by Gene Kizer, Jr.
I had some correspondence with an editor of the Post and Courier this week when I sent them a letter for publication in response to their July 6, 2019 editorial “Don’t let extremists define our national symbols.”
As a result, I saw an opening to send some valuable Southern history to this newspaper and I jumped on it.
Their editorial is good in that they are alarmed at Nike removing the Betsy Ross flag, the Charlottesville city council ending a celebration of Thomas Jefferson, and the idiots on the San Francisco school board voting to paint over an 80-year-old work of art portraying the life of George Washington.
The Post and Courier does not want us to validate bad people who attempt to redefine patriotic symbols, but wait! THEY in the media have done exactly that for years ad nauseam!
The media is the primary reason we have this politically correct hate and destruction of history in the body politic.
Here is the 250 word letter-to-the-editor that got this started:
START
Your editorial of July 6, “Don’t let extremists define our national symbols” shows that your heart is in the right place but, boy, you need to look in the mirror.
You let the KKK and Dylan Roof define the Confederate battle flag though neither of them has an iota of claim to it.
You put the Southern Poverty Law Center’s disgraceful campaign to remove Confederate monuments on your front page, and you agitate all the time against ancient monuments including the Calhoun monument on Marion Square, and even against the word “Dixie.”
And now you are surprised when Colin Kaepernick and others follow your lead and turn the Betsy Ross flag, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington into vile racists?
The foundation of our great nation was indeed set in 1776 as you write, but it was certainly not “reset in 1865.” It died a violent death in 1865.
In the republic of the Founding Fathers, states were supreme, but after 1865, the Federal Government and Northern majority were supreme, which was the North’s goal all along.
You quote the Gettysburg Address but here’s what the great H. L. Mencken wrote in May, 1920: “The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – ‘that government of the people, by the people, for the people,’ should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves….”.
END
Actually, the “you” is the Post and Courier, but also the news media in general because so much of the media is of the same political philosophy, which has utterly politicized history in recent decades.
As serious historians know, one can’t apply 21st century standards to the past. When you do that, you aren’t understanding the past at all. You are using it as a current-day political tool.
Your Robert Behre explained to us on the front page on May 16th why we should hate the word “Dixie” after the College of Charleston in a disgusting fit of political correctness changed the 175-year-old name of Dixie Plantation (“C of C dumps ‘Dixie’ name for plantation”). Behre then implied why we should also hate the song “Dixie” and word “plantation.”
Do you not find it odd that four weeks later on June 15th, the Antifa vandalizers of the Defenders Monument at the Battery also had a large sign that said “DIXIE IS DEAD.”
Maybe they were inspired by Behre and maybe it was just a coincidence, but the Post and Courier is really not fair or accurate with Southern history at all.
You let the KKK and Dylan Roof define the Confederate battle flag though neither of them has an iota of claim to it. The battle flag is, arguably, the greatest symbol of pure American valor our nation has ever produced because it was a soldier’s flag, not a national flag. It flew over the bloodiest battlefields of a war in which 800,000 died and over a million were wounded. It never flew over a slave ship like the US and British flags did for over two centuries. The largest Klan groups of the early 20th century carried the American flag.
Your editorial had mentioned the Declaration of Independence so I wanted to tell you that when Southerners debated seceding in the months before they actually did, the most widely quoted phrase of the secession debate 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. . .
And please don’t quote that garbage about States Rights being the right to own another person. The Confederate Constitution allowed free or slave states to join.
Five slave states fought for the North throughout the entire war, and the Emancipation Proclamation deliberately exempted them all as well as slaves in most Confederate territory already captured by the Union army.
The one thing that can be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt is that the North did not go to war to end slavery. They went to war to preserve the Union, as Lincoln said over and over, because all their wealth and power were tied to the Union. They manufactured for the South and shipped Southern cotton and they made obscene amounts of money with tariffs, bounties, subsidies, monopolies and such, which caused three-fourths of the treasury to flow continually into the North, though most of the money in the treasury came from the South.
When the Cotton States seceded, the Northern economy began a dramatic collapse and by war time, there were hundreds of thousands of people unemployed and a dire situation in the North.
Southerners seceded because they were fed up with Northern hate and support for terrorism such as John Brown and Hinton Helper that Republicans had used to rally their votes in the election of 1860 in which over 60% of voters nationwide voted against Abraham Lincoln.
The War Between the States was one of the most unnecessary wars in all of history but then, from Lincoln’s standpoint, it was necessary for him and his new political party to establish their control over the rest of the country, though 800,000 had to die and over a million be wounded for them to do it.
To Southerners, 1861 was 1776 all over, and we in Charleston can be especially proud because we were never beaten by the Union army or navy. Charleston was unconquered militarily and never surrendered in the War Between the States. It was the only place besieged that did not give way to the besieger. When Confederate troops were ordered to evacuate in February, 1865 to continue the war elsewhere, the city, which had endured one of the longest sieges in history, was turned over to the Union army by a city alderman.
Slavery was dying out and would not have lasted another generation.
It is unconscionable that you maintain this politically correct hatefulness toward Southern history. Maybe you should go back and read your own archives which tell a different story.
XXXXXXX, people are SO fed up with idiotic political correctness. The removal of Kate Smith’s monument (she helped win WWII with God Bless America) recently, and, as your editorial pointed out, Charlottesville’s canceling of Thomas Jefferson’s birthday; the San Francisco school board’s decision to paint over a beautiful 80 year old mural of the life of George Washington; the Kaepernick/Nike thing over the Betsy Ross flag.
It is disgusting and alarming, as your editorial pointed out. It is like a cancer. It ain’t gonna stop. It needs to be opposed and defeated, which will be hard because one political party is heavily invested in it.
I wish the Post and Courier would give me a chance to write long articles on history as you do with others. Everything I write is solidly argued and documented. It would definitely add to the debate.
Regardless, thank you for letting me send this to you.
Gene
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I may be wrong but I understanding Lincoln was thinking of sending the slaves back to their country.
Gene, You are right. Abraham Lincoln favored sending blacks back to Africa or to a place suitable for colonization his entire life. The famous black scholar, Lerone Bennett Jr., wrote about it in his excellent book, Forced Into Glory, Abraham Lincoln's White Dream. Also, an outstanding book published by the University of Missouri Press in 2011 entitled Colonization After Emancipation, by Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian N. Page, confirms it. Thanks for your excellent comment!
I included a link to your article in the Major John C. Hutto Camp's July 2019 Newsletter. I hope this meets with your approval.
http://huttocamp.com/news/2019JulyNewsltr.pdf
Looks good, James! Count me as a friend of the Major John C. Hutto Camp and the Raphael Semmes Camp as well as the great state of Alabama! Congratulations on the SCV Reunion. I'm a member of Secession Camp #4 here in Charleston. We have the CSS Hunley connection between Charleston and Mobile. We also have a Magnolia Cemetery here, and that's where all the Hunley crews are buried including Horace L. Hunley himself. Raphael Semmes is one of my favorite people and I'm going to publish a brilliant essay of his soon. Please feel free to use any of my blog articles, or link to them or quote from them. Also, don't hesitate to use anything from my book, Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States, The Irrefutable Argument. Just cite everything in the usual way. Deo Vindice!
Thanks Gene,
I'm sending this article throughout the New Mexico Division.
Jim Red
Commander
New Mexico Division-SCV
I would be very proud of that, Jim. Good luck to the New Mexico Division! I'm a member of Secession Camp #4 here in Charleston. Viva la SCV!
An excellent article. You have put into words what so many of us are thinking and feeling. The younger people aren’t being taught any of this history. I am ninety and when I was in grammar school we were taught Simm’s South Carolina history, World history, and American history, plus geography. Of course, this was before the Federal Government got into our schools! We also learned how to write both printing and cursive.
Alice, I agree completely about cursive. All kids should be taught cursive. It is such a personal expressive thing. I can't even believe some aren't. I was taught out of Simms's South Carolina history book too and recently bought a copy of that book. It is still outstanding. I studied Simms's 1856 lecture tour to the North. He wanted to answer some slanders against South Carolina in the Revolutionary War that were made by a Northern historian. Simms, being a literary man and well-known in the North, was an expert on the Revolution. He thought he would be welcomed with open arms but the North was extremely hostile and the lectures had to be canceled after a couple weeks. Simms came back to Charleston and did a series of lectures on that failed tour, at what is today Hibernian Hall. He warned Southerners to prepare for war because they hate your guts in the North. This is the hate Northerners used to rally their votes to take over the government, which they finally did with Lincoln in 1860. Of course, Simms's 1856 tour was right after SC's Preston Brooks had caned the pompous Charles Sumner so feelings were pretty hot. --- I have some plans I am going to roll out soon that will help us reach young people and get them fired up about our history.
Awesome thank you
You are quite welcome!
Thank you Mr. Kizer! The truth will unite our country and it is baffling to me why the media would NOT want to do that! It WOULD be the greatest headline ever written! Total peace
One of the problems with the media is that it is politically correct, which usually means factually incorrect. Their standard is not truth and objectivity as it was before the 1960s. It is leftist politics, which is often the racist identity politics of the Democrat Party. It is horrible for America as we have seen with Charlottesville's idiotic decision to stop honoring Thomas Jefferson's birthday, and the unbelievable decision of the San Francisco school board to paint over an 80-year-old mural, a true work of art, portraying the life of George Washington. There is also Nike's cowardly unpatriotic decision to remove the Betsy Ross flag shoes at the urging of Colin Kaepernick, who is certainly not a person decent Americans should listen to. I can still see Kaepernick kneeling for the national anthem, which was the LAST NFL GAME I watched. I will not watch any NFL game as long as they allow their players to dishonor the flag and national anthem. I just have no desire to watch that, and the NFL forces us to watch it, so to HELL with the NFL.
Thanks Gene, well done.
Thank you, Timothy!
Gene,
Thank you for writing, and for sending this.
My pleasure, Shannon. Always appreciate your thoughts.
you are so right! William Ferguson Hutson(great great grandpa) was a Charleston lawyer who knew full well secession was legal when he began on Nov.17,1860 to formulate the words of the Ordinance of Secession,originally written on a hat,according to his son and fellow Confederate veteran,my great grandfather,Charles Woodward Hutson. It was the shortest (and to my mind most to the point)of all the Ordinances of Secession; yours,in veritas,Deo vindice
That's great information, Michael, about the Ordinance of Secession beginning on a hat! If you can find out more about that, let me know. Your great great grandpa William Ferguson Hutson was absolutely right about the legality of secession. We definitely had the right to secede from the Union and exercised that right properly by calling a convention of the people (a/k/a a secession convention), debating the issue then voting to secede. The precedent of calling a convention of the people to decide a single important question came from the Founding Fathers when they had the states call conventions to ratify the Constitution rather than letting their legislatures vote on it. A convention of the people was a much more solid foundation and statement to make about an issue, and it could not be rescinded by a later legislature as a purely legislative vote could have been.
Well said,well written thank you for standing up to the once proud post and courier or many years ago when I delivered it the news and courier.
Donnie, the Post and Courier should know better but they are as politically correct as the rest of the liberal media. I do think sometimes they want to do better and try to be more fair but they have a long way to go. Their last editorial about not letting extremists define our national symbols was good. They are thinking right with that. Maybe there is hope yet! But don't hold your breath.