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The Battle of Fort Sumter by DuBose Heyward — Part One

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Part One of

The Battle of Fort Sumter

Adapted from Peter Ashley
by DuBose Heyward

 

[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. : DuBose Heyward is best known for his 1925 novel, Porgy, which eventually became the famous George Gershwin opera, Porgy and Bess.1

DuBose Heyward, author of Peter Ashley, and Porgy, around 1928.
DuBose Heyward, author of Peter Ashley, and Porgy, around 1928.
Dorothy and DuBose Heyward, late 1920s.
Dorothy and DuBose Heyward, late 1920s.

Heyward was born in 1885 in Charleston and died in 1940. He is descended from Thomas Heyward, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Much of his writing took place during the Charleston Renaissance, the period between World Wars I and II, when the arts flourished following the difficult period after the War Between the States. Writers included Heyward, John Bennett, Josephine Pinckney and Julia Peterkin, along with poets Hervey Allen and Beatrice Ravenel. Visual artists included Alfred Hutty, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, and Elizabeth O'Neill Verner.2

The Southern Renaissance (also known as the Southern Renascence) took place at the same time as the Charleston Renaissance, the 1920s and '30s. The Southern Renaissance featured writers such as William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Caroline Gordon, Margaret Mitchell, Katherine Anne Porter, Erskine Caldwell, Allen Tate (and the other Fugitive Agrarians of I'll Take My Stand), Tennessee Williams, Robert Penn Warren, and Zora Neale Hurston.

Hurston was an African American anthropologist whose recently released book, Barracoon,3 is a truthful recounting of the origins of slavery in Africa whereby black tribal warfare produced captives who were held by other blacks in slave forts called "barracoons". They were held to be sold to mostly New England slave traders (and the British before them).

DuBose Heyward, during his time, was perhaps the foremost authority in the country on Southern black culture. He portrayed blacks with respect and not condescension.

During the same time period, he wrote Peter Ashley, set on the eve of South Carolina's secession from the Union. His goal was to capture the exhilaration and fire of the people of Charleston as they struck for independence.

Heyward was working on Peter Ashley (1932) at the same time he was working on Porgy and Bess with George Gershwin.

There is no better way to be transported back in time to an actual event as it happened than through exciting, accurate historical fiction.

Heyward wrote Peter Ashley, and Herbert Ravenel Sass wrote Look Back to Glory, and both of those works were adapted for the shorter Fort Sumter, 1861-1865, from which this blog article comes.

Citation: DuBose Heyward, Herbert Ravenel Sass, Fort Sumter, 1861-1865 (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1932).]

 

Foreword to Fort Sumter, 1861-1865:

FROM CHRISTMAS night in the year 1860 to the twelfth of the following April the attention of the civilized world was centered upon Fort Sumter, a fortification built upon a sand bar and commanding the entrance to the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. For there the great American experiment in government was facing its ultimate test, and the destiny of the Union hung in the balance.

Fort Sumter, 1861, before the bombardment.
Fort Sumter, 1861, before the bombardment.

Would Major Anderson, in command of the Federal garrison, evacuate the fort to the state of South Carolina and the newly formed Confederacy, or would he remain there flying the Stars and Strips and invite civil war?

President Buchanan whose tenure of office would expire on the fourth of March, reluctant to meet so grave an issue, took no action. When his successor, Abraham Lincoln, was inaugurated in March, 1861, the situation had reached an acute phase and an immediate decision was imperative. Anderson had exhausted his supplies and must either be reinforced or evacuated.

The new president decided to stand fast and send a fleet to Charleston with supplies. The Confederacy construed this as an overt act. The Battle of Fort Sumter ensued and the states were hurled into four years of devastating war.

In the spring of 1863 Fort Sumter, now in the possession of the Confederate States, became the scene of a second momentous drama, and again the eyes of the world turned toward the sand bar at the harbor mouth and the mass of defensive masonry that stood interposed between the city and the sea.

For now in the march of events had come the hour of the steel man-of-war, and the ironclad armada of the United States had arrived to match its strength against man's immemorial stronghold of brick and stone.

It is perhaps because of the enormous richness of our national historical heritage that these two events, so dramatic in themselves and far-reaching in their consequences, have received but scant attention; there being, so far as the authors of this book are aware, no detailed narrative account accessible to the general public except those contained in the two novels, Peter Ashley and Look Back to Glory, from which the following chapters are adapted.4

This is our justification for salvaging from the limbo of a past season's fiction two stirring and dramatic episodes of American history, and combining them in a convenient and readily accessible form. If we presume to present them in their new guise as history rather than mere entertainment, let it be said that they are based upon years of exhaustive research, and in some particulars are derived from sources that will not be available to future historians. For into these stories have gone not only a painstaking scrutiny of the written record, but the good talk of men now dead who knew the truth that lay behind the fact, and illumined it in the telling because they had felt as well as known.

With the exception of General Beauregard, Colonel Wigfall, Admiral DuPont, Colonel Rhett and other historical characters who are well known, the people who appear in the stories will be strangers to the reader, but this should not prove embarrassing. We have allowed them to remain so that through them he may glimpse the life of the time and place as we have reconstructed it, and see reflected in their talk and attitudes the forces which precipitated events and shaped history.

DuBose Heyward,
Herbert Ravenel Sass,
Charleston, South Carolina

 

Part One of

The Battle of Fort Sumter

THE READER is invited to witness the battle from the Chardon residence, a large Georgian dwelling situated on Charleston's Battery and commanding a sweeping view of the harbor. Assembled within the hospitable walls, or gathered upon the roof the better to view the engagement, are Pierre Chardon, the host, who is a veteran of the Mexican War, a widower, and the devoted guardian of his nephew Peter Ashley; Thomas and Emily Ashley, Peter's parents; Captain Wakefield Ashley, his brother; Damaris Gordon, his fiancee; and Proctor Gordon, Damaris' father. Rene Berrenger, Alicia Pringle, and others who enter and leave casually are friends of Peter.

 

MARCH, mad month in the maddest of years. Up in Washington, President Buchanan, "The Property Man," has handed the lighted fuse to Lincoln, and has dropped gently into oblivion. Lincoln, the untried, the unknown, standing amid the babel of advice, the pull of opposing wills, with his single immovable idea: "The Union must be preserved."

But time is racing now. The fuse that he is holding must presently be stamped out or its fire will reach Fort Sumter and detonate the waiting charge. Shall Anderson be reinforced? Shall Anderson be withdrawn? The old question, but no longer to be evaded. And the world watching, waiting, holding its breath, for the word.

In Montgomery, President Davis and his cabinet are facing a delicate problem. The Confederate government must assume command of the military forces at Charleston. And Charleston is known to be difficult. The task calls for a soldier, but it also requires something of a diplomat, and, emphatically, a gentleman. And the God of Battles that smiles with such inspiring indulgence upon the new Confederation presents them with Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard. Beauregard, great-grandson of Jacques Toutant-Beauregard who, under Louis XIV, had been in command of the flotilla to the Province of Louisiana, and on the distaff side direct descendant of Francois Marie Chevalier de Reggio, royal standard bearer under the Spanish domain. Oh, most emphatically a gentleman, but a soldier as well---hero of Chapultepec, Cerro Gordo, Vera Cruz, and late commander of the military academy at West Point.

Healy portrait of Gen. Beauregard in the National Portrait Gallery, Washington.
Healy portrait of Gen. Beauregard in the National Portrait Gallery, Washington.

March fourth. General Beauregard arrives at Charleston and assumes command of the military forces. On the fifth, he appears publicly with Governor Pickens and his aids at a performance at the Charleston Theater. Little Misses Fanny and Julia dance and sing. A competent cast performs The Lady of Lyons. But the sensation of the evening is the glittering presence in the proscenium box, and Charleston, remembering Jacques Toutant-Beauregard and Francois Marie Chevalier de Reggio, feels safe in taking the general unreservedly to its heart. Overnight he becomes the fashion. Ladies denude their gardens and convert headquarters at Institute Hall into a bower. Lads who have patiently cultivated fierce and warlike beards trim them  down without a quiver to the Beauregard mustache and goatee. Huguenots with one accord forget that the general is a Catholic, and remember only that he is French.

But Beauregard is now in seclusion at headquarters, facing a stupendous task, opposing order to chaos. Martial law is declared for the island defenses. There are no longer champagne punches and parties of laughing and delicately stepping ladies among the tents. Leaves are canceled.

March twelfth. By special correspondent of the News and Courier5 at Washington, "It is unofficially announced that the President favors withdrawal of Anderson from Sumter."

March eighteenth. "It is now generally conceded that within a few days Sumter will be vacated."

Maj. Robert Anderson, commander of Fort Sumter; Brig. Gen. from May 15, 1861.
Maj. Robert Anderson, commander of Fort Sumter; Brig. Gen. from May 15, 1861.

In his private office at Institute Hall, Beauregard takes the newspaper in his slender long-fingered hand, smiles his slow skeptical smile, and orders an extra draft of five hundred slaves to rush the work on the forts. That night, up the river, sledges ring on spikes until morning, where they are sheathing the floating battery with railroad irons.

On April second, the Honorable Louis T. Wigfall, late United States Senator from Texas, having decided to remove the seat of war from Washington to Charleston, arrives with his lady, and quarters himself at the Mills House. With his passing, Washington must seem strangely quiet, for the Senator's private campaign at the Capital has been violent and sustained.

U.S. Senator from Texas, Louis Trezevant Wigfall, before the war.
U.S. Senator from Texas, Louis Trezevant Wigfall, before the war.
Louis Trezevant Wigfall, date unknown.
Louis Trezevant Wigfall, date unknown.

One by one the other Southern Senators and representatives had abandoned the fight as hopeless and left for their homes. Their deflection had only stiffened the resistance of the redoubtable Texan. Of tremendous physique, inexhaustible vitality, and known as a fearless and deadly duelist, he had set himself the task of destroying the hostile government at its source by the sheer power of his oratory. It was said that he never slept. Hour on hour the tremendous mellifluous voice poured its broadsides of invective into the ears of the exasperated but powerless Senators. At night he would pursue them to their clubs, and there, holding them with his fierce magnetic gaze, he would deliver a verbal chastisement that so exhausted them that, when he left in the morning fresh and vigorous to carry the fight back to the Senate chamber, they were incapable of following him. There was a half-hearted suggestion that he be arrested, tried for treason, and hanged, in the somewhat forlorn hope that he would thus be silenced. He laughed in their faces, told them that they were Yankee shopkeepers and poltroons, and that for his part he was done with them. They could consider themselves dismissed. He now had more important business before him. He would go to Charleston and attend to Major Anderson.

On the third of April the Senator appears at headquarters. He is wearing varnished top boots and huge Texas spurs. About the senatorial frock coat is tied a broad, red, tasseled sash, and through this is thrust a sword. In his hand he carried his black plainsman's felt hat, and his magnificent leonine head is bare to the spring morning. When he emerges he is Colonel Wigfall, and a duly appointed aide to the commanding general.

It is evident that Beauregard has remembered that he is not only a soldier and a gentleman, but upon occasion a diplomat as well. But it is not unlikely, as the door of the private office closes upon his magnificent newest colonel, that he feels somewhat as though he has reached out and closed his hand upon the tail of a flaming comet.

As to whether or not Beauregard desired war, we have only to remember that for six hundred years his forebears had distinguished themselves upon the field of battle and that, at that particular moment, should hostilities eventuate, he stood practically unrivaled upon the threshold of the supreme command. It is not likely that these circumstances would have conspired together for the creation of an ardent pacifist. He knew that President Davis and his cabinet did not desire war. He must have known that President Lincoln did not desire it. Had he been consulted as to his views, he would doubtless have replied that it was not the province of the soldier either to believe or to disbelieve that a war was imminent --- but to be prepared. And to this end, under the grave formal elegance of the man in the private office, there drove steadily forward all day and most of the night the irresistible momentum of a superb engineering machine.

It may have appeared that, knowing the reluctance of Montgomery to precipitate the effusion of blood and finding himself in Charleston which already considered itself at war, his position would have been embarrassing. But it was singularly the reverse. He was scrupulous in his dealings with the Confederate command. In every decision he deferred to Davis and awaited instructions. And he was in complete harmony with the Carolinians. He must have understood their temper completely. He surrounded himself with a group of aides taken for the most part from civil life, and incongruously attired in black frock coats, sashes and swords. They represented the flower of the commonwealth. Statesmen, orators, men of high courage, very great gentlemen, arrant individualists, they were, with their latest recruit Colonel Wigfall, the comet to which the general had attached himself and the Confederate States of America, while he kept flashing his full and punctilious reports out across the void toward Montgomery.

 

In Washington, on April seventh, Secretary of State Seward sends his famous message to the Confederate commissioners through the person of Associate Justice Campbell: "Faith as to Sumter fully kept. Wait and See."

On April eighth the papers contain official announcement that Lincoln had already dispatched his messenger to Charleston to state that Fort Sumter would be relieved peaceably or by force. The Powhatan, first vessel of the flotilla, had put to sea for Sumter on the sixth.

And now, dramatically, the moment has arrived. Destiny has leaped beyond human control. It remains only for those in authority to preserve a decent reluctance, to write into the record those final brief dispatches by which each side hopes to convince posterity that the other is the aggressor.

In Charleston the excitement is terrific. For two days the crowds never leave the bulletin boards.

The newspapers bombard them with headlines:

"Washington, April tenth. Special correspondent to The Courier reports: Lincoln's policy coercion and war. Fort Sumter to be relieved at all hazards. Anderson to open on Batteries. Four light draft cruisers have already sailed with troops."

"Montgomery calls for three thousand troops from each state."

"Leaving Columbia for Charleston: The Governor's Guards, Columbia Grays, Congaree Riflemen."

Orators thunder invective:

While the South has been listening in good faith to the promises of Seward, while Lincoln has pretended to consider Anderson's peaceable withdrawal, the Yankees have been deliberately playing upon the credulity of the south and making ready for war. Davis is openly criticized. Does he expect Charleston to sit calmly by until the arrival of reinforcements for Sumter?

But Beauregard will not be stampeded. He dispatches Colonel Chestnut and Captain Lee to Anderson with a demand that he surrender, and offering him the opportunity of evacuating with all supplies and a fifty-gun salute to his flag. Anderson refuses but states that he will be starved out and have to vacate in a few days if, in the meantime, he has not been battered to pieces.

General Beauregard confers with Montgomery and submits: "If you will state the time at which you will evacuate Fort Sumter, and agree that in the meantime you will not use your guns against us, unless ours shall be employed against Fort Sumter, we will abstain from opening fire against you."

At two-thirty A.M. April twelfth, Anderson replies that he will vacate by noon on April fifteenth, should he not receive prior to that time "controlling instructions" from his government or additional supplies.

The Confederate command, knowing that "controlling instructions" are already on their way to Fort Sumter, and that the relief flotilla is expected momentarily off the bar, sees in the reply a continuation of the tactics that have been employed by Washington, merely a postponement against a more complete preparedness.

At three-twenty A.M. on April twelfth, the final dispatch crosses the harbor toward Sumter:

"To Major Anderson,
United States Army, Commanding
Fort Sumter.

Sir:

By authority of Brigadier-General Beauregard, commanding the provisional forces of the Confederate States, we have the honour to notify you that he will open the fire of his batteries on Fort Sumter in one hour from this time.

We have the honour to be, very respectfully,
Your obedient servants,
James Chestnut, Jr., Aide-de-Camp.
Stephen D. Lee, Capt. S.C. Army
and Aide-de-camp."

 

*   *   *   *   *

The windows of Chardon's room were open and through them came the damp heavy pressure of an east wind. The sky was overcast, and when he looked down into the street he could distinguish nothing. But up out of the night came the sound of low, excited voices, and the shuffling of feet.

He heard Caesar's tread, then the front door opened and closed. Boots took the steps two in a stride, rang strong and vital on the corridor, and paused before his door. Then, with "I'm coming in, Uncle Pierre," Wake was in the room. He was carrying a lantern that he had taken from Caesar. The light, hanging low, showed Chardon military boots and gray breeches. Above, in the fainter, reflected glow, he saw the face of his nephew, flushed, eager, excited.

Wake said, "Hurry and dress, Uncle Pierre. We're opening on Sumter at half-past four."

Chardon, shivering in his nightshirt, answered testily: "You are, are you? Well, come in and close the door."

"But you don't understand, sir. I have some of the boys from the Rifles here, and we're hoping that some of the ladies will join us. I hope you don't mind, sir, but I'm having Caesar open the trap door to the roof. We want to be there for the first shot."

Something in Chardon wanted to cry out. Wanted to warn the boy that war was not, after all, a gala festival. But, as he often did when deeply affected, he sought concealment in irony.

"Perhaps," he suggested, "you had better send orders to Beauregard to hold his fire until you have your gallery arranged and your ladies seated. It would be a pity to have them miss the first act." Then his manner changed. He asked sharply: "Where's Peter?"

"I don't know," Wake told him. "He's on duty tonight. That's how we got the word so promptly. He knew when Colonel Chestnut sent the last dispatch to Anderson, and he sent Washington out to the camp on Starling to tell us to come down."

He stood a moment looking at his uncle, then said, "I hope you don't mind us coming here, sir. It's not going to last long, you see; we had to hurry. Someone said---"

"Yes, yes, I know. You'll probably be breakfasting in Washington. But get along to the roof now, with your friends, and I'll join you as soon as I am decently covered."

Chardon lifted his head and shoulders through the trap door and looked about him. Clouds, heavy with moisture, hung low and dense. A wind from the Atlantic drove steadily westward over the roofs. It had body, substance, and when it flung its weight against Chardon, his footing became uncertain on the ladder.

But he was immediately sighted by the group of men who were gathered about the lantern on the flat roof of the rear piazza. Lawrence and Wake were at his side in a moment. They lifted him out lightly, as though he had been a child, to the secure footing of the roof. Their tenderness and solicitude embarrassed him, as, each holding him by an arm, they conducted him across the short distance to the group. His bad leg always stiffened up while he slept, making his lameness more apparent. He was compelled to say with dignity: "You needn't carry me. I am fully capable of maintaining my own footing."

He pulled himself together, welcoming them to his home, and summoning Caesar to bring up a decanter and glasses.

He noticed then that lights were coming up on adjacent roofs, and from one to another excited voices were calling across the darkness. The De Saussures had assembled quite a party. He could see hoop skirts swinging in the wind like large bells, and negroes were bringing up chairs and rugs for the ladies.

Presently the Gordons and Alicia Pringle arrived. Damaris kissed Chardon in silence, and slipped an arm through his. They stood a little apart from the others, saying nothing, their eyes staring out into the darkness. Caesar came with decanter and glasses, supplied the guests, and retired.

Wake was standing by the lantern, his watch in his hand. Chardon had seen him often with that look of concentration on his face, as he stood timing the start of a race on the Pineville track.

"We've only three minutes to wait," he announced. "It is four-twenty-seven." A great silence had fallen over the roofs. From the street came the sound of hurrying feet, but  no talk.

Wake's voice came wire-tense in the stillness.

"Time."

Minutes passed. The suspense became unbearable. Feet shuffled. Alicia Pringle cried, "I can't bear it!" Chardon, with his finger nails pressing little pains into his palms, stood motionless, his gaze focused on the spot in the night where the fort stood waiting.

The boats of the night patrol were coming in. He could see the flares moving toward the town, bright gouts of blood on the water, with smears drawn from them toward the shore.

 

To be concluded next week, April 8, 2021.

 

NOTES:

1Porgy was also made into a play in 1927 by DuBose Heyward's wife, Dorothy. Porgy and Bess came out in 1935. In 1959, it was adapted as a film of the same name.

2 The Gibbs Museum of Art came about during that time, and the Poetry Society of South Carolina, which DuBose Heyward helped to create along with John Bennett and Hervey Allen.

Also, historic preservation began with Charleston becoming the first city in the nation with historic preservation laws. Women were a powerful force for historic preservation and in related fields. Laura Bragg became the first woman in America to run a publicly funded museum, the Charleston Museum, during the Charleston Renaissance.

3 Zora Neale Hurston, Barracoon, The Story of the Last "Black Cargo", Edited by Deborah G. Plant (New York: Amistad, 2018, by the Zora Neale Hurston Trust). Only 5% of the black exodus from Africa known as the African Diaspora, came to America. Many went to South America and other places.

4 The following footnote was denoted by an asterisk in the text: "The Defense of Charleston Harbor" by Major John Johnson, Engineer in charge at Fort Sumter, 1863-1865, and for many years after the war rector of St. Philip's Church in Charleston, was published by Walker, Evans and Cogswell Co., Charleston, in 1890. This book of 276 pages, with voluminous appendices and numerous illustrations, is an admirable detailed technical account of the military and naval operations in the Charleston district. The work is a model of its kind, but has long been out of print.-----[Publisher's Note: This book is back in print today, 2021, and can be found online.]

5 The Charleston Courier was around in 1861, but the Charleston Daily News was not founded until 1865. They merged and formed the News and Courier in 1873. This is according to Wikipedia, The Post and Courier, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Post_and_Courier, accessed 3-31-21.

Robert E. Lee and Me by Ty Seidule, Part Two, Conclusion, of the Review, by Gene Kizer, Jr.

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Part Two, Conclusion, of the Review of

Robert E. Lee and Me

A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause
by Ty Seidule, Professor Emeritus of History at West Point

By Gene Kizer, Jr.

53K

[Publisher's Note: Last week Col. Jerry D. Morelock gave us Part One of this two-part review of Ty Seidule's book, Robert E. Lee and Me. Here is Part Two, the conclusion.]

A number of good historians have written reviews recently of Ty Seidule's book, Robert E. Lee and Me, including historian Phil Leigh who produced the video, Robert E. Lee and (Woke General) Please Like Me.

All of these reviews note that the tone of Robert E. Lee and Me is a desperate plea by Seidule for academia to "please PLEASE like me!" Academia is Seidule's new home. He has gone from the United States Military Academy at West Point, to Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.1

For Seidule to write such an embarrassing screed on his way into academia is understandable. Most of academia looks down on the military and military personnel. One of my professors at the College of Charleston in 1999, when I was a middle-age student, was Dr. Clark G. Reynolds. We became close friends. He told me on several occasions about the condescension of other faculty members toward military historians and the military itself.

Dr. Reynolds would know because he was a very fine naval historian who had written several important books and served on the faculty of the United States Naval Academy, and as Chair of the Department of Humanities at the United States Merchant Marine Academy.2

Robert E. Lee and Me is a non-history book that is so historically irrelevant it doesn't even have an index.

It was written by a virtue-signaling narcissist whose obvious goal is to make sure academia knows that he is woke and correct on all the leftist political issues of today that resonate in academia. They are the focus of way too many history departments that have hired social justice warriors instead of historians.

It is extremely propagandistic. It is peppered with leftist talking points, references to white supremacy, fights over Confederate monuments, the Emanuel AME Church murders in Charleston, Charlottesville, George Floyd's death, and other current issues that Seiudule uses to tar Robert E. Lee and Southern history.

Seidule is going from the most successful colorblind meritocracy in all of history --- the United States Military --- into academia, much of which is a racist, non-diversified, America-hating, free-speech hating, Marxist-loving indoctrination mill.

Academia has also given us the racist identity politics of Critical Theory, and the anti-white hate and racism of Critical Race Theory that now pollutes much of the country.

The problem with academia is that it is 100% liberal and aggressively politically correct meaning there is no real debate on anything. I know the actual percentage of liberal professors and administrators is closer to only 90%, but the other 10 are not going to speak up. Even the professors who disagree with leftist dogma don't dare say anything and risk losing tenure or having the mob show up at their office. The whole environment is sick, but Seidue's book will fit him right in.

My apologies to the open-minded folks still in academia who are appalled by racist identity politics, Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, attacks on free speech and all the rest of it. I know there are some good people in academia, but you know I am right about my description of most of it.

On the very first page of Robert E. Lee and Me, Seidule talks about a PragerU video he did in 2015 entitled "Was the Civil War About Slavery?". He states that he answers that question in the first 30 seconds:

Many people don't want to believe that the citizens of the southern states were willing to fight and die to preserve the morally repugnant institution of slavery. There has to be another reason, we are told. Well, there isn't. The evidence is clear and overwhelming. Slavery was, by a wide margin, the single most important cause of the Civil War.3

No it wasn't.

Not even close.

In Seidule's entire book, he does not even mention, once, the economic interconnectedness of the North and South in 1860, yet that was the underlying factor in causing the war, not slavery.

Southerners seceded to govern themselves. They expected to live in peace, but Lincoln could not allow that and the reason was 100% economic.

If it wasn't, Northerners like The Chicago Times would not have said things like:

In one single blow our foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwise trade would pass into other hands. One-half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves. We should lose our trade with the South, with all its immense profits. Our manufactories would be in utter ruins. Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue,4 and these results would likely follow. If protection be wholly withdrawn from our labor, it could not compete, with all the prejudices against it, with the labor of Europe. We should be driven from the market, and millions of our people would be compelled to go out of employment.5 (Emphasis added.)

The Northern economy was largely based on manufacturing for the South and shipping Southern cotton. See Complicity, How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery by Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank of the Hartford Courant (New York: Ballantine Books, 2005).

Without the South, the North was dead economically.

Without the North, the South, with 100% control of King Cotton, would ascend to dominance in North America, and Lincoln knew it.

Southerners were already paying 85% of the taxes yet 75% of the tax money was being spent in the North. Secession meant turning all that money inward, back on the South.6

Southerners wanted desperately to manufacture for themselves to get out from under the North's inferior goods that were greatly overpriced because of tariffs. In the meantime Southerners could buy from Europe at much lower prices than they had been paying.

The Morrill Tariff, passed by greedy, economically ignorant Northerners in the U.S. Congress after the Cotton States seceded, raised the rate for entry into the North to as high as 60%, as compared to the South's low 10% tariff for the operation of a small federal government in a States Rights nation. This threatened to shift the entire Northern shipping industry into the South overnight as Northern ship captains beat a path to the South where free trade reigned and protective tariffs were unconstitutional.

The loss to the North of their captive Southern manufacturing market, together with the damage to their shipping industry by the Morrill Tariff, was a one-two punch they would not be able to recover from. That's before even considering the loss of the 85% of tax revenue the South had been paying.

But the biggest thing driving Lincoln was the threat of European military aid. It would be for the South like French aid in the American Revolution was to the Colonists. The North would not be able to beat the South in that situation and, again, Lincoln knew it.

He needed to get his war started as quickly as he could so he could set up his blockade and chill European recognition of the South, because, with European recognition of Southern independence, it was game over for Lincoln.

So, Lincoln sent his hostile navy into the South to start the war, five different missions in April, 1861, to Fort Sumter in Charleston and Fort Pickens in Pensacola.7 The Charlestonians tried up to the last minute to avoid war and get Major Anderson to evacuate Fort Sumter but he did not feel like he could. He did, however, realize what Lincoln was doing and he answered a letter to Secretary of War Cameron and Lincoln stating:

. . . a movement made now when the South has been erroneously informed that none such will be attempted, would produce most disastrous results throughout our country. . . . We shall strive to do our duty, though I frankly say that my heart is not in the war which I see is to be thus commenced. . . . (Emphasis added.)

Anderson sees that the war "is to be thus commenced" by Abraham Lincoln, who had to hurry up and get it started or soon the South with European trade and military alliances would be unbeatable.

Abraham Lincoln announced his blockade before the smoke had cleared from the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Just before the Fort Sumter drama, Lincoln had committed his act of war in Pensacola by secretly landing troops in Fort Pickens and breaking a long-time armistice with the Confederates down there.

Lincoln was determined to get his war started as noted by several Northern newspapers including the Providence (R.I.) Daily Post which wrote, April 13, 1861, the day after the commencement of the bombardment of Fort Sumter:

We are to have civil war, if at all, because Abraham Lincoln loves a party better than he loves his country. . . . Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor.

"WHY?"
Providence (R.I.) Daily Post
April 13, 1861

It is immoral that Seidule completely ignores this overwhelming evidence in pushing his propaganda but that is the tactic of the left: Do like Goebbels said and repeat the big lie over and over, while ignoring everything else.

With everything Southerners had to gain economically by independence, it is absurd to say they seceded to protect slavery. That takes a lot of nerve anyway, since there were nine slave states in the Union when the guns of Fort Sumter sounded, soon to be increased by one with the admission of West Virginia.

There were only seven in the Confederacy.

On page 9, Seidule writes:

Eleven southern states seceded to protect and expand an African American slave labor system.

Again, Seidule is dead wrong.

As stated, there were nine slave states in the Union when the war started and only seven in the Confederacy. Four of the Union slave states had rejected secession at first: Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina. And in those four states lived 52.4% of white Southerners, a majority.

But those states immediately seceded when Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to invade the South, and their reason was obviously federal coercion, not slavery. They believed, and rightfully so, that Lincoln's call to invade peaceful fellow states was unconstitutional and unconscionable. There was nothing in the Constitution in 1861 that required or allowed Lincoln and the Federal Government to force a sovereign state to do anything much less stay in a union they did not want. The Federal Government had no right to invade an American state, kill its citizens, and destroy its property.

The most widely quoted phrase in the secession debate in the South in the year prior to states calling conventions and actually voting to secede came from the Declaration of Independence:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Of the seven Cotton States that first seceded and formed the Confederacy, only four issued declarations of causes for their secession. In fact, those four declarations of causes were the only four issued by any of the 13 states represented in the Confederate Government.

Missouri and Kentucky were represented in the Confederate Government though they did not officially secede. They remained as two of the six Union slave states the entire war; and Kentucky had slavery well after the war, until the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery kicked in, in December, 1865.

The four declarations of causes do mention slavery along with numerous other grievances including economic, constitutional, and the hatred used by the North to rally its votes in the election of 1860.

That hatred was the primary reason for Southern secession. Northerners had supported murder and terrorism against the South. They had financed John Brown and sent him into the South to murder Southerners. He had hacked pro-South settlers to death in front of their families in Kansas.

Lincoln's party also used Hinton Helper's The Impending Crisis as a campaign document. They had hundreds of thousands of them printed and distributed coast to coast. It called for slave insurrection and the throats of Southerners to be cut in the night.

Would you allow people who hated your guts and were already at war with you to rule over you? What kind of stupid, cowardly people would do that? Certainly not Southerners.

But the simplistic Seidule characterizes Southern secession like the fake news media characterizes those who have serious concerns about the integrity of the 2020 election. Seidule writes:

Unwilling to accept the results of a fair, democratic election, they illegally seized U. S. territory, violently.

The truth of the 2020 election will come out eventually but there are certainly an enormous number of legitimate concerns that call into account Seidule's description of a "fair, democratic election" in 2020. The Texas law suit which was joined by 20 other states, lays out legion legitimate issues of corruption and constitutional violations that have never been adjudicated by a court. The Navarro Report also goes into great detail. Anybody with a brain knows that when mail in voting jumps from 5% to 35% at the same time that signature verification standards are lowered or dropped, it is a formula for disaster.

For over a year, Southerners debated seceding from the Union. After all, five times in U.S. history Northerners had threatened to secede from the Union so nobody questioned the right of secession, not even Horace Greeley, until he realize Southern secession would affect his money. Then he wanted war like the rest of them. Before that, he believe "Let our erring sisters go" and he editorialized in favor of the right of secession.

Three states had formally reserved the right of secession before acceding to the Constitution. They were New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia. Because all the other states accepted the reserved right of secession of New York, Rhode Island and Virginia, those states had it too, because all the states entered the Union as equals with the exact same rights.

The Stetson Law Review, a publication of the Stetson University College of Law, did a good article on the right of secession entitled "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession" by H. Newcomb Morse. He writes that the War Between the States did not prove that secession was illegal because:

[M]any incidents both preceding and following the War support the proposition that the Southern States did have the right to secede from the Union. Instances of nullification prior to the War Between the States, contingencies under which certain states acceded to the Union, and the fact that the Southern States were made to surrender the right to secession all affirm the existence of a right to secede . . .8

He adds that the Constitution's "failure to forbid secession" and amendments dealing with secession that were proposed in Congress as Southern states were seceding strengthened his argument that:

[T]he Southern States had an absolute right to secede from the Union prior to the War Between the States.9

Of course they did.

How can you believe in the Declaration of Independence and governments deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed and not believe a people can leave a government that has become tyrannical and oppressive. That was the essence of the Revolutionary War and the foundation of our country.

Northern hate, not unlike the hate we have in America today, drove the South from the Union, that and supporting terrorists and murderers like John Brown and encouraging mass murder in the South like Republicans did with Hinton Helper's book.

The one thing about American history that you can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt is that the North did not go to war to end slavery. They went to war because they faced economic annihilation when the Southern States seceded and took their captive manufacturing market and their tariff revenue with them.

The Corwin Amendment which passed the Northern Congress and was ratified by several states would have left black people in slavery forever, even beyond the reach of Congress. That was the true feeling of the North and Abraham Lincoln in 1861 and it proves the North's motive was not to end slavery. And there is much much more irrefutable proof.

A near-unanimous resolution entitled the War Aims Resolution established early-on what the North was fighting for. It was passed by the Northern Congress in July, 1861, three months after the bombardment of Fort Sumter:

. . . That this war is not waged upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or institutions [slavery] of the States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution [which allowed and protected slavery], and to preserve the Union. . . .10

It is unquestionable and irrefutable that the North did not go to war to end slavery.

They went to war because they wanted to dominate the country economically. Northern wealth and power were all dependent on the Union. That's why Lincoln said over and over it was about preserving the Union, not ending slavery.

That puts Seidule's Union Army in a pretty bad light. Lincoln's troops were down here in the South. Southern troops were not up there in the North menacing any Northern city.

Why didn't Lincoln just remove his troops who were on sovereign South Carolina and Florida soil? If he had done that there would have been no war, no 750,000 deaths and over a million maimed.

The hateful Seidule argued against memorializing West Point graduates who fought for the Confederacy. He writes:

I believed we should exclude them. After all, they died fighting against the United States. I argued stridently that West Point should honor only those who fought for the Constitution we swear to support and defend. West Point's mottos of "Duty, Honor, Country" (especially country) would seem to argue forcefully for exclusion of those dedicated to the country's destruction.11

Southerners were certainly not dedicated to the destruction of the Union. No Confederate EVER said any such absurdity. The United States could have easily continued into the future as a major power on this earth but with just a few less states.

Seidule talks about support of the Constitution but Northern violations of the Constitution are one of the many legitimate grievances Southerners had and so stated many times. Many Northerners believed there was a higher power than the U.S. Constitution they should adhere to (and it always just happened to increase their political power).

Other Northerners like William Lloyd Garrison believed the Constitution was a "covenant with death" and "an agreement with Hell."

William H. Seward, Sr., Lincoln's secretary of state, asserted in 1850 that “[…] there is a Higher Law than the Constitution.”

None of these self-righteous Northerners in the antebellum era ever proposed a plan to end slavery such as they had used in the North with compensated, gradual emancipation. That is how all nations ended slavery and it would have been easy to do but Northerners were not about to spend their hard-earned sweatshop money to free the slaves in the South who would then go North and be job competition.

Lincoln did talk about it time to time but Lincoln's primary idea for dealing with slavery was to send black people back to Africa or into a place where they could survive. This was Lincoln's plan his entire life. See Colonization after Emancipation, Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement by Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian N. Page (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011).

In Chapter 7, page 238, Seidule writes:

Lee acknowledged defeat but felt neither he nor the white South had done anything wrong. In his famous General Orders No. 9, Lee bid his soldiers farewell. He stated his version of what the war meant and why it ended, initiating the Lost Cause myth. The Army of Northern Virginia "succumbed to overwhelming numbers and resources," a kind of code criticizing the immigrant army of the United States supported by unsavory businessmen and ruthless politicians.

To prove how utterly disingenuous Seidule is, below is Gen. Lee's General Orders, No. 9. Compare what Lee actually said with what Seidule wrote above. See if you can find "a kind of code criticizing the immigrant army of the United States supported by unsavory businessmen and ruthless politicians" in Gen. Lee's short, heartfelt address. This, alone, proves what a fraud Seidule's entire book is.

General Orders, No. 9
Robert E. Lee's Farewell Address to
The Army of Northern Virginia

Hd. Qrs. Army of N. Va.
General Orders
No. 9

After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.

I need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to this result from no distrust of them; but feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest, I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen.

By the terms of the agreement, officers and men can return to their homes and remain until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed; and I earnestly pray that a Merciful God will extend to you His blessing and protection. With an unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your Country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration for myself, I bid you all an affectionate farewell.

R.E. Lee, Genl.12

Lee was almost always outnumbered and outgunned.

Grant himself admitted this when he wrote Secretary of War Edwin Stanton July 22, 1865 to explain how he won the war:

The resources of the enemy, and his numerical strength, were far inferior to ours. . . I therefore determined . . . to hammer continuously against the armed force of the enemy and his resources, until by mere attrition, if in no other way, there should be nothing left to him but . . . submission. . . "13

The numbers showing the Union advantage over Lee are startling. Here's one example. Phil Leigh writes:

Grant began his forty-day campaign with an approximate two-to-one numerical advantage. He had 124,000 troops compared to 66,000 for Lee. At the end, Grant had suffered 55,000 casualties, which was also about twice those of Lee. Losses for the two sides during the battles at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor correspond closely to the federal disasters at Second Bull Run, Chancellorsville, and Fredericksburg.14

The North had four times the white population of the South. While slaves helped the Southern economy, and many served as Confederate soldiers, they were not a big source of manpower.

The North had a functioning government, an army, navy, merchant marine, sound financial system. They had a pipeline to the retched refuse of the world who came here often with only the shirts on their backs to find the Union Army recruiter with bonuses in hand, food and clothing.

Over 25% of the Union Army was foreign born but as James McPherson points out, over 30% of the North was foreign born. The North was a wild busting-at-the-seams society. The scenes in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York are historically accurate.

Some speculate that because of the wildness caused by massive immigration during the 1850s that the North would have had a revolution if not for the western lands where they could send their surplus population. "Go west, young man, and grow up with the country!" said Horace Greeley.

So Lincoln starting a war knowing he had four times the white population of the South plus unlimited numbers of people verses the South's impossibility of adding more people because of the Union blockade, is despicable but understandable. The Republican Party was new, and what is better than a war to give it power, money and solidify it in the political life of a nation.

Lincoln certainly figured it would be a short war but he found otherwise, that a people fighting for independence will fight until there are oceans of blood covering their sacred soil, and until their society is completely destroyed.

The Northern manufacturing for armaments, ammunition, guns and uniforms was unlimited while it was non-existent in the South. Seidule's Union soldiers were always well-fed and had the latest weaponry but Confederates were always hungry, cold and often barefoot.

There were 19 marine engine factories in the North. There were zero in the South.

Northern society throughout the war barely noticed a difference in their day to day lives while Southerners suffered at the hands of Seidule's barbaric animals in the South raping, pillaging, murdering. All of that did go on and has been well-documented, as in every war. The great British historian, Antony Beevor, estimates that 2,000,000 German women were raped by the Russian army at the end of World War II as it conquered Germany. Union soldiers raping black women is especially documented in the Official Records.

Gen. Lee often could not do things on the battlefield because he did not have the resources. That was never a problem for the North.

The Federal ration of grain for their horses was ten pounds a day per horse. Lee wrote this to President Davis August 24, 1863:

Nothing prevents my advancing now [against Mead] but the fear of killing our artillery horses. They are a much reduced, and the hot weather and scarce forage keeps them so. The cavalry also suffer and I fear to set them at work. Some days we get a pound of corn per horse and some days more; some none. Our limit is five per day per horse. You can judge of our prospects. . . . Everything is being done by me that can be to recruit the horses. I have been obliged to diminish the number of guns in the artillery, and fear I shall have to lose more.15

The South faced the same problem with railroads. Of the 30,000-plus miles that existed nationwide in 1861, 70% was in the North. There were 21,300 miles of track in the North and Midwest with 45,000 miles of telegraph wire while in the South there was only 9,022 miles with 5,000 miles of telegraph wire. The South had a much larger territory to cover with much smaller resources.16

Ramsdell writes:

For more than a year before the end came the railroads were in such a wretched condition that a complete breakdown seemed always imminent. As the tracks wore out on the main lines they were replenished by despoiling the branch lines; but while the expedient of feeding the weak roads to the more important afforded the latter some temporary sustenance, it seriously weakened the armies, since it steadily reduced the area from which supplies could be drawn.17

So, again, Gen. Lee's "overwhelming resources" of the North is correct and Seidule is wrong. The Lost Cause Myth is not a myth. It is simply the Southern view of what happened, and it is both accurate and truthful.

On the other hand, the Righteous Cause Myth of the North is truly a myth --- no, not myth, LIE. Their "righteous cause" was their money, power, and the lust to rule the country.

Lysander Spooner, who was an abolitionist in Massachusetts, agreed:

On the part of the North, the war was carried on, not to liberate the slaves, but by a government that had always perverted and violated the Constitution, to keep the slaves in bondage; and was still willing to do so, if the slaveholders could be thereby induced to stay in the Union.

The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.18

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, a West Point graduate and true American hero, is a much better representative of West Point and the United States Army than the virtue-signaling "please, academia, like me!" of Ty Seidule. Eisenhower is a much better judge of honor and character.

Gen. Eisenhower, 1st Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, in World War II, later president of the United States for eight years, had a picture of Gen. Robert E. Lee on his wall in the White House his entire time there.

Eisenhower speaks with some of the 101st Airborne Division June 5, 1944, the day before the D-Day invasion.
Eisenhower speaks with some of the 101st Airborne Division June 5, 1944, the day before the D-Day invasion.

Like President John F. Kennedy, Eisenhower had great respect for Gen. Lee and his cause, and he appreciated Lee's efforts to bind up the nation's wounds after our bloodiest war.

On August 1, 1960, a New York dentist, Dr. Leon W. Scott, wrote an angry letter to President Eisenhower excoriating him for having that picture of Lee in his White House office.

Scott wrote: "I do not understand  how any American can include Robert E. Lee as a person to be emulated, and why the President of the United States of America should do so is certainly beyond me. / The most outstanding thing that Robert E. Lee did, was to devote his best efforts to the destruction of the United States Government, and I am sure that you do not say that a person who tries to destroy our Government is worthy of being held as one of our heroes."19

President Eisenhower wrote back on the 9th:

Dear Dr. Scott:

Respecting your August 1 inquiry calling attention to my often expressed admiration for General Robert E. Lee, I would say, first, that we need to understand that at the time of the War between the States the issue of secession had remained unresolved for more than 70 years. Men of probity, character, public standing and unquestioned loyalty, both North and South, had disagreed over this issue as a matter of principle from the day our Constitution was adopted.

General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of his cause which until 1865 was still an arguable question in America; he was a poised and inspiring leader, true to the high trust reposed in him by millions of his fellow citizens; he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with captured enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and personally courageous in battle, and never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle. Through all his many trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his faith in God. Taken altogether, he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.

From deep conviction, I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee's caliber would be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the Nation's wounds once the bitter struggle was over, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.

Such are the reasons that I proudly display the picture of this great American on my office wall.

Sincerely,
Dwight D. Eisenhower20

Robert E. Lee, oil on canvas, by Edward Calledon Bruce, 1865.
Robert E. Lee, oil on canvas, by Edward Calledon Bruce, 1865.

Seidule favors the term "civil war" for our conflict of 1861 to '65. He writes:

When I hear 'the War of Northern Aggression' or 'the War Between the States,' I know a Confederate sympathizer or argument against equal rights will soon follow.

Gen. Eisenhower used "War Between the States" in his letter, above, and in that one letter is more truthful, accurate American history than in Seidule's entire book.

Seidule's book, as many who have reviewed it conclude, is nothing but a desperate supplication for academia to please like him.

Can you imagine Gen. Eisenhower or Gen. Lee lowering himself to the level needed to write such a book?

Seidule is a writer of woke, politically correct propaganda, which means he will fit into academia like a glove.

NOTES:

1 Hamilton College appears to be a charming, small liberal arts college founded in 1793 and named for Alexander Hamilton who was on the first Board of Trustees when it was Hamilton-Oneida Academy. Hamilton.edu, accessed 3-22-21.

2 Dr. Reynolds also taught at the University of Maine, and was History Departmental Chair at the College of Charleston (SC). Among his books are Command of the Sea: The History and Strategy of Maritime Empires; Navies in History; History and the Sea; The Fast Carriers: The Forging of an Air Navy; and On the Warpath in the Pacific: Admiral Jocko Clark and the Fast Carrier. His complete bio is at www.WorldHistory101-102.com. Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_G._Reynolds.

3 Ty Seidule, Robert E. Lee and Me, A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2020), 1. Seidule did not capitalize "southern" in his quotation. I always capitalize it and Northern, as well as North and South, which are obviously proper names that should be capitalized.

4 See also Footnote #47 on page 44 of Gene Kizer, Jr., Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States, The Irrefutable Argument. (Charleston, SC: Charleston Athenaeum Press, 2014) for the difference between tariff for revenue and protective tariff. What is meant by "a tariff for revenue" is a small tariff to raise a small amount of revenue to pay for the operation of a small federal government such as the government of the Confederate States of America. Southerners had always wanted free trade with the world. They believed in as small a tariff as possible. Contrast a small tariff for revenue with the huge protective tariffs the North loved that were punitive and meant to deter free trade so that one would be forced to buy from the North at jacked-up rates that were not determined by market competition but were jacked-up to the level of the tariff. The tariff is the perfect thing to contrast the differences in North and South. The moment the South was out of the Union, they made protective tariffs unconstitutional while the North passed the astronomical Morrill Tariff. The Morrill Tariff prevented the recovery of the Northern economy and made war Abraham Lincoln's only choice to save the North from economic annihilation. Of course, Lincoln's choice resulted in 800,000 deaths and over a million wounded out of a population of approximately 31 million.

5 Daily Chicago Times, "The Value of the Union," December 10, 1860, in Perkins, ed., Northern Editorials on Secession, Vol. II, 573-574.

6 Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr., It Wasn't About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War (Washington, DC: Regnery History,  2020), 103.

7 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 142.

8 Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," 420.

9 Ibid.

10 The War Aims Resolution is also known by the names of its sponsors, Representative John J. Crittenden of Kentucky and Senator Andrew Johnson of Tennessee: the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution, or just the Crittenden Resolution. It passed the U.S. House of Representatives July 22, 1861, and the Senate July 25, 1861. There were only two dissenting votes in the House and five in the Senate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crittenden-Johnson_Resolution, accessed March 29, 2014.

11 Seidule, Robert E. Lee and Me, 4.

12 Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee: A Biography, 4 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936), Vol. 4, 154-55.

13 Phil Leigh, Civil War Chat, "Ty Seidule's Falsehoods About Grant and Lee", https://civilwarchat.wordpress.com/2021/02/24/ty-seidules-falsehoods-about-grant-and-lee/, accessed 3-25-21.

14 Ibid.

15 Charles W. Ramsdell, "General Robert E. Lee's Horse Supply, 1862-1865" in Gene Kizer, Jr., compiler, Charles W. Ramsdell, Dean of Southern Historians (Charleston: Charleston Athenaeum Press, 2017), 250. The quotation is from the OR, ser. I, v XXIX, pt. 2, 664-665.

16 "Railroads In The Civil War: Facts and Statistics (North vs South)," https://www.american-rails.com/civil.html, accessed 3-23-21.

17 Charles W. Ramsdell, "The Confederate Government and the Railroads," in Gene Kizer, Jr., compiler, Charles W. Ramsdell, Dean of Southern Historians, 300.

18 Lysander Spooner, "No Treason. No. 1, Introductory," Boston, by "the Author, No. 14 Bromfield Street. 1867".

19 Dwight D. Eisenhower in Defense of Robert E. Lee, August 10, 2014, Mathew W. Lively, https://www.civilwarprofiles.com/dwight-d-eisenhower-in-defense-of-robert-e-lee/, accessed 5-3-20.

20 Dwight D. Eisenhower letter, August 9, 1960, to Leon W. Scott, in "Dwight D. Eisenhower in Defense of Robert E. Lee," August 10, 2014, Mathew W. Lively, https://www.civilwarprofiles.com/dwight-d-eisenhower-in-defense-of-robert-e-lee/, accessed 5-3-20.

Robert E. Lee and Me by Ty Seidule, Part One of a Two-Part Review

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Part One of a Two-Part Review of

Robert E. Lee and Me
A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause by Ty Seidule, Professor Emeritus of History at West Point
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[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. - Original post was March 17, 2021. Updated December 5, 2022:

I am honored to present Col. Jerry D. Morelock's review, below, as Part One of a two-part review of Ty Seidule's Robert E. Lee and Me. Next week will be Part Two, by me.

Seidule is on the naming commission which came about because of Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who introduced in 2021 in the Senate Armed Services Committee, a resolution to change the names of the military bases in the South named for Confederates. We won two World Wars from those bases, which are around a century old. They were named for Confederates as part of the reconciliation of our country and most, such as Fort Bragg and Fort Benning, are legendary.

Warren's legislation has morphed into the changing of over a thousand historically inspired names of streets, monuments, and patches making it an unbelievable waste of taxpayer money at a time when some of our servicemen and women are on foodstamps because they can't make ends meet.

Now, Seidule and the naming commission have concluded that they need to demolish the 108 year old Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, which symbolizes the reconciliation and reunification of North and South after the War Between the States.

The memorial, entitled "New South" and created by internationally renowned Jewish sculptor, Moses Ezekiel, who was a Confederate soldier and is buried at the base of his monument, was the idea of Union soldier and later president William McKinley.

McKinley said that every grave, Union and Confederate, was a testament to American valor.

Congress and two other presidents, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson, as well as veterans North and South supported the Confederate Memorial but what difference does history and tradition make to a Woke political commission out to erase history. Their standard is "presentism," the application of the goofy standards of today rather than peer-reviewed and debated scholarly history.

Scroll down for a link to an excellent video by Bode Lang entitled "The Civil War Was Not for Slavery," which tears apart Seidule and the Prager University video he made.

Frankly, I have lost all respect for Prager University. They might present some aspects of American history well, but they are false and unhistorical to promote Seidule as a truthful expert on Southern history.

Lang makes Seidule look foolish by showing one clip after another of Seidule's cherry-picked "history" then thoroughly refuting each with equal, and in most cases, better, sources.

Lang proves Seidule's dishonesty, politicization and falsification of history.

Below, is Col. Morelock's bio followed by his excellent assessment of Seidule's Robert E. Lee and Me.]

JERRY D. MORELOCK, PhD, Colonel, U.S. Army, ret., is a 1969 West Point graduate who served 36 years in uniform. A decorated Vietnam War combat veteran, his assignments included Pentagon tours on the Department of the Army staff and in the Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate, Joint Chiefs of Staff. His final active duty assignment was head of the history department of the US Army Command & General Staff College. An award-winning author, he has published several books and hundreds of journal and magazine articles. His books include Generals of the Bulge: Leadership in the U.S. Army’s Greatest Battle (Stackpole, 2015) and (as a contributing author) Pershing’s Lieutenants: American Military Leadership in World War I edited by David Zabecki and Douglas Mastriano (Osprey, 2020).

After Army retirement, he was Executive Director of the Winston Churchill Memorial & Library at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri (2000-2004) and is adjunct faculty professor of history and political science at Westminster. He was Editor in Chief of Armchair General magazine (2004-2015), and currently is Senior Editor/Senior Historian for three military history magazines.

Don’t Be Fooled by Ty Seidule's "West Point Professor/Brigadier General" Misleading Credentials

by Jerry D. Morelock

Lest any potential buyer/reader of this book be swayed by the seemingly "impressive military credentials" of the author, please let me explain what those credentials really comprise and represent when the author acquired them by being a former 'permanent professor' and 'department head' in the academic department of the US Military Academy at West Point.

First of all, Ty Seidule did not earn his rank of 'Brigadier General' by being competitively selected by a Department of the Army promotion selection board from among his peers, but, per standard procedure for retiring USMA academic department heads, was merely given that general officer1 rank upon his retirement from military service (that is, as he exited military service, he was 'awarded' that rank -- essentially like a long-serving corporate executive would get a 'gold watch' as he walked out the door).

Seidule never served on active duty as a 'general officer' commanding a tactical unit (apparently, based on his bio, he commanded a tank platoon – a Lieutenant’s command – and his highest unit command appears to be an armored battalion – a Lieutenant Colonel’s command); so some of the reviews on this book asking, "Was he a warrior general or was he not?" sadly miss the point because they are simply unaware of where Seidule's 'general' rank came from, and not their fault -- Seidule was never a general until he retired.

Second, Seidule's author bio emphasizes that he served on active duty for "36 years" (coincidentally, the same as I did) but also notes that he spent "two decades" teaching history at West Point – so, immediately, that means Seidule had, at most, 16 years of 'real' military service in the 'real' Army -- serving on the staff & faculty at West Point is hardly 'real' military service, as it is a completely artificial environment in every possible way (how do I know? my own 36 years of service included eight years at USMA, four as a cadet, graduating in 1969, and four more years later serving on the USMA staff & faculty).

Being a 'permanent professor/department head' at West Point means serving in the artificial, hermetically-sealed environment that exists at the Military Academy, completely separate and distinct from the day-to-day, rough and tumble 'real' Army.

The bottom line is that the title 'Brig. Gen.' given to a former USMA permanent professor/department head does NOT carry the same weight and prestige as an Army officer EARNING that rank on his own military merits -- it was merely given to Seidule for 'staying the course' for 20 years as a West Point professor.

And his claimed '36 years' of military service is really only, at best, 16 years in the REAL ARMY when his 20 years in an academic department at USMA is factored into his overall service.

I only present this information to alert readers that there is a profound difference between 'real' US Army brigadier generals and those who, like Seidule, are simply awarded that rank upon retirement; plus when his claimed 36 years of military service has the 20 years serving at West Point removed, Seidule's actual military service is about the same as that of an Army Major.

His book on Lee is nothing more than his revisionist 'sucking up' to his new civilian academic buddies, ingratiating himself into the camaraderie of his new 'Woke' buds and has nothing of any historical revelation to share in this so-called 'book.'

It's not a researched, thoughtful book based on new information or new evaluation of previous information. In fact, it ignores Lee’s significant post-Civil War efforts to bring the divided nation back together – which was Lee’s “finest hour” as, for only one example, historian Charles Bracelen Flood revealed in his book Lee: The Final Years.

Seidule's book seems merely to be his own 'Hey! I'm so, so WOKE now!' confessional, but disingenuously using his 'BG' rank, his misleading ’36 years’ service, and touting his 'so what?' West Point service to try to trick potential readers/buyers into spending actual money on his worthless book based on his misleading ‘military credentials.’

Don't waste your money.

 

Click Here for Bode Lang's excellent video,
"The Civil War Was Not for Slavery."
Click Here for a short video by the Abbeville Institute on the
Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.

Here is the caption beneath Abbeville's video:

Nov 9, 2022

The Naming Commission has recommended the removal of the Arlington Confederate Monument. This would not only be a historical travesty and a barbaric leveling of art, it would lay waste to the very message the monument was intended to convey: fraternity, healing, and reconciliation. Tell your Representative you want to stop this heinous act of cultural destruction.

 

Next Week:

Part Two of a Two-Part Review of

Robert E. Lee and Me, A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause by Ty Seidule, Professor Emeritus of History at West Point     

by Gene Kizer, Jr.

NOTES:

1 The term “general officer” means an officer of the Army, Air Force, or Marine Corps serving in or having the grade of general, lieutenant general, major general, or brigadier general. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/101#b_4, Accessed 3-17-21.

Our Confederate Ancestors: The Legendary Dalton Snowball Fight; and Sticks, Fists and Rocks at Orange Courthouse

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A Series on the Daring Exploits of Our Confederate Ancestors in the War Between the States.

H. McInnis of Lakeland, Fla. in 1895 wrote: "Allow me to say something about that grand snowball battle we had at Dalton, Georgia. In the early morning there was light skirmishing between our Brigade (Findley's) and Tyler's Brigade across the road. We saw that Tyler's men were going to charge us so we went to work and soon had breastworks built out of snow and in a short while the warning was given: 'Look out, boys, they are coming!' Then that blood chilling, on one side, and soul-cheering Rebel Yell was raised, and such a scene was hardly ever witnessed before. Tyler's men had the best of it and took possession of our quarters. Then we concentrated both brigades and charged and captured Gen. Walker's Brigade over another hill, and so on all day. Long live the Veteran!"

From Confederate Veteran magazine,
Nashville, Tenn., Vol. III, No. 2, Feb. 1895

The Legendary Dalton Snowball Fight;
and
Sticks, Fists and Rocks at Orange Courthouse


[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. :
There are several accounts of massive snowball fights involving thousands of Confederate troops with battle flags flying, formations, horses, charges, and prisoners, while they were hunkered down for the winter in different places during the War Between the States. There are some drawings in the Library of Congress.

The Dalton, Georgia snowball fight is famous and they had some hilarious things going on! They had Gen. Patrick Cleburne carrying a fence rail since that was a known punishment of his for slackers.

The second account, featured below, at Orange Courthouse, Virginia, got serious when some soldiers used rocks as well as snowballs dipped in water and packed tight to make them like ice balls. Their shocked opponents captured the provocateurs then counterattacked and quickly the passions of actual battle ensued! There were several serious injuries and some bitterness that "took time and comradeship, battles, privation, and suffering to destroy."]

 

Snowball Battle at Dalton
by S. R. Watkins

From Confederate Veteran magazine,
Nashville, Tenn., Vol. II, No. 7, July, 1894

 

IT WAS IN THE SPRING OF 1864, about the 22d of March; a heavy snow had fallen during the night; the hills and valleys were covered with the flaky white. Joe Johnston's army was in winter quarters at Dalton. Two regiments of infantry were camped near each other, and in a spirit of fun, began in somewhat military order to throw snowballs at each other.

The effect was electrical, boyhood frolics were renewed, and the air was full of flying snowballs. Brigades and divisions were soon involved, and such a scene was never before witnessed on earth. Many thousands of men were engaged in a snowball battle.

Caption should say 1864, not 1863.
Caption should say 1864, not 1863.

It began in the morning; generals, colonels, captains, and privates were all mixed up. Private soldiers became commanders and the generals were simply privates, and the usual conditions were reversed. The boys had captured the generals' horses and swords and were galloping through the flying snowballs giving orders and whooping things up generally. Verbal orders to different portions of the field were sent on flying steeds.

Library of Congress: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.21383. Dalton, Georgia, March 22, 1864.
Library of Congress: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.21383. Dalton, Georgia, March 22, 1864.

Gen. Patrick Cleburne was noted for his strict discipline, and whenever he caught a straggler from any regiment in the army, he would make him carry a fence rail. Well, the boys had captured "Old Pat," when some fellow yelled out: "Arrest that soldier, and make him carry a fence rail."

The surgeon of our regiment was calm and even-tempered, but would get out of patience with a lot of whining fellows who would report on the sick list day after day. The doctor would look at his tongue, feel his pulse, and say: "Well, there is not much the matter with him; just put him on light duty."

They captured the old doctor, and a soldier had hold of each leg, another his head, and others his arms, and as he was brought in as terribly wounded, Fred Domin ran to him, felt his pulse, looked wise, and said: "Well, there is not much the matter with him; just put him on light duty."

This same doctor was noted for having had the same affliction as the soldier who complained. If a man went to him with the toothache, he would say: "Shucks, that's nothing; I've had the toothache a thousand times."

One day Kenan Hill got a bug in his ear and went to the doctor, hallooing in great agony. The doctor said : "O shucks, that's nothing; I've had a thousand bugs in my ears." One day a soldier got a nail in his foot, and the doctor said: "O shucks, that's nothing; I've had a nail in my foot a thousand times."

The doctor had one of his eyes nearly knocked out by a snowball when Fred Domin ran up to him again and said: "O shucks, that's nothing; I've had my eye knocked out a thousand times."

There was a great deal of this kind of fun and take-off in imitation of some general or other officer, but we were kept too busy throwing snowballs to take it all in at the time. Infantry boys would capture cannon and caissons and take the horses from the artillery and go dashing through the crowd. They would also hitch to the caissons and dash off somewhere else. This snowball battle lasted all day.

Library of Congress, from https://www.historynet.com/deep-freeze-fight.htm.
Library of Congress, from https://www.historynet.com/deep-freeze-fight.htm.
A Battle with Snowballs.
by Thomas Perrett, Faison, N. C.

From Confederate Veteran magazine,
Nashville, Tenn., Vol. XXVI, No. 7,
July, 1918

 

AFTER THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG, July 1-3, 1863, I was laid up for repairs for about four months; and after a perilous trip to Richmond and about thirty days in Camp Winder Hospital, I was granted a furlough to visit my home in Central North Carolina. Remaining there till in the early part of November, I returned to the Army of Northern Virginia, finding the 26th North Carolina Regiment, to which I belonged, located near Orange Courthouse. I found the regiment in much better shape than I had expected after the great loss sustained at Gettysburg. Many of the wounded had returned to duty, and quite a number of new recruits had been added, which gave it much of its old-time life and morale.

We were soon on the move and bivouacked at several places during the next months, our moves usually caused by raids of the Federals. During the latter part of November the Federals crossed the Rappahannock in considerable force, advanced up the turnpike in the direction of Orange Courthouse, and were met by the Confederate forces at a place we afterwards called Locust Grove. No regular engagement, only skirmishes, took place, and after a few days they retreated and left us in possession of the field.

During our stay, however, we had to be constantly on picket duty, and on one occasion I had charge of a part of the picket line in the woods about five hundred yards from the Federal line. While on duty there one day a flock of wild turkeys got between the Federal and Confederate lines, which excited the boys very much. As the turkeys came near our line the boys turned loose a volley at them. The turkeys then made a get-away in the direction of the Federal line. In a few minutes the Federals let loose a volley, and the turkeys again headed in our direction. This sport was kept up for some time. One of our boys finally killed one of the turkeys. This sport was positively against orders, but so many of us were in it that no one got punished.

The latter part of December our camp was moved to a large wood about four miles northeast of Orange Courthouse, and we were assured that we would have this as winter quarters. The weather was extremely cold, and we had no tents; so it was up to us to do the best we could under the circumstances, I selected three partners, and we at once went to work to build us a "shack." The ground was frozen hard, and we were too cold to sleep. The moon was shining brightly, and we began cutting poles and setting them up, and by day we had the structure ready for the roof and chimney; and by night the roof was on, a stick chimney built, and the cracks daubed to keep out the cold. We moved in and had a regular "house-warming." We remained here through the winter, but were called out occasionally to meet some threatened raid or do picket duty on the North Anna River.

Library of Congress: Abandoned Confederate camp, 1861-1862.
Library of Congress: Abandoned Confederate camp, 1861-1862.

A little friction had developed between the brigades of General Kirkland and General Cook, which were located near each other, the whole trouble starting by making raids on each other in fun, which had grown into bad feeling. The boys must have something up all the time to keep them in good humor, and about everything was tried that would afford any sport,. When not on drill they would play cards, drafts, make and fly kites, and occasionally made a raid at night.

Early in 1864, at the first heavy snowfall, a challenge was passed for a battle royal between the brigades, snowballs to be the weapons. The challenge was duly accepted, and the rules of battle agreed upon. The brigades, under command of their respective officers, met in a large field, facing each other on opposite sides of a ravine. At a given signal the battle began in earnest.

At first the men contented themselves with using ordinary snowballs, and all was fun and frolic; but the battle had not progressed very far before we discovered that quite a number of Cook's men had brought along their haversacks and filled them with snowballs dipped in water and pressed as hard as a ball of ice. On making this discovery we captured a number of them and relieved them of their haversacks and snowballs. As the contest waxed more animated, each side struggling for victory, the passions of the combatants became aroused, and the excitement of actual battle seized them. Hard substances, frequently stones, were used with telling effect, in a number of cases doing serious damage.

At one stage of the battle about twenty-five of Cook's men made a charge to capture the colors of the 26th Regiment and were met at the colors by about an equal number of our men. The fight that followed was terrific for a few minutes. We broke the flagstaff into several pieces, fought with these pieces, fists, or anything we could get, but finally routed them and carried off the colors in triumph. I happened to be one of the men engaged in the fight over the colors, but escaped without any serious damage. Colonel McRae, in command of one of the regiments, was pulled from his horse and roughly handled; and the combat ended only with the exhaustion of the men, each side agreeing that it should be considered a drawn battle.

This affair caused some bitterness between the brigades which it took time and comradeship, battles, privation, and suffering to destroy. This battle was not compulsory with the men, but most of them engaged in it for the fun. On returning to camp a few slackers who had refused to take part in the fun got to guying the boys about being such fools, when they were taken down and covered up in the show as a "leveler."

 

Deo Vindice!

The War Through Women’s Eyes, Part II

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"The next day Mrs. McDonald went into Winchester to aid in caring for the wounded. She wrote: "I wanted to be useful, and tried my best, but at the sight of one face that the surgeon uncovered, telling me that it must be washed, I thought I should faint. It was that of a Captain Jones of a Tennessee regiment. A ball had struck him on the side of the face, taking both eyes and the bridge of his nose. It was a frightful spectacle. I stood as the surgeon explained how, and why he might be saved, and the poor fellow not aware of the awful sight his eyeless face was, with the fearful wound still fresh and bleeding, joined in the talk, and, raising his hand put his finger on his left temple and said, 'Ah! if they had only struck me there, I should have troubled no one.' The surgeon asked me if I would wash his wound. . . ."

From Cornelia McDonald's
A Diary with Reminiscences of the War
and Refugee Life

Part II of

The War Through Women's Eyes

by Douglas Southall Freeman

Chapter VI of
The South to Posterity,1
1939.

[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. : This is the final part, Part II, of Freeman's Chapter VI. These have all been riveting and well-written accounts of the war. The passages from Sarah Morgan (later Sarah Morgan Dawson) show the humiliation and bitterness for her family when forced by circumstances to take the oath of allegiance to the Yankees in New Orleans while two brothers were still in the field, both of whom were soon killed. Of ten regiments of Louisianians -- approximately 10,000 men -- only 750 made it home.

Sarah Morgan later married the former English writer, Francis Warrington Dawson, who was a captain in the Confederate Army and later editor of the Charleston News and Courier.

The News and Courier became today's Post and Courier, which is an insufferable politically correct rag that is 100% responsible for destroying the monument to South Carolina's most famous native son and American Founding Father, John C. Calhoun. It had stood on Marion Square in downtown Charleston for 125 years.

The monument said simply "Truth, Justice, and the Constitution" but that was too patriotic for the woke Post and Courier, which has celebrated their destruction of this huge piece of Charleston history since the summer. Their own paper said the Calhoun statue was "as good as any in the City of Rome" but they destroyed it anyway because woke hate knows no bounds.

Since the 1930s when The South to Posterity was published, much more from the perspective of women and about women in the War Between the States has come to light. Many new books have been written.

I have inserted 14 outstanding illustrations, mostly photographs. Again, the style of the citation and content of each note are Douglas Southall Freeman's, verbatim.]

MRS. CHESNUT'S FRIEND, the President's Lady, never kept a diary for any length of time, if at all, but in her Jefferson Davis . . . A Memoir by his Wife2 she included much that was lively and autobiographical. The book was not enthusiastically welcomed in the South for reasons that went back to the early summer of 1861, when Mrs. Davis first came to the new Confederate capital. All Richmond, especially all feminine Richmond, scrutinized Varina Howell Davis with polite and perhaps with cold curiosity. Virginians knew, of course, of Mr. Davis' pathetic3 early romance, which ended speedily in the death of his bride. She had been a daughter of General, then Colonel, Zachary Taylor and hence a granddaughter of Virginia and a cousin of many F. F. V.'s. Tradition had it that she had been very lovely. As for the second Mrs. Davis---well, her grandfather on her father's side had been Governor of New Jersey and her mother's line included that of the Virginia Kempes, so there could be no question about her social standing. At the same time, echoes had come from Washington of some sharp passages at arms between her and certain other ladies. She had spoken with a candor almost cruel and again she had smiled and had been politic when there had been a dangerous gleam in her fine eyes. While naturally she would be received with the respect and attention due the wife of the idolized President, it might be well to be a little careful at first.

Varina Howell Davis, First Lady of the Confederate States, in Frank Leslie's Illus. Newsp, 1862.
Varina Howell Davis, First Lady of the Confederate States, in Frank Leslie's Illus. Newsp, 1862.
Wedding photo in 1845 of Jefferson Davis and Varina Howell. She was 18, he was 37.
Wedding photo in 1845 of Jefferson Davis and Varina Howell. She was 18, he was 37.

So reasoned Richmond women. Nor did they change their minds when first they saw her. She was somewhat above the average height and in the physical amplitude of the forties. Her face could not be accounted beautiful, but neither was it unattractive. She carried her head well and dressed her hair simply and most gracefully. Her neck and shoulders were fine. There was nothing in her manner that could be called forbidding; and if quick friendship was discouraged, this was done with much adroitness by a calm glance and an unsmiling mouth that showed she was conscious of her position and indisposed to risk it by hasty professions.

Mrs. Jefferson Davis, portrait, sometime between 1860 and 1870.
Mrs. Jefferson Davis, portrait, sometime between 1860 and 1870.

President and Mrs. Davis thought it would be proper to hold receptions at frequent intervals and to throw them open to the public, instead of confining them to invited guests. It was felt that a general invitation might bring to the President's house gentlemanly officers and soldiers of whose presence in Richmond the Davises otherwise might not know. Besides, it was the democratic thing to do. At first, Richmond society was a bit aghast at the thought of levees open to all, but after natives learned that interesting Cabinet members, Congressmen, Senators and distinguished soldiers were to be met there, the city's best attended. By her manner at these receptions, Mrs. Davis rose swiftly to admiration and, in many cases, to affection. Like her husband, she had the same friendly greeting for every guest, regardless of station, with neither effusion nor condescension.

When Constance Cary was the brilliant Mrs. Burton Harrison and could look back through decades with all the perspective of time and all the experience of social life, she could say "the lady of the Confederate White House, while not always sparing of witty sarcasms upon those who had affronted her, could be depended upon to conduct her salon with extreme grace and conventional ease." Again, she wrote, Mrs. Davis "was decreed to be a woman of warm heart and impetuous tongue, witty and caustic, with a sensitive nature underlying all; a devoted wife and mother."4

T. C. de Leon probably described Mrs. Davis with accuracy when he said: "She was politician and diplomatist in one, where necessity demanded, but . . . Varina Howell Davis preferred the straight road to the tortuous bypath. She was naturally a frank though not a blunt woman, and her bent was to kindliness and charity. Sharp tongue she had, when set that way and the need came to use it; and her wide knowledge of people and things sometimes made that use dangerous to offenders. Mrs. Davis had a sense of humor painfully acute, and the unfitness of things provoked laughter with her rather than rage. That the silly tales of her sowing dissension in the Cabinet and being behind the too frequent changes in the heads of the government are false, there seems small reason to doubt. Surely, in social matters, she moved steadily and not slowly, from at least coolness to the warm friendship of the best women of conservative Richmond and to the respect of all."5

In denying, somewhat too mildly, the vicious stories that Mrs. Davis interfered in the Cabinet, Mr. de Leon might have denounced as well the whispered "secret of the White House that Mrs. Davis confided too carelessly to a member of the President's official household affairs of war and state that he traitorously communicated to the Federals. This was the basest of slander, for which the revelations of seventy years give not the least shadow of justification or even any possible basis for unjust suspicion other than that the patriotic and sacrificial official happened to be Northern-born.

Mr. Davis did not permit "the Mistress of the Gray House" to visit often the hospitals because, as he told her, he did not think she should expose the men to the restraint that her presence might impose. In addition, Mrs. Davis was twice confined while in Richmond. The President probably felt that Mrs. Davis' physical condition and her social obligations were such that regular attendance upon the hospitals would be injurious. Even when she was busiest, or close to motherhood, she found time to visit bereaved families  to prepare and dispense the food and clothing that generous friends of the Confederacy sent to her, to the Governor, or to others for the use of the needy.6

By the affrighting spring of 1862, Mrs. Davis virtually had completed her conquest of Richmond society, but as the enemy drew nearer the city, there occurred an incident that dampened the enthusiasm of some natives for her. On the night of May 9, one of the regular levees was held at the Executive Mansion. Mr. Davis was a gracious as ever. Presently, through the throng, a courier made his way to the President,. Mr. Davis read his dispatches without the flickering of an eyelash and resumed his duties as host. In a short time, as he passed Mrs. Davis she gave him a questioning glance. He paused and whispered, "The enemy's gunboats are ascending the river," and then he went on.

When the last of the guests departed, he told her to complete her packing for a departure originally scheduled for the 12th. The next morning she left Richmond with her children and went to Raleigh. Mrs. Davis returned when the danger was past and reigned with favor, but again, when the end was at hand in 1865, there was grumbling that she fled the city. It would have been more courageous, Richmond women thought, had she remained as other wives did in order that all the trains might be used for troops and supplies. Later Mrs. Davis won much sympathy by her efforts to procure the President's release, but, for a fourth time, criticism was visited upon her when, following Mr. Davis's death, she went to New York to live. Her reasons were valid, but that did not win acceptance for them. Consequently, when she issued her Memoir of Mr. Davis, she did not have in the South as attentive an audience as she deserved. She was not an ideal historian, to be sure, and she weakened her pages by over-frequent quotation from her husband's book; but by her straightforward and cheerful narrative she won many unbiased hearts. James Ford Rhodes went on record as saying that hers was the most persuasive portrayal of the much-maligned Confederate President.7

Memoirs-of-Stonewall-Jackson 50K

T. J. Jackson, needless to say, had never been subjected to such adverse criticism as was visited on President Davis. Consequently, when the widow of the commander of the Second Corps, A. N. Va., published in 18958 her Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, her audience was in reverent mood. In military narrative Mrs. Jackson did not supplement materially what the diligent R. L. Dabney had written thirty years previously.9 At times she did little more than paraphrase the earlier book. Her contribution was in sharing with the South for the first time numerous letters that Jackson had written her from camp and from battlefield. Interesting letters they were. Often Jackson wrote as if he were at home on Saturday evening and, by conversation on religious topis with his wife, were preparing himself for communion on the Lord's Day. Again it was the time-pressed soldier who scrawled a few lines while the "foot-cavalry" slept uneasily and impatient staff-officers waited in the hall for orders. Twice or thrice, between meek lines of gratitude to God, his sword seemed to flash in the light of ambition. Nearly always, somewhere in the letters, there was a wistful sentence or two: He had been at the Winchester manse where he and Mrs. Jackson had spent happy evenings together in the winter of 1861-62; he was glad his victorious army was encamped near Weyer's Cave, because he remembered that once she had been there. An avowal of his love, an endearing word in the Spanish he had picked up in Mexico fifteen years before---and then he was deep again in his study of the map, or he was off to the front where Ashby's troopers crouched vigilantly behind the walls while their Blakely gun barked defiance. These letters did not explain the man to old soldiers who still cherished the illusion of a mysterious leader of terse commands, night marches and strange gestures. Rather, at the moment, did the letters appear to deepen the contradictions of his character.

Mary Anna Jackson in 1895, 32 years after Stonewall Jackson's death.
Mary Anna Jackson in 1895, 32 years after Stonewall Jackson's death.
General Jackson, painting by Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau.
General Jackson, painting by Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau.

Mrs. Jackson's experiences during the war were altogether in Virginia and in North Carolina, as were most of those that Mrs. Jefferson Davis records. Several other women who impressively wrote of the war lived on the Atlantic Seaboard and witnessed longest resistance to invasion. Fortunately for the completion of the story, where are in print some diaries and memoirs by women who resided during 1862-64 in districts occupied, if not subjugated, by the Federals.

Two of these diaries, both of deep interest, were written contemporaneously in Louisiana for some months of the war. The Journal of Julia LeGrand10 was kept by a woman of thirty-two who embodied all the elements of romance that an early Victorian novelist would have desired for a heroine. On her mother's side, she was a granddaughter of Robert Morris; her father was the son of a Frenchman of station who had come to America not long before the stirring days of the Bastile. The younger LeGrand, educated in France, was a colonel in the American War of 1812 and later was a wealthy planter in Maryland. Attracted by the larger agricultural opportunities of the Mississippi Valley, he sold his holdings and bought an estate in Louisiana. For the period of Julia's girlhood, he lived as a grand seigneur. In the spring and autumn he entertained on his plantation; in winter, he went to New Orleans with his daughters and a retinue of servants and had a suite at The St. Charles for the season of the opera; in summer, his daughters journeyed to the Virginia springs.

Julia LeGrand, from her book, The Journal of Julia LeGrand.
Julia LeGrand, from her book, The Journal of Julia LeGrand.

Julia adorned and enjoyed this rich social life. She wore long trailing white gowns, had a great dog as an attendant, "played very beautifully upon an old harp that had a history," and was "full of romantic fancies." Besides, she had a great sorrow. Her lover, too poor to win her father's approval, had gone to Mexico to seek a fortune. Stage by stage, with ardent protestation, he had written back of his adventures. Then the letters stopped abruptly. He had advanced on horseback from the wagon-train in a wild country, Julia subsequently ascertained, and had never returned. The supposition was that he and all his companions had been killed by the Indians. Julia LeGrand could do no more than grieve and make him the hero, under the name Guy Fontenoy, of an unpublished novel. After this tragedy came a darker: Colonel LeGrand died; his estate evaporated; Julia and her sister, Virginia, left penniless, went to New Orleans and opened a "select school for girls."11 The two ladies were earning a very modest living in this manner when the crash of war came. Their brother Claude hurried to Virginia with the first Louisiana volunteers. The sisters perforce remained where they were, until the city fell, and then for months they were refugees in Mississippi. As the Federal advance threatened their haven, they went to Georgia and helped to nurse Johnston's sick and wounded. In the end, they moved to Texas to live with their brother, who, meantime, had lost an arm at Port Republic. Romance returned with peace: Julia LeGrand in May, 1867, married a German, Adolph Waitz, described as a "gentleman of fine abilities and attainments."

These details of Julia LeGrand's career prepare the reader for a sentimental diary, which is distinctly what Julia LeGrand's is not. Much of it was destroyed. What remains covers briefly the events of December, 1861-December, 1862, and, in detail, those of January-April, 1863. It is an intelligent, direct and honest narrative of what happened in the city and in the temporary havens she subsequently reached. Occasionally there is a Byronic phrase, but page by page, the story is one of neighbors' woes, of personal hardship stoically endured, and---what is unusual in extant diaries---of hopes raised one day and dashed the next by reading the newspapers. More clearly than perhaps any other war-time writer, Julia LeGrand exhibits the dependence of those "within the enemy's lines," on hostile papers or on the few friendly journals that reached far-off inland villages.

Sarah Fowler Morgan Dawson, author of A Confederate Girl's Diary.
Sarah Fowler Morgan Dawson, author of A Confederate Girl's Diary.
Sarah-Morgan-Dawson-BOOK-44K

The second of the familiar Louisiana diaries is that of a girl of twenty, Sarah Fowler Morgan, daughter of Judge Thomas Gibbes Morgan. The judge opposed the secession of his State but, when Louisiana left the Union, he accepted her verdict as binding on him. Three of his sons entered the Confederate service, but the fourth and oldest, himself a judge in New Orleans, adhered to the Union, though he refused to fight against his own kind. Of Sarah Morgan's sisters, one was the wife of a Federal Colonel in California, and one was living at her father's home in Baton Rouge with her five children. The remaining sister, Miriam, was Sarah's closest companion and, like her, was unmarried. Rarely was a Gulf State family so divided and even more rarely did those of differing political conviction seek more consistently to help one another. After the death of the senior Judge Morgan in November, 1861, the pro-Union Judge Morgan did his utmost to care for his mother and his sisters, and in time arranged for them to come to New Orleans if they would take the oath of allegiance to the United States,. How they fared when necessity compelled them to accept the judge's offer is set forth by Sarah Morgan in her diary, under date of April 22, 1863:12

When we at last entered the canal, I beheld the animal now so long unseen, the Yankee. In their dark blue uniforms, they stood around, but I thought of the dear gray coats, and even the picket of Madisonville seemed nobler and greater men than these. Immediately a guard was placed on board, we whispering before he came, "Our dear Confederates, God bless them."

We had agree among ourselves that come what would, we would preserve our dignity and self-respect, and do anything rather than create a scene among such people. It is well that we agreed. So we whispered quietly among ourselves, exhorting each other to pay no attention to the remarks the Yankees made about us as we  passed, and acting the martyr to perfection, until we came to Hickock's Landing. Here there was a group of twenty Yankees. Two officers came up and asked us for papers; we said we had none. In five minutes one came back, and asked if we had taken the oath. No; We had never taken any. He then took down our names. Mother was alone in the coop. He asked if there was not another. The schooner had fifteen passengers, and we had given only fourteen names. Mother then came up and gave her name, going back soon after.

While one went after our passes, others came to examine our baggage. I could not but smile as an unfortunate young man got on his knees before our trunk and respectfully handled our dirty petticoats and stockings. "You have gone through it before," he said. "Of course, the Confederates searched it."---"Indeed they did not touch it!" I exclaimed. "They never think of doing such work."---"Miss, it is more mortifying to me than it can be to you," he answered. And I saw he was actually blushing. He did his work as delicately as possible, and when he returned the keys asked if we had letters. I opened my box and put them into his hand . . . Then came a bundle of papers on board carried by another, who standing in front of us, cried in a startling way, "Sarah Morgan!"---"Here" (very quietly). ---"Stand up!"---"I cannot (firmly)---"Why not?"---"Unable" (decisively). After this brief dialogue, he went on with the others until all were standing except myself, when he delivered to each a strip of paper that informed the people that Miss, or Mrs. So-and-So had taken and subscribed the oath as Citizen of the United States. I thought that was all, and rejoiced at our escape. But after another pause he uncovered his head and told us to hold up our right hands. Half-crying, I covered my face with mine and prayed breathlessly for the boys and the Confederacy, so that I heard not a word he was saying until the question, "So help you God?" struck my ear. I shuddered and prayed harder. There came an awful pause in which not a lip was moved. Each felt as though in a nightmare, until, throwing down his blank book, the officer pronounced it "All right!" Strange to say, I experience no change. I prayed as hard as ever for the boys and our country, and felt no nasty or disagreeable feeling which would have announced the process of turning Yankee.

Then it was that mother commenced. He turned to the mouth of the diminutive cave, and asked if she was ready to take the oath. "I suppose I have to, since I belong to you," she replied. "No, madam, you are not obliged; we force no one. Can you state your objections?" "Yes, I have three sons fighting against you, and you have robbed me, beggared  me!" she exclaimed, launching into a speech in which Heaven knows what she did not say; there was little she left out, from her despoiled house to her sore hand, both of which she attributed to the at first amiable man, who was rapidly losing all patience. Faint with hunger, dizzy with sleeplessness, she had wrought on her own feelings until her nerves were beyond control. She was determined to carry it out, and crying and sobbing went through with it.

I neither spoke nor moved. . . . The officer walked off angrily and sent for a guard to have mother taken before General Bowens. Once through her speech, mother yielded to the entreaties of the ladies and professed herself ready to take the oath, since she was obliged to. "Madam, I did not invite you to come," said the polite officer, who refused to administer the oath; and putting several soldiers on board, ordered them to keep all on board until one could report to General Bowens. Mother retired to the cabin, while we still kept our seats above.

Despite her plain speech, Mrs. Morgan finally took the oath after her son the judge procured permission for her and his sisters to land in New Orleans. Sarah was relieved and miserable, glad that her mother could have some comforts, but for herself, humiliated that she had taken an oath she could not respect. Here are the reflections she entered in her diary June 21:13

How about that oath of allegiance? is what I frequently ask myself, and always an uneasy qualm of conscience troubles me. Guilty of not guilty of perjury? According to the law of God in the abstract, and of nations, Yes; according to my conscience, Jeff Davis, and the peculiar position I was placed in, No. Which is it? Had I had any idea that such a pledge would be exacted, would I have been willing to come? Never! The thought would have horrified me. The reality was never placed before me until we reached Bonfouca. There I was terrified at the prospect; but seeing how impossible it would be to go back, I placed all my hopes in some miracle that was to intervene to prevent such a crime, and confidently believed my ill health or something else would save me, while all the rest of the party declared they would think it nothing, and take forty oaths a day, if necessary. A forced oath, all men agree, is not binding. The Yankees lay particular stress on this being voluntary, and insist that no one is solicited to take it except of their own free will. Yet look at the scene that followed, when mother showed herself unwilling! Think of being ordered to the Custom-House as a prisoner for saying she supposed she would have to! That's liberty! that is free will! It is entirely optional; you have only to take it quietly or go to jail. That is freedom enough, certainly! There was not even that choice left to me. I told the officer who took down my name that I was unwilling to take the oath, and asked if there was no escaping it. "none whatever" was his reply. "You have it to do, and there is no getting out of it." His rude tone frightened me into half-crying; but for all that, as he said, I had it to do. If perjury it is, which will God punish: me, who was unwilling to commit the crime, or the man who forced me to it?

Sarah Morgan had not the heart to write lengthy entries after she went to New Orleans, She was by the waters of Babylon in her own land. Finally, in January, 1865, the family received notice within a week that George and Gibbes Morgan, two of the Confederate sons of the house, were dead. The bitter cry of the girl is too sacred, even now, to be quoted. On May 2, 1865, when the first grief was past, she wrote:

While praying for the return of those who have fought so nobly for us, how I have dreaded their first days at home! Since the boys died, I have constantly thought of what pain it would bring to see their comrades return without them---to see families reunited, and know what ours never could be again, save in heaven. Last Saturday the 29th of April, seven hundred and fifty paroled Louisianians from Lee's army were brought here---the sole survivors of ten regiments who left four years ago so full of hope and determination,. On the 29th of April, 1861, George left New Orleans with his regiment. On the fourth anniversary of that day, they came back: but George and Gibbes have long been lying in their graves. . . .14

There is only one entry after that: "Our Confederacy has gone with one crash---the report of the pistol fired at Lincoln."15

Nine years later she married the brilliant Francis Warrington Dawson, an English writer who joined the Confederate army, rose to the rank of captain and subsequently became the editor of the Charleston News and Courier. She never intended her diary to be printed and, in fact, wrote explicit instructions that it be burned, but on the plea of her son, Warrington Dawson, gave it to him. In 1913 he issued it under the title A Confederate Girl's Diary. In his introduction, Mr. Dawson remarks that a Philadelphian to whom his mother loaned a transcript of the diary returned it "with cold regrets that the temptation to rearrange it had not been resisted." The critic maintained, to quote Mr. Dawson's words, "No Southerner at that time could possibly have had opinions so just or foresight so clear as those here attributed to a young girl."16 Mr. Dawson denied flatly that the diary was "rearranged." The printed text, said he, conformed in every way to the original in his possession, except for the omission of a few matters entirely personal.

Capt. Francis Warrington Dawson, CSA, from England, later editor of the Chas. News and Courier.
Capt. Francis Warrington Dawson, CSA, from England, later editor of the Chas. News and Courier.

He might well have added that the "just opinions" which created doubts in the mind of the critic were not illogical in a judge's daughter who was succored by a judge-brother of tolerant mind and sympathy though of opposing politics. To those unfamiliar with the standards of letter-writing that prevailed in the South prior to the war, the smooth ease of Sarah Morgan's style also may seem spurious. Truth is, letters in those days were for the leisured and cultured a careful exercise in composition,. Young women, in particular, were taught to regard skill in letter-writing as a social accomplishment,. Sarah Morgan wrote her diary precisely as she would have prepared a series of letters,. She was exceptional, yes; but she was not, in any sense, suspiciously unique.

Hannah Lide Coker saved her son, Capt. James Lide Coker, later founder of Coker College.
Hannah Lide Coker saved her son, Capt. James Lide Coker, later founder of Coker College.

No stylistic puzzle is presented by Mrs. Hannah Lide Coker's Story of the Confederate War, which was printed in a small edition for the family and never was circulated outside. It is one of the simplest but most inspiring of all books on the bloody era. Mrs. Coker, wife of Caleb Coker of Society Hill, S. C., gave three sons to the Confederacy: James, a captain in the Sixth South Carolina Volunteers, William of the Eighth, also a captain, and Charles, ordnance sergeant of the same regiment. Charles was killed at Malvern Hill; William was wounded and captured at Gettysburg. Then, on the morning of October 30, 1863, came word that James had been hit at Lookout Mountain on October 28. A minie ball had shattered the bone of his right thigh, an inch and a half below the hip joint. He asked that his mother, his wife and the family physician come to him, but his wife, nee Susan Short, was within three weeks of confinement. The senior Mrs. Coker and the physician set out at once, while all Society Hill lamented. James Lide Coker had been at Harvard under Agassiz and Asa Gray and already had organized at Hartsville an agricultural society to advance scientific methods. South Carolina had not more promising young planter than this infantry captain of twenty-six.

Mrs. Coker's Story is that of her journey to the front and of her nursing of her boy who, within a short time, was left on his back, splinted from foot to shoulder, within the Federal lines. There is not a suggestion in her narrative that she felt she was doing anything unusual, and certainly nothing heroic. All her emphasis is on the cheerfulness of her son, on the fidelity of the sergeant who voluntarily remained to attend him, and on the manner in which, whenever food or money gave out, aid somehow came,. She records gratefully that among the many Federal officers whom she met during nearly nine months, in Tennessee, at Louisville, on the long journey to Baltimore and thence to Fort Monroe, only two were rude to her. Most of them were sympathetic and helpful. While these glimpses of the Federal treatment of a captured officer are creditable to the Army, and especially to the medical corps, the reader, whose eyes soon will be dimmed as he turns the pages, will conclude that Hannah Lide Coker possessed superb tact and fortitude. Well was she recompensed for her service! Major James Lide Coker recovered, became one of the greatest industrialists of the South, founded Coker College, brought new hope to agriculture in the Carolinas, lived to be eighty-one, and begot great sons. One of them, the brilliant David R. Coker, probably advanced plant-breeding more than did any man who ever lived in the South.

Rear of Davidson Hall, Coker Univ., Hartsville, SC, photo courtesy of Jud McCranie.
Rear of Davidson Hall, Coker Univ., Hartsville, SC, photo courtesy of Jud McCranie.

Of a dozen other interesting books by Confederate women, none excels that of Mrs. Cornelia McDonald, A Diary with Reminiscences of the War and Refugee Life.17 During her residence in Winchester, the second wife of Col. Angus McDonald kept a regular diary from March, 1862, to August, 1863. This was supplemented by a narrative she put together in 1875. The whole is one of the most thrilling of the war books, and, had it been published for general circulation, it would have made a sensation. From her photographs, Mrs. McDonald must have been a woman of great dignity of person. She possessed high intelligence and unshakable moral courage, as every page of her diary shows, but she could not endure the sight of acute physical pain. About as much of the misery of war as ever comes within the vision of one woman is to be read in her account of the battle of Kernstown, March 23, 1862.

Cornelia McDonald, author of A Diary with Reminiscences of the War and Refugee Life.
Cornelia McDonald, author of A Diary with Reminiscences of the War and Refugee Life.

She was home with a young baby; her husband and his elder sons by his first marriage were away with their regiments; only the younger of her step-sons had been in Winchester that day, and they had gone out to witness the battle. Long and anxiously she waited for the lads in the chill of the evening. Now hear her:

About nine o'clock they came in, very grave and sad looking. Indeed they seemed not like the same boys, so sad and unnatural was their expression. . . . All the careless happiness had gone from the faces and manner of the boys, and though there was no sign of fright or of excitement, they were very grave and sorrowful; disappointed, too, as we had lost the battle, and they had been compelled to see the Southern troops sullenly withdraw after the bloody struggle. . . . They told of the prolonged fight behind the stone wall, of the repeated onset of our men, and the rolling back of the blue columns, as regiment after regiment was repulsed by the Confederates, till at last, outnumbered and borne back, they had retired from the field, leaving behind the dead and dying, and even their wounded. When the boys told of the retreat their anger and mortification found relief in tears, but they were tears of pity when they told of the wounded. They remained for a while to give water to some, and would have gladly done more, but were hurried away by the sentinels. "I was mortified all the time," said Allan, "because we had to stay on the Yankee side."18

The next day Mrs. McDonald went into Winchester to aid in caring for the wounded. She wrote: "I wanted to be useful, and tried my best, but at the sight of one face that the surgeon uncovered, telling me that it must be washed, I thought I should faint. It was that of a Captain Jones of a Tennessee regiment. A ball had struck him on the side of the face, taking both eyes and the bridge of his nose. It was a frightful spectacle. I stood as the surgeon explained how, and why he might be saved, and the poor fellow not aware of the awful sight his eyeless face was, with the fearful wound still fresh and bleeding, joined in the talk, and, raising his hand put his finger on his left temple and said, 'Ah! if they had only struck me there, I should have troubled no one.' The surgeon asked me if I would wash his wound. I tried to say yes, but the thought of it made me so faint that I could only stagger toward the door. As I passed, my dress brushed against a pile of amputated limbs heaped up near the door."19

That [meaning all the accounts in Chapter VI as published in my two blog posts] is what war means to women.

End of Part II.

NOTES

1 Douglas Southall Freeman, The South to Posterity (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939).

2 New York (Belford Co.), 1890; 2 v.

3 The word, "pathetic", in the past, was often used to refer to something dealing with the emotions. A synonym would be "sympathetic" in today's usage. The New Oxford American Dictionary, Third Edition, says: ORIGIN late 16th cent. (in the sense 'affecting the emotions'): via late Latin from Greek pathetikos "sensitive,' based on pathos 'suffering.'

4 Recollections Grave and Gay, New York (Scribners), 1916, p. 70.

5 T. C. De Leon, op, cit., p. 67.

6 This account of the life of Mrs. Davis in Richmond is revised from D. S. Freeman, "When War Came to Richmond," published in the Bicentennial Supplement of the Richmond News Leader, Sept. 8, 1937.

7 History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, New York (Macmillan), 1920, v. 5, pp. 169-170. Mr. Rhodes noted: "The forfeiture by Mrs. Davis of the copyright of her book, through an informality, gave the American Congress an opportunity for a graceful deed. In 1893, the Senate and the House unanimously passed an act restoring the rights and privileges of copyright . . ."

8 Louisville, Ky. (The Prentice Press).

9 See supra, pp. 37 ff.

10 Edited by Kate Mason Rowland and Mrs. Morris L. Croxall, Richmond (Waddey), 1911.

11 All these facts are from the biographical sketch that precedes the Journal.

12 Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's Diary, with an Introduction by Warrington Dawson, Boston (Houghton, Mifflin), 1913, pp. 381 ff.

13 Ibid., pp. 392-93.

14 Ibid., pp. 439-40.

15 Ibid., p. 440.

16 Ibid., p. xi.

17 Nashville (Cullom & Ghertner), 1934.

18 Op. cit., pp. 52, 53.

19 Op. cit., p. 55.

We Mean to WIN this Heritage War

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"The radical view of American history is a web of lies, all perspective is removed, every virtue is obscured, every motive is twisted, every fact is distorted and every flaw is magnified until the history is purged and the record is disfigured beyond all recognition."

President Donald J. Trump,
Speech at Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota
July 3, 2020

We Mean to WIN this Heritage War

by Gene Kizer, Jr.

Going on Offense in South Carolina
with the American Heritage Association
Battles Raging Across Georgia

Multiple Georgia SCV Suits
and a Georgia Minutemen Suit,
ALL at A Critical Stage

Abbeville Institute Will Respond
to Washington and Lee University

 

I had planned to publish Part II of The War Through Women's Eyes by Douglas Southall Freeman, this week, and will soon, but so many important heritage fights and initiatives are going on, I wanted to help them all as much as possible right this minute!

There are bills before the legislature in South Carolina, and law suits raging across Georgia. The suits are all at a critical stage and those who are fighting hard for Southern honor and American history can win but desperately need us to reinforce them by calling legislators and especially giving money!

By this summer, we can have HUGE victories under our belts that protect forever the hundreds of sacred memorials in at least South Carolina and Georgia, which will set an example of highly effective legal and legislative tactics for other places fighting the same fights.

Also, Washington and Lee University will likely soon drop Gen. Lee from the school's name. The Abbeville Institute plans to respond with a high powered video featuring historian Phil Leigh.

Think where we were last summer when President Trump issued an Executive Order that included this:1

Over the last 5 weeks, there has been a sustained assault on the life and property of civilians, law enforcement officers, government property, and revered American monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial. Many of the rioters, arsonists, and left-wing extremists who have carried out and supported these acts have explicitly identified themselves with ideologies - such as Marxism - that call for the destruction of the United States system of government.

Anarchists and left-wing extremists have sought to advance a fringe ideology that paints the United States of America as fundamentally unjust and have sought to impose that ideology on Americans through violence and mob intimidation. They have led riots in the streets, burned police vehicles, killed and assaulted government officers as well as business owners defending their property, and even seized an area within one city where law and order gave way to anarchy. During the unrest, innocent citizens also have been harmed and killed.

These criminal acts are frequently planned and supported by agitators who have traveled across State lines to promote their own violent agenda. These radicals shamelessly attack the legitimacy of our institutions and the very rule of law itself.

Key targets in the violent extremists' campaign against our country are public monuments, memorials, and statues. Their selection of targets reveals a deep ignorance of our history, and is indicative of a desire to indiscriminately destroy anything that honors our past and to erase from the public mind any suggestion that our past may be worth honoring, cherishing, remembering, or understanding.

He reinforced that sentiment a few days later in a speech July 3, 2020 at Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota:

Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children. Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities. Many of these people have no idea why they’re doing this, but some know what they are doing. They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive, but no, the American people are strong and proud and they will not allow our country and all of its values, history, and culture to be taken from them.

It goes beyond that. The anti-Americanism in academia, in order to benefit the political left, not only is cheating young Americans out of the greatest heritage of freedom and opportunity in world history, it often preaches Critical Race Theory, a philosophy that rejects the approach of Martin Luther King who wanted equal opportunity in a colorblind society. Critical Race Theory demonizes white people and seeks to make up for perceived racial slights by striving for racial advantage today, especially through the law. This will guarantee unnecessary racial division forever.

Nobody is held down in America, today, and nobody has been for over a half century.

A lot of the pandering on race is to get reparations as Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the New York Times's fraudulent 1619 Project, asserts. She has said it many times.

The constant obsession with race is anathema to American opportunity. Americans rise up. They overcome. They don't whine about anything. They figure it out. Anybody who does not think there is opportunity galore in America is a dope. That's why tens of thousands of Central Americans are on the way here right this minute.

We've had a two-term black president, despite him being one of the worst in American history. That could never, ever have happened in a racist country.

The left ignores that, which is a popular Marxist technique. Push your own position and ignore anything that goes against it, no matter how appropriate.

Trump got more black and Hispanic votes than any Republican president in a long time and that trend will continue. We are looking for American excellence. We want all Americans to achieve great things, make money, be happy, live in a great country. We are not obsessed with race like the left. Without the false charge of racism, the left stands for nothing.

Ending censorship, cancel culture, depravation of free speech and election corruption are the worst problems we face today.

Gina Carano was kicked out of her successful part as Cara Dune in The Mandalorian for posting the intelligent and prescient observation that, before you start killing people, you have to hate them, and you have to preach your hatred and humiliation against them. She pointed out that in Nazi Germany:

Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors . . . even by children.

"Because history is edited, most people today don't realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?"2

It's not.

It's not one iota different.

William Gilmore Simms went on a lecture tour in the North in 1856. He was a well-known American writer and thought he would be well received or at least listened to. He wanted to refute some Northern writings that said South Carolina had been "imbecile" in the Revolutionary War, and cowardly. Simms was an expert on the Revolutionary War and knew better.

He started OK but soon Northern hate took over and he ended up having to cancel the tour. He lost a good bit of money. He came back to Charleston and told Southerners to prepare for war because the North hates your guts.

They lusted after political power, just like the left today. In the late 1850s, Northerners knew if they could just rally their votes they could take over the Federal Government and rule the entire country for their own benefit. They could vote themselves all the tariffs, bounties, subsidies and monopolies they wanted. The entire power of the country and its wealth would be in their greedy hands.

Hatred of the South was their method of rallying votes, just like today's Democrat Party hatred of conservatives, as Gina Carano observed.

The anti-slavery movement in the North was political, to rally Northern votes. It was not pro-black, it was anti-black. It was racist. They hated slavery because they hated blacks and didn't want blacks anywhere near them. Historians acknowledge this.

Simms talked about his failed lecture tour in a series of lectures in 1857 in Charleston at what is today, Hibernian Hall. He said:

Do you not see that, when Hate grows into open insolence, that the enemy is prepared to gratify all his passions? --- that, having so far presumed upon our imbecility as to spit his scorn and venom into our very faces, he feels sure of his power to destroy!3

John Remington Graham writes in his Principles of Confederacy:

. . . in six short years, from 1854 through 1860, the United States had been transformed into a sea of passionate hatred.4

As divided as our country is, it is quite obvious that the political hate of the left in 2016 against President Trump and Republicans, was exactly like the political hate of the North in 1860 against the South, which led directly to the War Between the States.

Every war has a turning point such as our Revolutionary War whose turning point in the South was the Battle of Kings Mountain right here in South Carolina.

Let NOW be the turning point of the heritage war we are in. Pledge to call legislators in support of heritage bills, and please give money. Give anything you can. Give a lot if you can! This is IT! We need victories NOW. Give something.

Make a sacrifice just as our Confederate ancestors sacrificed their lives for independence thus leaving us a legacy of honor and valor unsurpassed in world history.

Going on Offense in South Carolina
with the American Heritage Association

Get on the newsletter list of the outstanding American Heritage Association. Visit their website at www.AmericanHeritageAssociation.org.

They state:

WHO WE ARE

The American Heritage Association was formed out of necessity.   Across the country we have seen vandalism, removal of America's historical monuments and direct attacks on the founding principles.  It is these recent events that served as a catalyst for the formation of the American Heritage Association.  We are citizens who simply recognize the value of our history and its importance in maintaining a free society and the American culture itself.

WHAT WE DO

The American Heritage Association has four main functions:

1.  To advocate for policies which both protect historical monuments and properly present American history.

2.  To advocate for the teaching of American History in public schools.​

3.  To educate the public through living history events.

4.  To preserve current and erect new historical monuments and markers.

I joined their email list and got this nice Welcome:

Good Morning,

Thank you for subscribing to the American Heritage Association (AHA) website. We are dedicated to the preservation of America's national memory. Based in Charleston, SC, the AHA is active throughout the Palmetto State and part of an informal coalition of groups which covers a larger part of the country. Our mission is simple: Preserve America's historical monuments, defend American history from politically motivated revisionism and restore patriotic history education in schools.

For 2021, we have chosen to support three bills in South Carolina that are inline with our mission and known collectively as
THE STORY OF AMERICA legislative package:

HB 3249 sponsored by Rep. Bill Taylor (Aiken), provides severe penalties for local governments that violate state monument protection laws;

HB 3326 sponsored by Rep. Steven Long (Greenville), prevents historical plaques and markers from becoming editorials for activist viewpoints; and

COMING SOON: Restore America's Foundation Act sponsored by Rep. Lin Bennett (Charleston), will put patriotic history education back into schools.

Statewide polling shows overwhelming support for these policies but most people do not even know the bills exist. AHA is trying to solve the problem by playing radio ads statewide to raise awareness. This week we have started running ads on 94.3 WSC in Charleston during the Kelly Golden show and the Sean Hannity show. We will be expanding across the state next week.

These ads cost a significant amount of money to keep on the air. Please consider visiting the website to make a donation :

www.AmericanHeritageAssociation.org

Lastly, please do your part and call your state representative today and ask them to co-sponsor all three bills in the STORY OF AMERICA legislative package.

Thank you for your interest and support!

Regards,
American Heritage Association

There is much more excellent information on their website including a recent poll showing strong support for our history and monuments. You can donate with credit card or PayPal on their Home page.

 

Battles Raging Across Georgia
Multiple Georgia SCV Suits
and a Georgia Minutemen Suit,
ALL at a Critical Stage
GA Div SCV Logo

February 19, 2021

***CALL FOR HELP***

SCV LEGAL BATTLES

Litigation up-date from Georgia Division Spokesman
Martin K. O'Toole

This is both a report and a plea to the members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and our supporters.

In 2019 we were able to amend the Official Code of Georgia Annotated Section 50-3-1 or the Monument Protection Act. This was providential and that we have been faced with an unprecedented assault on traditional America in 2020.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans responded to this assault with a series of lawsuits. We now have three cases headed for the Court of Appeals and five others in litigation at the trial level. It has been a learning experience, so we have drafted amendments to O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1 to defeat some of the defenses raised by the politically correct government censors. We will provide you with more on that in the very near future so that you can begin to express your opinion to your state legislators.

The SCV was also able to participate in removing sovereign immunity as a defense by government agencies effective 1 January through a constitutional amendment. A constitutional amendment passed unanimously through both houses of the Georgia General assembly and was approved by the voters 3-1. To date, every defending government county, city or consolidated government has raised sovereign immunity as a defense. We believe we can defeat them on appeal but, if we do not, they will no longer be able to use it in the future anyway. That is a battle which we have won.

At the moment the Sons of Confederate Veterans have pending appeals monument cases and Newton County, Rockdale County, and Henry County. We also have an appeal concerning censorship of a parade by the city of Alpharetta. The cases that are presently at the trial level include: Brunswick, Cuthbert, Athens/Clarke County, Columbus/Muskogee County and we have filed a motion to intervene in the Gwinnett County action brought by the Gwinnett County solicitor. We are planning to file lawsuits in Rome, DeKalb and are cooperating with a local group in a northwest Georgia community which will remain nameless for the moment. Additionally, we have provided financial support in the Silvia Cotriss case.

You may recall that Sgt. Cotriss was fired for flying a Confederate flag from her home while employed by the Roswell Police Department. If she loses this case, it can be cited as a precedent that no one may display any Southern heritage item at their home while a public employee.

The plan has gotten out to cities and counties that if they violate Georgia law by removing our Georgia Confederate veterans’ monuments, we will sue them. But they know they are playing with other people’s money – at least thus far – so they would prefer to pander to the mob rather than to obey the law. One government official even went so far as to state that in the media that he knew he was breaking the law, but they were going to do it anyway. I wonder what laws you can break in his jurisdiction and suffer no consequences.

We are doing our best to see that these lawbreakers do suffer consequences. But the fight has been long and hard thus far and we still have plenty of distance to travel.

Here is the battle plan: if we can win the appellate level cases in Newton, Rockdale, and Henry Counties, I do not believe any jurisdiction would dare defy the law further. With the passage of the sovereign immunity repeal, our cases are now stronger than they were before January 1.

At least two jurisdictions have recognized this, and we have entered into agreements “staying” any further litigation until the appellate courts give a final ruling. The Court of Appeals will be as follows: we will start in the Georgia Court of Appeals. If the verdict is unsatisfactory to either side, it can be appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court. If either side is dissatisfied with their ruling an appeal can be taken to the United States Supreme Court. In reality, the chances of the United States Supreme Court hearing our cases is pretty slim. Consequently, the most likely conclusion of our cases will be the decision of the Georgia Supreme Court.

Now I must turn to the toughest part of this letter. That is a plea for yet more money. Thus far we have spent approximately $100,000 in litigation in these cases and supporting the affiliated case of Silva Cotriss. We have been asked to support at least two other cases. At this moment we have to decline to support those other affiliated cases down because the well is running dry. Despite the generosity of our members and supporters fighting City Hall in the County Courthouses around the State of Georgia is not cheap.

The good news is that we are not that far from the finish line. If we can sustain our cases and keep the monuments cases either tied up at the trial level or in the appellate court once we win a final verdict all the other jurisdictions will have no choice but to obey the law. If they do not do so, O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1 provides stiff penalties which I am sure would be applied.

If we lose on the appellate level, we will have an answer as to whether or not O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1 has teeth or not. If our laws mean nothing, then the monuments will fall all over Georgia.

This is the fight for which the Sons of Confederate Veterans was formed. Our ancestors left as markers to commemorate the heroism and courage of our Confederate soldiers, sailors, Marines, and civilians decorating the entire state. If we cannot win this fight, we will lose it all.

If you know anyone with deep pockets now is the time to ask them to contribute to the Heritage Defense Fund. If you have any money you can spare, now is the time to send it. I would suggest that if you cannot send a substantial contribution now is the time to send regular modest contributions to keep our lawyers in the courtrooms fighting the good fight.

This is it. If we lose now this state will never be the same again. Already monuments have been squirreled away in storage bins even cast in pieces into fields. When you sit by and permit this? If you have not given any money to the Heritage Defense Fund, why not? If you have given to the heritage Defense fund already, I sincerely thank you. But we must call on you to be generous once again.

The passage of the Confederate Army could be marked sometimes by bloodstains in the snow of shoeless soldiers. No one needs to make the sacrifices our ancestors did. But in order to honor them, we all must make some contribution to the fight.

Credit Card Donations can be made on-line (click the link below).

Mail-in Donations:

Georgia Division, SCV
P.O. Box 1081,
Macon, Ga. 31202

Please Donate Now

Please visit the Georgia Division, SCV, website

www.GeorgiaSCV.org

 

 

1-RAY-MCBERRY-LOGO-MINUTEMAN-GEORGIA-300x300

THE GEORGIA MINUTEMEN

From an email notification Monday, Febraury 22, 2021

Please post this on Facebook, share it, and forward it to
your email lists of like-minded Georgians.

OUR CONFEDERATE MONUMENT CASE HEADED
TO GEORGIA COURT OF APPEALS

FIRST CONFEDERATE MONUMENT CASE TO BE HEARD
BEFORE THE GEORGIA COURT OF APPEALS

In response to a motion by the defendants in December, Henry County Superior Court Judge Brian Amero signed an order to dismiss the case on the grounds that the Georgia Minutemen do not have “standing” in the case to sue. The Georgia Minutemen steadfastly contend that if they do not have standing to use Georgia’s “Monument Protection Law,” then there is no person nor entity on the planet that does have standing to use the law. The Georgia Supreme Court has ruled on more than one occasion that the General Assembly has the authority to confer standing by statute… which is exactly what they have done in this law. It is plain enough for any literate person to see clearly.

The ink was barely dry on Judge Amero’s order to dismiss the case before attorneys for the Georgia Minutemen had an appeal filed with the Georgia Court of Appeals. The case will now be heard by that court on appeal before being sent back down to Judge Amero if the appeal is won on the matter of standing.

This is the first case in the nation in which officials responsible for the removal of a statue have been sued in their individual capacity. In so doing, the case has already set a precedent as the first in the nation to overcome the legal hurdle of the “sovereign immunity” defense.

This is going to be a precedent-setting case in not only Georgia but in all of American jurisprudence for years to come. If we fail to win this case, there is NO statue in the country which will be safe from the cultural Marxists and their practice of cultural genocide. We MUST win this case. If we lose this case, literally scores of other cases across Georgia and across the country will fall because the courts are watching our case closely.

I am asking every American reading this to please make some donation to our efforts. The enemy thinks that he is going to simply outlast us because we won’t have the funds to continue. We MUST have the funds to continue this and our other efforts to stop the cultural Marxism going on in America.

Would you please stop what you’re doing and click on the link below to make some contribution to our efforts? How much is it worth to YOU to have us stay in this fight? Your children and your grandchildren cannot afford for you to sit by on the sidelines and just watch for the outcome. What will you say when they ask you years from now what you did to stop what is happening in America when you had the chance?

I am not asking anyone to do anything that I have not already done and continue to do personally. To date, I have personally spent more than $5,000 in this effort. I was also arrested for being the only one who refused to vacate the sidewalk when the officers said, “The crane company can’t remove the statue until we clear the sidewalk.” So I refused to move until they arrested me. They have since trumped up the charge against me from a local city violation to a state criminal offense… all because I have refused to plead guilty and accept their “gracious” offer of reducing the charge back down to a local ordinance violation with a $100 fine if I will just plead guilty. I am not pleading guilty to anything but love for God, for Georgia, for my ancestors, for their Cause which was right, for my children, and for America.

Please join me and make a generous contribution to our efforts today by clicking the link below. Time is of the essence!

Then click the next link to join the Georgia Minutemen for as little as $10 per year.

Then forward this email or post to every patriotic American that you know. We can NOT afford to lose this battle!

For Georgia First,
Ray McBerry, Founder
Georgia Minutemen

MAKE A DONATION TO THE CAUSE TODAY

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP US WIN?

1. Click HERE to join the Georgia Minutemen if you haven't already.

2. Click HERE to make a contribution so that we can continue our efforts in this case and other fronts.

3. Click HERE to Like the new Facebook page for the Georgia Minutemen and send invites to your friends to like it.

P.S. Please note that the Facebook page called "Georgia Minutemen" is NOT our group. Our original page was disabled and removed by Facebook when we eclipsed 1,000 followers in just a little over a week's time. The enemy is not happy at our popular support or our audacity to oppose their plans.

For more information, please contact the Georgia Minutemen through our website at www.GeorgiaMinutemen.com.

Georgia Minutemen Founder, Ray McBerry, is a Christian, father, businessman, Baptist pastor, television host, and former Republican candidate for governor of Georgia. In 2013, he became the first "public figure" in more than 100 years of Georgia history to win a libel suit when he sued those responsible for lies about him created by our enemies during the 2010 governor's race. He has previously served in the Southern Heritage movement as both SCV Georgia Division Commander and Georgia Chairman of the League of the South. In 2010, he organized and hosted the first-ever national Tenth Amendment Summit and has been a guest on FOX News, CNN, HLN, MSNBC, and hundreds of other media outlets as one of America’s foremost spokesmen on issues related to States’ Rights, Southern Heritage, and the Constitution. He is also the founder of the Georgia Minutemen, organized on April 19, 2020 as a voice for patriotic Georgians who have had enough of the cultural war being waged against them and their heritage. Ray McBerry is no stranger to fighting for our heritage and freedoms.

Join the Georgia Minutemen or visit us online at www.GeorgiaMinutemen.com.

Membership in the Georgia Minutemen is growing rapidly across Georgia! Join today for as little as $10 annually.

--------------------------------------------------

Abbeville Inst Logo
Abbeville Institute Will Respond
to Washington and Lee University

Last summer 80% of the Washington and Lee University faculty voted to remove Lee from the institution’s name. The school has not yet made a decision but presumably will not wait long.

W&L's Administration has been providing Internet presentations, which we believe are too critical of Lee. Most significant among them during the past five months are lectures by Allen Guelzo and Ty Seidule. The one by Seidule is obnoxious as you can see from this YouTube video he did for the Association of the United States Army earlier this month.

Their accusations should be answered. Therefore, the Abbeville Institute is seeking donations of $7000 to finance production of a six minute video by Phil Leigh like the one he did here on Confederate statues.

After watching Seidule’s video linked above we trust you will agree that this is a battle we must fight.

Support Our Videos!

Abbeville Institute

Please visit their outstanding website by clicking below

Abbeville Institute | What is true and valuable in the Southern tradition

PO Box 10 | McClellanville, South Carolina 29458
8433230690 | mcclanahan@abbevilleinstitute.org

NOTES:

1 President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order on Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence, June 26, 2020.

2 Lee Brown, "See Gina Carano's tweets and posts that got her fired from 'The Mandalorian'", February 11, 2021, The New York Post, https://nypost.com/2021/02/11/see-gina-caranos-tweets-and-posts-that-got-her-fired/, accessed 2-25-21.

3 William Gilmore Simms, "South Carolina in the Revolution. The Social Moral. Lecture 1", unpublished 1857 lecture housed in the Charles Carroll Simms Collection of the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, 4-5.

4 John Remington Graham, Principles of Confederacy, The Vision and the Dream & The Fall of the South (Salt Lake City, Utah: Northwest Publishing, Inc., 1990), 660.

The War Through Women’s Eyes, Part I

Posted on by | 2 Comments

"[July 23 1861] Witnessed for the first time a military funeral. As that march came wailing up, they say Mrs. Bartow fainted. The empty saddle and the led war-horse---we saw and heard it all, and now it seems we are never out of the sound of the Dead March in Saul. It comes and it comes, until I feel inclined to close my ears and scream."

From Mary Boykin Chesnut's
A Diary from Dixie.

Part I of

The War Through Women's Eyes

by Douglas Southall Freeman

Chapter VI of
The South to Posterity,1
1939.


[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. : This is a fascinating article in which I have inserted 11 illustrations, mostly photographs. There is much on Phoebe Pember, who was born and raised in Charleston, and there are several dramatic passages from A Diary from Dixie at the end of this post. The style of the citation, and content of each note, are Douglas Southall Freeman's, verbatim.]

SCARCELY A WOMAN'S NAME appears in Lee's confidential dispatches to President Davis. Not many are mentioned in the Official Records outside the correspondence on espionage and "suspected disloyalty." To assume on this account that women made no contribution to the writing of Confederate history would be almost as unreasonable as to ignore their influence on the morale of the armies. Their letters brightened many a night-watch; their formal publications soften the hard lines of military narratives.

Few of their letters are extant. Most of those taken from the dead bodies of soldiers mercifully were destroyed, but occasionally one finds in family papers a closely and carefully written sheet that passed to the battle front and, in some fashion, found its way back home again. At least one such letter should have a place here to illustrate in what spirit the women heartened the men at the front. The letter selected as typical of the best was penned June 29, 1863, by Sallie Radford Munford of Richmond, to her first cousin, John Henry Munford, Lieutenant of the Letcher Battery, which was making its way along Pennsylvania roads. Miss Munford was then about twenty-two and was the first of the ten daughters of Col. George W. Munford, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Virginia, by his second wife, Elizabeth T. Ellis. Miss Sallie's half brother, Col. Thomas T. Munford, had distinguished himself in a score of cavalry actions. The lieutenant, her correspondent, was the elder of the two gallant sons of Doctor Robert Munford and his wife, who had been Anne Curtis. The connections of the family were of the widest and highest in Virginia.

Gettysburg Battlefield, marker for Hill's Corps, ANV, Pegram's Battalion, Brander's Battery, and Letcher Artillery.
Sallie Munford's half brother, Col. Thomas T. Munford.
Sallie Munford's half brother, Col. Thomas T. Munford.

Here, then, is what Miss Sallie Munford wrote to her kinsman on the day that General Lee ordered his infantry to converge on Cashtown and Gettysburg:

Richmond, June 29th 1863.

My Dear John,

I had promised myself the pleasure of sending you a long letter by Willie Pegram, as I had not been able to write by the last opportunity which carried you letters from home, but I was so unwell the day before he left, I would not inflict upon you one of my stupid epistles. Now I can only write, hoping if it ever reaches you, it will serve to show how much we all constantly think of you, through I much fear, from the present state of the Army, my letter will never find your Battery. We are kept in the most constant state of anticipation and suspense concerning the present movements of our troops; everything is shrouded in mystery, except the one fact that our gallant boys are at last in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and are by no means idle there. I can not learn whether your Battery has yet crossed the Potomac, though as Pegram's Battalion of Artillery was bringing up the rear when last heard from, I supposed you are with Gen. Lee's portion of the Army. I know you will have a fine chance when you cross the river, and only wish I could be there to witness the entrance of our troops in some of those Union towns. War at all times, and especially such a war as we are engaged in, makes all classes fearfully bloodthirsty, and I am oftentimes astonished at the force of my feelings against the Yankees, but when I remember what we have suffered and lost, when I think of all the horror they have inflicted upon our people, and of the shameful display of barbarity and uncivilized warfare they have always displayed, I cannot wonder at the strength of such feelings, not blame the merest child for desiring retaliation. And if the accounts in the papers are true Ewell, Imboden and Jenkins, are at last carrying this fearful war into the enemy's territory, and causing them to feel some of the horrors of burning houses, homeless families, desolated fields, and an impoverished country. While such rumours as the burning of Harrisburg, the vast destruction of public and private property slowly reach us, we, the good people of Richmond are by no means quietly moving on the "even tenor of our way"; raids, and intended attacks by the Yankees upon our town, caused a good deal of excitement last week, which culminated when we learned the Yankees, reported 20,000 strong, were advancing in our direction. The Militia, were all called out, and yesterday, Sunday, the entire male population from 16 to 55, were occupied in drilling and manning the fortifications. There has been no alarm at all, for no one dreamed that the city could be taken, but as Gen. Lee has telegraphed for more troops, before we could send them, it was necessary to find out what militia force we could count upon, and the display has been a most satisfactory one.---I have been enjoying Kate Corbin's visit most amazingly; the weather has been entirely too warm for any unusual exertion, so we spend our time mostly in sewing, in reading aloud, and of course talking, for who ever knew a parcel of girls assembled together who did not talk. And what do you supposed we talk about? Our noble, brave, and gallant soldiers,---the deeds of daring and heroism which has made this the most unsurpassed of all wars, where one common feeling animates the breasts of high and low, old and young. And such a subject is inexhaustible; I do long sometimes to be a man that I too might fight for so glorious a cause, never had I felt more than now how hard it is to do a woman's part,---to wait, and that patiently, until others shall strike the decisive blow.---We have suffered a good deal of anxiety about Bro Tom recently; for the last fortnight, he has had a fight with the Yankees, either in Fauquier or Loudoun, every day, and some of these have been most desperate, hand to hand encounters.---In the first, on the 17th, Jemmie Tucker was very badly wounded, by a pistol ball in the back, the ball lodging under the right shoulder blade, and rendering his right arm perfectly useless---After great exertions uncle Bev succeeded in reaching him, and last night they arrived here, but the wound has healed entirely, and the ball not yet being found, the Surgeon will be obliged to probe it, and I fear it will be a tedious and most painful wound. It seems so hard that such a boy, (he is just 18,) should have to suffer so much.---I know you will be glad to hear that your Mother's school closes tomorrow; it will be a great relief to her I know, and I hope she will entirely recruit during the summer.---The Munfords had intended to have paid their visit to the Prices' last week but the approach of the Yankees deterred their going, and they will wait now until all is quiet. Nannie has grown to be a very pretty girl, and seems to greatly enjoy the freedom of being away from Yankee rule.---Congratulate Robert, for me, upon his well merited promotion. I was so very glad to hear of it, and hope before long you will also earn the title of Captain.---I expect to hear great things from your Battery this summer, and I know I shall not be disappointed. And what a campaign we are to have; hardships, toilsome marches, and wearisome nights of watchings I know will be your portion, but the end that is before our gallant soldiers is a sufficient recompense, and when our loved country is free, who will not be proud to tell that he was one of that army which so nobly fought for her independence. My paper gives out, and I must close, with the ever fervent prayer that our Heavenly Father may guard Robert and yourself, and bring you safely through all the perils that surround you. All join me in warm love, ever

Your much attached cousin,
Sallie R. Munford2

(Please read endnote No. 2, below.
It identifies all the people she mentioned
in her captivating letter.)

 This typical letter has been preserved because it never was delivered. Ere it could reach the Army of Northern Virginia, by the long route through the Shenandoah Valley and across the Potomac, Gettysburg had been fought and lost. John Munford had fallen, with a desperate head wound, in the ghastly action of July 3 when Lee had attempted to storm Cemetery Ridge. The young lieutenant was brought with other wounded back to Richmond where, babbling in delirium of charges and ranges, he died within a week.

Miss Sallie later married Charles H. Talbott, lived to great age and, ere the end, had unique distinction. In November, 1927, Virginia received again the State flag that had been hauled down from the Capitol on the day the Union army had entered Richmond. Maj. A. H. Stevens, Jr., of the 4th Mass. Cavalry, had won that prize and had kept it with care. His grandson, Frederick A. Stevens, Jr., of Arlington, Massachusetts, decided that the long blue standard should be returned to the Old Dominion. When announcement of the coming ceremony was published, Mrs. Talbott, who was then eighty-seven, remarked casually that she believed she could identify the flag for the quite sufficient reason that she had made it. Her father, she explained, had been responsible as Secretary of the Commonwealth for the supply of standards for the Capitol. Late in the war he had observed that he was having difficulty in procuring a new banner to take the place of the wind-ripped one then flying. He could procure the bunting, he said, but he had no one to paint for the center the figure of Liberty conquering Tyranny. Miss Sallie then had volunteered to make the flag and, with her sisters, had done so. Sixty-three years later, in the old Hall of the House of Delegates, when the flag was returned, she ran her fingers along the seams she had sewed as a girl.3

Last Virginia state flag over Richmond capitol at end of war, sewn by Miss Sallie Munford.
Last Virginia state flag over Richmond capitol at end of war, sewn by Miss Sallie Munford.
Nice-piece-59K
Sallie-R-Munford-Talbott-Grave 65K

Unfortunately, Mrs. Talbott did not write her memoirs, nor did many of the older women who played a conspicuous part in the war. For example, Mrs. Arthur Francis Hopkins, wife of the Chief Justice of Alabama, apparently left no record of her great labors for the South. Born Juliet Opie, of the high blood of the Lindsays, she married Capt. Alex. G. Gordon of the Navy while she was quite young. After early widowhood, she became the wife of Judge Hopkins. On the outbreak of the war, she was forty-five, wealthy and the mother of several children. Without hesitation she gave herself to the service of the Alabama volunteers and, when the first of them went to Richmond, she followed and organized in the Confederate capital the Alabama Hospital, one of the best of many. It is of record that she and Judge Hopkins gave $200,000 to the maintenance of this hospital and to similar works. Alabama honored her by formal legislative thanks and by placing her fine, aristocratic face on two of the State's bank-notes. She had the still higher honor of shedding her blood for the South. On the field of Seven Pines, where she went to succor the victims, she received two wounds, and to the day of her death, limped from the effects of her injuries.4 She is buried in Arlington among the brave, her peers, and by that very interment she is memorialized; but what a monument her own narrative of her experience would have been!

Juliet Ann Opie Hopkins, the Florence Nightingale of the South.
Juliet Ann Opie Hopkins, the Florence Nightingale of the South.

From the diaries of the few who recorded their experiences, Doctor Matthew Page Andrews has quoted most effectively in his Women of the South in War Times.5 Probably the first in date of publication among these journals and certainly among the very first in interest was Mrs. Judith Brockenbrough McGuire's Diary of a Refugee, issued in 1867.6 Mrs. McGuire was of devoted Virginia stock and was the wife of Reverend John P. McGuire, principal of the Episcopal High School, near Alexandria. At forty-eight years of age, she fled before the oncoming Federals and moved to Richmond. Ere she left her home, she began a daily record which, as she subsequently explained, she kept "for the members of the family who are too young to remember these days." The diary was not one of those spuriously confidential documents written with an eye to subsequent publication. In its naturalness and informality, it is a perfect picture of the mind of the high-bred, religious Southern woman of middle life. The gentility it displays without a single self-conscious touch, the faith it exemplifies, and the light it throws on the hopes and fears of the South make it as interesting psychologically as it is historically.

More diverting than the Diary of a Refugee, though about ten years farther removed from the scene, is Mrs. Phoebe Yates Pember's A Southern Woman's Story.7 Mrs. Pember had journeyed to Richmond in her desire to relieve the suffering troops, and at the instance of the wife of the Secretary of War, she accepted the superintendency of a "division" of the vast Chimborazo Hospital. Except as she appears in her own pages, we have only a glimpse of her elsewhere. T. C. de Leon, the Confederate St. Simon, describes her as "brisk and brilliant . . . with a will of steel, under a suave refinement, and [a] pretty, almost Creole accent [which] covered the power to ring in defi on occasion."8 She found the hospital under excellent general management, with one of the great men of the south at its head; but she discovered among the war surgeons some drunkards and some incompetents. Medical attention was negligent, graft was not lacking. The average ward was anything but what a patriot would like to credit to an institution where, on occasion, as many as 7000 soldiers simultaneously were under treatment for wounds or disease.

Phoebe Yates Levy Pember, around 1855. She was born and raised in Charleston, SC.
Phoebe Yates Levy Pember, around 1855. She was born and raised in Charleston, SC.

The story of Mrs. Pember's war on waste and thievery, of her struggle with indifference, and of her battle to save the lives of individual soldiers would be heartbreaking were it not told with an odd humor. She wrote as she talked, always to the point; wherefore one almost can hear her relate the story of the family that descended on the hospital and refused to be ousted, or that of the patient's wife who presented him with a baby daughter on his own hospital bed and had the temerity to name it after the outraged matron. These and a hundred other emergencies Mrs. Pember met with a decision which, one ventures, even the most besotted surgeon learned to respect.

Her most charming story, which she must be permitted to tell at length in her own words, dates from a cold day in 1862, when a "whining voice from a bed in one of the wards drawled, 'Kin you writ me a letter?'

"The speaker was an up-country Georgian, one of the kind called 'Goubers' by the soldiers generally; lean, yellow, attenuated, with wispy strands of hair hanging over his high cheek-bones. He put out a hand to detain me, and the nails were like claws.

"'Why don't you let the nurse cut your nails?'

"'Because I aren't got any spoon, and I use them instead.'

"'Will you let me have  your hair cut then? You can't get well with all that dirty hair hanging about your eyes and ears.'

"'No, I can't git my hair cut, kase as how I promised my mammy that I would let it grow till the war be over. Oh, it's onlucky to cut it!'

"'Then I can't write any letter for you. Do what I wish you to do, and then I will oblige you.'

"That was plain talking. The hair was cut (I left the nails for another day), my portfolio brought, and sitting by the side of his bed I waited for further orders. Then came with a formal introduction---'For Mrs. Marthy Brown.'

"'My dear Mammy:

"'I hope this find you well, as it leaves me well, and I hope that I shall git a furlough Christmas, and come and see you, and I hope that you will keep well and all the folks be well by that time, as I hopes to be well myself. This leaves me in good health, as I hope it finds you and---'

"But here I paused, as his mind seemed to be going round in a circle, and asked him a few questions about his home, his position during the last summer's campaign, how he got sick, and where his brigade was at that time. Thus furnished with some material to work upon, the letter proceeded rapidly. Four sides were conscientiously filled, for no soldier would think a letter worth sending home that showed any blank paper. Transcribing his name, the number of his ward and proper address, so that an answer might reach him---the composition was read to him. Gradually his pale face brightened, a sitting posture was assumed with difficulty (for, in spite of his determined effort in his letter 'to be well,' he was far from convalescence). As I folded and directed it, contributed the expected five-cent stamp, and handed it to him, he gazed cautiously around to be sure there were no listeners.

"'Did you writ all that?' he asked, whispering, but with great emphasis.

"'Yes.'

"'Did I say all that?'

"'I think you did.'

"A long pause of undoubted admiration---astonishment ensured. What was working in the poor mind? Could it be that Psyche had stirred one of the delicate plumes of her wing and touched that dormant soul?

"'Are you married?' The harsh voice dropped very low.

"'I am not. At least, I am a widow.'

"He rose still higher in bed. He pushed away desperately the tangled hay on his brow. A faint color fluttered over the hollow cheek, and stretching out a long piece of bone with a talon attached, he gently touched my arm and with constrained voice whispered mysteriously:

"' You wait.'"9

Surely this reveals as much of Southern character, male and female, and explains as much of the war as does any page of Mr. Davis's or any ream of Mr. Stephens'. If historians have lapsed since Mrs. Pember's day in realistic treatment of the war, the fault assuredly is not hers.

United States postage stamp, 1995, honoring Phoebe Pember.
US stamp, 1995, honoring Phoebe Pember.

One of the most remarkable of all the women's commentaries on the war was never written. That is to say, it was spoken---presented as testimony before a Senatorial committee. The upper house of the 48th Congress in 1883 directed the committee on Education and Labor to investigate "the relations between Labor and Capital." As chairman served Henry W. Blair of New Hampshire. Among the eight other members were Gen. William Mahone of Virginia and Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island. As the committee was dispatched, apparently, on a serious quest for information and not on a smelling expedition, it travelled (sic) widely and held hearings in many cities. In November, it came to the town of Birmingham, Alabama, which was then twelve years old and boasted 12,000 population. As witnesses, Congressman G. W. Hewitt brought before the committee the town's best---Doctor H. W. Caldwell, President of the Elyton Land Company, which developed Birmingham from an old field, Mrs. Caldwell, Mrs. R. W. Boland, and, as a special attraction, Mrs. George R. Ward.

This notable woman, born in Augusta, Georgia, December 8, 1841, had been Margaret Ketcham, and, through her mother's line was a grandniece of Samuel Griswold Goodrich, better known to the juvenile readers of his school histories as Peter Parley. All the long line of the Connecticut Griswolds was her kin. At sixteen, Margaret Ketcham had married George R. Ward, by whom she had several children, among them George B. Ward, who later became a renowned mayor of Birmingham. During the war, Mrs. Ward lived in Georgia and shared most of the horrors of the invasion, but in 1871 she went to Birmingham with her husband. By the time the Senatorial committee arrived, Mrs. Ward, though only forty-two, was revered as one of the "pioneers" and was a social arbiter besides.

On the evening of November 15, she took the stand. After some formal questions about herself, Mrs. Ward was asked by the chairman: "Had you opportunity of observing the course of life in [Georgia] upon plantations and in society generally prior to the war?" When Mrs. Ward admitted that she had "very full opportunity," the chairman said, "Give us an idea of how things were in Georgia in those days." Then Mrs. Ward fairly began. She talked admirably, without a stumble or a pause for correction, and she had a humor, an aptitude for illustration, that entranced the committeemen. After a time, Doctor Caldwell chimed in; Mrs. Boland added her observations; so did Mrs. Caldwell; Colonel Hewitt corrected their history and gave general direction to the hearing. After Mrs. Ward had said about all the committee seemed to need concerning the "servant problem," one of the members of the committee asked her to relate her experiences during the war. Without a second's preparation she started and, as the evening wore on, held the committee breathless with her narrative which, after more than fifty years, is as fresh and authentic as when it came from her lips. At the end occurred this colloquy:

The Chairman. Well, Mrs. Ward, on the whole what do you think of the situation?

Mrs. Ward. I think I am going to try to make myself as comfortable as I can with the darkies under existing conditions.

The Chairman. Do you blame us Northern folks for it all, or how do you feel about it?

Mrs. Ward. Yes: I blame you for a great deal of it. I think if you had stayed at home and let us go out of the Union we would have avoided all this trouble. I don't see what you wanted to keep us in for. When we wanted to go out, you wouldn't let us, and then when we got back you kept all the time dinging an dinging at us as if to make us go out again. You "reconstructed" us as thought we had never known anything at all, and as though we were indebted to the Northern people for the very first ideas of civilization.

The Chairman. You will get over that feeling after a while.

Mrs. Ward. Oh, yes. You have no idea how soothing it is to be able to say what you please to somebody on the other side, and this is the first opportunity I have ever had to air my sentiments before a Republican Senator.

The Chairman. I have enjoyed it very much, haven't you?

Mrs. Ward. Intensely. I am very glad to have had an opportunity of saying it to you face to face, and I never say anything worse about people behind their backs than I say to their faces.

The Chairman. Well, speaking for myself, I must say that I like you Southern people down here very much.

Mrs. Ward. We are all very glad you do like us. We thought all the time you would like us if you knew anything about us, but you weren't willing to take our say-so in the matter. You just seemed to make up your minds you wouldn't like us and that you weren't going to like us, but I hope that is passed now, and I do reckon that the times will be better hereafter.10

Margaret Ketcham Ward finally gets to confront the Yankees to their faces!
Margaret Ketcham Ward finally gets to confront the Yankees to their faces!

She had the last word, and she deserved it. "I hope you will not think me foolishly enthusiastic when I write you," Margaret Mitchell told George G. Ward, in 1936, "that I think your Mother's testimony is undoubtedly the most perfect and valuable complete picture of a long gone day that I have come across in ten years' research into the period of the Sixties." She added: "If I had had that book, I am sure I would not have had to read hundreds of memoirs, letters and diaries to get the background of Gone with the Wind accurately."

The most famous war-diary of a Southern woman probably is that of Mrs. James Chesnut, Jr. She was born Mary Boykin Miller, daughter of Stephen Decatur Miller, South Carolina Congressman, Governor and United States Senator. Two years after her father's death in 1838, Mary Miller married James Chesnut, Jr., the inheritor of a distinguished Carolina name and the son of a rich planter. As she was only seventeen at the time of her marriage, Mrs. Chesnut entered with exuberant zest into the social life of the Palmetto State. Her husband, a Princeton graduate, made politics his avocation and devoted to it far more of his time than to his profession, the law. Gradually he came to the front of the secession party, which sent him to the United States Senate in 1858. On the outbreak of the war, he accepted a place on the staff of General Beauregard, but later he took similar service with President Davis, who had a high opinion of Chesnut's judgment. Varied as were his duties and titles, James Chesnut was, in reality, liaison officer between the Confederacy and South Carolina. On his numerous missions, he often was accompanied by Mrs. Chesnut, who had friends everywhere in the South. Her diary, as published in 1905,11 begins November 8, 1869, [Publisher's Note: This is a typo. The "9" should be a "0". The diary begins November 8, 1860.] and ends August 2, 1865. Although she intended to write daily, there are gaps of some length. The internal evidence indicates also that, for some reason, occasional passages of different dates are confused or are connected with disregard of the precise chronology. Despite these blemishes and the exclusion of many items, the printed text of A Diary from Dixie is a remarkable human document. Of the complete devotion of Mrs. Chesnut to the Southern cause, there could be no question; but occasionally the reader hears champagne corks pop while boys are dying in the mud. Then again there is all the poignancy of woman's understanding of the sorrows of her sisters.

A Diary from Dixie started Nov. 8, 1860 and ended August 2, 1865.
A Diary from Dixie started Nov. 8, 1860 and ended August 2, 1865.

Here, for example, are her entries on the death of Col. Francis Bartow in the First Battle of Manassas:

July 22 [1861] Mrs. Davis came in so softly that I did not know she was here until she leaned over me and said: "A great battle had been fought. Joe Johnston led the right wing, and Beauregard the left wing of the army. Your husband is all right. Wade Hampton is wounded. Colonel Johnston of the Legion killed; so are Colonel Bee and Colonel Bartow. Kirby Smith is wounded or killed."

I had no breath to speak; she went on in that desperate calm way, to which people betake themselves under the greatest excitement: "Bartow, rallying his men, leading them into the hottest of the fight, died gallantly at the head of his regiment. The President tells me only that 'it is a great victory.' General Cooper has all the other telegrams."
Still I said nothing; I was stunned; then I was so grateful. Those nearest and dearest to me were safe still. She then began, in the same concentrated voice to read from a paper she held in her hand: "Dead and dying cover the field. Sherman's battery taken. Lynchburg regiment cut to pieces. Three hundred of the [South Carolina Hampton] Legion wounded."

That got me up. Times were too wild with excitement to stay in bed. We went into Mrs. Preston's room, and she made me lie down on her bed. Men, women, and children streamed in. Every living soul had a story to tell. "Complete victory," you heard everywhere. We had been such anxious wretches. The revulsion of feeling was almost too much to bear. . . .

A woman from Mrs. Bartow's country was in a fury because they had stopped her as she rushed to be the first to tell Mrs. Bartow her husband was killed, it having been decided that Mrs. Davis should tell her. Poor thing! She was found lying on her bed when Mrs. Davis knocked. "Come in," she said. When she saw it was Mrs. Davis, she sat up, ready to spring to her feet, but then there was something in Mrs. Davis's pale face that took the life out of her. She stared at Mrs. Davis, then sank back, and covered her face as she asked: "Is it bad news for me?" Mrs. Davis did not speak. "Is he killed?" Afterwards Mrs. Bartow said to me: "As soon as I saw Mrs. Davis's face I could not say one word. I knew it all in an instant. I knew it before I wrapped my shawl about my head." . . .

Col. Francis S. Bartow signed the Georgia Ordinance of Secession. He was wounded at First Manassas and died shortly after.
Col. Francis S. Bartow signed the Georgia Ordinance of Secession. He was wounded at First Manassas and died shortly after.

[July 23] Witnessed for the first time a military funeral. As that march came wailing up, they say Mrs. Bartow fainted. The empty saddle and the led war-horse---we saw and heard it all, and now it seems we are never out of the sound of the Dead March in Saul. It comes and it comes, until I feel inclined to close my ears and scream.12

Two more glimpses of Mrs. Bartow appear and then, in May, 1862, occurs this:

Mrs. Bartow, the widow of Colonel Bartow, who was killed at Manassas, was Miss Berrien, daughter of Judge Berrien, of Georgia. She is now in one of the departments here [in Columbia, S. C.], cutting bonds---Confederate bonds---for five hundred Confederate dollars a year, a penniless woman. Judge Carroll, her brother-in-law has been urgent with her to come and live in his home. He has a large family and she will not be an added burden to him. In spite of all he can say, she will not forego her resolution. She will be independent. She is a resolute little woman, with the softest, silkiest voice and ways, and clever to the last point.13

It is from touches of this nature that characters take life and stand out from Mrs. Chesnut's pages. She said of herself and her sister: "We keep all our bitter words for our enemies. We are frank heathens; we hate our enemies and love our friends."14 Of this, if it were not playful exaggeration, little appears in her diary. Those whom she did not like she dismissed with few words. About those she admired she wrote again and again. Her finest sketch is of her father-in-law, who fascinated her always. Curiously enough, the figure of her own husband, though it was strong and forceful in public life, is almost shadowy in her pages. Her qualities are oddly gallic: One has to pinch oneself to realize that she is writing of hungry Richmond and of the Anglo-Saxon South.

End of Part I.

NOTES:

1 Douglas Southall Freeman, The South to Posterity (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939).

2 The individuals mentioned in Miss Munford's letter are easily identified. Several of them are well known. "Willie Pegram," of course, was Col. William Johnson Pegram, the gallant commanding officer of the Pegram Battalion, A. P. Hill's Third Corps, Army of Northern Virginia. Colonel Pegram was a son of Gen. James W. Pegram and Mrs. Virginia Johnson Pegram, of Richmond, and a brother of Gen. John Pegram, C. S. A. "Kate Corbin" was a devoted friend of Miss Sallie Radford Munford, and was of the well-known family of that name of Caroline County. She later was the wife of Com. John M. Brooke, Confederate States Navy, who after the conclusion of the war was a member of the faculty of the Virginia Military Institute, at Lexington. "Bro Tom" was Col. Thomas Taylor Munford, Cavalry Corps, Army of Northern Virginia. He was a son of George Wythe Munford by that gentleman's first marriage to Lucy Singleton Taylor. Colonel Munford, consequently, was an older half-brother of the writer of the letter. "Jemmie Tucker" was James Ellis Tucker, a son of Nathaniel Beverly Tucker and Jane Ellis, and a first cousin, through the maternal line, of Miss Sallie Radford Munford. A brother of James Ellis Tucker was the late Rt. Rev. Beverly Dandridge Tucker, D.D., Bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Southern Virginia. "Uncle Bev" was Nathaniel Beverly Tucker, father of "Jemmie" who had been wounded, and one of the sons of Judge Henry St. George Tucker and Ann Evelina Hunter. The reference in the letter to "the Munfords" is to Maria, Sally, and Nannie Munford, daughters of John Durburrow Munford and Eliza Roper. Their parents had been residing at the old "Tazewell Hall," in Williamsburg. These girls, who were among the first cousins of the writer, were at this time "refugeeing" in Richmond at the homes of relatives. Their father, John D. Munford, was a son of William and Sarah Radford Munford. One of these Munford cousins of the writer, Sally, later married Judge J. D. Coles, of Chatham, Pittsylvania County, and Nannie married Capt. Robert A. Bright, of Williamsburg, who was an aide to Gen. George E. Pickett. Maria Munford, the oldest of the three sisters, died unmarried. "The Prices" were the old family of that name which resided at "Dundee," a lovely old Hanover County home. The Prices were related to Maria, Sally, and Nannie Munford, who, as the letter states, had been planing to pay a visit to their Hanover County cousins. When the writer says "congratulate Robert for me" the reference is to Robert Beverly Munford who had been promoted to the rank of Captain and assigned as the A. Q. M. of the Pegram Battalion. He was the second son of Dr. Robert and Anne Curtis Munford and a brother of John H. Munford to whom the letter is addressed.

3 Richmond News Leader, July 19, 1927, p. 1; Nov. 28, 1927, p. 1, and Nov. 29, 1927, p. 8.

4 Cf. T. C. De Leon, Belles, Beaux and Brains of the Sixties; New York (G. W. Dillingham), 1909; pp. 383-85.

5 Baltimore (The Norman, Remington Co.), 1920.

6 New York (E. T. Hale & Co.), 1867.

7 New York (Carleton), 1879.

8 De Leon, Op. cit., pp. 146, 162, 166.

9 Mrs. Pember, op. cit., pp. 37-40.

10 Rept. of the Sen. Committee upon the Relations between Labor and Capital . . . ; 48th Congress (Washington), 1885, v. 4, pp. 311 ff.

11 New York (Appleton).

12 Mrs. Chesnut, pp. 87-88.

13 Op. cit., pp. 146, 162, 166.

14 Ibid., p. 162.

The Story of the Beginning of the War, from Stories of Dixie

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"I believe the world has never produced a body of men superior, in courage, patriotism, and endurance, to the private soldiers of the Confederate armies. I have repeatedly seen those soldiers submit with cheerfulness to privations and hardships which would appear to be almost incredible; and the wild cheers of these brave men when their lines sent back the opposing host of Federal troops, staggering, reeling, and flying, have often thrilled every fiber in my heart. I have seen, with my own eyes, ragged, barefooted, and hungry Confederate soldiers perform deeds, which, if performed in days of yore, by mailed warriors in glittering armor, would have inspired the harp of the minstrel and the pen of the poet." --- Gen. Jubal Early, CSA

The Story of the Beginning of the War
The Irrepressible Conflict
From
Stories of Dixie
NY: American Book Company, 1915.
Chapter VI

by James W. Nicholson, A.M., LL.D.
Professor of Mathematics
Louisiana State University

[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. : This is a GREAT story, which today would be classified as "YA" or "Young Adult." The only difference in YA fiction and regular short stories and novels, is that the YA protagonist is a teenager or young adult, as opposed to an adult. Since so many of our Confederate boys were this age during the war, this story gives us a vivid and realistic glimpse into their lives and the lives of their families before the war, how they enlisted and departed from home, and what they faced initially.

The story's pages in the book that have illustrations on them I have scanned so you can enjoy the drawings as you read the text. The author, James William Nicholson, says that northern Louisiana, where the story starts, is a microcosm of the Old South.]

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WHEN IT BECAME KNOWN that Mr. Lincoln had been elected president of the United States (November, 1860) there was great excitement all over the country. It is hard for one, at the present time, to realize how widely the North and the South had become separated in thought and feeling, especially with regard to certain leading questions and issues. It really seemed that an "irrepressible conflict" had arisen between them. So the Southern states, believing that the Union had become hurtful rather than helpful to their peace and welfare, resolved to withdraw from it, just as a partner would leave a business concern which had ceased to be pleasant and profitable to him. They seceded from the Union (annulled the compact which bound them to it), formed a government of their own, and called it the Confederate States of America.

Mr. Lincoln was an intense unionist; he believed and affirmed that the breaking up of the Union would be the greatest evil that could befall all the states. So he determined to preserve the Union at all hazards, and to this end sent an army into the South to quell the "rebellion."

How little the common people of the two sections really knew of one another---their thoughts, habits, characters, and ideals! This came from their living so far apart, and having no opportunity or means of mutual communication. Their knowledge of one another was based on hearsay, and this was distorted by partisans and fanatics. The South misjudged and undervalued the North in many ways, and evidently Mr. Lincoln himself had a poor idea of southern conditions; for, to subdue the South, he called out 75,000 troops for three months, whereas as a matter of fact it took 2,750,000 soldiers four years to accomplish it. Had the common people North and South known each other better---their patriotism, devotion to the Union, and ideals of right and wrong---probably their differences would have been healed without the cost of so much blood and treasure.

Nick Goes to War

It was on a superb spring morning that Nick, with his gun and dog, was strolling through the dark green woods near his father's country home. What lad would not have been happy under the same conditions! For him there had just been substituted outdoor freedom for indoor restraints, hunting for studying, the songs of birds and the murmur of running water for a stillness unrelieved except by the rattle of chalk or the clatter of slate pencils. No sound or sight of the landscape evaded the lad's quickened and responsive senses. A buttercup quivered and bowed under the flutter and weight of a bee extracting its honey; a "news-carrier" (syrphus fly), just arrived from fairyland, poised in mid air and cheered the boy with its fanciful message; a sapsucker flopped from a distant tree to one nearby and ran in dismal spirals about one of its big branches. All nature was "laughing in the madness of joy"; never seemed the sky so blue, the foliage so green, nor the odor of the honeysuckle so sweet.

It is dreadful how quickly a delightful situation may be changed. Over the hills came the long swelling blasts of Uncle Wash's hunting horn. Nick knew at once that it was a call to him to come home. He struck a bee line for the house, feeling that it must be something about the war, for people now thought and talked of little else. At the front gate he met his cousin Billie [who was actually W. C. Boring, Shreveport, La.] who lived in the western part of the parish. He was also a lusty lad, a little

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hall. Lying on these rough beds and lulled by the roar of wind and rain, they fell asleep. What an experience---the ride, the storm, the bed! What a fitting introduction to the career of the Dixie soldier! Was it an accident or a harbinger? God only knows.

After a sound two-hour nap they mounted their mules, continued their journey, and had the joy and honor of being enrolled as members of the "Claiborne Rangers," of which Thomas M. Scott was captain.

The first day of July, 1861, was fixed as the time for the company to assemble in Homer and start to the war. These were now busy and exciting times. Every soldier was to have a uniform---a round-about coat with large horn buttons---and all the ladies joined in to help make them. The ladies met, in groups at different places and there was a great deal of planing, measuring, sewing, and chattering. The young people lived in a fever of excitement. Uncle Wash made Nick a great bowie knife that was nearly a foot long. On the night before the day of departure, Nick was so wrought up in mind that he could scarcely go to sleep. He rose early the next morning, put on his uniform and also his belt, to which was attached a scabbard carrying his big knife. "Ah," thought he, "Mr. Yank had better keep out of my way." His little sister dashed into

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was simply a part of the natural optimism of the people. Nick almost prayed that the war would not close before he got into one battle; but after he got into one he then prayed that it would close before he got into another.

It was sixty miles to the nearest railroad. This distance was to be traveled by the Claiborne Rangers in wagons or on foot. They knew nothing of drilling; this was the first time many of them had ever seen one another. But few had even heard of "fall in." So there was no attempt to form or march them in military order. When they started every fellow went as he pleased.

When the order was given to march there was much cheering and shaking of hands, and good wishes were showered upon the departing soldiers. Oat said it was really a relief when they had gone so far that friends and relatives could no longer say to them "good-by" and "God bless you." The poor fellow did not dream that many a long day was to pass before they again saw faces so beaming with looks of love and good will. With Aunt Martha's last embrace of Nick there came a far-away, dreamy look into her eyes. She was staring at him, but he felt himself almost outside the range of her vision. Nick never forgot that look, piercing as it were the realms of the future, and in after years wondered if she then had a premonition of her own passing away before his return from the war. While her beautiful eyes bespoke fear, anxiety, and sorrow, there was no dimming of the indomitable light that lived in their clear depths.

There were enough wagons and hacks to haul the entire party, their baskets of food, and their luggage. Some of the men rode and others walked, and when tired of the one they did the other. All along the road, people cheered them with their smiles, kind words, and good wishes, the men waving their hats and the women their handkerchiefs.

Late in the afternoon they reached the Gee Place, and there they pitched camp for the night. Most of the men had been on camp hunts and camp fishings, and were more or less familiar with camp life. They knew what to do and how to do it to make themselves quite comfortable. There was a great stir and bustle in feeding and watering the stock, preparing and eating supper, and making pallets of blankets and comforts. After that the men became more quiet; they sat in groups on logs or pallets and told stories, cracked jokes, and sang familiar songs. As the night wore away they went by ones or twos "to bed," until none were left. On their rude couches they slept as soundly and as sweetly as if they had been in their soft beds at home. While they slumbered, the stars shone brightly in the skies as if keeping watch over them, and the stillness of the night was broken only by the whippoorwill as in the deep shadows of the forest, it poured forth its plaintive call, "chuck, will-widow."

The men rose early the next morning, fed the stock, prepared and ate breakfast, and continued the march. The scenes and events along the road did not differ much from those of the day before. One mile west of Vienna they passed the old Wafer Place, the home of Nick's maternal great-grandfather. The second night they camped at the "Gum Spring," and the third night, in the courthouse yard of the beautiful city of Monroe.

A new railroad ran from Monroe to Vicksburg, and this was the first one many of the Rangers had ever seen. Some platform cars were provided with seats made of rough planks, and on these the soldiers were transported from Monroe to Vicksburg. The terminal of the road at that time was DeSoto, a small village just across the river from Vicksburg. It has long since been destroyed by the changes in the channel of the great river. From DeSoto they were ferried across the river to Vicksburg. Here they stopped a few hours, during which time Nick went to an art gallery and had his "ambrotype" taken, a copy of which faces page 18.

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From Vicksburg the company went by rail to Jackson, Mississippi, and thence journeyed to Camp Moore, Louisiana.

Camp Moore

In the piny woods of Tangipahoa Parish there is a certain old field neglected and overgrown with pine bushes. Thousands have seen it from the passing trains of the Illinois Central without suspecting that it was the site of a great military encampment in the stormy days of  '61. Here Camp Moore, named after the governor of Louisiana, was located. Hardly could a more appropriate place for the purpose have been found---seventy-five miles from New Orleans, sufficiently rolling for easy drainage, and level enough for military evolutions. Situated as it was in the ozone belt, the air was pure and sweet, and redolent with the odor of fresh pine straw. On one side was Beaver Creek and on the other the Tangipahoa River, both running streams of clear sparkling water.

Here the sons of Louisiana went to enlist in the army and to be trained in the duties of soldiers. When the war began these sons knew nothing of drilling, guard mounting, and many other duties which alone make men efficient in the camp and on the march and the battle field. Camp Moore was

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arms!" "Forward, guide right, march!" "Company, left  half wheel, march!" The welkin rang with these and other commands, each having something of the clear crack of a rifle.

When the Rangers received their tents they at once put them up in two rows, facing one another, and Captain Scott said, "They look as well as any on the ground." The next day officers were elected, and the company mustered into service for one year. Then they drew guns---all kinds, scarcely any dozen of them being of the same pattern. Thus equipped, they entered upon all the duties of soldiers; namely, drilling, guard mounting every morning, dress parade every afternoon, policing, inspections, cleaning quarters, washing clothes, drawing rations, cooking and eating the frugal meals.

When a regiment was formed and sent to the "front" its place was soon filled by new companies coming in from all parts of the state. A few of these were Irish, more French, and still more English. Ten of the English companies from North-Central Louisiana, including the Claiborne Rangers, were formed into a regiment, known as the 12th Regiment, Louisiana Infantry. Of this regiment Captain Scott, of the Rangers, was elected Colonel.

The 12th was formed of a thousand young men---stalwart, muscular, dauntless hobbledehoys. They were the sons of lawyers, doctors, business men, and farmers, and having been reared largely in Christian homes they had that pride and morale which make men towers of strength in peace and in war. Of course their military potency could not be estimated before training and trial, but there was the assurance in advance that "blood will tell" for there flowed in their veins the blood of the heroes of Hastings and Marston Moor, Valley Forge and Yorktown, Horse Shoe Bend and New Orleans, Buena Vista and Chapultepec.

It was a short walk from camp to the Tangipahoa River, and early in the morning and late in the afternoon the soldiers were permitted to go there to bathe and swim. This was much enjoyed by all, and every day the river was lined with the jolly and noisy swimmers. Indeed, throughout the war, the range of their pleasures being so narrow, the men went in the creeks, mill ponds, and rivers whenever they had a chance, even in pretty cold weather, that being about their only pastime. They often took their soiled clothes, washed them, and spread them on the bushes to dry, while they bathed and played in the water.

It was at Camp Moore that Nick learned to swim. That was queer, for, as a rule, Louisiana boys take to water almost as soon as they can walk. But after that, Nick made up for lost time by swimming in, if

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punished for drunkenness by being put under guard with a chain and ball attached to his ankle. Kelly had been a steamboat roustabout, and was a giant in size and strength. Nick happened to be on guard that day and had to guard Kelly. Now the big Irishman, moved by a spirit of humor or desperation, seemed to be watching for a chance to spring on Nick and beat the life out of him. So every time he moved down would come Nick's gun. It was loaded with an ounce ball and Kelly knew it. When the corporal of the guard came, Kelly said to him in a whisper: "Would ye be after putting a man in the place of that spalpeen of a lad? The little cuss has got so he won't let me turn over."

Nick was as glad to go as Kelly was to have him go.

Exposure and other causes produced much sickness among the troops. At the beginning of the year each camp was supplied with a hospital in which the sick were cared for. In it were clean beds, medicines, and nurses, and many ladies came with flowers and delicacies for the patients. But year by year, as the war went on, camp hospitals became poorer and the medicines scarcer, until they really disappeared altogether. At first the chief kind of sickness was measles, which is usually a harmless disease, but a very fatal one when the subject is exposed. More men died of it during the war than of all other dis-

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now hears the "mournful song" of the pine straw as it is swept by the passing breeze.

Many years after the war the Daughters of the Confederacy induced the legislature to appropriate enough money to buy the old graveyard, clean it off, build a strong iron fence around it, and erect a monument in memory of the men, living and dead, who served there. When the monument was unveiled (1907) Nick, then a professor in the state university, made the dedication speech.

Two large beech trees were left standing in the inclosure on account of the many names of the soldiers cut into their bark. Among these old carvings Nick's attention was called to his own initials, "J. W. N.," which were probably cut by him just forty-six years before.

In the latter part of August, the 12th was ordered to "the front." With what a thrill of excitement was the order received by the men! At last their hopes of getting into a battle were to be realized! Up to his time they had had no news to write home except the details of camp life. Now they were to go far away into Kentucky, where the storm of war would soon be raging.

There was a great hurry and bustle in preparing to move---taking down tents, packing luggage, and cooking three days' rations. When they boarded the train each man carried a knapsack, a haversack, a canteen, two blankets, and a gun and cartridge box. It was a long freight train that was to carry them, and some took passage in and some on top of the box cars. When it "pulled out" a long and loud hurrah was shouted by a thousand jolly fellows. Poor boys! They little dreamed of the hardships and privations in store for them.

NOTE: [from the story's author]
It is not the intention of this book to give any account of the battles and conflicts of the War between the States. As to how the Dixie boys acquitted themselves as soldiers is briefly told in the following tribute to them by General Early:

"I believe the world has never produced a body of men superior, in courage, patriotism, and endurance, to the private soldiers of the Confederate armies. I have repeatedly seen those soldiers submit with cheerfulness to privations and hardships which would appear to be almost incredible; and the wild cheers of these brave men when their lines sent back the opposing host of Federal troops, staggering, reeling, and flying, have often thrilled every fiber in my heart. I have seen, with my own eyes, ragged, barefooted, and hungry Confederate soldiers perform deeds, which, if performed in days of yore, by mailed warriors in glittering armor, would have inspired the harp of the minstrel and the pen of the poet."

The 1776 Report by The President’s Advisory 1776 Commission

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The 1776 Report
by The President's Advisory 1776 Commission
Accurate Identification of Today's Hate-America Enemy
Identity Politics and Academia Called Out
References to the South Are Incorrect
Lincoln, Who Destroyed the Republic of the Founders, Glorified
Despite Flaws, Report Is Definitely Worth Reading and Following
The Emphasis on Our Magnificent Declaration of Independence
and Constitution Is Excellent
Many Other Excellent Solutions
by Gene Kizer, Jr.
The 1776 Report by The President's Advisory 1776 Commission.

President Trump had the very best of intentions with The President's Advisory 1776 Commission and its 45 page report that came out in January, 2021 and was the first thing removed from the White House website by Joe Biden.

The Democrats don't want anybody thinking America is a great country as in MAGA. The hate that holds the Democrat Party together is not only hate of most of the "deplorable" United States population (which must be diluted by the foreign hordes of new Democrat voters that Biden waved through on day one), but hate of the founding of America, itself, as a place where all men and women are created equal.

After all, academia and the news media have told us that America was founded on slavery and stealing land from the natives (who had been stealing it from other natives from the beginning, but I guess they didn't know that or they would have said it, because academia and the news media never lie).

The New York Times's 1619 Project lays it all out: The Revolutionary War was fought by those bad old white guys because the British were about to abolish slavery.

Nikole Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer for the 1619 Project, which proves it must be true because the NY Times also won a Pulitzer reporting that Trump colluded with Russia, and that was true too.

Oh, wait! That wasn't true! Mueller proved there was no Trump collusion with Russia! I guess if you get a Pulitzer today it proves your work is a fraud.

The strength of The 1776 Report is its showing, analytically and in depth, how our history has been politicized for decades now, and how horrible that is for America's future. It points out that we are as divided today as the Colonists were with the British in 1776, and the North was with the South in 1860.

The points it makes about America's founding and especially our magnificent Declaration of Independence and Constitution are outstanding.

It exposes the deliberate hate coming from the left and the left's institutions such as academia, the news media and the Democrat Party with its racist identity politics. They have let our country down enormously. Our history should be a source of cohesion and pride for everybody.

Despite what the left says, we are a great nation founded on solid rock and nobody is held down these days. There is opportunity galore for everybody.

The report takes on slavery, head on.

It does vilifies the South, in some places, though that is not the main focus. It does show its Northern bias and cheats readers by leaving out the fact that the North with its slave trading that went on until 1878, brought all the slaves here and made huge fortunes in the process

The report acknowledges that we have fallen short at times, as all nations have, but, by and large, everybody on the planet still wants to come here and will often risk death to get here. Go to a naturalization ceremony and look at the pride and happiness in the faces of new American citizens. That tells you all you need to know.

President Trump's speech last summer at Mount Rushmore was inspirational and this report has a similar voice, but, as stated, it is much more analytical about the forces aligned against America, our defeat of Fascism, Communism, and the dangerous, unjustified hatred of our country being taught today for the political advantage of the left.

It might be good for the left politically but it is terrible for the people who buy into that loser narrative that tells them they are being oppressed when they are not. The only thing holding them back is the Democrat Party and their own minds.

We are a nation and people who worship success like the pioneers who came here for freedom and conquered a continent, building great states all along the way. Any one of our states could stand on its own as a nation on this earth, and many may choose to do so, if we don't correct the massive election fraud that took place in November. That absolutely has to be corrected in the next couple years despite Democrat plans to make it permanent. They will not succeed because nobody wants our country to fall apart.

We want it to be strong, united and happy, with unlimited opportunity for everybody, and we will settle for nothing less.

Below, I have included five sections from the report, in their entirety, because they are eye-opening and important:

Racism and Identity Politics

A Scholarship of Freedom

The American Mind

Conclusion (Part VI)

Appendix III: Created Equal or Identity Politics?

I also have a few short quotes from early on. There is a link to a PDF of the entire report that you can save, at the end of this post.

The 1776 Report begins with a literary flourish: "In the course of human events there have always been those who deny or reject human freedom. . . . ".

They should have written "When in the course of human events" so they'd match up with the Declaration of Independence, but I'm sure they were concerned about being censored by dopy Facebook, which one time listed the Declaration of Independence as "hate speech."

The Introduction states:

The declared purpose of the President's Advisory 1776 Commission is to "enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union."

It wisely encourages the study of primary sources:

The principles of the American founding can be learned by studying the abundant documents contained in the record. Read fully and carefully, they show how the American people have ever pursued freedom and justice, which are the political conditions for living well. To learn this history is to become a better person, a better citizen, and a better partner in the American experiment of self-government.

Under III. A Constitution of Principles:

It is one thing to discern and assert the true principles of political legitimacy and justice. It is quite another to establish those principles among an actual people, in an actual government, here on earth. As Winston Churchill put it in a not dissimilar context, even the best of men struggling in the most just of causes cannot guarantee victory; they can only deserve it.

Churchill must have been thinking about the South because there was never in the history of the world a people more deserving of their independence. That's why it took four bloody years and 750,000 deaths for the North with four times the white population, 100 times the arms manufacturing, a navy, and an army of which 25% were foreign born, to, not beat, but wear out the South.

Here's Ronald Reagan famous quote that especially has meaning today because we are seeing what he warned about before our very eyes:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

A Constitution of Principles continues:

Our first freedom, religious liberty, is foremost a moral requirement of the natural freedom of the human mind.

Like religious liberty, freedom of speech and of the press is required by the freedom of the human mind. More plainly, it is a requirement for any government policy. To choose requires public deliberation and debate. A people that cannot publicly express its opinions, exchange ideas, or openly argue about the course of its government is not free.

Finally, the right to keep and bear arms is required by the fundamental natural right to life: no man may justly be denied the means of his own defense. The political significance of this right is hardly less important. An armed people is a people capable of defending their liberty no less than their lives and is the last, desperate check against the worst tyranny.

In Section IV. Challenges to America's Principles, are sections on Slavery, Progressivism, Fascism and Communism. This part, under Communism, nails academia:

Led by the Soviet Union, Communism even threatened, or aspired to threaten, our liberties here at home. What it could not achieve through force of arms, it attempted through subversion. Communism did not succeed in fomenting revolution on America. But Communism's relentless anti-American, anti-Western, and atheistic propaganda did inspire thousands, and perhaps millions, to reject and despise the principles of our founding and our government. While America and its allies eventually won the Cold War, this legacy of anti-Americanism is by no means entirely a memory but still pervades much of academia and the intellectual and cultural spheres. The increasingly accepted economic theory of Socialism, while less violent than Communism, is inspired by the same flawed philosophy and leads down the same dangerous path of allowing the state to seize private property and redistribute wealth as the governing elite see fit.

Here is the entire section, Racism and Identity Politics:

The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, passed after the Civil War, brought an end to legal slavery. Blacks enjoyed a new equality and freedom, voting for and holding elective office in states across the Union. But it did not bring an end to racism, or to the unequal treatment of blacks everywhere.

Despite the determined efforts of the postwar Reconstruction Congress to establish civil equality for freed slaves, the post bellum South ended up devolving into a system that was hardly better than slavery. The system enmeshed freedmen in relationship of extreme dependency, and used poll taxes, literacy tests, and the violence of vigilante groups like the Ku Klux Klan to prevent them from exercising their civil rights, particularly the right to vote. Jim Crow laws enforced the strict segregation of the races, and gave legal standing in some states to a pervasive subordination of blacks.

[Publisher's Note: With all due respect, the postwar Reconstruction Congress was more concerned with its political power than helping the newly freed blacks. They were some of the most despicable people ever to serve in American government, like the hatemonger Thaddeus Stevens. During Reconstruction, former Confederates came home to a devastated country where even feeding themselves and their families was almost impossible. Their families were in constant danger. Radical Republicans, to keep blacks voting Republican, told black that their former masters were going to put them back in slavery. Corrupt Republicans such as the Union League members threatened blacks and made them violent toward their former white masters and friends. A man's barn could be burned in the night and he'd have no recourse or law to help him. Many former Confederate soldiers said Reconstruction was worse than the war. Many lost all hope. As to Jim Crow, it started in the North according to esteemed historian C. Vann Woodward in his book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow. It was up North a long time before moving into the bi-racial, non-segregated South. The Supreme Court that affirmed "separate but equal" in 1895, was composed of all Northerners except for one justice. So to mischaracterize and slander Southerners is low, dishonest, and extremely historically inaccurate.]

Back to Racism and Identity Politics:

It would take a national movement composed of people from different races, ethnicities, nationalities, and religions to bring about an America fully committed to ending legal discrimination.

The Civil Rights Movement culminated in the 1960s with the passage of three major legislative reforms affecting segregation, voting, and housing rights. It presented itself, and was understood by the American people, as consistent with the principles of the founding. "When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every America was to fall heir," Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his "I Have a Dream" Speech. "This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

It seemed, finally, that America's nearly two-century effort to realize fully the principles of the Declaration had reached a culmination. But the heady spirit of the original Civil Rights Movement, whose leaders forcefully quoted the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the rhetoric of the founders and of Lincoln, proved to be short-lived.

The Civil Rights Movement was almost immediately turned to programs that ran counter to the lofty ideals of the founders. The ideas that drove this change had been growing in America for decades, and they distorted many area of policy in the half century that followed. Among the distortions was the abandonment of nondiscrimination and equal opportunity in favor of "group rights" not unlike those advance by Calhoun and his followers. The justification for reversing the promise of color-blind civil rights was that past discrimination requires present effort, or affirmative action in the form of preferential treatment, to overcome long-accrued inequalities. Those forms of preferential treatment built up in our system over time, first in administrative rulings, then executive orders, later in congressionally passed law, and finally were sanctified by the Supreme Court.

Today, far from a regime of equal natural rights of equal citizens, enforced by the equal application of law, we have moved toward a system of explicit group privilege that, in the name of "social justice," demands equal results and explicitly sorts citizens into "protected classes" based on race and other demographic categories.

Eventually this regime of formal inequality would come to be known as "identity politics." The stepchild of earlier rejections of the founding, identity politics (discussed in Appendix III) values people by characteristics like race, sex, and sexual orientation and holds that new times demand new rights to replace the old. This is the opposite of King's hope that his children would "live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," and denies that all are endowed with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Identity politics makes it less likely that racial reconciliation and healing can be attained by pursuing Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream for America and upholding the highest ideals of our Constitution and our Declaration of Independence.

Here is the entire section, A Scholarship of Freedom:

Universities in the United States are often today hotbeds of anti-Americanism, libel, and censorship that combine to generate in students and in the broader culture at the very least disdain and at worst outright hatred for this country.

The founders insisted that universities should be at the core of preserving American republicanism by instructing students and future leaders of its true basis and instilling in them not just an understanding but a reverence for its principles and core documents. Today, our higher education system does almost the precise opposite. Colleges peddle resentment and contempt for American principles and history alike, in the process weakening attachment to our shared heritage.

In order to build up a healthy, united citizenry, scholars, students, and all Americans must reject false and fashionable ideologies that obscure facts, ignore historical context, and tell America's story solely as one of oppression and victimhood rather than one of imperfection but also unprecedented achievement toward freedom, happiness, and fairness for all. Historical revisionism that tramples honest scholarship and historical truth, shames Americans by highlighting only the sins of their ancestors, and teaches claims of systemic racism that can only be eliminated by more discrimination, is an ideology intended to manipulate opinions more than educate minds.

Deliberately destructive scholarship shatters the civic bonds that unite all Americans. It silences the discourse essential to a free society by breeding division, distrust, and hatred among citizens. And it is the intellectual force behind so much of the violence in our cities, suppression of free speech in our universities, and defamation of our treasured national statues and symbols.

To restore our society, academics must return to their vocation of relentlessly pursuing the truth and engaging in honest scholarship that seeks to understand the world and America's place in it.

Here is the entire section, The American Mind:

Americans yearn for timeless stories and noble heroes that inspire them to be good, brave, diligent, daring, generous, honest, and compassionate.

Millions of American devour histories of the American Revolution and the Civil War and thrill to the tales of Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Franklin, Lincoln and Grant, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglas. We still read the tales of Hawthorne and Melville, Twain and Poe, and the poems of Whitman and Dickinson. On Independence Day, we hum John Philip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever" and sing along to Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land." Americans applaud the loyalty, love, and kindness shared by the March sisters in Little Women, revere the rugged liberty of the cowboys in old westerns, and cheer the adventurous spirit of young Tom Sawyer. These great works have withstood the test of time because they speak to eternal truths and embody the American spirit.

It is up to America's artists, authors, filmmakers, musicians, social media influencers, and other culture leaders to carry on this tradition by once again giving shape and voice to America's self-understanding--to be what Jefferson called "an expression of the American mind."
To them falls the creative task of writing stories, songs, and scripts that help to restore every American's conviction to embrace the good, lead virtuous lives, and act with an attitude of hope toward a better and bolder future for themselves, their families, and the entire nation.

Here is the entire section, VI. Conclusion:

On the 150th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, President Calvin Coolidge raised the immortal banner in his time. "It is often asserted," he said, "that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776 . . . and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions."

[Publisher's Note: Of course, President Coolidge was right but the consent of the governed in the South made no different to Abraham Lincoln when his money and power were threatened. The most widely quoted phrase in the secession debate in the South in the year leading up to states actually seceding, came from the Declaration of Independence:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.]

Back to VI. Conclusion:

America's founding principles are true not because any generation---including our own---has lived them perfectly, but because they are based upon the eternal truths of the human condition. They are rooted in our capacity for evil and power for good, our longing for truth and striving for justice, our need for order and our love of freedom. Above all else, these principles recognize the worth, equality, potential, dignity, and glory of each and every man, woman, and child created in the image of God.

Throughout our history, our heroes---men and women, young and old, black and white, of many faiths and from all parts of the world---have changed America for the better not by abandoning these truths, but by appealing to them. Upon these universal ideals, they built a great nation, unified a strong people, and formed a beautiful way of life worth defending.

To be an American means something noble and good. It means treasuring freedom and embracing the vitality of self-government. We are shaped by the beauty, bounty, and wildness of our continent. We are united by the glory of our history. And we are distinguished by the American virtues of openness, honesty, optimism, determination, generosity, confidence, kindness, hard work, courage, and hope. Our principles did not create these virtues, but they laid the groundwork for them to grow and spread and forge America into the most just and glorious country in all of human history.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of our independence, we must resolve to teach future generations of American an accurate history of our country so that we all learn and cherish our founding principles once again. We must renew the pride and gratitude we have for this incredible nation that we are blessed to call home.

When we appreciate America for what she truly is, we know that our Declaration is worth preserving, our Constitution worth defending, our fellow citizens worth loving, and our country worth fighting for.

It is our task now to renew this commitment. So we proclaim, in the words our forefathers used two and a half centuries ago, "for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, our sacred Honor."

Here is the entire section, Appendix III, Created Equal or Identity Politics?

Americans are deeply committed to the principle of equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that all are created equal and equally endowed with natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This people everywhere, no matter their race or country of origin. The task of American civic education is to transmit this creed from one generation of Americans to the next.

In recent times, however, a new creed has arisen challenging the original one enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. This new creed, loosely defined as identity politics, has three key features. First, the creed of identity politics defines and divides American in terms of collective social identities. According to this new creed, our racial and sexual identities are more important than our common status as individuals equally endowed with fundamental rights.

Second, the creed of identity politics ranks these different racial and social groups in terms of privilege and power, with disproportionate moral worth allotted to each. It divides Americans into two groups: oppressors and victims. The more a group is considered oppressed, the more its members have a moral claim upon the rest of society. As for their supposed oppressors, they must atone and even be punished in perpetuity for their sins and those of their ancestors.

Third, the creed of identity politics teaches that America itself is to blame for oppression. America's "electric cord" is not the creed of liberty and equality that connects citizens today to each other and to every generation of Americans past, present, and future. Rather, America's "electric cord" is a heritage of oppression that the majority racial group inflicts upon minority groups, and identity politics is about assigning and absolving guilt for that oppression.

According to this new creed, Americans are not a people defined by their dedication to human equality, but a people defined by their perpetuation of racial and sexual oppression.

The Historical Precedent for Identity Politics

Whereas the Declaration of Independence founded a nation grounded on human equality and equal rights, identity politics sees a nation defined by oppressive hierarchies. But this vision of America is actually not new. While identity politics may seem novel and ground-breaking, it resurrects prior attempts in American history to deny the meaning of equality enshrined in the Declaration. In portraying America as racist and white supremacist, identity politics advocates follow Lincoln's great rival Stephen A. Douglas, who wrongly claimed that American government "was made on the white basis" "by white men, for the benefit of white men." Indeed, there are uncanny similarities between 21st century activists of identity politics and 19th century apologists for slavery.

John C. Calhoun is perhaps the leading forerunner of identity politics. Rejecting America's common political identity that follows from the Declaration's principles, he argued that the American polity was not an actual community at all but was reducible only to diverse majority and minority groups. Calhoun saw these groups as more or less permanent, slowly evolving products of their race and particular historical circumstances.

Like modern-day proponents of identity politics, Calhoun believed that achieving unity through rational deliberation and political compromise was impossible; majority groups would only use the political process to oppress minority groups. In Calhoun's America, respect for each group demanded that each hold a veto over the actions of the wider community. But Calhoun also argued that some groups must outrank others in the majoritarian decision-making process. In Calhoun's America, one minority group---Southern slaveholders---could veto any attempt by the majority group---Northern States---to restrict or abolish the enslavement of another group. In the context of American history, the original form of identity politics was used to defend slavery. (their emphasis)

[Publisher's Note: Apparently, the 1776 Report writers are referring to Calhoun's doctrine of the concurrent majority. In defense of Mr. Calhoun, here's what Margaret L. Coit, editor, says in John C. Calhoun, Great Lives Observed [Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970, 10-11:

During his last years, when his intellect was at its most incandescent, he wrote the two books upon which his reputation as a political philosopher rests: A Disquisition on Government and A Discourse on the Constitution of the United States. In these books he discussed in full his revolutionary doctrine of the concurrrent majority, of which nullification was but one aspect---his concept of a government, not "of a part over a part," but of "a part made identical with the whole," each division or "interest" armed with either a voice in making the laws, "or a veto on their execution." He recognized that "only a few great and prominent interests could be represented," but even Richard Hofstadter acknowledges that "Calhoun's analysis of American political tensions certainly ranks among the most impressive intellectual achievements of American statesmen." [Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition (New York, 1948), 87-88]. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., on the other hand, while conceding that Calhoun's theory was devised to protect a special group, denies that it was any mere lawyer's brief "to advance the pretensions of slavery, but a brilliant and penetrating study of modern society, whose insights remain vital for any minority." [Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston and New York, 1945), 405.|

As for slavery, the more Calhoun saw its doom, the more passionately he argued for its preservation. He knew that the North was rapidly outnumbering the South, that simple majority rule was ever more the law of the land. He knew that, whipped on by the abolitionist minority, more and more people were coming to see slavery as a sin and any compromise with slave-holders as treason. The South was at bay, her way of life and her "peculiar institution" doomed.

Yet, for all the power and clarity of his thinking, Calhoun saw no way out of the dilemma. Even had he seriously considered abolition as a possibility---an act which would have ended his public life and fame---there seemed to be no feasible answers. Colonization was impractical; the freedmen did not want to go back to Africa. The life of a freed black could be miserable, as Calhoun discovered for himself when he freed a shoemaker who later came back from the North and begged to be reinslaved. [The incident of the returned slave was observed by the Calhoun family governess, Mary Bates. See Mary Bates, The Private Life of John C. Calhoun (Charleston, 1852), 21]. Even some of the new "free" states denied settlement to freed men. The North had no plans beyond abolition; the South had even less, because the Southerners saw no way out of what, even more than an economic question, was a social one. How, other than by slavery, were the relations between the races to be regulated?]

Back to The Historical Precedent for Identity Politics:

As American history teaches, dividing citizens into identity groups, especially on the basis of race, is a recipe for stoking enmity among all citizens. It took the torrent of blood spilled in the Civil War and decades of subsequent struggles to expunge Calhoun's idea of group hierarchies from American public life. Nevertheless, activists pushing identity politics want to resuscitate a modified version of his ideas, rejecting  the Declaration's principle of equality and defining Americans once again in terms of group hierarchies. They aim to make this the defining creed of American public life, and they have been working for decades to bring it about.

Intellectual Original of Identity Politics

The modern revival of identity politics stems from mid-20th century European thinkers who sought the revolutionary overthrow of their political and social systems but were disillusioned by the working class's lack of interest in inciting revolution. The setback forced revolutionaries to reconsider their strategy.

One of the most prominent, the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, argued that the focus should not be on economic revolution as much as taking control of the institutions that shape culture. In Gramsci's language, revolutionaries should focus on countering the "Hegemonic Narrative" of the established culture with a "Counter-Narrative," creating a counter-culture that subverts and seeks to destroy the established culture.

Gramsci was an important influence on the thinkers of the "Frankfurt School" in Germany, who developed a set of revolutionary ideas called Critical Theory. Herbert Marcuse, one member of the Frankfurt School who immigrated to the United States in the 1940s, became the intellectual godfather of American identity politics. With little hope that the white American worker could be coaxed to revolution, Marcuse focused not on instigating class conflict but on instigating cultural conflicts around racial identity. He saw revolutionary potential in "the substratum of the outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other races and other colors."

These ideas led to the development of Critical Race Theory, a variation of critical theory applied to the American context that stresses racial divisions and sees society in terms of minority racial groups oppressed by the white majority. Equally significant to its intellectual content is the role Critical Race Theory plays in promoting fundamental social transformation. Following Gramsci's strategy of taking control of the culture, Marcuse's followers use the approach of Critical Race Theory to impart an oppressor-victim narrative upon generations of American. This work of cultural revolution has been going on for decades, and its first political reverberations can be seen in 1960s America.

The Radicalization of American Politics in the 1960s

Prior to the 1960s, movements in American history that sought to end racial and sexual discrimination, such as abolition, women's suffrage, or the Civil Rights Movement, did so on the ground set by the Declaration of Independence.

In leading the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., was aware that other, more revolutionary groups wanted to fight in terms of group identities. In his "I Have a Dream" speech, King rejected hateful stereotyping based on a racialized group identity. The "marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust all white people," he warned. King refused to define Americans in terms of permanent racialized identities and called on Americans "to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustices to the sold rock of brotherhood" and see ourselves as one nation united by a common political creed and commitment to Christian love.

"When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir," King wrote. "This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

As the 1960s advanced, however, many rejected King's formulation of civil rights and reframed debates about equality in terms of racial and sexual identities. The Civil Rights Movement came to abandon the nondiscrimination and equal opportunity of colorblind civil rights in favor of "group rights" and preferential treatment. A radical women's liberation movement reimagined America as a patriarchal system, asserting that every woman is a victim of oppression by men. The Black Power and black nationalist movements reimagined America as a white supremacist regime. Meanwhile, other activists constructed artificial groupings to further divide Americans by race, creating new categories like "Asian American" and "Hispanic" to teach Americans to think of themselves in terms of group identities and to rouse various groups into politically cohesive bodies.

The Incompatibility of Identity Politics with American Principles

Identity politics divide Americans by placing them perpetually on conflict with each other. This extreme ideology assaults and undermines the American principle of equality in several key ways.

First, identity politics attacks American self-government. Through the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances, American constitutionalism prevents any one group from having complete control of the government. In order to form a majority, the various groups that comprise the nation must resolve their disagreements in light of shared principles and come to a deliberative consensus over how best to govern. In the American system, public policy is decided by prudential compromise among different interest groups for the sake of the common good.

Identity politics, on the other hand, sees politics as the realm of permanent conflict and struggle among racial, gender, and other groups, and no compromise between different groups is possible. Rational deliberation and compromise only preserve the oppressive status quo. Instead, identity politics relies on humiliation, intimidation, and coercion. American self-government, where all citizens are equal before the law, is supplanted by a system where certain people use their group identity to get what they want.

Second, by dividing Americans into oppressed and oppressor groups, activists of identity politics propose to punish some citizens --- many times for wrongs of their ancestors allegedly committed --- while rewarding others. Members of oppressed groups must ascend, and members of oppressor groups must descend. This new system denies that human being are endowed with the same rights, and creates new hierarchies with destructive assumptions and practices.

On the one hand, members of oppressed groups are told to abandon their shared civic identity as Americas and think of themselves in terms of their sexual or racial status. The consequence is that they should no longer see themselves as agents responsible for their own actions but as victims controlled by impersonal forces. In a word, they must reject, not affirm, the Declaration's understanding of self-government according to the consent of the governed. If members of oppressed groups want to become free, they must rely upon a regime of rewards and privileges assigned according to group identity.

On the other hand, members of oppressor groups merit public humiliation at the hands of others. Diversity training programs, for example force members of "oppressor" groups to confess before their co-workers how they contribute to racism. Education programs based on identity politics often use a person's race to degrade or ostracize them.

These degradations of individuals on the basis of race expose the lie that identity politics promotes the equal protection of rights. Advocates of identity politics argue that all hate speech should be banned but then define hate speech as only applying to protected identity groups who are in turn free to say whatever they want about their purported oppressors. This leads to a "cancel culture" that punishes those who violate the terms of identity politics.

Third, identity politics denies the fundamental moral tenet of the Declaration, that human beings are equal by nature. This founding principle provides a permanent and immutable standard for remedying wrongs done to Americans on the basis of race, sex, or any group identity.

Repudiating this universal tenet, activists pushing identity politics rely instead on cultural and historical generalizations about which groups have stronger moral claims than others. They claim this approach offers a superior and more historically sensitive moral standard. But unlike the standard based on a common humanity---what Lincoln called "an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times"---their historical standard is not permanent. Rather, it adjusts to meet the political fashions of a particular moment. By this standard, ethnicities that were once considered "oppressed" can in short order turn into "Oppressors," and a standard that can turn a minority from victim to villain within the course of a few years is no standard at all.

Fourth, identity-politics activists often are radicals whose political program is fundamentally incompatible not only with the principles of the Declaration of independence but also the rule of law embodied by the United States Constitution. Antagonism to the creed expressed in the Declaration seems not an option but a necessary part of their strategy. When activists are discussing seemingly innocuous campaigns to promote "diversity," they are often aiming for fundamental structural change.

Conclusion

Identity politics is fundamentally incompatible with the principle of equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

Proponents of identity politics rearrange Americans by group identities, rank them by how much oppression they have experience at the hands of the majority culture, and then sow division among them. While not as barbaric or dehumanizing, this new creed creates new hierarchies as unjust as the old hierarchies of the antebellum South, making a mockery of equality with an ever-changing scale of special privileges on the basis of racial and sexual identities. The very idea of equality under the law---of one nation sharing King's "solid rock of brotherhood"---is not possible and, according to this argument, probably not even desirable. [Publisher's Note: The "old hierarchies of the antebellum South" were often not fair but neither were the many Northern and Western states that did not even allow free blacks to visit for more than a few days, much less take up residence. In Lincoln's Illinois, a free black staying too long would find his new residence the country jail. Perhaps the writers of this report should have included some knowledgeable Southerners to give the report more accuracy rather than taking cheap shots at the South when nobody is there to refute them.]

All Americans, and especially all educators should understand identity politics for what it is: rejection of the principle of equality proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. As a nation, we should oppose such effort to divide us and reaffirm our common faith in the fundamental equal right of every individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

 

Click Here to download a PDF of the entire 45 page report.

Lysander Spooner’s “No Treason.” The Georgia SCV’s 10 Law Suits Defending Confederate Monuments and the First Amendment: Synopses and Updates

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Lysander Spooner's No Treason.
The Georgia SCV's 10 Law Suits
Defending Confederate Monuments and the
First Amendment: Synopses and Updates

 

[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. : Lysander Spooner (1808-1887) was a "Champion of Liberty, a lawyer, abolitionist, entrepreneur, legal theorist and scholar" according to the plaque on his birthplace in Athol, Massachusetts. He's known for setting up a post office to compete with the government but it was shut down. He is author of a number of famous works including No Treason., and The Unconstitutionality of Slavery. He is still influential in libertarian circles and was cited in two United States Supreme Court Cases recently. Justice Antonin Scalia cited him in District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down Washington, DC's ban on handguns in 2008. Justice Clarence Thomas cited him in McDonald v. Chicago, a 2009 firearms case.

The beginning of Spooner's No Treason., No. 1 is an outstanding summary of the North's reason for fighting the War Between the States, and it definitely was not slavery. Massachusetts-born Spooner would know. He states as one possibility that "the lusts of fame, and power, and money" was why the North fought, and, of course, that is absolutely correct. They were fighting for their tariff money, paid mostly by the South but spent mostly in the North. They were fighting for the bounties, subsidies and monopolies voted in Congress by the Northern majority for their businesses despite the South generating all the wealth of the nation with King Cotton and other Southern commodities.

They were fighting also because they thought they could win easily with four times the white population of the South, maybe 100 times the arms manufacturing capability, an army, navy, merchant marine; there were zero marine engine factories in the South while there were 19 in the North. Lincoln also had access to the unlimited immigration of the wretched refuse of the world to feed his armies while his navy blockaded Southern ports. At least 25% of the Union Army were new immigrants and many had been paid bounties to join after they arrived on ships hungry, broke, with only the clothes on their backs.

Yet it still took four years and 750,000 deaths, over a million wounded and the whole region laid waste for Lincoln's armies of invasion to subjugate the South. That's what happens when you fight men and women who were as committed to independence as our Founding Fathers. For the South, 1861 was 1776 all over.

In the year leading up to South Carolina's secession on December 20, 1860, the most widely quoted phrase in the secession debate in the South came from the Declaration of Independence:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

As Alexis de Tocqueville said in Democracy in America, if any one state became powerful enough to take over the government, they would make the rest of the country subservient and tributary to their wealth and power. That is exactly what happened and was exactly the goal before it happened.

The human lust for money, power and control is universal, as a South Carolina document acknowledged in December, 1860:

[W]hen vast sectional interests are to be subserved, involving the appropriation of countless millions of money, it has not been the usual experience of mankind, that words on parchments can arrest power.

[From The Address of the People of South Carolina, Assembled in Convention, to the People of the Slaveholding States of the United States]

The Georgia Division, SCV, has 10 excellent law suits going on, mostly against cities, counties, and public officials who have voted to break the law and remove Confederate monuments, but some involve protecting First Amendment rights.

The synopses and updates on each of the Georgia law suits are INSPIRING and fascinating. They show great determination to hold corrupt public officials accountable.

Finally, we get to kick some ass!

They need money so please donate. Here's how you get back at the mob that has been tearing down sacred monuments to war dead, and get back at corrupt public officials who are part of the mob and think they are above the law. [Click the Donate to the Georgia SCV Heritage Defense Legal Fund link at the very end of this post to help!]

Below is a press release from January 25, 2021 discussing the war they are waging in Georgia for the honor of Confederate soldiers who died and were maimed protecting Georgia and the South when Lincoln's hordes invaded.

The Georgia folks got a constitutional amendment on the ballot in the last election to repeal sovereign immunity and it passed overwhelmingly, so corrupt city and county officials can now be held accountable and not get away with hiding behind sovereign immunity.

Every state in the country ought to get rid of sovereign immunity so that groups and citizens have standing to sue cities, counties AND individual councilmen and women. That will get their attention and be good for government at all levels.

A few victories like that, the word gets around (we will SPREAD it around with vigor!) and the removal of monuments will be stopped dead in its tracks, forever.

We can then increase the building of new monuments so future generations will know our glorious American, Southern history.

We also need to focus on shaming characterless legislators who would even consider removing monuments from battlefields. We should appeal to veterans and veterans groups.

The fight over the U. S. Army base names in the South such as Fort Benning and Fort Bragg needs to continue with research on how the bases came to be named as they are. There is no question it was a grand gesture of reconciliation by our newly reunited country and as such are important statements as they are.

They have nothing to do with white supremacy as the dope Elizabeth Warren, one of the most characterless people in Congress who gamed the affirmation action system for years pretending to be an Indian, says. She knows nothing about history and could care less about American military honor.

If there are any old laws and some way we can sue to stop the base name changes, we should.

Maybe some old agreements are in place between the states where the bases are located and the Federal Government that would give us a chance. Maybe the state attorneys general or governors can help.

It is going to take two years, supposedly, to change the base names and all the streets, buildings, military assets such as ships and weapons named for Confederates, and to remove all Confederate monuments. If Republicans were in power, we could maybe do something with next years NDAA.

I do not think we should give up on the bases. We need more research. This is a ridiculous waste of millions of taxpayer dollars to change the names of 100 year old bases from where we won two World Wars. Surely veterans groups would be incensed and join us.

Please let me know of other law suits defending monuments and other situations going on around the country. Please write me anytime.

Publishing the beginning of Lysander Spooner's excellent No Treason. followed by the synopses of the Georgia SCV law suits protecting monuments, shows what the North was fighting for, which was not to end slavery. It was for their own wealth and power. Over 750,000 died so Yankees could enrich themselves and control the rest of the country.

Southerners were fighting for independence and the principles of the Founding Fathers. Basil Gildersleeve, the greatest American classical scholar of all time, was a Confederate soldier from Charleston, South Carolina. He sums up our reason for fighting in his book, The Creed of the Old South:

All that I vouch for is the feeling: . . . there was no lurking suspicion of any moral weakness in our cause. Nothing could be holier than the cause, nothing more imperative than the duty of upholding it. There were those in the South who, when they saw the issue of the war, gave up their faith in God, but not their faith in the cause.

The Georgia SCV synopses and updates follow Spooner, along with a Donate to the Georgia SCV Heritage Defense Legal Fund link.]

 

No Treason.
No. 1

by Lysander Spooner.

(Boston: Published by the Author,
No. 14 Bromfield Street. 1867.)

Introductory

The question of treason is distinct from that of slavery; and is the same that it would have been, if free States, instead of slave States, had seceded.

On the part of the North, the war was carried on, not to liberate the slaves, but by a government that had always perverted and violated the Constitution, to keep the slaves in bondage; and was still willing to do so, if the slaveholders could be thereby induced to stay in the Union.

The principles, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.

Lysander Spooner, author of No Treason., The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, and many other important works.
Lysander Spooner, author of No Treason., The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, and many other important works.

No principle, that is possible to be named, can be more self-evidently false than this; or more self-evidently fatal to all political freedom. Yet it triumphed in the field, and is now assumed to be established. If it be really established, the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been greatly increased; for a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave. And there is no difference, in principle --- but only in degrees --- between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man's ownership of himself and the products of his labor; and asserts that other men may own him, and dispose of him and his property, for their uses, and at their pleasure.

Previous to the war, there were some grounds for saying that --- in theory, at least, if not in practice --- our government was a free one; that it rested on consent. But nothing of that kind can be said now, if the principle on which the war was carried on by the North, is irrevocably established.

If that principle be not the principle of the Constitution, the fact should be known. If it be the principle of the Constitution, the Constitution itself should be at once overthrown.

I.

Notwithstanding all the proclamations we have made to mankind, within the last ninety years, that our government rested on consent, and that that was the only rightful basis on which any government could rest, the last war has practically demonstrated that our government rests upon force --- as much so as any government that has ever existed.

The North has thus virtually said to the world: It was all very well to prate of consent, so long as the objects to be accomplished were to liberate ourselves from our connexion with England, and also to coax a scattered and jealous people into a great national union; but now that those purposes have been accomplished, and the power of the North has become consolidated, it is sufficient for us --- as for all governments --- simply to say: Our power is our right.

In proportion to her wealth and population, the North has probably expended more money and blood to maintain her power over an unwilling people, than any other government ever did. And in her estimation, it is apparently the chief glory of her success, and an adequate compensation for all her own losses, and an ample justification for all her devastation and carnage of the South, that all pretence of any necessity for consent to the perpetuity or power of the government, is (as she thinks) forever expunged from the minds of the people. In short, the North exults beyond measure in the proof she has given, that a government, professedly resting on consent, will expend more life and treasure in crushing dissent, than any government, openly founded on force, has ever done.

And she claims that she has done all this in behalf of liberty! In behalf of free government! In behalf of the principle that government should rest on consent!

If the successors of Roger Williams, within a hundred years after their State had been founded upon the principle of free religious toleration, and when the Baptists had become strong on the credit of that principle, had taken to burning heretics with a fury never before seen among men; and had they finally gloried in having thus suppressed all question of the truth of the State religion; and had they further claimed to have done all this in behalf of freedom of conscience, the inconsistency between profession and conduct would scarcely have been greater than that of the North, in carrying on such a war as she has done, to compel men to live under the support a government that they did not want; and in then claiming that she did it in behalf of the principle that government should rest on consent.

This astonishing absurdity and self-contradiction are to be accounted for only by supposing, either that the lusts of fame, and power, and money, have made her utterly blind to, or utterly reckless of, the inconsistency and enormity of her conduct; or that she had never even understood what was implied in a government's resting on consent. Perhaps this last explanation is the true one. In charity to human nature, it is to be hoped that it is.

. . .

Here is the end of No Treason. by Lysander Spooner:

George the Third called our ancestors traitors for what they did at that time. But they were not traitors in fact, whatever he or his laws may have called them. They were not traitors in fact, because they betrayed nobody, and broke faith with nobody. They were his equals, owing him no allegiance, obedience, nor any other duty, except such as they owed to mankind at large. Their political relations with him has been purely voluntary. They had never pledged their faith to him that they would continue these relations any longer than it should please them to do so; and therefore they broke no faith in parting with him. They simply exercised their natural right of saying to him, and to the English people, that they were under no obligation to continue their political connexion with them, and that, for reasons of their own, they chose to dissolve it.

What was true of our ancestors, is true of revolutionists in general. The monarchs and governments, from whom they choose to separate, attempt to stigmatize them as traitors. But they are not traitors in fact; inasmuch as they betray, and break faith with, no one. Having pledged no faith, they break none. They are simple men, who, for reasons of their own --- whether good or bad, wise or unwise, is immaterial --- choose to exercise their natural right of dissolving their connexion with the governments under which they have lived. In doing this, they no more commit the crime of treason --- which necessarily implies treachery, deceit, breach of faith --- than a man commits treason when he chooses to leave a church, or any other voluntary association, with which he has been connected.

This principle was a true one in 1776. It is a true one now. It is the only one on which any rightful government can rest. It is the one on which the Constitution itself professes to rest. If it does not really rest on that basis, it has no right to exist; and it is the duty of every man to raise his hand against it. . . .

 

The Georgia SCV's 10 Law Suits
Defending Confederate Monuments and the First Amendment: Synopses and Updates
GA-Div-Press-Rel-1-25-21--75K
Georgia Division Pending Litigation
City of Cuthbert, Randolph County - O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1 violation

Synopsis:

On December 14, 2020 the City of Cuthbert City Council voted to remove the Randolph County Confederate Monument. The Georgia Division will be filing for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) and filed a lawsuit for violation of O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1. All the City Council members will be listed individually as defendants.

Status:

On January 19, 2021 the Georgia Division filed for a Temporary Restraining Order and filed a lawsuit for violation of O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1against the City of Cuthbert and the City Council Members as individuals. We are currently awaiting a court date.

City of Brunswick, Glynn County - O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1 violation

Synopsis:

On November 18, 2020 the City of Brunswick City Council voted to remove the Glynn County Confederate Monument. The Georgia Division has filed for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) and filed a lawsuit for violation of O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1. All the City Council members will be listed individually as defendants.

Status:

The city of Brunswick file a motion to dismiss our case. Then offered an temporary motion to stay to place a hold on any action to remove the monument. The SCV agreed to the terms of the motion to stay and the Superior Court Judge issued a consent order.

Newton County - O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1 violation

Synopsis:

The Newton County Board of Commissioners voted to remove the Newton County Confederate Monument. The Georgia Division filed for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) and filed a lawsuit for violation of O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1. While the Newton County Superior Court Judge did not issue a TRO, he ruled that nothing would happen to the Confederate Monument until the final ruling was issued.

As expected, the Newton County Superior Court Judge John Ott issued an order in favor of the County Commission’s action stating that the doctrine of sovereign immunity applied. The Georgia Division, SCV immediately filed a motion to appeal. The next day the County Commissioner Chairman attempted to have the Confederate Monument removed. This action, violation of the understanding reached at the earlier hearing, prompted Judge Ott to issue an Order to stay and forbid the removal of the Confederate Monument until the final decision is made.

Status:

The Georgia Court of Appeals has set a court date on April 13, 2021 and has agreed to hear oral arguments.

Rockdale County - O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1 violation

Synopsis:

Chairman Oz Nesbitt, Jr., Chairman of the Rockdale County Board of Commissioners made an “executive decision” to remove the Rockdale County Confederate Monument. No formal discussion or vote was obtained from the Rockdale County Board of Commissioners. The Monument was removed that night under the cover of darkness. Georgia Division filed a suit for violation of O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1 in Rockdale County Superior Court. We have sued the Chairman both as an individual as well as Chairman of the Commission.

Status:

Rockdale County Superior Court issued a ruling in favor of the county on the basis of sovereign immunity. The Georgia Division has filed the case to be heard by the Georgia Court of Appeals. The Georgia Court of Appeals set the date of January 11, 2021 for the SCV to file their pleadings to the Court of Appeals, and it was filed on January 7, 2021. We are currently waiting on a ruling from the Georgia court of Appeals.

Henry County - O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1 violation

Synopsis:

The Henry County Board of Commissioners voted to remove the Henry County Confederate Monument. The Georgia Division filed for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) and filed a lawsuit for the actions proposed in violation of O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1.

The Henry County Superior Court Judge did not issue a TRO. He accepted the County’s defense based on the doctrine of sovereign immunity. The Georgia Division filed a motion to reconsider after finding a lease agreement between the County and City showing the property where the Monument was standing was leased by the City of McDonough. Therefore, the County had no standing to remove the Monument.

Status:

Henry County Superior Court issued a ruling in favor of the county on the basis of sovereign immunity. The Georgia Division has filed the case to be heard by the Georgia Court of Appeals. Our Attorney is currently working on the pleadings for the Georgia Court of Appeals.

City of Athens/Clarke County - O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1 violation

Synopsis:

City of Athens Clarke County Consolidated Government (ACCG) stood by and permitted "mostly peaceful protestors" to vandalize the 1871 Clarke County Confederate Monument located at the intersection of Broad Street and College Avenue. The ACCG voted to remove the Confederate monument to an obscure location in Clarke County at the end of a dead-end, rubbish-strewn road. They claim the move is necessary for a pedestrian walk-widening project that has been the works since 2019. The plans received under an open records request clearly shows that proposed relocation of the Confederate monument was not considered until May 2020. The Georgia Division filed for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) and filed a lawsuit for ACCG’s violation of O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1. The Superior Court of Clarke County denied the Georgia Division a TRO based on the doctrine of sovereign immunity.

Status:

The Georgia Division lawsuit for violation of O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1 is awaiting a court date. The Georgia Division filed an amendment adding the mayor and city commissioners to the lawsuit as individual defendants.

Gwinnett County - Motion to intervene

Synopsis:

The Gwinnett County Solicitor Brian Whiteside filed a lawsuit claiming the that the Gwinnett County Confederate Monument at the old historic County Courthouse was a "nuisance" and is a public safety issue and could cause injury or even death. The Georgia Division and the Major William E Simmons Camp #96 filed a motion to intervene to be a party to the suit.

Status:

Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge issued a ruling in favor of the SCV to grant the motion to intervene. Currently, the Camp and Gwinnett County are negotiating a settlement.

City of Alpharetta - Old Soldiers Day Parade- 1st Amendment violation

Synopsis:

The Georgia Division filed for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. The TRO was denied by Judge William Ray and Georgia Division then filed a suit against the City of Alpharetta for violation of their 1st amendment rights.

The City's defense was that since the City was the primary sponsor the parade was considered to be “governmental speech” and therefore not a First Amendment violation. The City argued that permitting the Confederate Battle Flag in the City-sponsored parade might cause viewers to believe the City was endorsing the Confederacy or the SCV. The SCV provided proof the VFW was the primary sponsor and there were other participants in the parade. The Democratic party of Fulton County was one such group. It displayed a banner. Other businesses advertised their trade with signs and banners. The SCV argued that the City was not concerned about endorsing the Democratic Party or these businesses and was therefore censoring the SCV for its viewpoint.

Judge William Ray again ruled against the Georgia Division citing that the parade was governed by the concept of governmental speech. The SCV has filed a motion for reconsideration with the United States District Court of the Northern District of Georgia based on the issue of forum analysis.

Status:

Judge William Ray ruled against the motion to reconsider. The Georgia Division has filed an appeal with the United States 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Attorney Walker Chandler has filed an entry of appearance and pleadings with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

City of Columbus - Linwood Cemetery - O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1 violation

Synopsis:

General Henry Benning Camp #517 entered into an agreement formally adopted by resolution with the Mayor and City Council of the City of Columbus on October 4, 1994. The SCV was permitted to erect two 35 foot flag poles flying the Confederate Battle Flags in the Confederate Sections of the Linwood Cemetery. Sometime in 2016 the Battle Flags were removed and replaced with 1st National Flags. The Camp made various attempts to resolve the issue with the Mayor by rotating the flags with the many different flags of the Confederacy, but the Mayor refused. The Camp then placed, as clearly permitted under the Agreement, a Battle Flag back on one pole. The Mayor and Council responded by having the Memorial Flag poles cut at the base, destroying and removing them.

Status:

Georgia Division filed a suit for violation of O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1 in Muscogee County Superior Court, awaiting a court day to be set. The Georgia Division filed an amendment adding the mayor and city commissioners to the lawsuit as individual defendants.

Cotriss Case - 1st Amendment violation

Synopsis:

Silvia Cotriss was a police sergeant with the Roswell city police. She was fired for flying a Confederate Battle Flag in front of her home. A black pharmacist complained because she had a city police car parked at her home. According to her attorney, the car was in the shop on the day in question. She sued based on the city firing her when she was exercising her 1st amendment rights at her home.

The case went before United States District Court of the Northern District of Georgia and Judge William Ray ruled against her.

Status:

The case was appealed and now is awaiting a ruling from the US 11th circuit court of appeals. The SCV has assisted in expenses in this vital case. If upheld, the precedent could be set that no Confederate heritage supporter has a right to a government job.

 

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