Berryville, VA. – The Turner Ashby Camp 1567, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Winchester, Virginia, honors Confederate soldiers who died during the War Between the States on Veteran’s Day.
The Clarke County War Memorial in Berryville, Va. adorned with Confederate and U.S. Flags on Veteran’s Day, Nov. 11, 2022.
Both Confederate and United States flags were placed side by side signifying the shared sacrifice of American soldiers, both Confederate and Union, who are honored equally as veterans by the United States.
Laws and proclamations passed by the U.S. Congress in 1906, 1929 and 1958 (and by President Eisenhower in 1960) gave Confederate veterans the same honors as any American veteran. Confederate Soldiers were made eligible to receive benefits including gravestones, markers, and/or pensions for service from 1861 to 1865.
Today, people forget that it was the United States who recognized the Confederate States in an act of reconciliation. Therefore, official proclamations by the Government removes all claims against the Confederacy and those who served it and protects, defends and honors their symbols, monuments and heroes. This codifies and makes law the fact that any assault upon all things Confederate is contrary to the laws of the United States and must be resisted vigorously.
In a more reconciliatory time in America, Confederate soldiers were admired for their courage and tenacity, and his descendants were sought for their honorable martial heritage. In 1954, ten years after D-Day during the dedication of the WW2 memorial for Virginia’s Bedford Boys, Commanding General Charles Gerhardt of the 29th Infantry Division, and southerner himself from Tennessee, described why Company A of the 116th Infantry Regiment was chosen to lead the first wave attack at Omaha Beach, Normandy. He said: “The record of the 29th [Infantry Division] goes back to 1620, through the regimental history of Virginia troops, and their record has been unequalled. Those boys were the descendants of those who fought with Jackson, Lee, and Stuart.”
Photo by Frank Capra. Companies A, then B, of the 116th Infantry, 29th Infantry Division, U.S. Army, attack German-held positions at Omaha Beach, Normandy, France, June 6, 1944.
Opponents want to abolish and drive a wedge between any connection descendants have to their Confederate ancestors, including altering their history, in order to divide America. Removing or revising history, and denigrating southern heritage, is their aim in order to destroy a nation they claim is racist and oppressive – and this strategy must be exposed and resisted.
The War Memorial honoring Clarke County veterans in Berryville is just one example of current resistance to this attempt to revise history and denigrate the dead. Fear and weakness have permeated the local Board of Supervisors and even many of Clarke’s citizens who are made to feel ashamed about the truth and connections to their heritage and history.
Berryville is culturally a southern town, has always had southern traditions, and sons who fought overwhelmingly for the Confederacy during the war. In the eyes of left-wing opponents, this fact is what needs to be destroyed. The monument at the court house recognizes those fallen Clarke soldiers who died during the war. Yet the BoS chooses to go lock-step with this new agenda where America’s southern culture and heritage exists no more, its symbols and history erased from the public mind and public square.
The strategy goes far beyond Clarke County, Va. It’s now a national agenda by the Democrat party and left-wing activists, that is, the agenda to wreck the military by altering its traditions, culture and lifeblood, and wipe away its people, its soldiers and their heritage. Remember a lot of military members are born and raised in the South where they live and work near large bases in their states: Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia and Texas are the big four. Add in Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida –and you have a majority of the southern states comprising by far the most American military bases.
From his camp in Mississippi, Sept. 1863, Union General William T. Sherman observed in a letter of the “young bloods of the South” he had been fighting:War suits them, and the rascals are brave, fine riders, bold to rashness … and they are the most dangerous set of men that this war has turned loose upon the world. They … must all be killed or employed by us before we can hope for peace.
The new Marxist agenda is changing the names of military bases, removing names of southern heroes and Generals. Anyone who stands in their way are called racists, rednecks and hillbillies, “gun-violent” nuts and the like. The new policies of the woke are aimed squarely on the military where senior officials at the Pentagon—who are nothing more than political hacks, and non-southern officers serve on re-naming commissions to alter American military traditions forever. In a larger strategic sense, once you weaken a military from within, you no longer have to worry about any enemy from the outside. Communists and globalists don’t have to invade our shores, they can simply fly first class and land at Dulles airport.
The descendants of Clarke County soldiers should feel proud, not alienated or shamed. In fact, they join a long line of tradition of service to America. According to the DoD’s most recent Population Representation in the Military Services report, some 44% of American recruits still come from the South. That doesn’t account for even larger numbers prior to 1990, when southerners made up to 50% of all soldiers, or the estimate that the South’s military service far outpaces its percentage of ~30% total population.
With the military today, along with the cultural removal strategy of base names, monuments, the lowering of military standards and social engineering, it’s pretty fair to say this will negatively impact America’s fighting ability permanently. If you have a soldier worried about what gender they are, rather than how to clean their M4 rifle and kill the enemy, well, we lose.
Veterans Day is more about Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918 to end World War I. However, it is now a day to recognize all veterans who served, including Confederate soldiers.
Berryville, Va. — In another example of how Republican “RINOs” are just as destructive, if not worse, than left wing democrats, the Turner Ashby Camp 1567, Sons of Confederate Veterans, has been battling the woke Clarke County Board of Supervisors over the ownership of the Confederate monument which serves as a war memorial to the fallen sons of Clarke County from 1861-1865. The issue is David Weiss, the so-called Republican on the Board.
The Clarke County War Memorial has cost county taxpayers almost $150,000 so far. At that pace, with the coming “reimagining” landscaping disaster of a project of the courthouse grounds, that price tag will be closer to $500,000 or more.
Board of Supervisors Chairman, David Weiss, is obsessed with defeating the non-profit Turner Ashby Camp in court. Taxpayers need to be aware of what this one-sided fight is costing them. According to a recent FOIA request, 70% of which was redacted with black ink, legal and consultant invoices alone added up to $125,800 from Jan. 2021 to June 2022.
Weiss wanted to originally remove the monument, but he was shot down by his own monument committee’s recommendation. He’s been obsessed with muscling his way over the other BOS members in his crusade to “reimagine” the courthouse grounds in response to not getting his way with the monument.
Working quickly and under the public radar, Weiss has directed county attorneys to stop the Turner Ashby Camp’s appeal to the Virginia Court of Appeals. Why? Because Weiss has no accountability and simply doesn’t care – it’s other peoples’ money why should he! He is intoxicated with this little power he has as Chairman.
The public needs to wake up and stop this. Weiss is trying to get the design work done quickly before the Appeals court gives its decision. That ruling could force the Clarke County Court to halt ownership of the monument and allow Turner Ashby its day in court with a fair trial it never received. When that happens, the money spent on Weiss’s designs will be a complete loss to taxpayers, thanks to him. Not to mention the taxpayer money spent on Weiss’s continuing fight with Turner Ashby Camp in court keeps adding up.
A design firm, RHI Consultants of New York, has already been chosen with ridiculous landscaping plans that defy imagination without any kind of engineering analysis. That nightmare project will likely cost taxpayers $500,000 before it’s over.
Turner Ashby Camp approached the county with a fair, no-cost deal back in March 2021, offering to care for and maintain the monument at no cost to taxpayers. Instead, Weiss ignored them and chose to go on a crusade of spending. In documents, the majority of county board members wished to remove the Confederate monument, stopped in part by public outcry that advised them to keep the monument.
The Clarke County Board of Supervisors elections are in 2023. It’s time for someone to vote these people out and stop this fast-paced spending orgy of David Weiss.
America is on its way to its third self-inflicted war. In the revolution of 1776-1783, the British monarchy, in its stubborn arrogance, would not compromise with our great-grandfather colonial subjects on taxes or parliamentary representation, and the result was a disaster. American colonists were fed up from decades of tyranny. Had the British crown compromised on the tyranny part we would all still be British subjects. But war came and England’s centralized governing philosophy, along with the prize of America, were lost to them. America’s governing philosophy, based on the natural rights of man, won out big — for a brief moment that is.
Battle of the Cowpens, 1780
By the early 1800s, in the South mainly, the limited government tenets of the Jeffersonian Revolution took hold, but almost simultaneously in the North, those seeking to centralize power and grow the federal authority were growing in strength. Sadly, in the ensuing decades leading up to the election of Lincoln in 1860, the country split ideologically over the means of power and who controls it: the collectivists (Hamilton, Webster, Clay) or individualists (Henry, Mason, Madison, Jefferson). It was the collectivist thinking, manifested in the desire for centralized federal power in the North, that infected the new nation and ultimately won out. These philosophical differences led to America’s second war, the war between the states (1861-1865). We’ve never been the same since.
In this second war, the Lincoln Administration, in order to crush the southern states’ “rebellion”, demanded the seceding states return to the union. The South truly believed the northern states had completely abandoned their vows to the Constitution in favor of a new philosophical crusade which favored centralized power similar to the authoritarian version their grandfathers fought the British monarchy over. Lincoln blockaded, then invaded the southern states.
Lincoln and the abolitionists ignored last ditch efforts at peace when the South sent a delegation in February of 1861 (before the final four southern states seceded). The Lincoln-led northern abolitionist collective wanted a war to settle the matter. They couldn’t afford a multi-state southern pull-out of the union. Tax revenues from tariffs alone amounted to almost 90% of the entire federal revenue – revenue that went North, not South. So, the newly minted Lincoln nationalists devised a political strategy to justify their war based on “saving the union”.
War should have, and could have been avoided, but inevitably, as we’ve now learned, northern victors were comfortable with a more centralized, nation-first collective, instead of a federation of independent, sovereign states, as envisioned in the Constitution. The Yankees won. The Constitution and the American people lost. Saving the Union was a subversive political strategy to isolate and divide an entire half of the country and force the other half to have to choose sides. Fast-forward to today, and this dividing strategy is on the march again, only this time, it’s all over America not just North vs. South.
For Lincoln and his northern allies, long seduced by the prospect of centralized power (by now the United States Government), war was the only means to settle this philosophical divide. Many northern politicians and Lincoln wanted war. For southern people, they had simply had enough of this unholy “union”, and wanted to secede to actually avoid war. They formed their own true union in the form of the Confederate States, based on the original Constitution, not what it had devolved into.
It is evident that even in the fall of 1862, when the war was going badly for the union, Lincoln could have chosen peace, but England and France, already culturally and economically siding with the South, looked to jump in completely on the southern cause in order to protect their trade. So, Lincoln deliberately changed his strategy from “saving the union” to the ultimate superficial political weapon – emancipation – which caused the foreign help to delay their decision long enough that it effectively ended full southern support.
The war went on for another three long years, killing 650,000 Americans, including Lincoln himself. In 1861 and 1862, Lincoln could have sat down and listened, and he would have heard the South’s willingness to compromise on taxes, issues of slavery and other disputes over limited government and state sovereignty. It wouldn’t have solved all the issues, but it certainly would have stopped the war. But why didn’t Lincoln stop the war? After all, he was supposedly a compromiser and debater by trade, wasn’t he? He could have stopped the whole thing on many occasions, so why did he choose not to?
Unfortunately, Lincoln was not philosophically in the limited government corner. He was a nationalist, and no longer saw the value of sovereign states as an American concrete. He argued that states were akin to counties. His heroes were Hamilton, Webster and Clay and he was admired by Karl Marx himself, who wrote him a letter to congratulate him on his re-election in 1864 to which Lincoln responded in kind. Today, so-called conservatives worship Lincoln only because he was a “Republican”, and in doing so they abandon any real allegiance to the Constitution for purely political reasons, such as sanctimoniously disavowing the Confederates and associating them with evil and racism, which is completely disingenuous garbage. If certain Republicans today had any real honesty they’d deplore Lincoln as an anti-conservative, but alas, there are many hypocritical, false conservatives today. Lincoln’s worldview was fine with federal authority; he didn’t espouse state sovereignty or true federalism.
After the war, with America’s founding philosophy defeated, politicians, academics and intellectuals became accustomed and comfortable with centralized government. In the last half of the 1800s, they even began adopting elements of Marxism and socialistic philosophy. After all, it was Karl Marx who enthusiastically agreed with Lincoln’s view that his “civil war” was a rebellion of “slave drivers” against a “great democratic republic”. Marx also thought the war was waged against his own newly arrived kindred German progressive immigrants to America, who he believed, were better than southern patriots and founders. Lincoln admired Marx. It has been estimated that some 300,000 foreign immigrants were used over the war to fill the ranks in Lincoln’s army.
With the South down and out politically following the war, Democrat politicians (and some Republicans, although eventually the sides flipped on issues philosophically) grew the federal government and dictated how, when, and to what extent federal power would rule the United States. Corrupt and impotent politicians from both parties bought in. In the early 1900s, progressivists such as Woodrow Wilson expanded the role of the executive branch and implemented the national income tax. They saw an opportunity during WWI to get America involved in global conflict. Progressives grew stronger politically and expanded power in the 1930s with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. The duping of the American people continued with the “need” for more institutionalized central power during the massive military-industrial complex of the 50s and 60s.
With regulations and federal bureaucracy unchecked today, we now see the deep state machine in a complete takeover. The American people are dead, at least in the political sense, because we’ve ceded all power to a central authority in favor of our life-sucking digital platforms and technology. Now we find ourselves moving closer to our third war. Why?
Because in this philosophical dead zone we’ve been in for decades, a philosophy has indeed tried to enter quietly and insidiously into the void – globalist Marxism. Examples abound: our American historical heroes, the Founders, memorials, monuments, literature, art, education and culture are being erased and transformed. That’s a prime first step method for Marxist ideologists: kill the past fast. Our federal behemoth is now Marxist-driven, and both northern and southern politicians have become adopters.
But it’s been downhill for a while. The fact is, a bloodless cold war has been going on since 1865. It was the last time a significant part of our nation recognized the need to stop the slide and reinstate their God-given individual rights. Like then, today is not “civil war”, it’s a philosophical war all over. Even though it was a regional fight in 1861-1865, enough Americans today, from all corners of the nation, have recognized what has happened (Trump’s populism is an example), except this time it’s red vs. blue, or more historically accurate, rural vs. urban. The enemy today is not as much citizen against citizen, it’s two politically and philosophically corrupt parties who control all power, along with unaccountable systems and institutions created by the executive branch after more than a century of unconstitutional delegation of law-making power by Congress. The Constitution had a near-perfect structure and moral philosophy for a flawed mankind, but we were manipulated and allowed a federal bureaucratic monster to take over instead.
Sadly, we gave our political elite, Democrat and Republican, all the power, even the authority to be re-elected indefinitely. Rather than our politicians representing our sides in the battle of collectivism vs. individualism, they’ve all become collectivists. Philosophically, these are the two definitions of people: those who wish to govern others, and those who wish to govern themselves. Our Constitutional founders debated these philosophies, but decidedly came down on the individual rights of man and state sovereignty side. That has now been abandoned.
Since we’ve abandoned the founding philosophy in America, we float around like a sailboat on the equator, unable to produce power, allowing our individual selves to be swallowed up by an ocean of federal yoke. From that comes thousands of bureaucracies, funded by trillions of dollars, inadvertently created by us, but directly paid for by us through our corrupt Congress we continue to elect! We have no intellectual leaders, only an army of federal managers, and a bored and detached people ripe for the taking. And we are being taken from within with the greedy eye of globalists feeding the fire, ready to pounce on the power vacuum.
The coming third war amongst us could be unavoidable, but in fact, history shows it’s inevitable. The unthinkable is coming because of our inability to act and admit we need a return to our founding Constitution, American heritage and culture. We need to renew what works and come to terms with what doesn’t. We need to drop our arrogance and recognize we’re failing, but do something about it. Our corrupt leaders, to start, need to be shamed and voted out. We can’t accept the influence of an elite globalist oligarchy that has infiltrated our institutions and blackmail our politicians. We should focus our hearts on what works: free, limited government where the power is returned to the states and to the people. We need to accept all our Amendments, but then reset back to a Bill of Rights stage in practice, and remove all federal authority accept which is set forth explicitly in the original Constitution. Otherwise, we’ll have a corrupt deep-state congress, nationalist courts, an overreaching Executive branch, and federal institutions that will continue to divide and control us.
The American dream for half the nation, whether they know it or not, is not what they think. It’s one they’ve abdicated to the global Marxists in our own nationalized system, one that history shows will lead to dictatorship and totalitarianism. Yes, it can and will happen here if we don’t act. Our feckless political elite are in control (or out of control) and we just stand by and let it happen. The Constitution will fix that tendency if we just re-dedicate to it and re-adopt its philosophy, the only philosophy that will save us from war. And if “we the people” don’t do it fast, our leaders will continue to hoist up false flags and start that third war for us. Then, America’s really over.
Cover Image: Tenth Communist Party USA convention in Chicago. Portraits of Lincoln, Lenin and Stalin flanked the stage, while the Party’s leader spoke, May 1938.
History is an inconvenient truth which cannot be revised and overwritten by the North, then, or by the ignorant of today.
IF THE ACT OF SECESSION WAS AN ACT OF DISGRACE, (WHICH IT WAS NOT) THEN IT IS A DISGRACE EQUALLY SHARED WITH THE NORTH, THE GREATER CONDEMNATION BELONGING TO THE NORTH AS THEIR EARLIER THREATS OF SECESSION WERE COUPLED WITH INDIGNANT VIOLATIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION.
“I need not array further evidence as to where and when the seeds of disunion were first sown. The truth is, they antedate the Constitution, and the nursery and hotbed in which they were cared for and cultivated in the first fifty years of the republic was in the North, principally New England. The truth I believe is that, from the very beginning, a large majority of the South believed in the constitutional right of a State to secede and some believed in the doctrine of nullification as a remedy to flagrant violations of the Constitution; but they loved the Union, and, largely controlling its destinies for sixty out of seventy years, they held it steadily within its constitutional limits. They never nursed any doctrine looking to its destruction. In its early perils, when its enemies within and without threatened its existence, when at best it was an experiment, the South was found entangled in no hostile machinations. As in her revolutionary struggles the South sent to the army no Benedict Arnold, so in the weakness of her infancy she furnished no Shay’s rebellions nor Hartford conventions.
Alexander Stephens has said, and it is worth remembering, that:
“No Southern State ever did. intentionally or otherwise, fail to perform her obligation as to her confederates under the Constitution, according to the letter and spirit of its stipulated covenants, and they never asked of Congress any action or invoked its powers upon any subject which did not lie clearly within the provisions of the Articles of Union.”
I affirm, therefore, if odium is to attach to the South for the act of secession, it must also attach to the great North and East, where it was. for political, economical, and industrial reasons, sedulously agitated and inculcated up to the Mexican war, and the right distinctly recognized by its leading statesmen up to 1860. History ought to not allow them to slip this odium, if odium it be, from their shoulders to the shoulders of the South.”
Excerpt from a speech by Judge Henry Rogers to the United Confederate Veterans at New Orleans , La., held May 19-22, 1903
Confederate POWs waiting to go North to prison from Chattanooga, TN. This photo was taken around the Battle of Chattanooga some point between September to November of 1863. It is housed at the National Archives.
One hundred and sixty years ago, the South voted to secede the Union of their grandfathers. Reasons for secession were varied and many, but primarily financial; and did not happen overnight. The states did not leave the Union at the same time, nor on the same day, but one by one. The Confederate States formed to preserve the same self-government we had from our successful secession from the Crown in 1776.
On Tuesday, April 15, 1861, Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to invade the seceded, Southern states in order to force us back into the Union. One by one the citizens of the South enlisted to defend their homes from illegal invasion. These citizen-soldiers were overwhelmingly farmers, but among them were shop keepers, tailors, blacksmiths, educators, clergy, college students, and some already in the Armed Forces of the United States, such as Robert E Lee. Among these citizen soldiers was every race and every nationality, as well as every age of male such as R.B. Freeman of the 6th GA Cavalry who enlisted at 10 years of age to John Roy of the 24th TN who enlisted at 76 years of age. These citizen-soldiers were husbands, fathers, grandfathers, sons, brothers, grandsons, uncles, nephews and cousins. Among these citizens were the very wealthy, but the vast majority of these men, some 95-97% were not wealthy, had no hopes of being so, and therefore did not own “slaves”. It is imperative that we understand that these 95-97 percent did not own slaves, and were not fighting to keep slaves, but were simply fighting to defend their families and homes from illegal and unconstitutional invasion.
These citizen-soldiers grew up hearing stories of the fight for American independence. The flame of patriotism was passed to them from their Fathers. They’d heard of the Battle of King’s Mountain, and knew very well what happened at Lexington and Concord, so it was natural for them to enlist to defend their families and homes from invasion. Each time they were captured by Federals and asked why they were fighting, their answer every time was, “Because YOU’RE HERE!”
We don’t comprehend what it cost our Fathers to defend their “country” which is what they called their sovereign states. The Federal government had no control over states back then. They walked away from their families and home, jobs, friends, churches, schools, sweethearts, futures and everything familiar to them. Those in the service of our country can appreciate the cost, but for most of us it is difficult to grasp…their chosen life path was not military service. But they all answered the call of their states to fight invasion.
The war was not over quickly, nor was it easy. Four long years our Fathers battled hunger, cold, disease, malnutrition, and lack as they fought a larger, well-fed, better equipped, never-ending fighting force in the Federals. There are stories in the Confederate Veteran Magazine which tell of them leaving bloody tracks in the snow for lack of shoes, and going for days on a handful of cornmeal and tiny spoon of molasses. The fatigue was overwhelming and they were so emaciated they could not march, so they crawled into position to defend their homes. These men, our Fathers, are world renowned for their bravery, loyalty, and defense of their families and homes.
According to Miss Mildred Lewis Rutherford, who was Historian General of the UDC and a real daughter:
“The North had an army of nearly 2,800,000. General Buell, a general on the other side, said, “It took a naval fleet and 15,000 men to advance upon 100 Confederates at Ft Henry. It took 60,000 men to whip 40,000 at Shiloh, but it took only 60,000 Confederates to drive back with heavy loss 115,000 at Fredericksburg, VA.
Yes, there was a great disparity in number, but the make-up of our army was the very flower of Southern manhood; those men fought! Never in the annals of history has been recorded such devotion to duty and principles as was found in the Southern soldier.
We were not then a manufacturing people, we were an agricultural people. This cannot be said about us now. So the home supplies soon gave out, and our soldiers did suffer sorely. Half-clad they went through storm and sleet, through shot and shell. Half-shod, they marched through thorn and thistle, and bare-foot scaled the mountain heights to meet the advancing foe. Half-fed on half rations they went without complaint and cheerfully shared their little with others in the devastated regions. No, you will never find anything like the record of the Confederate soldiers. They surrendered when forced to surrender like heroes.”
Family after family had their males, sometimes from the father to each and every son, in the Confederate service. In some instances their daughters served as well.
After the war, the citizen-soldiers went to what was left of their homes and most of the time that was nothing. Everything was gone. No houses or farms, salted earth to affect future crops, no animals because all were stolen or dead, nothing to plow with, burned churches, ruined families and destroyed lives. Not even a pencil left in the south. Many families were completely wiped out due to exposure, disease through over-crowding, lack of sanitation, and the hard hand of famine. The South lay in ruins and then, the hell of reconstruction. But these citizen-soldiers persevered. Some of them went home maimed so badly they wore veils over their faces the rest of their lives, or lived as cripples till the day they died. They could not perform physical labor anymore due to loss of limb. For the ones who were illiterate, this mean a life of poverty not just for them, but for their families. Remember in those days there was no welfare or medicare. There are stories of men telling their wives to hitch plows to them and they plowed the field on crutches. It took all day, but they persevered. These men rebuilt our beloved South. They acquiesced to the conqueror, accepted defeat as the sovereign will of God, and went home to be the best they could be.
In closing, here is a portion of Stephen D Lee’s speech in New Orleans that you may not be aware of:
“And is there any message we would give to the States we loved and on whose behalf we drew our swords more than a generation ago? As we have sorrowed over your devotion, we now rejoice in your prosperity. We chose for you the fortune of war rather than a shameful peace.
We battled for your principles rather than yield them, not to conviction but to force. With breaking hearts we bowed beneath the stroke of fate. We chose the only course worthy of Americans. Better defeat than dishonor, better the long, bitter story of reconstruction than tame surrender of the convictions we received from our fathers, the principles which we cherished as the basis of our liberties. We leave our motives to the judgment of posterity.
In the choice we made we followed the dictates of conscience and the voice of honor. We sacrificed all that men hold dear for the land of our birth, and, while we have no fear that history will record our deeds with shame, we do not regard even the verdict of posterity as the equivalent of a clear conscience, nor ought we to have been false to our convictions even to win the eternal praises of mankind. If our children shall praise us, it is well, if our own hearts tell us we have fulfilled our duty, it is better. “
By Lani Rinkel and originally posted on FB by Dan Cooper
What people see and hear today from their woke peers, teachers and parents, they believe, is gospel truth – especially if they’re young and easily influenced. There is an incessant race to get woke before enough grown ups find out it’s really Marxism.
The Woke generation’s symbol of revolution is quite removed from anything remotely American.
Today, all of us see and hear about the altering of names, places, descriptions – basically our written and spoken language. Words are being “updated”. Narratives are being “corrected”, and context “added”.
The “American Civil War”, named so by the victors in the North, will be re-named too. No, the wokesters haven’t succeeded in its renaming yet, but you see the signs and attempts to re-define and re-label the meaning of the war everywhere. How about we just rename it ourselves, shall we, how about… The War for Slavery. That is, white southerners were fighting a war for slavery. The white northerners were fighting a war against slavery. That’s what they want you to swallow. That’s what the re-written history books will say. It’s all about fighting over blacks, right?
Simple. Drop the mic. Everyone can go home now. It’s all settled. Nothing more to see here. Move along. Take your test online and get an easy ‘A’. Just another re-naming effort, but this time, the “civil war”, wrongly named in the first place, is on the chopping block, so even northern Americans will get a taste of wokeness and the eradication of their precious “civil war” victory.
Marxist ideology such as “Critical Race Theory”, the “1619 Project”, the “BLM Movement” and many other pop-up manifestations of historical re-wiring, are in full push. Almost every public school system and university campus (warning: scary link) has been taken over by the woke ‘religion’, the cult that preaches everything is the fault of white people.
States’ legislatures and woke school boards are injecting it into their curricula. So, it appears, it’s only a matter of time before “The American Civil War” will be ousted and The War for Slavery shamed upon us. And yes, a “civil war” reference-removal project is underway. Just last year the president of Oregon State University, Ed Ray, said changing the name “civil war” was overdue, as “it represents a connection to a war fought to perpetuate slavery.” Full story.
MSNBC Host Joy Reid recently tweeted a narrative that defends Critical Race Theory, and went even further to claim “Confederate Race Theory” was being taught in schools. (Courtesy: MSNBC, FoxNews)
Southerners believed the war was not a “civil war” at all. Southerners believed then, as most do now, the war was about fighting (and defending against) an invading federal Army who came into their States. That federal Army was ordered to do so by its Commander in Chief. In 1861, the American people did not rise up to overthrow another group of American people, or to overturn the U.S. government, and they were not seceding as a result of a coup – all of which would have been civil war by definition (Google: Nigerian Civil War 1967-1970; Nigeria’s Constitution did not allow for secession). You see, southerners believed in the right to secede, as laid out in the Constitution which guarantees to states all rights not delegated to the federal government. Sending troops into their states was a violation of those principals.
On the ground, the average Confederate soldier-farmer (95% of whom did not own slaves) believed in protecting his family, his farm, his property, and his native state where his people lived. The name “civil war” was conveniently anointed after the fact by the victors.
It was true that some states in the south and elsewhere had no problem with slavery expanding to newly-formed western states. It is also true that this disagreement was not settled by the time southern states decided to secede. Irrespective of the morality of the slave issue – no matter which side you were on at the time – the matter should have been argued and decided by representative government. In fact, Union should have been preserved, as Robert E. Lee declared in his early 1861 letter to his son Custis, “I hope, therefore, that all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution.” Lee would change his mind, not on secession, but on a specific action, the one that saw a federalized Army invade his native Virginia. For Lee, there was never any mention of going to war or defending Virginia over slavery.
Rather, Lee saw a fatal flaw in judgment had been forced upon him. As we know, Lincoln took the next step — a step that would cost 650,000 lives. With his 75,000-man invasion, Lincoln had violated something sacred in Lee’s mind, and in the mind’s of many that reasoned, “… Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government…”, even despite the warning in the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence that to move forward with revolution over “light and transient” reasons was a mistake because “mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable”. But Lee looked to God, and to him, Lincoln had violated a sacred principal of unalienable rights that come from “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”. And slavery? Neither Lincoln or Lee had this on their mind. Only later would Lincoln use slavery emancipation as a political weapon to rally the waning support in northern states for the war.
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” Lee had thought long and hard on this before deciding to defend his native Virginia and her rights. He must have pondered the words “Governments long established”, for the United States, at 80 years, was barely out of diapers.
The seceding states had other grievances, in fact, there was a whole laundry list. Representative government, bound by the rule of law and by the Constitution, should have settled the matter, if not in 1860, then over the natural course of time. But it did not. By 1861, Abraham Lincoln decided to push the issue and bring the states back into the Union by force. He did not agree with the 10th Amendment on the issue of states’ rights. This was the cause for war; it was Lincoln’s calculation. An appalled South raised their own Confederate States Army in response to that decision. And slavery? It was not prominent on the grievance agenda, and it was certainly not a major reason to go to war, in the north or south.
And now, what does this have to do with today? Let’s just look at what the modern-day victors are doing. Just as the northern victors coined a War Between the States as a “civil war”, the neo-Marxist woke theorists are seeking to rename it expressly based on their desire to make it about slavery. But this time, like the last time, it’s a sham, another example of language shape-shifting. The American way of life, its culture, and constitutional government will be the casualty. Sadly, southerners say “we told you so.”
Finally, here is one fitting example that represents how southerners felt then and now. It includes a poignant prediction of things to come. To a ‘rebel’ soldier, Jefferson Smith from North Carolina, who had first-hand knowledge of the war because he was up to his neck in it, the reason for fighting the war for he and his fellow soldiers was clear. It was gospel truth. And for them, it was not about slavery. As it is often said, why would men charge a line of rifle fire and face a double-shot of iron balls and cannister to keep (or free) slaves? That question applies to soldiers on both sides of the battlefield.
No sir, that is a modern “after-the-fact” convenient construct. The War for Slavery is being injected into our conscience faster than Orwell can say ‘newspeak’. It’s done so in order to steal a nation’s soul for all time.
In 2010, the Charlottesville Daily Progress published the following letter Pvt. Jefferson Smith wrote home to his wife.
My lovely wife. I do so miss you, and the life we have there on the small plot of land God has given us. More and more, it seems that my thoughts are drifting back there to reside with you. Yet, as badly as I desire to be back home, it is for home for which I deem it best for my presence here with these other men.
The proclamation by the Lincoln administration six months prior may appear noble. Were I here in these conditions, simply to keep another man in bondage, I would most certainly walk away into the night and return unto you.
God knows my heart, and the hearts of others here amongst me. We know what is at stake here, and the true reason for this contest that requires the spilling of the blood of fellow citizens. Our collective fear is nearly universal. This war, if it is lost, will see ripples carry forward for five, six, seven or more generations.
I scruple not to believe, as do the others, that the very nature of this country will be forever dispirited. That one day, our great great grandchildren will be bridled with a federal bit, that will deem how and if they may apply the gospel of Christ to themselves, their families, and their communities. Whether or not the land of their forefathers may be deceitfully taken from them through taxation and coercion. A day where only the interests of the northern wealthy will be shouldered by the broken and destitute bodies of the southern poor. This my darling wife is what keeps me here in this arena of destruction and death.
Jefferson Smith
(In 1863, shortly after writing this letter, Jefferson would die)
But now there’s a bigger aim and it’s not just the South, it’s America they want. Our language, our culture and history, our country.
On Jan. 9, 1865, men from many different units gathered at McDowell, Virginia. The weather was fairly mild. In the next two days though, it would snow, rain, thunder, and then the temperature dropped to near zero. Two privates in Company D of the 6th Regiment, Virginia Cavalry (C.S.A.), Fontaine Hite and his cousin, Cornelius B. Hite, probably had little idea where they were going, or what they had signed up to do. The mission they had just volunteered for would cover 80 miles, starting from the winter camp at McDowell just west of Staunton, over the Alleghenies and Cheat mountain, across two forks of the Greenbrier River, and eventually to the Union-held supply depot at Beverly in West Virginia. The two privates would have to share a single mount, alternating between walking and riding the entire way. They were part of a piecemeal force of some 300 Confederates who volunteered to follow their commander and attack two Federal regiments numbering some 1,200 encamped in the town. It became known as Rosser’s Raid.
Pvt. Cornelius B. Hite
An excerpt describing the event from the letter of Cornelius Hite to his friend Thomas J. Arnold, a nephew of Stonewall Jackson:
“My cousin, Isaac Fontaine Hite, of Frederick Co., Va., and I were not with our company, but were in advance because our horses had broken down, and we were afoot part of the way. To get remounted we got with the advance and were all dismounted and fought as infantry-except my company, which had not arrived because they approached Beverly on a different road, the Files Creek road.My cousin, a third man whom I did not know, and myself attacked the first huts facing the Philippi road. My cousin and the third man got four Yankees out of the first hut and I got three out of the second, fearing all the time there was another Yankee left in the hut. These men were turned over to the third man to take back to the officer in charge of prisoners.
It was then that my cousin, who approached the [t]hird hut, bidding the inmates to surrender, was shot. I was about 8 feet from him and just turning to go towards him. He turned and uttered a terrific yell and ran to me and groaned in reply to my question if he was much hurt. I am sure he was killed almost instantly, the bullet having entered his right breast, passing diagonally on.
General Thomas L. Rosser
He had a fine record as a soldier all through the war and Rosser used him in 1864 as a scout until he resigned, his plea being that his horse was too much run down, but really because he disliked Rosser. We both were members of Co. D, better known as the Clarke Cavalry, 6th Virginia Regt.” Read the full letter.
Arnold went on to describe the raid: “The Federals, such as were not captured, retreated, fighting through the streets of Beverly and across the bridge on the road to Buckhannon,” he wrote. The fight lasted 30 minutes. Six Union troops were dead, 23 were wounded and nearly 800 were captured. Some 150 managed to escape to Buckhannon. Confederate losses were 1 dead and several wounded. They captured 10,000 rations from the supply depot including 600 rifles and about 100 horses.
A similar description of “Rosser’s Beverly Raid” can be found on pg. 301 of a History of Clarke County, VA by Thomas D. Gold, Berryville, VA, 1914.
The author of the letter, Cornelius Hite, died in 1943 at the age of 101. His grandfather was Major Isaac Hite, a Revolutionary War soldier and the proprietor of Belle Grove Plantation at Middletown in Frederick County, Va. Major Hite married Nelly, the younger sister of future president James Madison. Belle Grove was the site of the battle of Cedar Creek, which occurred just 3 months prior to Rosser’s Raid at Beverly.
Over the next 80 years, many of the Hite descendants settled in and around Frederick County and nearby Clarke County. At the onset of the War Between the States the Hite men would serve their native Virginia. Some of the Clarke County men of fighting age enlisted in Company D with the 6th Regiment, Virginia Cavalry.
During the war, the 6th Va. Cavalry fought in both Shenandoah Valley campaigns, in 1862 with Stonewall Jackson, then in 1864 with Jubal Early. All told, about 2,500 men would serve in the regiment from 1861 to 1865. On April 9, 1865, three men surrendered at Appomattox. The rest of the 6th Va. Cavalry broke through the Federal lines and later disbanded on their own.
The citizens of Clarke County, and families of those who served in the 6th Va. Cavalry, were proud of the men who served in the war, and so, in July 1900, at their court house in the little town of Berryville, they erected a statue memorializing the “sons of Clarke” veterans who died during the conflict.
The Old Courthouse, Clarke County, Va. and the statue of a Confederate soldier stand side-by-side. Inscription reads in part: “erected to the memory of the sons of Clarke who gave their lives in defense of the rights of the states and of constitutional government. Fortune denied them success but they achieved imperishable fame.” Photo Courtesy of Wikipedia
The statue honors the lives of men who fought for what they believed — their farms, their families, friends and neighbors. They fought for the lands and homes where they grew up, and the surrounding hills, mountains and streams where they roamed. Simply put, these men were fighting for what anyone would be willing to fight for — their freedom.
By 1861, only two generations separated the cavalrymen of Clarke’s Company D from their grandfathers. Many had grandfathers who fought tyranny for the exact same principals of individual rights and freedom they were about to risk their own necks to defend. So, when 1861 came, they recognized what the problem was right off. They also knew the danger, and the odds against them, just like many of their fellow soldiers across the south and north, should they take up arms.
Most importantly, they had been taught that men were fallible and that a time would likely come when tyranny would rear its ugly head again.
From the beginning, John Adams and his founding-father compatriots proclaimed, “We are a nation of laws, not of men”. At least that was the game plan from the beginning in the thinking of most, including northern politicians.
However, our concept of a “nation of laws” is now disintegrating in American society. Leaders on all levels have flouted their responsibility to law and order and given in to the political “minority”, in the democratic sense, which is the new form of tyranny. The result has been devastating — the minority now rules, not the majority as was envisioned from the start.
Today, this is done on purpose, for political ends. The first casualty, our American history, is to be replaced, re-written, and sacrificed at an astounding pace. It is actively being removed everywhere in favor of the ‘new’ history, based not on facts or truth, but on political correctness. Think of the 1619 Project, Marxist front movements such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter, and the popular desire to re-frame and discredit any slave-holding Founding Father. The narrative is to drive home that these were white supremacists connected to SLAVERY! SLAVERY! SLAVERY! The need to re-write history is an insatiable quest driven by hatred, ignorance and a desire for power and control.
An example of this expedient, purposeful destruction of history is occurring in the little town of Berryville in Clarke County, Virginia. Founded over 200 years ago in 1798, the town sits quietly with a magnificent view of the Blue Ridge mountains, just west of the Shenandoah River and just east of the city of Winchester.
The town’s citizens, like so many towns in the North and South, have dedicated statues to their war dead, their heroes and veterans from throughout American history. But why is it that only statues to Confederate veterans are the object of such triggering and gnashing of teeth? The hatred directed at a people who are no longer here to defend themselves is very peculiar.
In Berryville, a few citizens who disagree with the existence of the 1900 statue of Confederate veterans, want it gone. These few citizens are in fact the minority. A few of these people believe the statue is about racism and oppression, ignoring the very inscription on the statue itself. But why and what is the motivating factor here? Is it really all about racism and white supremacy, the claim of the new minority? No, that’s a calculated fabrication and a means to a political end.
It’s about control. The purpose for undoing the past is about control and who has it. It’s not about racism or oppression, or slavery, or white supremacy, the common gibberish of the day — it’s about political will and power. And why not? In today’s climate, crying racism every time some piece of history offends you is quite an effective political weapon.
The new politicians that represent people in towns like Berryville do not have the will to stand up when the scarlet ‘R’ of racism is waved by a minority political voice. The majority is easily cowed into submission when they see the false flag hoisted and amplified by a complicit media. It’s a tactic that is being cleverly and purposely employed everywhere.
No longer are the people of Clarke County, or many other counties in Virginia, willing to stand up to this shrill cry of racism! Is it possible that an entire cultural heritage of a region, or a nation, is on the verge on being wiped out because of the tyranny of the few?
The once unquestioned will of Americans across the nation in countless towns and locales is now faced with the same historical extermination as other societies of the past. But it seems this is different, more internal than external. Small towns and communities in America are inflicting this destruction on themselves because the will to fight, that is the will to save cultural and historical legacy, has flickered out. The weak answer now is, ‘oh, it’s just the Confederate stuff, we can sacrifice that and make this go away.’ A country that has no past to reach to, no history, and no stone foundation of experience in which to draw from, is doomed to die. Even a small town like Berryville is on the verge of losing its soul.
Now, all of the citizens of Clarke County are on the front lines, whether they like it or not. These citizens have a say about the legacy of simple soldiers who went to war to fight, and to die, for their country. They have a say about American history, the good or bad, right or wrong. For a country that no longer cares about its history, or its veterans, is wasting a wealth of knowledge and missing an opportunity to teach future generations about their town, and its place in American history. Clarke County folks have a say, and a choice, to make.
The Berryville soldier stands pensive looking off with arms crossed. He is disarmed and humble, clutching his hat. He stands off to the side of the Old Courthouse. The statue is mounted on a strong granite foundation, well-maintained, just like the old red-brick building and grounds. In fact, standing from the road the view of the whole scene seems right.
It looks dignified and handsome. Although prominently displayed it’s hard to see how it would even draw much attention; most people passing by from day-to-day would likely not even notice it.
Perhaps that was the vision the creators of the statue had prior to funding and erecting it in 1900, that is, to create a memory and impression that stands the test of time. For 121 years it has stood in the same position, unmoved, now a true historical artifact of the town.
Swirling around the statue there is a great philosophical debate about the statue’s existence which seems so trivial and unnecessary.
In Berryville, the political powers have heard from a few who proclaim the statue is about slavery, oppression and racism. The town’s Board of Supervisors has been quick to create a committee; schedule a public hearing. They are under pressure from a few and they are in reaction mode. But they have not heard from the majority of Clarke County, or the descendants of the Company D veterans of the 6th Va. Cavalry.
Then there is the law. The ground upon which the statue rests is private property. There is no hidden clause or stipulation in this law. The clock does not run out on the statue’s legitimate and lawful place on the deeded 25-foot strip of ground where it stands. The rule of law through due process is guaranteed by the Constitution. No court shall abridge the law.
It is this rule of law, a very founding principal, for which the Clarke Company D men fought for, and for which the statue memorializes in words: “erected to the memory of the sons of Clarke who gave their lives in defense of the rights of the states and of constitutional government. Fortune denied them success but they achieved imperishable fame.”
Will historians speak up? What will people say about our history, or is it to be re-written by the few who disagree? The statue should stay right where it is. Any attempt at its removal would be a violation of law, but more profoundly, a violation of the true history of America.
One lone statue doth not make history. It is odd why there is a cry to remove or displace this one. Why do not the few who protest fund and erect another if the sentiment is truly so high? Many of we students of history know exactly why. We’ve seen this game before and it does not end well.
Pvt. Fontaine Hite died on that bitter cold January 11th in 1865 at Beverly. His cousin Cornelius raised his pistol and ordered one of the prisoners to help him carry the body of his cousin back to the surgeon. He died of his wounds a couple of hours later and was buried in a marked grave near Beverly. The burial spot is unknown and all that remains is the inscription of his name, “F. Hite”, which appears in granite alongside the other fallen soldiers at the Clarke County Confederate statue at Berryville.
The author is a descendant of the Hite’s of Frederick County, Virginia.
Lately, a lot of emotion has been spent over … Confederate monuments in the Tar Heel state.
Silent Sam, the statue on the campus of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, was gleefully pulled from its pedestal by a mob, August 20th. Former alumni, as well as citizens across the state, were outraged at the lawless act and the justifications given for it.
Protesters toppled Silent Sam, the Confederate statue on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus, on Aug. 20, 2018 Julia Wall, News & Observer
Two days later, August 23rd, the North Carolina Historical Commission rejected Governor Roy Cooper’s request to relocate three Confederate monuments on state Capitol grounds. The Commission opted instead to provide contextualization signage and raise funds for constructing and erecting African-American monuments.
Contextualization creates angst for many, while others rail against the Commission’s decision to leave the monuments standing. The situation remains a hotbed of passion on both sides.
I have written on this subject a number of times. I cannot say that everyone who is a part of the organization I represent, the Christian Action League, believes as I do on the topic. Nevertheless, I speak because I believe the matter is one of significant import to our state, country, and Western Civilization.
To understand history, it’s important that one hears all sides of the story. When memorials such as Confederate monuments are pulled down, it’s because only one narrative is being allowed.
Critics of Silent Sam said that the monument sends a message of racism and White Supremacy. They argue it was erected during a period in history when whites wanted to show that they still ruled the south.
Their proof? Julian Carr’s speech at the unveiling with its egregious and wrongheaded remarks about what the Confederate soldier meant to the Anglo Saxon race and how he, Carr, personally horsewhipped a black woman after insulting a Southern white lady. Also cited as evidence are the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who spearheaded and funded the monument. Some contend the UDC is a white supremacist organization, an accusation the UDC denies.
Critics of Silent Sam also argue the Confederate soldier was a traitor to his country and a defender of slavery. Memorials to Confederates glorify treason and the subjugation of the black race, they say.
I’m certain some sophisticate will charge that I’m just a backward preacher from the South with a misinformed and misguided allegiance to a terrible group of people. But I can’t agree the issue is that simple.
1. White Supremacy?
Thomas J. Crane, an attorney who represents individuals in employment actions and has appeared in both state and federal court, says the charges of racism against statues like Silent Sam and other Confederate memorials wouldn’t succeed in a court of law.
In a most intriguing article titled, Confederate Monuments and Racism, Crane writes:
“I represent victims of discrimination. Like historians, I am in the business of accusing persons or entities of discrimination. But, if I tried to accuse a person or statue of racist bias based solely on speeches by third parties, I would likely be sanctioned by the court for filing a frivolous lawsuit…There are several alternative explanations for why these statues were erected.
“The challenge regarding the Confederate monuments is there is always a legitimate alternative explanation. The United Daughters of the Confederacy was founded expressly to commemorate the deceased Confederate veteran. The Confederate States of America was not the United States of America. That means there was no government effort to mark the passing of these hundreds of thousands of veterans. If the UDC or some organization like the UDC did not raise the funds for these monuments, it would not be done…
“Certainly in most communities, the Daughters were part of the white power structure. But, being part of the dominant white society does not mean those Daughters necessarily sought to support Jim Crow laws when they erected those monuments.”
Crane is right. There are many other valid reasons for Confederate monuments, which received broad support in the day of their placing.
History shows Confederate veterans were dying at the time and family members wanted to memorialize their fathers, brothers, and husbands before their passing. Others felt that their loved ones who suffered, sacrificed, and died in that great conflict deserved better recognition and more prominence than what they received in a cemetery for the Confederate dead. Reconstruction had also ended, and there was more money available for building and raising these memorials. Moreover, such monuments were seen as reunification symbols, where the Confederate heritage was brought into the larger American context, acknowledged, respected, and tolerated.
One might ask, if the sole purpose of these monuments was to lionize White Supremacy and slavery, why wasn’t this stated on the monuments? No such pattern exists.
In the case of Silent Sam, the plaque on the memorial simply read: “To the sons of the University who entered the war of 1861-65 in answer to the call of their country and whose lives taught the lesson of their great commander that duty is the sublimest word in the English language.”
2. Confederates Soldiers Were Traitors?
In my estimation, there is no basis for the indictment that Confederate soldiers were traitors. It’s true the war started when Southerners fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina, but who provoked the conflict is still in dispute by historians.
Lincoln sent a ship to re-provision Fort Sumter, which was a federal fort in Charleston. South Carolina had already seceded from the Union, along with six other states. Certainly, if secession had any meaning, the state couldn’t permit a foreign power to maintain a military fort on its own soil. When negotiations broke down between President Lincoln’s administration and President Jefferson Davis’ administration for the transfer of the fort to South Carolina, Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, which resulted in Union forces surrendering. Although there were no casualties, Lincoln sent 75,000 troops into the “rebel” states, which resulted in four additional Southern states, including North Carolina, seceding from the Union.
The Southern states also seceded from the Union based on the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The right for states to legally secede was widely accepted. Even Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political thinker and historian, who visited America to study its system of government, said the Union “was formed by the voluntary agreement of the states; and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the states chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right to do so.”
Again, traitors? How can Confederate soldiers be traitors when the states in which they resided had seceded from the Union, as was their Constitutional right, and formed a new country of which they were citizens?
3. Confederates Soldiers Fought for Slavery?
Neither is it right to contend that Confederate soldiers were all about defending slavery. This is not to say the conflict was never about slavery. Instead, its to argue that the reason they fought was more nuanced.
Thomas E. Woods, an American historian, who is both a Harvard and Columbia University graduate, correctly argues in, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, that “slavery was far from the only issue on Southerner’s minds, particularly since the great majority of Southerners did not even own slaves. For their part, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, two of the South’s best-known Generals, described slavery as ‘a moral and political evil.’ Lee had even been an opponent of secession, but fought on the side of Virginia rather than stand by as the federal government engaged upon the mad project of waging war against his state. Recall that Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina seceded only after Lincoln had called up 75,000 volunteers to invade the South and prevent its secession. These four states, therefore, certainly did not secede over slavery, but rather over Lincoln’s decision to use military force to suppress Southern independence.”
Additionally, Civil War historian James McPherson’s incredible research, consulted a sizeable number of Union and Southern soldiers’ letters and diaries on the way they viewed the war. The results clearly determined that they were concerned about saving the Union, the right of Secession, Constitutionalism, the Founding Fathers, but not slavery.
In other words, Southern politicians might have had slavery on their minds. However, the issue wasn’t a primary concern for Confederate soldiers on the battlefield. They weren’t putting their lives on the line each day, their bodies being torn and broken by cannonballs, bullets, and bayonets, just so they could enslave, whip, or lynch black people. The notion is preposterous.
Instead, they fought primarily for reasons of patriotism. They fought because they believed their homeland had been invaded. They fought for fear of the federal government enslaving them, and preventing their own self-determination. They fought for their independence. They fought for the commercial freedom of the South. They fought because they had lost family members through acts of brutality by the enemy. They fought because an occupying force was often denying their rights. They fought because they didn’t believe they deserved the scourge of their wives eating rats, their children starving, and their property reduced to ashes.
Whether they believed in slavery or not, whether their government was right about it or not, the South was their home, and they would give their lives in defense of it.
4. Oversimplification and Overreach
Certainly, these affairs were the larger part of the equation. Therefore, making Confederate monuments primarily about White Supremacy, treason, and slavery is gross oversimplification and overreach.
In the same article referenced earlier, Crane contends that “alleged prejudice must be based on more than mere speculation and tenuous inferences.” The case must be proven, and the preponderance of the evidence must reasonably conclude racist intent. The evidence doesn’t show this to be the reason for erecting Confederate monuments. Even racial motivations do not necessarily constitute a racial purpose.
With these assertions in mind, I will conclude with these thoughts.
5. True Tolerance Essential
America is a place of many cultures, many political opinions, and many values. True tolerance, which respects individuals without necessarily approving of everything they believe or espouse, is essential.
As a white man, I may not be able to fully connect with a monument like the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Alabama, which is dedicated, in part, to the way people of color are often burdened with presumptions of guilt and police violence. Nevertheless, I can reverence and appreciate my fellow Americans. This same deference should go the other way.
To take down memorials placed in honor of deceased people who forewent their health and happiness, forfeited their honor and substance for the ones they loved in a time of war, is to say such people and the ones for whom they spent their affections don’t count. It’s to say their ancestors are evil and beyond the recognition of any noticeable or worthy virtues.
6. Orwellian Ends
Moreover, pulling down said monuments, more often than not, produces Orwellian ends. If the monuments are taken down, there remains only a one-sided account. There is no way to ponder them and the full significance of their meaning, as well as the lessons they can teach.
Taking down monuments and memorials is a revolutionary tactic of history. Burn the books. Destroy the landmarks. Topple the statues. Flatten the memorials.
In a quote from George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, we read, “One could not learn history from architecture any more than one could learn it from books. Statues, inscriptions, memorial stones, the names of streets, anything that might throw light on the past had been systematically altered.”
Here’s another: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered, and the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped, nothing exist except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
Photograph: Mondadori via Getty Images Quote: “A further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.”
Isn’t this what we are witnessing? – an intentional and imposed ignorance.
It’s an appropriate question to ask where this will end. What else besides Confederate monuments is next to be removed or hidden away in some rather obscure place? Will it be statues of Washington and Jefferson? What about the U.S. Flag? Could it be the Christian Cross on steeples and buildings? Might it be any reminders of America’s heritage or Western Civilization that causes offense, makes people feel unwelcome, or hurts their feelings?
It isn’t spurious to question whether the goal or the outcome will be to lose ourselves in the mass mind and the mass will.
While there was cheering at the fall of Silent Sam at UNC, the lawless action of the mob which perpetrated the crime signals a time of future mourning. A time when intolerance is supreme, lack of knowledge predominant, and uniformity enforced.
Yes, this matter is of considerable import to our state, nation, and Western Civilization.
