 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| Rivers Bridge Camp No. 842 Sons of Confederate Veterans |
| TheSouthern Defender |
| "It is our duty to keep the memory of our heroes green..." Jefferson Davis |
| To access, click on desired link |
| Motives Don’t Matter Valerie Protopapas Long have I pondered about how to deal with the problems of slavery and race in any discussion or symposium on the War of Secession. Should one include references to race and slavery quite apart from anything directly involved with the issue being discussed? I considered a treatise of mine on the Titanic as an allegory which reveals that there was so much more about the origins of the war than the question of slavery—just as there was so much more about the Titanic than the story of a boat and a berg. Then I pondered the “apologia” with which many begin any presentation of the Southern side pointing out how the presenter isn’t about criticizing blacks or excusing slavery etc., etc. etc., positions which seem to obtain in any attempt to bring up the facts about the War of Secession that do not reflect the current orthodoxy. It seemed to me that opening on such a note probably influences the audience to think exactly the opposite of what the presenter wants them to think and leads to the dismissal of entire effort as the ranting of racists. Then I remembered something in a presentation of my own and that proverbial “light bulb” went off in my brain. Frankly, I believe that for once in my life, I am being brilliant with regards to the entire business of the whos, whats and whys of the war! Below is Lincoln’s quote and my comment upon it: “Can this government stand, if it indulges constitutional constructions by which men in open rebellion against it, are to be accounted, man for man, the equals of those who maintain their loyalty to it?” Here again, Lincoln excuses an openly unconstitutional act, the creation of West Virginia and its admission into the Union. Remember, that new state was removed unconstitutionally from the State of Virginia. As do so many amoral people, he blames Virginia, the State wronged by his actions, for pointing out the unconstitutionality of the deed. Instead of doing what a true representative of the law does—that is, follow the law—he points out that those who agree with the admission are “loyal” to the government while those who disagree are “rebels” and “insurrectionists.” But no mention is made in the Constitution about the patriotism or lack thereof of those committing an unconstitutional act or those who reject it. The act is either constitutional or it is unconstitutional; it does not stand or fall by any other criteria. For the first time I realized that there is no reason to defend or reject the motives put forth surrounding the War! Was it about slavery? I’m sure to many—both North and South—it was. Was it about economics? Again, the same is true. Was it about religion? Culture? Corruption? Yes, yes, and yes. But the point is, we don’t have to—and shouldn’t—waste our time on any of this! There is only one criteria here as I said at the end of my comment above: “(t)he act is either constitutional or it is unconstitutional; it does not stand or fall by any other criteria.” Secession is either constitutional or unconstitutional; the war to prevent or end secession was either constitutional or unconstitutional. It matters not what the motives involved on either side were, only the legality and constitutionality of their actions. In the middle of the 19th Century, secession was considered constitutional and therefore legal. Indeed, it took a false decision by the Supreme Court four years after the War (Texas v. White in 1869) to make secession a crime! Jefferson Davis was not brought to trial as a traitor because several federal attorneys including Richard Dana and Salmon Chase stated that Davis had committed no crime as secession was legal! So despite Lincoln’s (and the other radicals’) belief that the government created the States(!), as that was not the acceptable constitutional understanding of the matter at the time, nothing that the Southern States did was illegal no matter what motivated them to do so. On the other hand, an attack by the federal government on the States was treason according to the Constitution and no matter what motivated Lincoln and the federals that fact does not change! So the only argument we have to make is the constitutionality of the actions of both parties. Their motives mean nothing. They neither validate nor repudiate the actions taken. Motives in these circumstances have no bearing on the legitimacy of the acts and calling something “constitutional” or, in the alternative “unconstitutional" on that basis has no meaning in law and thus, no meaning in regard to a presentation of historical facts. Concerns about the good or evil of the motives of those involved in historical actions might make a wonderful book, but it cannot be used to create a policy or an historical judgment of either side. |
| Historical Ignorance Walter E. Williams · Jul. 15, 2015 The victors of war write its history in order to cast themselves in the most favorable light. That explains the considerable historical ignorance about our war of 1861 and panic over the Confederate flag. To create better understanding, we have to start a bit before the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the war between the colonies and Great Britain. Its first article declared the 13 colonies “to be free, sovereign and independent states.” These 13 sovereign nations came together in 1787 as principals and created the federal government as their agent. Principals have always held the right to fire agents. In other words, states held a right to withdraw from the pact — secede. During the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a proposal was made that would allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison rejected it, saying, “A union of the states containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a state would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.” In fact, the ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly said they held the right to resume powers delegated should the federal government become abusive of those powers. The Constitution never would have been ratified if states thought they could not regain their sovereignty — in a word, secede. On March 2, 1861, after seven states seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, Sen. James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment that read, “No state or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States.” Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S. Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. Here’s a question for the reader: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional? On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, “Any attempt to preserve the union between the states of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty.” Both Northern Democratic and Republican Parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace. Just about every major Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South’s right to secede. New York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): “If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861.” Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): “An attempt to subjugate the seceded states, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil — evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content.” The New York Times (March 21, 1861): “There is growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go.” The War of 1861 settled the issue of secession through brute force that cost 600,000 American lives. We Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech: “It is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense.” Lincoln said the soldiers sacrificed their lives “to the cause of self-determination — that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth.” Mencken says: “It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self- determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves.” The War of 1861 brutally established that states could not secede. We are still living with its effects. Because states cannot secede, the federal government can run roughshod over the U.S. Constitution’s limitations of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. States have little or no response. |
| Historical Ignorance II Walter E. Williams · Jul. 22, 2015 We call the war of 1861 the Civil War. But is that right? A civil war is a struggle between two or more entities trying to take over the central government. Confederate President Jefferson Davis no more sought to take over Washington, D.C., than George Washington sought to take over London in 1776. Both wars, those of 1776 and 1861, were wars of independence. Such a recognition does not require one to sanction the horrors of slavery. We might ask, how much of the war was about slavery? Was President Abraham Lincoln really for outlawing slavery? Let’s look at his words. In an 1858 letter, Lincoln said, “I have declared a thousand times, and now repeat that, in my opinion neither the General Government, nor any other power outside of the slave states, can constitutionally or rightfully interfere with slaves or slavery where it already exists.” In a Springfield, Illinois, speech, he explained: “My declarations upon this subject of Negro slavery may be misrepresented but cannot be misunderstood. I have said that I do not understand the Declaration (of Independence) to mean that all men were created equal in all respects.” Debating Sen. Stephen Douglas, Lincoln said, “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes nor of qualifying them to hold office nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.” What about Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation? Here are his words: “I view the matter (of slaves’ emancipation) as a practical war measure, to be decided upon according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion.” He also wrote: “I will also concede that emancipation would help us in Europe, and convince them that we are incited by something more than ambition.” When Lincoln first drafted the proclamation, war was going badly for the Union. London and Paris were considering recognizing the Confederacy and assisting it in its war against the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation was not a universal declaration. It specifically detailed where slaves were to be freed: only in those states “in rebellion against the United States.” Slaves remained slaves in states not in rebellion – such as Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and Missouri. The hypocrisy of the Emancipation Proclamation came in for heavy criticism. Lincoln’s own secretary of state, William Seward, sarcastically said, “We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.” Lincoln did articulate a view of secession that would have been heartily endorsed by the Confederacy: “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. … 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.” Lincoln expressed that view in an 1848 speech in the U.S. House of Representatives, supporting the secession of Texas from Mexico. Why didn’t Lincoln share the same feelings about Southern secession? Following the money might help with an answer. Throughout most of our nation’s history, the only sources of federal revenue were excise taxes and tariffs. During the 1850s, tariffs amounted to 90 percent of federal revenue. Southern ports paid 75 percent of tariffs in 1859. What “responsible” politician would let that much revenue go? |
Ben "Cooter" Jones is perhaps best known for his roles in Smokey and the Bandit and in The Dukes of Hazard but after his acting career he served two terms in the United States Congress as a representative from Georgia. Currently retired in Virginia, he is a Heritage Defense Officer for the Sons of Confederate Veterans. “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” -- George Orwell In our ceaseless struggle against the seemingly overwhelming forces of Cultural Marxism, political correctness, identity politics, and historical “presentism”, I believe we have great allies in an unlikely pair of 20th century Englishmen. Eric Blair, whose nom de plume was George Orwell, so despised totalitarianism that his pen name now applies to the mindless miseries that have been created by the demagogues of right and left. And without Winston Churchill, we all would likely live in a very different and dystopian world, an “Orwellian” world. For those of us who are daily being falsely attacked as racists and smeared as bigots by a cabal of leftist academics, politicians, and journalists, the words of those who have fought these fights before are a comfort and a blessing. Quite simply, we are up against it. Those whose profession it is to vilify the South and Southern culture and heritage have surrounded us with their perfidious propaganda. They have enormous resources. They have a national media which is almost entirely “woke” with the maxims of the radical left. They have hundreds of millions of dollars. (The disgraced Southern Poverty Law Center alone has an endowment of $477,000,000.) Our opponents control the entire apparatus of the national Democratic Party. They seemingly have the vast majority of academia. And of course, they have long had the active support of the Hollywood film industry, whose power and influence are a major determinant in American opinion. If one believed what is being taught in our schools, read in our newspapers and seen on our televisions and at movie theatres, one would have to believe that those of us who dissent from this conventional wisdom are indeed vile and scabrous reactionaries to all that is good and decent. And that, of course, is exactly what they want you to believe. But, and it’s a huge BUT, those who propagate this fiction are not, by a long shot, in the majority. Serious polling shows that the nation is divided in almost equal numbers about all of our social and political issues. It is obvious that the United States is politically polarized between “urban” and “heartland” viewpoints. Yet, although the “heartland” has electoral clout, as was witnessed in the last Presidential election, it has no influence on the national “narrative”. And with the notable exception of Fox TV, only one viewpoint is being force fed to our citizenry. Our story, about who we are and what we believe, is being buried by the power of urban Interests. In fact, it is not just buried, but presented as something dark, with hateful and dangerous intent. We are being defined, brothers and sisters, by people who don’t know us and who really don’t want to know us. But we certainly do have the wonderful right to tell them what they don’t want to hear. Here are just a few things they don’t want to hear, right off the top of my head and in no particular order of importance: They don’t want to hear that American slavery was a Northern enterprise from beginning to end. They don’t want to hear that the Emancipation Proclamation was a cynical political move to influence Britain and France. They don’t want to hear that the worst race riots in our history have been in the North. They don’t want to hear that slavery existed in all of the colonies and in all of our original States. They don’t want to hear about Lincoln’s belief that black folks and white folks could not co-exist and that blacks should be deported to colonies elsewhere. They don’t want to comprehend Lincoln’s words in his first Inaugural Address, when he said that slavery was Constitutionally legal, and that the states should pass the Corwin Amendment to make it perpetually protected by the Constitution. They don’t want to hear that 12 American Presidents owned slaves, as did patriots like Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock. They don’t want to hear that hundreds of blacks owned black slaves. They don’t want to believe that black Southerners fought for the Confederacy. They don’t want to see the War Between the States as a terrible event that should have and could have been avoided. They don’t want to believe that Lincoln could have withheld the reinforcement of Ft. Sumter and extended diplomatic overtures to save the Nation. They don’t want to hear that Reconstruction was a vindictive punishment that hobbled the South and set the nation back. (There was no “Marshall Plan for Dixie.) They do not want to hear that the American Revolution was won in the South, or that seven of our first ten Presidents were Southerners. They don’t want to hear that the current wave of cultural Marxism with its wave of attacks against Southern culture and legacy are doing very real damage to the hard-won progress towards racial equality and understanding that has been made in the last five decades. They don’t want to hear that our nation is fed up with “snowflakes”, “social justice warriors” and upper class “victims” of whatever the fashionable “oppression” is. They don’t want to acknowledge that the media has been complicit in censoring voices of dissent. (Or to accept that the same media has been complicit in the endless and omnipresent flow of sleazy “adult” entertainment available to any child of any age.) They don’t want to hear that there is an orderly process of immigration into our nation which has worked well for a very long time. They don’t want to hear that somewhere on this Earth an American in uniform is in jeopardy, risking his or her life for our right to speak freely like this. There is a lot that they don’t want to hear. So, we must continue to raise our voices to the rooftops and press our cause at every chance. We are Southerners. We are of all colors and religions and ages. And we will be heard. “Never, give in! Never give in! Never, never, never… In nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions or honor and good sense!” -- Sir Winston Churchill "The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it." -- George Orwell. |
| Whose History – and Why It Matters Valerie Protopapas Some time ago, I wrote an article in response to a review of the book, REBEL YELL: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson. I did so because I believed what the review’s author, Matthew Price, had written should not be allowed to go unchallenged. Mr. Price noted that, “(Stonewall) Jackson was no proslavery zealot, but (author) Gwynne does not address directly the somewhat vexed issue of writing sympathetically about a figure who still fought for a cause utterly discredited by history.” My question to Mr. Price was, to “whose history” was he alluding when he made that claim? Because the matter involved the history and heritage of the South, I submitted my position to a Southern publication holding the same beliefs as expressed in my essay. However, it was rejected not because of my premise but because, in the words of those involved, the publication was “. . . not publishing as many Confederate history articles as previously . . . [Our] focus has shifted to current issues and to the future of the South.” Frankly, I fail to see the “disconnect” between that which I countered— Mr. Price’s definition of the cause for which Stonewall Jackson fought as “discredited”—and those same “current issues” which the publication wishes to address. After all, this contention is the very basis for the ongoing efforts of cultural genocide “currently” directed against the South! Ergo, it is neither rational nor intelligent to fight the present anti- Southern brushfires while ignoring the inferno causing them; that is, Mr. Price’s accepted version of “whose history!” To further illustrate the importance of the defeat of Jackson’s “cause,” I ended my article by stating, “For those who look at this country today and wonder how we got a government that is essentially lawless . . . and a Constitution that has been nullified along with its Bill of Rights, most of the answers to their questions can be found in the defeat of General Thomas Stonewall Jackson’s noble cause, a cause which has been made ignoble through the triumph of that present version of “history.” I believe that such a conclusion does address “current issues” for until and unless we directly counter the present myth of the South’s seceding because of and fighting for slavery, nothing else we do will matter. If we vacate that “historic” field and leave Mr. Price’s version of “whose history” to define all issues relative to the South’s past, then every present effort, no matter how intelligent, rational or spirited, is going to be dashed to pieces on the rocks of politically correct, factually inaccurate racial rhetoric. Responding to every claim that the Southern cause was all about slavery is analogous to going back and correcting a miscalculation at the beginning of a mathematical equation. For no matter how involved and lengthy the equation, if one starts with error one will never reach truth no matter how many years one takes to solve the problem. All efforts to avoid “Confederate history” and “move on” so as to address “current issues,” is a study in futility for each and every time the South is considered or discussed in the present, we invariably—and inevitably— go back to that same “Confederate history.” This cannot be avoided and all attempts to disconnect present from past only gives credence to those who say that we do so because the South’s past is shameful and has been discredited by actual (rather than “whose”) history. Did my response to Mr. Price involve merely matter of history or did it not represent an attempt to enlighten people to the facts that undergird the entire question of “today’s” South? Do we who desire to re-establish the South as representing the true vision of the Founding Fathers not understand that until people realize the ante-bellum South was not all moonlight, magnolias and slavery, we have little chance of achieving our goal? Do we not realize that if we do not thwart this wretched narrative about slavery as the South’s only cause, all of our efforts to stave off oblivion are in vain? If we do not understand this reality, then we are wasting our time trying to refute the image of the South as it is currently understood in the 21st century. The simple fact is that we must repudiate “whose history” and re-establish authentic history. Only by doing so will the people of the South—their faith, intellect, morality, humanity and way of life—be understood to be what is missing from the current United States! On the other hand, if we do not—if we permit “whose history” to remain the only history, the South will be consigned to oblivion. |
| Walter E. Williams |
| Valerie Protopapas |
| What They Don't Want to Hear |
| See Below: Motives Don't Matter Historical Ignorance Historical Ignorance II What They Don't Want to Hear Whose History and Why it Matters |