to slavery). The proposed amendment was submitted to the state legislatures without a deadline so as to make its passage easier. If the States of the South had wished only to preserve slavery, the Corwin Amendment—which had already been passed by at least one “non-Southern” state and signed by outgoing President Buchanan—would have given those States all the protection required for them to remain in the Union.

The second situation is even more telling. In the Hampton Roads conference held between the leaders of the United States and the Confederate States almost at the end of the war, President Lincoln offered to restore the Southern states into the Union as quickly as possible knowing that had they been so restored, they could have voted down any proposed Constitutional Amendment ending slavery! In other words, Lincoln wanted the Union restored and to achieve that end, he offered to the states in supposed rebellion an immediate return to their prior place absent any loss of power, a situation that would have permitted them to prevent the adoption of the 13^th Amendment. If slavery were the fundamental reason for both secession and war, as the South was almost at the end of her ability to resist federal might, why bargain away that hard won victory? The answer is simple: slavery was not the cause of the war and its end or continued existence was of less importance to Lincoln and his government than was the restoration of the Union and the continued growth of power of both the American empire and its central government.

If the paths of the Titanic and that iceberg had not crossed on April 14^th and that great ship had gone on to arrive safely in New York, we cannot know what would have happened anymore than we can know what would have happened had the Southern states accepted Corwin and remained in the Union. Would slavery still be with us today? Absolutely not! That institution—at least in the New World—was fading away by that time. Even Brazil ended slavery of its own accord in May of 1888 not too many years after the adoption of the second 13^th Amendment to the United States Constitution—and it did so without war or internal conflict. Whatever else we may or may not know, we can know this: both the iceberg and chattel slavery were intrinsically involved in these two great human tragedies, but neither was the cause of either.

pickin

worldglory

standard_bearer

DO

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smSWRforum

A needful task

The question has been raised as to why we should study the causes of the War of Secession. After all, aren’t most folks really only interested in the people and events of that War? Indeed, most of those interested in the subject know (or think they know) pretty much what the war was all about and certainly, who won. Can’t we just enjoy learning about the great heroes and awesome events and let the matters of blame and cause “rest in peace” so to speak? As has so often been said, can’t we just “get over it?” Ah ~ but can we realistically do that? Is it desirable? Is it even possible?

During World War II, there were two men – Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto - who, taken as individuals, were of honorable and noble character as well as being possessed of great military genius. Both were extremely successful warriors—for a while. Both were eventually overcome by sheer strength and numbers rather than any strategic defects on their parts. Finally, both served on “the losing side”. But for the sake of the question posed at the beginning of this article, we must ask, who now celebrates them? Does there exist a General Erwin Rommel Society or an Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto Society either in America or elsewhere? Perhaps they do—somewhere—but I tend to doubt it. Why? Because the cause for which these personally noble and supremely gifted men fought is justly considered unworthy of celebration or commemoration. Their faultless service to that cause is seen as a blemish on their characters rather than actions to be praised and glorified. Their military achievements are considered actions intended to advance an inhuman tyranny and therefore, the more brilliant their military service, the more condemnation obtains for that very reason. For the soldier cannot be separated from the cause for which he fights no matter the nature of his own personal life or professional abilities. Certainly there is more sympathy and respect, historically, for Rommel and Yamamoto than for other Axis military figures because of who and what they were as men, but neither can escape the wicked nature of the cause for which they spilt their blood or the stain that cause cast upon their memories.

Ah, but one might ask, what has that to do with the great men of the Confederacy? Everything! Consider the present ongoing, relentless and all-pervading assault on Southern history and heritage. The cause for which men like Lee, Jackson, Stuart and Semmes fought and for which Jackson and Stuart died, is being implacably, irresistibly and irrevocably reduced to the same moral level as the cause for which Rommel and Yamamoto fought and died. Furthermore, this assault proceeds from every cultural and establishment institution and across political and ideological spectrums. Members of both political parties either condemn the cause of Southern independence or remain mute in the face of every calumny brought against it while this new war—every bit as violent, hateful and bitter as the first—only becomes more brutal and unforgiving with each passing year.

Gone are the days of “the Grand Bargain” in which the South was honored for its cause while admitting, however, that it was for the best that that cause was lost. Gone is respect for Southern heroes, Southern values and Southern culture. Gone is the acknowledged right of Southerners to display their symbols while others look on with respect or, at the very least, tolerance. Left unchallenged, very soon indeed the cause of Lee and his comrades in arms will be as hateful and despised as the cause of Rommel and Yamamoto! Indeed, the only way to prevent such a travesty of justice is to educate people to those facts and truths of history which are at present being denied them. For a perceived “noble cause” will ennoble atrocities committed in its name—Sherman’s March, Sheridan’s Desolation of the Shenandoah—while a perceived “wicked cause” will debase even the most noble men who supported and sustained it. But the cause of Lee and the rest, was the cause for which the Founders and those of their time fought: individual liberty and limited government deriving its power from the consent of the governed. This is a cause that deserves the respect of all true Americans whether or not it prevailed on the battlefield.

Terrorists And Socialists Caused Southern Secession

The 150 year sesquicentennial begins on December 20, 2010 marking the secession of Southern states and the formation of a new nation-The Confederate States of America. On this date 150years ago delegates at South Carolina's secession convention voted to secede from the Union. The rapid secession of 10 more Southern states followed in the winter and spring of 1861 and the CSA was formed.

The states constitutionally, legally, and honorably withdrew from the Union (U.S.A.) and resumed their pre-Union sovereign status. Several states including New York and Virginia had specifically reserved the right to withdraw from the Union when they joined the Compact of 1787 which was ratified in 1789 as the Constitution of the United States of America. The historical precedent for secession was well established. Early attempts at secession were made by the Northern states of Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1803 and 1814 in opposition to the Louisiana Purchase and the War of 1812. All early U.S. presidents including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson recognized the right and stated "let them go in peace if they so desire".

Military cadets at West Point Military Academy were taught that secession was legal through a text book "Rawle's View of the Constitution". Up until 1861 most politicians and citizens in America considered secession legal. Prior to becoming U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln on the floor of Congress on Jan.12,1848 stated "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most sacred right — a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much territory as they inhabit". What caused Lincoln to reverse his opinion in 1861? When asked "Why not let the South go in peace" he replied "Let the South Go? I can't let them go. What would become of my tariff (taxes)".

Only the misinformed and uneducated believe that the North (Union) invaded the Confederate States of America for the express purpose of freeing slaves. All wars are fought over 4 things - money, resources, land, and power (empire). There was, however, a small group of New Englanders who wanted war for that purpose. It Was A Coalition Of New England economic interests (greed) With The New England radicals, fanatics, zealots and hypocrites that caused the Southern secession movement. These New England terrorists threatened and carried out terrorist activities in Kansas and Virginia through psychopath John Brown. The Civil War actually began in Kansas in 1854, not April 12,1861 at Ft. Sumter South Carolina. In 1857, terrorist Hinton Helper published a book "The Impending Crisis" demanding instant Abolition with the alternative being the mass murder of Southern men, women, and children. In the U.S. Congress 68 of 117 Republicans had signed a resolution supporting such terrorist activities against the South. Terrorism cased Southern secession.

Abraham Lincoln acted with deceit in setting up the Ft. Sumter incident in April 1861 with the express intent of starting a war. Original correspondence documents prove this fact. There was also much socialist involvement in creating the war. Lincoln's assistant secretary of war, Charles A. Dana was a socialist who had went to Europe and been instructed by the infamous socialist Karl Marx. The new book "Red Republicans And Lincoln Marxists" furnishes the details. The new Republican party formed in 1854 was socialist and worked to create war. Karl Marx coached Lincoln and Dana on how to start the war and blame the South. Many European socialists from the failed European socialist revolution of 1848 came to America and served as Union military officers.

Lincoln burned and shut down 200-300 Northern newspapers in 1861 because they supported the South's constitutional right to secede. It was the worst violation of 1st Amendment rights ever committed in America. He jailed about 200,000 Northern war protesters without warrant or trial - 38,000 for the duration of the war. An unconstitutional, illegal, immoral, and criminal war of aggression was carried out 1861-65 by the Union against the CSA. After the War Of Northern Aggression ended in 1865 the Native American Indians in the West received the same treatment.

James W. King
Commander Sons Of Confederate Veterans
Camp 141 Albany Georgia

“It Started With a Lie”

“Everyone should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in the hope that it may find a place in history and descend to posterity. History is not the relation of campaigns and battles and generals or other individuals, but that which shows the principles for which the South contended and which justified her struggle for those principles.” ~ Gen. Robert E. Lee
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“The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form.” ~ President Jefferson Davis, C.S.A.

Most people are familiar with that terrible and bloody conflict wherein a great deal more died than men and women, as “the Civil War”, but is that name accurate or even appropriate? The definition of a “civil war” is as follows:

~ a war between opposing groups within a nation for the control of that nation. ~

Some recent definitions omit the second phrase referring simply to a “war between opposing groups within a nation”, but that is misleading, even mendacious. The recognized meaning of a civil war has always been one in which differing factions strive for control of a single nation in order to rule. The war between King Charles I and Oliver Cromwell was truly a “civil war” in that both sides strove by war to rule England. The war between the Stuart kings and the line of Hanover was also a “civil war” for the same reason. On the other hand, the wars between the British and the Irish, Scots and Welsh were not “civil wars” because though the British sought to rule Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the peoples of those nations had no designs upon the British throne – they simply wished to be left alone in peace and freedom.

The war which took place on the North American continent between 1861 and 1865 (although that only encompasses four years of what was in fact a much longer struggle) was akin to the latter rather than the former situation. The States of the South did not wish to rule the Union, they merely wished to leave it and hence, the war cannot be truthfully designated a “civil war”. Yet, from the beginning, that was the term used and remains in use (at least in the North) to this day. How and why did that happen? Well, it would seem that President Abraham Lincoln defined it as such even before the actual war had begun. In his first inaugural address, Lincoln stated:

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it.

The entire address is a carefully contrived effort to justify whatever steps the new President considered necessary to, in his words, “preserve, protect and defend the Union” and he carefully notes that he bears no blame for what is to come though he initiates the actions leading to war. On the other hand, Lincoln does not claim that the states of the South desire to do anything but to secede and makes no reference to a threat by those states to forcibly wrest control of the Union from the remaining members for the purposes of ruling them. Lincoln expresses or implies nothing but that a group of states wishes to leave the old compact and form another more to their liking, an action already counted as a “divine right” of the People in the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ~ 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, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Indeed, Mr. Lincoln himself acknowledged that right when, on January 12th, 1848 on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, he stated plainly:

“Any people any where, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, sacred right -- a right which, we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movements. Such minority was precisely the case of the Tories of our own Revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines, or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones.”

It seems that somewhere between January of 1848 and January of 1861, Mr. Lincoln determined that this “sacred right” did not extend to or exist for the People of the South. Furthermore, while leaving the old Union and forming a new nation would obviously change the old Union, it would no more destroy either the Union or the federal government than had the addition of new states and territories done in the past. Yet, the newly elected President chose to make it known that he would not countenance secession despite the rights immortalized in the Declaration and the Constitution - and that the response of the Federal Government would be not “war”, but “civil war” though Lincoln was careful to make no claim that the States of the South desired to contest with the rest of the Union for hegemony or had threatened to wage war upon their sister states!

The question then must be this: did Lincoln not understand the difference between a “civil war” and the war he intended to wage if the States of the South continued on the path of separation? Given Mr. Lincoln’s obvious intelligence, that seems clearly an impossibility. Much more likely was the term was used deliberately in order to foist the appearance of legitimacy upon a conflict that otherwise would reek of unjust and unconstitutional aggression. After all, it is a “given” that both sides in a “civil war” initiate conflict since both must make war upon the other in order to rule. By purposefully mischaracterizing the war as a “civil war”, it can be reasonably argued that Lincoln sought to cast equal blame upon a people who wished only their constitutional right to peacefully leave the Union. Indeed, since a union by its very nature is voluntary, to maintain it at the point of a gun is not “union” but “conquest” and forcing men to accept the rule of an unwanted government is simply tyranny. This is not a matter of “politics” but of “history”. Unfortunately, while much of politics is a consequence of history, much of “history” – especially regarding the War of Secession - is a consequence of politics.

SWR's Lady Val

Driving Liberty Boys to the Devil

New England was no stranger to the fear of slave insurrection, New York City had experienced the “Negro Plot of 1741” with many conspirators hanged, burned and corpses left to rot in the open air. The British also knew well the incubus planted in the American colonies should residents contemplate revolt – Virginia’s Royal Governor Lord Dunmore in 1775 emancipated all slaves who would repair to His Majesty’s banner and bear arms to fight against American independence.

Bernhard Thuersam, Director
Cape Fear Historical Institute
www.cfhi.net

Driving Liberty Boys to the Devil:

“[The] terror of [slave] insurrection, so often and aptly illustrated in the common phrase of “sleeping over a volcano,” that continuous and awful dread which conscious tyranny feels, but hates to acknowledge, we have already said, was not unknown even in Massachusetts, where the servile class was always a comparatively small element of the population. In times of civil commotion and popular excitement, the danger was more imminent, and the fear was more freely expressed.

During the difficulties between the people of the town of Boston and the British soldiers in 1768, John Wilson, a captain in the 59th Regiment, was accused of exciting the slaves against their masters, assuring them that the soldiers had come to procure their freedom; and that, “with their assistance, they should be able to drive the Liberty Boys to the devil.” He was arrested on the complaint of the selectmen, and was bound over for trial; “but, owing to the maneuvers of the Attorney-General, the indictment was quashed, and Wilson left the Province about the same time.” Drake’s Boston, 754.

There was a similar alarm in September, 1774. It is noticed in one of the letters of Mrs. John Adams to her husband, dated at Boston Garrison, 22 September, 1774. “There has been in town a conspiracy of the Negroes. At present it is kept pretty private, and was discovered by one who endeavored to dissuade them from it. He being threatened with his life, applied to Justice Quincy for protection. They conducted in this way, got an Irishman to draw up a petition to the Governor [Gage], telling him they would fight for him provided he would arm them, and engage to liberate them if he conquered. Adams letters, I., 24.

(Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts, George Henry Moore, D. Appleton & Company, 1866, pp. 129-130)

Britain Populating its American Colony:

The need for labor in its American colony stimulated not only the indentured servitude detailed below, but also slave trading by England’s Royal African Company. This was formed in 1662 with the king’s brother, the Duke of York, as president. It would have an outright monopoly on bringing enslaved Africans to the New World until 1697, when the British Crown permitted private traders to carry slaves to British colonies and paying a 10 percent duty.

Bernhard Thuersam, Director
Cape Fear Historical Institute
www.cfhi.net

Britain Populating its American Colony:

“A principal source of labor for the [American] plantations during the seventeenth century were the white indentured servants brought from England. In the mother country the farm hands and laboring classes received miserably low wages….[and] found it almost impossible to save [6 pounds], the average cost of passage to America. The only method by which they could transfer their labor from a cheap market in England to a dear market in America was the indenture system, really a credit, or installment system to pay the passage money of crossing the Atlantic. The servant signed a contract by which he sold his labor to a master for a period usually of four or five years.

Immigration into the colonies was vastly stimulated by the profitable business of securing servants for the American market. John Harrower, an indentured servant in Virginia, described in his diary which he kept from 1773-1776, a class of merchants called Soul Drivers, who met immigrant and convict ships at the docks to buy servants, whom they would drive through the colonies “like a parcel of Sheep” to sell to the highest bidder. Such servants were sold for prices ranging from [20 pounds] for the highest type, Scottish soldiers captured after the Jacobite revolt, to [4 pounds] for Irish vagrants.

Most of the indentured servants were young men and women under twenty-five years of age. Under some masters the indentured servitude approximated the conditions of slavery. The master had the right to punish his white servant by whipping, and the servant could not leave the plantation without permission. If a servant married without consent or if a maidservant had an illegitimate baby, the term of service was extended for one year. If a servant ran away and was arrested, he or she was punished by extending the term of service two days extra in Virginia and ten days in Maryland for every day of absence.

The labor shortage in America was so great that it led to the dark crime of kidnapping. There were professional agents in England known a “spirits” who kidnapped “drunks” in taverns and young persons on the streets to ship them to America for sale as servants. The British government used the Southern colonies as well as the islands of Jamaica and Barbados as a dumping ground for convicts.

(A History of the Old South, The Emergence of a Reluctant Nation, Clement Eaton, MacMillan Publishing, 1975, pp. 23-31)

Was it worth it?

By David Ware

The Yankee takes delight in celebrating the War to Prevent Southern Independence as the time when the slaves were set free, yet his defense of freedom takes a dive when it comes to extending freedom to Southerners to establish their own country and to the establishment of martial law in the South during reconstruction..

In this month’s (Sept-Oct 2010) Confederate Veteran magazine, there is a wonderful article about slavery by Don Livingstone. Hopefully, all of you will read it. Also, Compatriot Bill Vallante has written a rather compelling article much about the same situation available here:
http://www.petersburgexpress.com/myth.html

It seems to me that there is another less explored aspect of the idea that this war was all about slavery. As this time period is discussed in the coming months and years, as we commemorate the sesquicentennial, we will not be given equal time to state our case. Instead, we will be shouted over and shouted down in the style of a Fox news or CNN debate. For the ten or so seconds we might get, our response might well be: “Then, was it worth it?”

An affirmative reply to the question would imply, at least the idea that the killing, burning, looting and destruction of our region was necessary and just. That all those that died and were wounded, on both sides, had to endure this ordeal to resolve the issue of slavery. That the issuance of statehood to West Virginia, the period of Reconstruction which followed, including the unconstitutional adoption of the 14th Amendment was all necessary and “worth it.”

At a deeper level, the idea that it was “worth it” would imply that the “ends justify the means.” The is one of the most vile and corrupt principles fostered on the civilized world. If the cause can be marketed as just, then any means to achieve it, is also just. Just causes include: making the world safe for democracy, weapons of mass destruction, possession of nuclear weapons, getting rid of unfavorable rulers (others, not those of the United States unfortunately), diversity, health, education, defense, old age, retirement, the environment, energy, oil rights, human rights, civil rights, woman’s rights, general welfare, wealth redistribution , good nutrition, East Germany, the Soviet Union, Viet Nam, Korea, Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Haiti, Grenada, Philippines, war on drugs and so on.

A negative response would require that further examination be done to discern other possible remedies for what this war and all wars since, “accomplished.” It was also challenge the doctrine of the ends justify the means.

Sometimes the best questions are the shortest.

White Slavery

For more than one hundred years or longer, before the first black slave was sent to America, there was white slavery. This is a subject our United States history books will not touch with a 10 foot pole. If they covered it in its fullest scope black`s having been slaves could no longer be used as political leverage & undeserved gain today.

At best our government school books only briefly touch on the subject of " indentured servants." What they do not tell you is that to many whites there was no such thing, they were lifetime slaves. Those who did sign themselves into bondage & servitude through the system of indentured servitude were subjected to rules which if broken extended their slave status for years up to & including permanent slavery. Of course, charges were usually trumped - up to see that most of them did remain slaves indefinitely as their production was needed by the commerce of the colonies. Which proves slavery was an economical institute & not one based on the hatred of a persons race.

From my research & contacts with numerous people in the United Kingdom outright white slavery was the preferred manner in which people were sent to the colonies, not as indentured servants. Poor destitute families sold children into slavery with the promise to the parents that a better life awaited them in America, this was a lie. People were drugged or hit over the head in local pubs to only find that when they awakened that they were aboard a wooden sailing ship on their way to a life of permanent slavery in America. The jails & prisons were emptied of many into slavery because their only crimes was that they were so poor that they could not pay their debts & were sentenced to prison terms in " Debtors Prisons."

I had a friend I worked with who told of his German ancestors having been captured in battle by the English & shipped to New York City before it was a city, to harvest pitch tar from white pine trees for the Royal Navy. They were put ashore during the winter & were given a 20 ft. x 20 ft. piece of land to build a cabin on for protection from the elements.

Later it was discovered that yellow pine trees in the Southern United States produced much more pitch tar than white pines did which brought on even more white slavery.

So the next time you are researching your ancestry & hit a dead-end remember some of your family & mine could have been & probably were white slaves. There is no shame or embarrassment in it because it only confirms that the United States government hasn`t had the common courtesy or decency to tell us about this sorry episode of its history. I demand reparations! LOL

Billy E. Price
Ashville Alabama

“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)
----------------
[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?

The Demise of The Southern Woman

In Southern Lady,
By Lydia McGaughey Sherman.

In the past, Southern ladies were always looked to as an example of propriety, hospitality, and femininity. It is sad to see them losing their culture. It was a culture that led the way in manners and religion. In the years that the South was referred to as “The Bible Belt,” Southern women led in the teaching of modesty in clothing and behavior to Christian women. It was disappointing to hear Paula Deen speak. On one of her shows, she announced: ” I’m Paula Deen. Y’all want some fried chicken and beer?” On another, she related that she had divorced her first husband, followed by a huge laugh. Perhaps she does not know the enormity of what she represents to the rest of the country. In time of war, it was the Southern women who saved their homes by offering their gentle hospitality to soldiers who might have otherwise burned their property. It was those quiet, gentle, southern women that faithfully taught their children Bible lessons while the men were away. Southern women have always had a strength and determination, and when they use it to preserve the family, and adhere to the principles of the Scriptures, they reach their true glory. The south will never “rise again” until that sweetness and modesty is restored in its women. We recently had a visitor from Louisiana, an elderly man, who said, “You need to stop saying that the western states are a mission field. It is that way in the South, now.”

THE STRUGGLE FOR MEMORY

Excerpts from Remarks Celebrating Confederate Memorial Day
Old Warrenton Cemetery Confederate Gravesite
Sponsored by Black Horse Camp #780
Sons of Confederate Veterans
May 30, 2010
by Thomas Moore

The hallmark of a healthy, vibrant People is their stories, traditions, folklore, tales, and legends, both the true and the mythic. In rich, viable cultures, it’s not just the rulers or politicians or captains of industry who are celebrated, but also the historians, the bards, the storytellers. These individuals are the repository of the collective memory of a People. Without it they have no i dentity. And with no identity, with no “individuation” as a worthy and distinct People, their society has no sense of purpose or direction. A People with no knowledge of their history, with no collective memory, have literally become senile. Collectively, they are just as dysfunctional as an individual with acute Alzheimer’s disease.

I believe we Southerners are a distinct People, with our own particular folkways, traditions, customs, music, speech, and a common history lived out in a shared space. In essence, we are an authentic nation. In fact, I believe we are the last authentic Western civilization in the historic sense of the word “civilization,” especially in contrast to today’s America, with its militant secularism, tawdry commercialism, and infantile celebrity worship that pass for civilization. One thing that distinguishes us in today’s America is that we Southerners understand the truth that we a re what we remember. We are a people rich in memory.

You can see this in our continued reverence for our heroes – especially the distinguished Southerners who were the main figures in founding America as a great constitutional republic, a confederated union of sovereign states, as created by the Founders in 1787. And we honor equally those who fought to keep it so from 1861 to 1865. They sacrificed much to prevent it from degenerating into a unitary state, a virtually unlimited, authoritarian, centralized national polity, which is what the USA is today, thanks to the Northern victory in 1865.

For many decades after the War ended, the Southern people followed the admonition of General Lee and other Confederate leaders to obey the law and conduct themselves as loyal Americans. When Federal occupation ended in 1877, the South found itself being ac cepted, slowly, grudgingly, because America’s expanding commercial and political ambitions needed our proven valor and military aptitude. And of course, our vast natural resources and our tax revenues.

In the 1890’s a kind of social truce emerged between North and South, sometimes called the “Grand Bargain.” Under this truce the North agreed to stop demonizing the South. They acknowledged the South had been sincere and honorable in The War, although misguided in trying to break up the Union. They agreed that the courage and dedication of the Southern armies were worthy of praise, even in a wrong cause. Confederate heroes like Lee and Stonewall Jackson were honored as American heroes. Southerners were allowed back in the fold as citizens, though never quite on an equal footing with the rest of Americans.

In exchange for being allowed to erect our Confederate monuments, fly our flags, display our revered symbols, and pay tribute to our heroes, the South conceded it was best for the Union not to have broken up. We became loyal, patriotic Americans, giving our full energies to building the country. We paid our taxes and sent our sons to fight America’s wars – and today even our daughters. We went along with the burgeoning American empire because that is what the powers decreed.

The South has kept this bargain many times over. No part of the country has been more loyal and more patriotic than the South. The Stars and Stripes fly more ubiquitously in the South than in any other region. In every war from 1865 to the present, Southern men have served bravely, representing a disproportionate share of the enlisted ranks and officer corps -- and of the dead and wounded. Nearly half today’s casualties in Afghanistan are from the 14 Southern States.

But sadly, the Grand Bargain has been broken, even while we Southerners are expected to continue living up to it. As Dr. Clyde Wilson, one of the South’s most distinguished historians, has said, “Our Confederate heritage is being banished to a dark little corner of American life labeled ‘Slavery and Treason.’ The people who seek to destroy our heritage are not folks we can win over by presenting historical evidence and assuring them we are good, loyal Americans free of hate. They could not care less about truth or heritage. We are not in an argument over the interpretation of the past. Our very identity as Southerners -- today and tomorrow, as well as yesterday -- is at stake.”

And the people cited by Dr. Wilson are not just Liberal Democrats and the perfervid ranks of the radical Left. They include so-called conservative Republicans as well. I know from exp erience, up close and personal and from the inside: the Republican Establishment to which so many Southerners have given their loyalty secretly despises us as much as the Democrats. In fact, the more loyal we are, the more the GOP Insiders and Neo-Cons despise us.

Today our ruling elites and their media lapdogs equate this Flag with the Nazi swastika, and the men who fought under it with Hitler’s legions. General Lee, a leading voice after the War for racial as well as political reconciliation, is dismissed with contempt as leader of an army of slave-drivers

Need I remind anyone here what happened when Governor Bob McDonnell recently tried to revive Virginia’s time-honored practice of honoring her Confederate history? The might of the establishment fell on him in full fury. The clamoring voices of moral sanctimoniousness insisted the Confederacy c ould only be cited if it was characterized as an exercise in treason, and that its soldiers fought only to enslave others. The Governor of course back-pedaled. He tried to apologize. He clearly hadn’t yet learned that you can never apologize enough or abase yourself abjectly enough before the altar of Political Correctness. I guess he knows it now.

The latest assault of the Marxist attempt to re-write history is by Roland Martin of CNN. In an April broadcast he attacked Governor McDonnell’s Confederate History proclamation, claiming -- his words – that “celebrating the Confederates is akin to honoring Nazi soldiers for killing of Jews during the Holocaust,” and that Confederate soldiers should be considered "domestic terrorists."

Do you feel insulted, or worse, assaulted? If not, you should. This is a gross insult – to you and to me a nd to the truth. But it’s more than an insult, as bad as that is. It’s more than a malicious lie borne of Political Correctness.

This kind of expunging of memory has profound and troubling political implications. Such acts have been the trademark of totalitarian regimes throughout the ages. The Communist dictator Stalin understood this principle. He said, “Who controls the past controls the present.” If despots can make you believe a false story about the past, they can control and manipulate your actions in the present for their selfish purposes. If they can label you as an enemy of the state, then you’re fair game and defenseless.

Stalin went to extraordinary lengths to expunge the names and images of his one-time colleagues and later rivals like Kirov and Trotsky from the pages of books and newspapers. Hitler had the ancestral village of his natural grandfather razed and tried to eliminate its very memory (from a fear the man was Jewish). The Jacobins of the French Terror, Mao Tse-Dong and the Red Chinese, and the Khmer Rouge all engaged in this most common behaviour of despots: warring against history and erasing memory. It recalls to us the words of Czech writer Milan Kundera: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

These are the ominous parallels with the campaign against Southern history and identity. This attempt to expunge memory and re-write history is a form of aggression. It’s a key strategy in the “cold civil war” raging in our country. It’s part of a new political paradigm that supersedes the old Left-Right paradigm. It supersedes the false dichotomy of Republicans versus Democrats, who are really just two wings of the same bird of prey, simply two gangs fighting over the spoils.

The real conflict today is between those who still cling to an older tradition of human dignity and liberty versus those who seek to control, exploit, and plunder their fellow man. It’s between those who still worship and serve God and those who worship and serve the state.

The relentless campaign of hatred, vilification, and elimination of all things distinctly Southern from the public sphere is not an inconsequential matter. It tells us our culture is marked for extinction. And why do the power elites want to destroy it?

Because the old Jeffersonian idea of personal responsibility, individual liberty, and limited government is the Southern political ideal. And that ideal is precisely the target. To eliminate it, Southern history and memory which have nurtured it, must be destroyed. And if the culture which shelters these ancient ideals is destroyed, then the liberty which sprouted and flourished in its soil, the personal freedoms which it sustains, will not be far behind.
Seen in this light, the cause of the South and the preservation of its memory, its traditions, and its symbols is the cause of decent men and women everywhere who love liberty and seek to live in dignity.

Thomas Moore is Chairman of the Southern National Congress.

TWO INSPIRING SIGHTS

By Bob Hurst

There was once a time in America when all across the Southland the melodious and uplifting strains of "Dixie" were heard during athletic contests, parades and many other social gatherings and occasions.

There was a time when Southern schools taught of the nobility and character of Robert E. Lee, the military genius and absolute goodness of Stonewall Jackson, the boldness and flair of Jeb Stuart, the audacity and brilliance of Nathan Bedford Forrest and the courage and honor of Jefferson Davis.

There was a time when monuments and statues were regularly raised on courthouse lawns to honor the deeds, the devotion and the spirit of our Confederate ancestors and heroes plus celebrations were held at these iconic sites to remember the heroism of the remarkable Confederates who had fought so hard for the independence of the Southland.

But times change.

About five decades ago this country went through a paradigm shift and began a transformation to a place many of us were, and still are, uncomfortable with. The putrid wind of political correctness began blowing its foul fragrance across this land with especially severe impact on our beloved South. It became verboten to play or sing the wonderful "Dixie" at any of those venues where it had been so common before. Why, the student senate of my undergraduate alma mater, one of the most conservative universities in the country, even voted to have the school band stop playing that wondrous melody at home football games. I never imagined that even a handful of students at Auburn would have voted that way much less the entire student senate.

Another great Southern university, Ole Miss, was every Southerner's "other" favorite school because they were the "Rebels" and their fans waved the Confederate Battle Flag at athletic events. That, too, changed a few years back when a liberal administration banned the waving of the CBF in the stands at athletic contests. They even changed the school mascot from a well-recognized Southern gentleman figure to something absolutely indescribable.

Many other things of this nature have happened throughout our Southland as political correctness has come to dominate so many aspects of our lives and one of the primary targets for extinction by the PC crowd has been anything having to do with the Confederacy. That is why I found two recent events here in our hard-to-recognize-as-still-Southern state of Florida to be so gratifying and inspiring.

The first occurred on April 24 in Trenton, the county seat of Gilchrist County. On that date a brand new monument was dedicated to the Confederate soldiers who hailed from that part of the state. The key point about the dedication of this monument is that the memorial is located on the grounds of the county courthouse - a public place.

Now, there was a time when it was not unusual at all for Southern groups, primarily the United Daughters of the Confederacy, to have Confederate monuments erected on public property with the full cooperation of elected officials. This, sadly, has become a thing of the past. Too many city, county and state officials are now so afraid that someone might claim to be "offended" by any display of pride in the Confederacy that they meekly give in to the complaints of the Always Complaining People.

This is why it was so inspiring to me to watch two members of John Hance O'Steen Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans remove the covering from the monument and reveal to the large crowd in attendance the most recent memorial to our ancestors. I could also detect the pride felt by Camp Commander Clement Lindsey and camp member John Aulick, Jr. as they did the honors.

I know from previous conversations with Commander Lindsey that this was a project several years in the making and I can only say," Job well done, gentlemen, you did us all proud." Kudos to everyone involved in this remarkable project.

By the way, making this accomplishment even more gratifying is the fact that just a couple of years ago the officials in a nearby county had had a Confederate monument moved from the spot at the courthouse in that county where it had sat for decades.

Also remarkable was the good (and fair) coverage that the event received in the very liberal Gainesville SUN newspaper. The article even contained a picture and was located on the front page of the "Local and State" section. Good job, SUN!

Only two days later (April 26) and not far from Trenton, another wonderful event took place. In Cross City, the county seat of Dixie County, a Confederate Memorial Day celebration hosted by Dixie Defenders Camp,SCV, was held on the steps of the courthouse in that fine town. Not only was there a good-sized crowd in attendance but both the city commission and the county commission presented proclamations to the camp declaring that day as Confederate Memorial Day in the city and county. Among those in attendance in front of the courthouse were many people who worked inside the building and a number of elected officials.

As nice as all this was, the most electrifying moment of the day came when (by permission of the county manager and county commission) the Third National Flag of the Confederacy (the current governmental flag of the Confederacy) was run up the sole flagpole at the courthouse and remained there throughout the ceremony. The Third National did not fly alone, however, as just beneath it was hoisted a new Confederate POW flag that was designed by a member of the Dixie Defenders Camp.

I know how hard Camp Commander Joe Sparacino has worked over the past several years to develop a good rapport with the government officials in the city and county. It all paid off with this wonderful and inspiring event which I understand Commander Sparacino hopes to make an annual affair.

I had the privilege of being one of the two speakers for the event (Tampa radio personality Al McCray was the other) and I can say, without reservation, that I will always be proud of my participation in this great occasion and will always look back upon it with fondness.

Since I'm writing about fine events, let me conclude with a heads-up for everyone in this area about an upcoming event that you should fine interesting.

My very first CONFEDERATE JOURNAL article for this magazine, written almost five years ago, was about the terrible damage done by Hurricane Katrina to magnificent Beauvoir, the retirement home in Biloxi of President Jefferson Davis. The huge wave surge and winds did extensive damage to the house itself but simply destroyed the other structures on the property including the museum/library.

The Mississippi Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, owns and operates Beauvoir and has overseen the complete restoration of the wonderful old house which has been re-opened to the public. Now it is time to rebuild the museum/library and this, of course, will require financial support.

On June 19, 2010, Col. David Lang Camp, SCV, in Tallahassee will host a Jefferson Davis Banquet to help raise money for this rebuilding program. While the Mississippi Division holds title to the presidential shrine, this wonderful place is the responsibility of all true Southerners and especially those in the SCV, OCR, UDC, CoC and other Southern heritage organizations. I invite those of you living in this area to contact me about tickets to the banquet and if anyone reading this article would like to contribute to this worthwhile cause (any donation is appreciated) then please feel free to contact me about this. My contact information is at the end of this article.

Richard Flowers, the curator at Beauvoir, will be the keynote speaker for the evening and will also bring many items from the Beauvoir store (books, collectibles, etc.) which will be available for purchase by those in attendance at the banquet.

I plan for our camp to continue hosting this banquet annually at least until such time as the library/museum is completely rebuilt and again open to the public. I encourage you to help us make this first event a real success.

For the Cause.

DEO VINDICE

Bob Hurst is a Southern Patriot who belongs to a number of heritage, historical and ideological organizations. He has a special interest in Confederate history and the antebellum architecture of the Old South. He is Commander of Col. David Lang Camp, Sons of Confederate Veterans, in Tallahassee and is 2nd Lt. Commander of the Florida Division, SCV.