All is well, all is well!
He’s awfully sanguine for a guy with such a feeble grasp of the actual, y’kow, historical facts.
No, probably not. Not while Real Americans remain content to sit passively back and permit Violent Left mountebanks to harrass them, torment them, murder them at will, and just generally run roughshod over them, makig no response to such abuse more devastating than filing another lawsuit, penning another windy op-ed threatening dire repercussions such as frowning angrily in their general direction, and of course Voating Harderer!© at them than ever before.
I shit you not, our Founding Fathers wouldn’t deign to piss in our mouths if our gums were on fire, we’ve become so gorram weak, evolved, and contemptible these days. Fret not, though, final victory is at hand. Yeppers, after rancorous internecine debates, investigations by blue-ribbon Congressional panels, and blood-curdling threats from Ms Lindsey Graham, we’ve got ’em right where they want us!
In 1776, American colonists, despairing that their rights as British citizens were being trampled upon by their overbearing king, George III, decided to secede from the British Empire. Thomas Jefferson wrote down their grievances in the Declaration of Independence. Just a few of them include the cutting off of trade, imposing taxes without consent, depriving the people of trial by jury, suspending colonial legislatures, and waging war on the colonists. I think Jefferson’s best argument was, “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.” Yep, sounds as though they had reasons to rebel.
In 1861, following the election of Abraham Lincoln, wealthy landowners pushed eleven Southern states, where slavery was legal, to secede from the United States. Much of the rhetoric claimed that the war was about states’ rights, but that was mostly a smokescreen. Unlike the rebellion against King George, these people had no grievances — only fears that slavery would be abolished, ending the free labor on which their economic system depended.
Yeah, no. NOT about States’ Rights, you protest? A”smokescreen,” you aver? Poppycock, sayeth moi.
Of course, CW v1.0 anti-historians like the above yayhoo are extremely eager to dismiss States’ Rights as one of the leading causes for the War Of Northern Aggression, likely because the complex realities make it much more difficult to saddle up the “all about slavery!” hobbyhorse and ride it into the fucking ground.
So just never you mind, you RAYCISS!!!©, that no more than 30%, AT MOST, of Southerners ever actually owned slaves. Nor did most of them own plantations, land, those lovely antebellum mansions as seen in Gone With The Wind, a pair of shoes, or much of anything else, frankly.
This being so, presumably the aforementioned dirt poor, slave-deprived sons of Dixie wouldn’t likely have been just wildly enthusiastic about packing up Grampa’s old shootin’ arn; some moth-eaten scraps of clothing, shoes if he had any; a small haversack of acorns, hardtack, grain, and two=three strips of moldy possum jerky, and go a-traipsing off to war in defense of a “peculiar institution” he’d never had much to do with his entire life long.
Of course there were several other factors which our disingenuous “scholar” above appears not to know much about either. Maybe he could try boning up on, say, cotton warehouse receipts sometime; that oughta be enough to give him a solid head-start before he begins working his way up to the more complicated, obscure stuff.
As we all know, after every war the victors write the history in whatever manner suits them, forever painting themselves as saintly, noble, and entirely blameless while their defeated foes were in fact ravening demons in human shape. But dammit, do they have to be so blasted sanctimonious and just plain obnoxious about it every single time? Having grown up in the South, I can confirm that after having this fictitious twaddle crammed down one’s gullet without remit can wax pretty durned wearisome over time.
Those unshod, dirty-faced, ill-nourished field hands, sharecroppers, and sundry ragamuffins had another rationale for fighting the Yankee aggressor, surely a more compelling reason than the remote, otherworldly principle of States’ Rights.
This rationale, not particularly well-known even among ardent students of Civil War lore, reveals itself in a brief exchange shouted across the soon-to-crumble MLR during a lull in the horrific Battle of Fredericksburg, betwixt one of Lee’s Weary Boys and his Union counterpart. Asked by the Bluebelly why he was fighting, Johnny Reb hollered in reply: Because y’all are down here, Yank, that’s why!
Kinda says it all, wouldn’t you say? Viewed from this angle, the long, slow slide into war, anguish, and incomprehensible horror starts to look disquietingly familiar, doesn’t it? That plainspoken Confederate lad didn’t give a fiddler’s fuck about slavery; he took up arms strictly to protect his home, hearth, and kinfolk against an invading army conducting a war of aggression. So it was for the vast majority of Southern troops as well: they wanted nothing more extravagant or outlandish than to just be letf alone by an overbearing, rapacious, and too-powerful Federal megalith bent on ruling and not governing.
Naaahhhh, not familiar to the contemporary ear at all, is it? As far back as the mid-1800s, the pattern was set, the trend established, the die cast. By the turn of the 20th century the fork in the road which leads ever down and down into tyranny, despotism, and immiseration had been taken. Unfortunately, it’s a dark, narrow, poorly marked lane with many twistings and turnings, a one-way route on which there is no easy way to reverse course and return to Consitutionally-correct governance again. Not without a great deal of pain, bereavement, and injury to body, spirit, well-being…,just about everything you can imagine, really.
Worst of all, Tyranny Road had been mapped for us long ago, drawn expertly, exactingly, and in great detail for us by our forebears—a deadly highway to Hell which our Founding Fathers cautioned us repeatedly to keep ourselves well way from. it is to our eternal discredit that we sxtuidly refused to heed the warnings o our sagacious ancestors—not just one single time, but again and again and again and again. Our heedless, stubborn mistake was a century in the making, and was in no wise excusable as merely a fleeting relaxation of vigilance, a moment’s inattention, a minor stumble in which the only harm done is to our pride.
Nope, not hard;y, none of the above. This was a blunder of titanic proportions, a ruinous act of wanton negligence and hubris which stands to cost us absolutely everything.Nor is this just “one of those things” that can happen to anybody, really. This was a heedless discarding of certain hard-to-come-by jewels (Freedom? Limited government? Consent of the governed? Unalienable rights? Government officials as servants, not masters?) which are beyond price, purchased for us by generations of Americans going waaaay back.
These extraordinary gifts were meant to be passed down to succeeding generations who would likewise appreciate them, nurture them, safeguard them, maybe expand them if possible. They would then be passed down again in due course. Thus did the world turn, for many generations.
The Big Q: Were we duly grateful for the unique legacy freely handed down to us? Did we strive ceaselessly to be mindful of the gift we had been given? To give humble thanks for the good people who worked so tirelessly, sacrificed so selflessly, gave of themselves so unstintingly, to bequeath such a bounty to us? Were we diligent in making ourselves worthy of this munificence?
Ohhh, if only.
I didn’t bother with the rest of this reeking shitpile of an article; the author having screwed the Civil War pooch so thoroughly in the opening ‘graphs, I just couldn’t see any reason to slog through the rest of it. I would like to note, by way of wrapping up this post, an additional related point:
Contra the self-serving version fabricated by the Yankee victors, the Confederate states wished to leave the Union peaceably, and firmly believed in their absolute right to do so, considering this to be so obviously in agreement with the precepts of America’s Founding documents as to make further explanation tantamount to a personal insult.
As no less august a personage than President Jefferson Davis said in his First Inaugural Address, the Confederacy bore the US government, its President, nor even the people of Yankeeland no ill will, and wished no harm to them. The address begins by spelling out the new Confederate nation’s philosophical roots in the ideals of the Founding Fathers.
Looking forward to the speedy establishment of a permanent government to take the place of this, and which by its greater moral and physical power will be better able to combat with the many difficulties which arise from the conflicting interests of separate nations, I enter upon the duties of the office to which I have been chosen with the hope that the beginning of our career as a Confederacy may not be obstructed by hostile opposition to our enjoyment of the separate existence and independence which we have asserted, and, with the blessing of Providence, intend to maintain. Our present condition, achieved in a manner unprecedented in the history of nations, illustrates the American idea that governments rest upon the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish governments whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established.
The declared purpose of the compact of Union from which we have withdrawn was “to establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity;” and when, in the judgment of the sovereign States now composing this Confederacy, it had been perverted from the purposes for which it was ordained, and had ceased to answer the ends for which it was established, a peaceful appeal to the ballot-box declared that so far as they were concerned, the government created by that compact should cease to exist. In this they merely asserted a right which the Declaration of Independence of 1776 had defined to be inalienable; of the time and occasion for its exercise, they, as sovereigns, were the final judges, each for itself. The impartial and enlightened verdict of mankind will vindicate the rectitude of our conduct, and He who knows the hearts of men will judge of the sincerity with which we labored to preserve the Government of our fathers in its spirit. The right solemnly proclaimed at the birth of the States, and which has been affirmed and reaffirmed in the bills of rights of States subsequently admitted into the Union of 1789, undeniably recognize in the people the power to resume the authority delegated for the purposes of government. Thus the sovereign States here represented proceeded to form this Confederacy, and it is by abuse of language that their act has been denominated a revolution. They formed a new alliance, but within each State its government has remained, the rights of person and property have not been disturbed. The agent through whom they communicated with foreign nations is changed, but this does not necessarily interrupt their international relations.
Ayup, seems clear enough to me. Even this slightly more bellicose pre-war speech still commends the olive branch over the bayonet.
It requires but a cursory examination of the Constitution of the United States; but a partial knowledge of its history and of the motives of the men who formed it, to see how utterly fallacious it is to ascribe to them the purpose of interfering with the domestic institutions of any of the States. But if a disrespect for that instrument, a fanatical disregard of its purposes, should ever induce a majority, however large, to seek by amending the Constitution, to pervert it from its original object, and to deprive you of the equality which your fathers bequeathed to you, I say let the star of Mississippi be snatched from the constellation to shine by its inherent light, if it must be so, through all the storms and clouds of war.
I say to you here as I have said to the Democracy of New York, if it should ever come to pass that the Constitution shall be perverted to the destruction of our rights so that we shall have the mere right as a feeble minority unprotected by the barrier of the Constitution to give an ineffectual negative vote in the Halls of Congress, we shall then bear to the federal government the relation our colonial fathers did to the British crown, and if we are worthy of our lineage we will in that event redeem our rights even if it be through the process of revolution. And it gratifies me to be enabled to say that no portion of the speech to which I have referred was received with more marked approbation by the Democracy there assembled than the sentiment which has just been cited. I am happy also to state that during the past summer I heard in many places, what previously I had only heard from the late President Pierce, the declaration that whenever a Northern army should be assembled to march for the subjugation of the South, they would have a battle to fight at home before they passed the limits of their own State, and one in which our friends claim that the victory will at least be doubtful.
Now, as in 1851, I hold separation from the Union by the State of Mississippi to be the last remedy—the final alternative. In the language of the venerated Calhoun I consider the disruption of the Union as a great though not the greatest calamity. I would cling tenaciously to our constitutional Government, seeing as I do in the fraternal Union of equal States the benefit to all and the fulfillment of that high destiny which our fathers hoped for and left it for their sons to attain. I love the flag of my country with even more than a filial affection. Mississippi gave me in my boyhood to her military service. For many of the best years of my life I have followed that flag and upheld it on fields where if I had fallen it might have been claimed as my winding sheet. When I have seen it surrounded by the flags of foreign countries, the pulsations of my heart have beat quicker with every breeze which displayed its honored stripes and brilliant constellation. I have looked with veneration on those stripes as recording the original size of our political family and with pride upon that constellation as marking the family’s growth; I glory in the position which Mississippi’s star holds in the group; but sooner than see its lustre dimmed—sooner than see it degraded from its present equality—would tear it from its place to be set even on the perilous ridge of battle as a sign round which Mississippi’s best and bravest should gather to the harvest-home of death.
Bold mine, and wholly dispositive.
The claim that the uniquely American concept of States’ Rights was not a primary cause of the first Civil War is laughably spurious. To disregard said concept’s crucial importance to the Founding Fathers as one of the strongest bulwarks against the establishment of tyrannical government in America is to be historically illiterate. To contend that Jefferson Davis was ever anything but A) a conscientious, ruminative patriot who reverenced his former country, and B) a reluctant secessionist who had to be all but dragged into rejecting the grotesque parody of itself the US government had become, is the mark of either a perfidious liar, an ignoramus, or a self-beclowning fool.
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