This is Confederate Memorial Day in North and South Carolina

This is Confederate Memorial Day in North and South Carolina

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

This is the day (May 10^th) set aside in my Carolinas to remember the bravery, sacrifice and honor of the men who wore the gray … the Confederate soldiers … OUR Confederate soldiers.

Let’s understand at the outset -- the US Constitution of 1861 did not forbid Secession from the Union.  That is a fact.  What the Confederate men did was perfectly legal. 

Nobody, north or south, thought Lincoln would sacrifice the lives of over 600,000 men in a war against his own countrymen. 

Now understand, that as the victors in the war, the North wrote the history books.  And therein lies the reason so many Americans have no idea why the Southern people went to war, nor what made the Southerner even think he had the right to pull out and form another nation. 

On the other hand what made Lincoln willing to do such a thing?

They tell us today that the war was fought over one issue.  Slavery.  That is a bald faced lie.  It is the Great Lie of American history.

When the census of 1860 was completed it was found that only 8% of Southerners owned slaves. That’s just Southerners.  Remember, slavery was legal in the entire country and the north not only ran the slave trade but they bought and sold slaves and kept slaves just as Southerners did.  In fact, at the beginning of the war, the two cities in America with the most slaves per capita were Charleston, SC, and New York City!  So, do not buy into the purity of the northern states when it comes to slavery.

There were many reasons Lincoln felt he could not allow the Confederate states to leave the Union.  But there was one reason, which dominated them all.  Simply put:  Lincoln could not allow the Southern States to leave the Union because the Southern States paid the bills of the United States of America!

In the early 1800’s, especially the 1820’s, when the federal government needed money -- it simply raised taxes on the Southern states!  Not the northern states… just the Southern states! 

In 1860 only 1/3 of the population of the United States lived in the South.  Yet the South paid over 70% of the taxes collected by the federal government.  And what did the federal government do with all that money?  They put it in railroads and canals and other infrastructure in the NORTHERN STATES.  There was a constant out-flow of Southern money going into the north from which the South received nothing.

The South warned the government that at some point we would have to secede just to save our economy!  They paid no attention to the complaints from the South.  And Congress turned a blind eye.  The South, seeing no alternative, seceded, and formed it’s own country.  

Then the North invaded.

When the war broke out the north had 20 million people.  The South had barely 6 million. Oh, and by the way, the north had a black population of 250,000… many of whom were slaves.

The north already had a government, which the South had to create.  The north had an Army, a Navy, tremendous manufacturing capability, and economic ties to the rest of the world.  The South had none of those things. To say the South was at a disadvantage was more than just an understatement.

The north had 71% of the population, 72% of the railroads, 81% of the bank deposits, and 85% of the factories.  During the course of the war, the north had 2,800,000 men in uniform while the South had, at most, only 800,000. 

Why in the world would an army of less than a million men -- poorly fed, poorly equipped, and half naked -- have the temerity to even THINK they could successfully go to war against an army over three times their size  -- and WIN? It is the indomitable, unconquerable, fighting spirit of the Southern People!  

Some say the southern fighting spirit accounts for the fact that every war America has been involved in… Southerners were in the middle of the fight doing their part. 

Did you know that Southerners won the Revolutionary War in the South?  Did you know that during the Viet Nam war 70% of the Medal of Honor winners were Southerners?  Did you know that nearly half the men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan today come from the 11 southern states of the Old Confederacy?  It is that indomitable, unconquerable, fighting spirit of the Southern People!  

Who WERE the Southern Americans of the 1860’s?  Well, by 1860, over 50% of Southerners were of Celtic descent.  Our ancestors were from Ireland, Scotland, and the hill country north of London, England.  Celts are renown for their history of fighting.  Long before Rome conquered and occupied England, the Celts invaded and conquered Rome!  Oh, yes.  At one point in history the Celts ruled most of what we know as Europe today. They are known as a freedom-loving, fun-loving, and hard-fighting people.  And they LOVE to be FREE!   So what does that have to do with the Confederate soldier?  Just about everything. 

When the Americans grew tied of the taxation of the British and the lack of representation in the British government for the colonists, it was the Southern American who led the charge for freedom from Great Britain.

In the1860’s it was the grandsons of the Southern men who fought Great Britain who then stood ready to fight another brand new world superpower for THEIR freedom. Their motives were the same in 1861 as that of their grandfathers in 1776.  Southerners were not willing to live under a repressive government and pay more taxes than was their fair share.

Many of the slaves of the 1860’s felt the South was their homeland, too. They had been born in the south.  Not only that… but many of them felt a need to defend the South and DID take up arms and fight alongside their white masters in battle against the northern invaders.  Many black Southern slaves died in battle fighting the troops of the federal government of the United States.  But … only the South gives THOSE brave black men credit for their valiant action. 

The Confederate soldier was the finest fighting man ever produced by any nation, at any time, in the history of humanity on this globe. 

The Confederate soldier did not fight for the spoils of war.  The Confederate soldier did not fight for additional territory.  The Confederate soldier did not fight because it was his job; he was not a professional soldier!  The Confederate soldier was not a REBEL.  At no time did the Confederate Army seek to overthrow the government of the United States… ever!

It is not simply a boast to say that the Southern Spirit was never broken.  Southern courage never faltered.  Even at Appomattox on that gray April day, when Lee surrendered to Grant, Southern soldiers, in the rags with elbows poking through worn out sleeves and knees poking through ripped and torn trouser legs begged the good general NOT to surrender.  Failing in that task THEY vowed never to surrender, themselves, but to take to the woods, and the swamps, and the hills, and continue the fight as long as it took… even if it took forever.  It was only at the behest of General Lee that those dedicated Southern soldiers furled their colors and grounded their weapons that day.  

No, the courage and determination of the South never quailed.  The Confederate soldier never questioned the Southern conviction that the SOUTH WAS RIGHT, even after Appomattox.

 The Confederate soldier bore more suffering than anyone should ever be asked to bear.  At no place on earth have soldiers fought so bravely, and struggled more fiercely, to defend their homeland.  The numbers of dead and wounded Confederates was staggering. Sickness and death from disease was equally staggering. Yet, battle after battle they strode straight in the withering fire of the enemy often routing Union forces and gaining the victory.

How do you defeat an opponent with that kind of spirit and zeal and that kind of courage? As the Northern Army learned, you cannot defeat them in battle. So… you starve them out.

And that is exactly what they did.   Bill Sherman’s infamous March to the Sea was a part of the “starve them out” policy of the federal government toward the South.  For the first time in it’s history, the US Military went to war against the civilians of another nation.  It was the introduction of what we know today as “Total War.”  It was a scorched earth policy. Not only were the families of the South suddenly hungry, the Confederate soldier, on the battlefield, had even less to eat.  When Fort Fisher finally fell it was the death knell for the Confederacy.

The world has never known men who could, and would, fight as these men did.  Never before, and never since, have there been such brave, gallant, Knights of the South… and never before has there been an army, which could fight with the steel hardened determination of the Confederate soldier. Never!  They were dedicated to their cause as no soldiers before or since have been.

North Carolina lost 40, 000 of her men in that war.  In four years 40,000 North Carolinians left home to give their lives for Southern Independence and states rights.  Contrary to what you have been taught and told -- those men did not put their lives on the line to keep other men in bondage!

Even in the US National Cemetery at Arlington, Virginia, there is a monument to the Confederate Soldier. If you approach you will see an engraving on that powerful maker.  When you read the words, the impact of what those men asleep in our sacred Southern soil did will send chills up your spine and bring tears to your eyes.  It reads:

Not for fame, nor for place or rank,
Not lured by ambition, Or goaded by necessity, 
But in simple obedience to duty, As they understood it.
These men suffered all, sacrificed all, - Dared all and died.

The heroes of the South, we honor on this Confederate Memorial Day, deserve all the accolades and all the praise and honor we can heap upon them. Around the world stories of the valor of these men is told and taught.  Their battlefield tactics are taught in Military Schools around the world.  They are honored around the world.  Except… except… in their own country! It is a shame, and a disgrace, the way we have treated the memory of these men.

The Confederate Soldiers forged a trail of heroic deeds amid selfless suffering no other fighting force has ever equaled on this continent -- or elsewhere.  The Confederate soldier walked away from everything they had… to fight for the idea that their new country had every right to just be let alone. Just let alone.

When one seriously surveys the complete mess our beloved country is in today one has to ask … was the cause of the Confederate Soldier, indeed, lost, … or was it only delayed?

All over the two Carolinas, the Confederate Battle Flag, the battlefield emblem the Confederate soldier fought, bled, and died beneath, will be flying from homes, businesses, and all over cemeteries, large and small, in honor of our Confederate ancestors.  We honor their memory, their history, and our beloved heritage as a southerner. Their blood STILL flows in our veins.

When the final push comes to crush the free constitutional republic of America, I predict the last defenders left standing will be the tenacious descendants of the Confederate soldier.

The Marine Hymn says the streets of heaven are guarded by the US MARINES.  If true, then I would expect the heavenly ramparts and the gates of pearl, are secured by Confederate troops under the eternal command of General Stonewall Jackson.

J. D. Longstreet

 

Confederate Memorial Day ... Alan Caruba

Confederate Memorial Day

By Alan Caruba

It seems odd, even to me, that a northerner, born and bred, should join in the celebration of Confederate Memorial Day on May 7th. Odder still because I saw the worst of the South with its Jim Crow laws that so cruelly oppressed the Blacks that lived there, but I spent enough years in the South to love its people, its music, its culture, and its history.

It is said that the winner of wars gets to write the history of those conflicts and that is true, but there is ample history of the Confederacy to gain a much-needed understanding of why, on February 4, 1861, the representatives of seven States, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas, would meet to formally secede from the Union to form a new republic. On February 8, the convention announced the establishment of the Confederate States of America and declared itself its provisional Congress.

State's Rights Versus the Federal Government

The Confederacy was always a paradox. The central issue for the South was states’ rights, not slavery, though slavery was the stain that shaped elements of the U.S. Constitution, an issue that the Founders had concluded must await the judgment of a later time.

It was about the South’s interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. In his inaugural address, Jefferson Davis said, “The constitution formed by our fathers is the constitution of the (newly formed) Confederate States." The Civil War was a war against the federal government in 1861 and the years leading up to it that had led the South to conclude it could no longer remain in the Union.

The Confederacy lasted from 1861 to 1885 and its history constituted the first modern war in which the awful technologies of war left the South with an estimated 94,000 battle deaths, and 164,000 dead from disease. Fully 258,000 men fought under its flag. The North lost a total of 360,222 to death and disease. Along with the Reconstruction, the South paid a fearsome price for its integrity and beliefs.

It is a little known fact that there is a monument to the Confederate dead at Arlington National Cemetery. Its inscription says, “Not for fame or reward, Not for place or for rank, Not lured by ambition, Or goaded by necessity, But in Simple Obedience to Duty as they understood it, These men suffered all, Sacrificed all, Dared all—and died.”

Confederate Memorial Day will be celebrated throughout the South. On May 7th in North Carolina, the Sons of Confederate Veterans will gather at the Columbus County Courthouse and the Whiteville Memorial Cemetery.

Here’s where the past and present meet. The featured speaker will be H.K, Edgerton, a man who had spoken last year. “At times the audience was laughing, uproariously, and at others weeping. His presentation is knowledgeable, perceptive, sensitive, politically incorrect, historically correct, humor, and serious—all rolled into a professional presentation of Confederate history that will leave you wanting more.” Edgerton is a Black American of southern heritage, a former president of the NAACP’s Ashville, North Carolina branch.

He has said of his ancestors, they “went to war with their masters”, serving as cooks or farriers, even taking up arms. “There was a love that existed between black and white in the South that transcended the bonds of slavery. We were family.”

That’s something those raised in the North and other regions are not taught and do not understand. It would take, however, another hundred years for the wrongs of slavery to be fully set right in the era of the civil rights movement. It takes more than a Constitutional Amendment to change the human heart.

The sharp political divide that present-day America is experiencing is every bit related to the issue of state’s rights as any that preceded it.

The fear that the federal government has grown too large and is too intrusive in the affairs of the States and of all Americans is a legitimate one. The Union is being severely tested and it is an irony of history that the source of much of that fear and anger is the nation’s first Black President.

It is common parlance these days that “In 2008 we voted for Obama to prove we were not racists. In 2012 we must vote for someone else to prove we are not idiots.”

© Alan Caruba, 20011

This is Confederate Memorial Day in North Carolina

This is Confederate Memorial Day in North Carolina .
…And I Have a Bone to Pick!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

**************

Every year, when spring rolls around, you can count on numerous articles in the mainstream media, and elsewhere, reviling the Confederacy, and so-called Neo-Confederates, the Confederate Battle flag, Proclamations of Confederate History Month, etc, etc, … ad infinitum.

It never fails that Southerners are branded as slavers over and over, and readers are told how vile, and nasty, and ignorant, and just plain E V I L we Southerners are. Most of the ruminations by these writers and commentators are just plain garbage not backed up by REAL history but underwritten by revisionist history. In plain English -- it is BOVINE SCATOLOGY!

I know what I am about to attempt to tell you will fall on mostly deaf ears because many of you anti-Southerners don’t want to hear it, will not hear it, and will continue to deny the truth simply because the facts do not fit your life’s template. TOUGH!

Yes, we had slaves in the South. But so did the north. In fact, the north ran the slave trade. Many of the fortunes of wealthy northeasterners today were built on the slave trade.

My family had no slaves. As sharecroppers there were times when the slave’s living conditions were, in fact, better than theirs!

And I am sick and tired of the anti-southerner’s vindictive claims that the War Between the States was fought entirely to free the slaves. That, dear reader is a bald-faced lie!

Yes, many months into the war, slavery was injected into the “reasons for the war” by the Lincoln Administration. Remember, of all slave-holding and slave-trafficking countries on the globe at the time, America was the ONLY one to abolish slavery through war! THE ONLY ONE!

We are fed the idiotic pabulum of revised history in our public school system that Lincoln was the savior of the Black man in America. We are taught that Lincoln freed the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation. That, too, is a bald-faced lie.

One of the spoils of war is the right to write history the way you want it to be remembered and taught. The Confederate soldier knew that and Confederate General Patrick Cleburne attempted to impress upon his men the meaning of losing the war. He summed it up this way: “…It means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be taught by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by all the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, or maimed veterans as fit objects for derision.” Gen. Cleburne was spot on!

As to Lincoln freeing the slaves, allow me to inquire… have you ever actually read the Emancipation Proclamation? I advise you to do so. When you DO read it, and read it carefully, you will quickly see that it did not free a single slave – NOT ONE!

In reference to the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln, himself, said the following: "The [Emancipation] proclamation has no constitutional or legal justification except as a war measure." That statement was in a letter to Sec. of Treas. Salmon P. Chase; 3 Sep 1863.

The following is a quote from the London Spectator, dated October 1, 1862 concerning the Emancipation Proclamation: "The principle [of the Proclamation] is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States government."

But, we Americans are taught that Lincoln LOVED the black people, right? Well, it isn’t exactly the truth.

Let us examine Lincoln’s own words and try to determine the degree of respect Lincoln held for the Black race:

Abraham Lincoln said the following on September 18, 1858 in a speech in Charleston, Illinois:
"I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races [applause]: that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." -- Reply by Abraham Lincoln to Stephen A. Douglas in the first joint debate, Ottowa, IL; 21 Aug 1858.

Lincoln also said this: “"I have never seen to my knowledge a man, woman, or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social or political, between Negroes and white men." This statement was in his opening speech, fourth joint debate with Douglas, Charleston, IL; 18 Sep 1858.

Lincoln thought the Black man should be equal to the While man, right? Well, think again! Lincoln said this about that: "Negro Equality! Fudge!! How long in the government of a God, great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagoguism as this?" A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as immediate separation is impossible the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. Such separation, if ever affected at all, must be effected by colonization. The enterprise is a difficult one, but 'where there is a will there is a way:' and what colonization needs now is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and at the same time, favorable to, or at least not against our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be." From an address by Abraham Lincoln at Springfield, Illinois, on June 26, 1857.

In a speech at Springfield Illinois on July 17th, 1858, Lincoln said the following: “What I would most desire would be the separation of the black and white races.”

Speaking at Charleston, Illinois, September 18th, 1858, Lincoln said this: “ … I will, to the very last, stand by the law of this state, which forbids the marrying of white people with Negroes.”

There is a very “telling” letter which Lincoln wrote to Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, in response to an article Greeley had written entitled; “Prayer of Twenty Millions.” The letter from Lincoln is dated August 22nd, 1862. In the letter Lincoln says the following:

Dear Sir: I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptible [sic] in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.

Yours,

A. Lincoln

Do you detect the slightest bit of political “double talk” in Lincoln’s letter? Never forget, Lincoln was, first and foremost, a politician! If you had ANY doubt, this letter to Greeley ought to dispel it.

So which is it? Was Lincoln Pro-slavery, of Anti-slavery? You decide.

In his first Inaugural Address before Congress on March 4th, 1861, Lincoln said: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to intervene with the institution of slavery.”

Then, in another letter to Horace Greeley dated March 24th, 1862, Lincoln said: “I am a little uneasy about the abolishment of slavery in this District of Columbia.”

Confused? Oh, it gets even more confusing -- or enlightening -- depending upon the degree to which you admire the truth.

Ever hear of The Corwin Amendment? Some refer to it as the original 13th amendment to the US Constitution. Let’s take a look at it.

On February 28, 1861, the United States House of Representatives approved the resolution by a vote of 133-65 (Page 1285, Congressional Globe). On March 2, 1861, it was approved by the United States Senate with a vote of 24-12 (Page 1403, Congressional Globe). A young Henry Adams observed that the measure narrowly passed both houses due to the lobbying efforts of Abraham Lincoln, who was then the President-Elect.

Why is the Corwin Amendment important? First let’s take a look at the text, shall we?
The text of the Corwin Amendment is as follows:

“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”

Ratification efforts began soon after the measure was adopted and Lincoln endorsed it in his inaugural address. In fact, Lincoln said this about the Corwin Amendment in his first Inaugural Address on March 4th, 1861: “To the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the states, including that of persons held to service … I have NO OBJECTION TO ITS (THE CORWIN AMENDMENT) BEING MADE EXPRESS AND IRRVOCABLE.”

The proposal was ratified by the legislatures of Ohio (May 13, 1861) and Maryland (January 10, 1862). Illinois lawmakers — sitting as a constitutional convention at the time — also approved it, although some still question the validity of that action. It was also considered for ratification in several other states including Kentucky, New York, and Connecticut where it was either rejected or died in committee because wartime issues had begun to preoccupy the states and the nation as a whole.

So why is the Corwin Amendment important today? Because, dear reader, it IS STILL PENDING! As long as it remains a pending amendment, there is the possibility, however slim, that it could still be ratified. The President’s signature is not required, and a President cannot veto an amendment to the constitution.

Congress even passed the Crittendon-Johnson resolution on July 22, 1861 in which the Congress announced that the purpose of the war “was NOT interference with the rights or established institutions of those states, but to Preserve the Union with the rights of the several states unimpaired.”

Then, in December of 1862, in his State of the Union message to Congress, Lincoln proposed three constitutional amendments: 1 – Slaves not freed by the Emacipation proclamation were to be freed over a 37 year period, to be completed by January 1st, 1900. 2 – Provided compensation to owners for the loss of their slave property. 3 – The government would transport “FREED BLACKS,” at government expense, out of the United States -- and relocate them in Latin America and in Africa.

Now. Does any of this sound like the Lincoln you know -- or the Lincoln you were taught about in the government indoctrination centers we refer to as Public Schools? Probably not! Ask yourself how much more you DO NOT KNOW about President Abraham Lincoln.

For instance -- did you know that Lincoln started a war without the consent of Congress? Did you know that he illegally blockaded southern ports; illegally suspended habeaus corpus and arrested tens of thousands of his political opponents; illegally orchestrated the secession of West Virginia; shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers and imprisioned their editors and owners; deported the most outspoken member of the Democratic Party, Congressman Clement I. Vallandigham of Ohio; confiscated private property, including, by the way, firearms; ignored the Ninth and Tenth Amendments; tolerated the arrest of ministers who refused to publicly pray for him; arrested duly elected members of the Maryland legislature, as well as Congressman Henry May of Baltimore; and supported a law that indemnified federal officials from all these illegal acts.
Shocking, Right?

THIS, dear reader, is the Lincoln I know – not the “Saintly Lincoln” revised history forces on us today. The “air brushed” Lincoln we know today is pure propaganda.

The facts we enumerated above can be easily verified on the internet. Once you begin digging don’t be surprized when you turn up even more historical accounts of Lincoln’s duality. Your research will present you with a choice. You must choose between the REAL Lincoln, or the REVISED Lincoln.

Someone once said “so much of what we know is wrong.” The wise man, in today’s world, questions everything.

Here in North Carolina we celebrate our Confederate history today. By “history,” I mean the TRUE history of of the Confederacy.

As a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, I took an oath to see that the true history of the of the Confederate soldier is preserved and passed on to generations yet unborn. It is a story of courage, bravery, audacity, faith, pride and honor. I will make every effort to see that his story is told and then passed on.

It is the oral tradition of passing on a people’s story, which is as old as man himself. In this way we can be sure that no matter what the revisionists do to the “official” record, we will have the truth. And it is the truth that makes one free.

J. D. Longstreet

Confederate Memorial Day

Confederate Memorial Day

J. D. Longstreet
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Today, May 10th, in North Carolina and South Carolina, is Confederate Memorial Day.

Yesterday, I attended the local “Sons of Confederate Veterans” Confederate Memorial Day celebration as I do every year, and, as I have done for several years, I presented a few remarks concerning the Confederate Soldier, or as I sometimes refer to them, the “Southern Knights.”

As this was a celebration of the southern warrior, I spoke on the attributes of the Confederate soldier… who he was, what he was like, what he did, what he felt, why he did what he did, and why he felt he MUST do what he did, and so on and so forth.

When one studies the Confederate soldier, one quickly comes to understand that there has never been, before or after, the American “War Between the States”, a warrior quite like that “Southern Knight”. As a combat soldier, he was more akin to the various “special forces” of numerous militaries around the world than he was to the “regular” soldiers we are acquainted with today. He was a killing machine… with good manners. It is impossible to overlook the fact that 800,000 badly equipped, badly clothed, badly fed, but wonderfully led Confederate soldiers managed to hold at bay 2-1/2 million federal troops of the US military for four of the longest, bloodiest, years in American history. They were masterful at the art of war.

It is absolutely shameful that political correctness has driven its talons so deeply into American consciousness that to speak of the Confederate soldier in anyway other than a defender of slavery is totally unacceptable. Modern day ancestors of the Confederate soldier are taught that their great, great, great, great grandfathers were traitors! There is no other way to address that accusation but to say it is a bald-faced lie. The Confederate soldier was a citizen of another country. He was a citizen of the Confederate States of America, not the United States of America. One cannot betray a country of which one is not a citizen. Plus, there is this fact: Something like 97% of the citizens of the Confederacy owned NO slaves. Common sense says men do not put their lives on the line, in a war, to preserve another man’s right to hold another human being in bondage!

As I spoke to the gathering in one of our oldest, and most beautiful, cemeteries yesterday an article I had recently read persistently nagged at me. It was an article by Paul Gottfried entitled: “ On Loving To Hate The South.”

Referring to my cohorts in the “Sons of Confederate Veterans” Mr. Gottfried said: “You may take pride in those whom you honor as your linear ancestors but equally in the anger of those who would begrudge you the right to honor them. What your critics find inexcusable is that you are celebrating your people’s past, which was a profoundly conservative one based on family and community, and those who created and defended it. For your conspicuous indiscretions, I salute you; and I trust that generations to come will take note of your willingness to defy the spirit of what is both a cowardly and tyrannical age.” Mr. Gottfried nailed it! You can read Mr. Gottfried’s entire article HERE.

Mr. Gottfried had said earlier in his article that we “Southern traditionalists are still celebrating a pre-bourgeois, agrarian, and communally structured world. It appealed to hierarchy, place, and family; and its members displayed no special interest in reaching out to alien cultures. Such ideals and attitudes and the landed, manorial society out of which they came, point back to a nineteenth century conservative configuration.”

It is here we find the root cause of the virulent hatred for the ensign of the South, the Confederate Battle Flag, and for the hatred of the people of the Southern region of the United States. It is our conservatism. It is our unyielding determination to hold on to the conservative values of our Southern ancestors.

I watched my fellow Southerners stand in silent reverence as the troops bearing the US flag passed and I watched as we all stood and recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the US flag, and then the NC state flag, and to the Confederate flag. I saw no contradiction. This was a gathering of conservative people who love and honor their country, the USA, just as their Southern Ancestors loved and honored THEIR country, the Confederate States of America. We were remembering THEM and honoring THEM and the commonality of our conservative philosophy which is STILL alive and well in their off-spring today.

Many of us in the South today worry that we see many of the same causes of the conflict of the 1860’s reflected in the political conflicts between liberal and conservative Americans today. Having yet not fully recovered from the so-called “reconstruction” of the South after that bitter war, we are concerned that as remote as it may seem, to those not versed in the history of this country, we may be headed for another conflict in which Americans will square-off with fellow Americans.

These are dangerous times for America. Standing in silence and watching those two red, white, and blue flags that once flew over the two nations that briefly occupied this land was a sobering moment. To realize that only the people living below those flags can prevent a repetition of history was equally as sobering. It was a jolting moment for this scribe and for the others who approached me after the ceremony to express their similar fears.

Never has America been as divided since the War Between the States. We are, today, two countries living beneath a single flag, as a gentleman from South Carolina reminded me. As he spoke his eyes were gazing at the sacred soil of that old cemetery and his head was slowly shaking from side to side as if to say “NO” to the unthinkable. But, I could not escape the thought that it obviously wasn’t unthinkable as we stood just six feet, or so, above the evidence screaming in silence a warning that history says will go unheeded.

J.D. Longstreet

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Conservative+Liberal+USA+CSA