A Yankee-Born Confederate Examines the "Lost Cause"
by Greg Loren Durand
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I was born, raised, and "educated" in Southern California. In
the California
public school system I was sustained on a steady diet of anti-South
propaganda and revisionist history. I was taught that the Republicans,
with
"Ole Honest Abe" Lincoln at the helm, were responsible for
"saving the
Union" from those who sought to destroy it in order to perpetuate
and extend
Southern slavery. As do millions of patriotic American schoolchildren
every
year, I memorized the Gettysburg Address, listened with rapt attention
to
stories of the Underground Railroad, and thrilled to read of the
military
exploits of such Northern Generals as Ulysses S. Grant and William T.
Sherman.
Influenced by a steady barrage of sixty second sound-bites on the
evening
news and the elaborate, yet fanciful, "reality" concocted by
the
movie-moguls in Hollywood, a Southern drawl would invoke instant images
in
my mind of sheet-clad imbeciles dancing around a burning cross, or some
beer-bellied, tobacco-spitting "redneck" hurling racial slurs
at those "of
color." The "Mason-Dixon Line" was to me an unscalable
wall of separation
between the socially sophisticated and open-minded North and the morally
degenerate and bigoted South; it was a line I never wanted to cross.
However, about three years ago, I had a "great awakening."
Everything that I
had been taught about the South and the so-called "Civil War"
of
1861-1865 -- more accurately known as the War for Southern Independence
--
started to crumble as I began to read what the Southerners themselves
had to
say. All my life I had been told one side of the story -- that of the
victor. But don't the "losers" have a story to tell as well?
Was the War
really fought over the issue of slavery, as we have been told, or was it
fought for other reasons?
It is estimated that only about six percent of Southerners at the
outbreak
of the war owned any slaves at all, and an even smaller number were
wealthy
enough to afford the hundreds of laborers which are often associated
with
Southern agrarianism. It simply was not possible for the average
Southern
planter to pay $1,500 in cash (that was in gold, not inflated paper
"money")
per slave; even those who could were frequently to be found picking
cotton
alongside their slaves. Despite the accounts of Northern Abolitionists
of
merciless whips and welted backs, of cruel masters and oppressed
servants,
such were in fact a rarity in the predominantly Christian South. In the
late
1930s, the Works Project Administration of the Federal Government
collected
the testimonies of former slaves throughout the occupied South which are
preserved in The Slave Narratives in the National Archives of
Washington,
D.C. The vast majority of those interviewed had fond memories of their
masters and mistresses on Southern plantations. For example, Mary Rice,
a
former slave of Alabama, stated, "Slavery times wuz sho good times.
We wuz
fed an' clothed an' had nothin' to worry about." Tom Douglas, also
from
Alabama, reflecting on the "emancipation" brought about by the
North, said,
"I was happy all de time in slavery days, but dere ain't much to
git happy
over now." Gus Brown of Richmond, Virginia remembered his former
master with
these words: "I cannot forget old massa. He was good and kind.... I
knows I
will see him in heaven...."
Let us not forget that, whether it was right or wrong, slavery was
protected
by the "supreme law of the land" -- the Constitution for the
United States
of America -- and as such, all those who held public office in
Washington
D.C. were bound by oath to ensure its continued protection. Only a
constitutional amendment, proposed by a two-thirds vote in Congress and
ratified by three-fourths of the states could bring about a lawful
change in
that document. Abraham Lincoln knew this to be true, and said so in his
first inaugural speech on the steps of the Capital:
have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the
institution
of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful
right
to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
In his speech at Peoria, Illinois on 16 October 1854, he revealed his
true
feelings toward the Black man by declaring:
Free [the slaves] and make them politically and socially our equals? My
own
feelings will not admit of this.... We cannot make them equals.
In his reply to Stephen Douglas on 18 September 1858, scarcely five
years
before he issued his celebrated Emancipation Proclamation and altered
the
course of the war to an attack on Southern slavery as a calculated
"war
measure" to cripple the "enemy," Lincoln stated:
I will say... that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing
about,
in any way, a social and political equality of the White and Black
races,
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.
[T]here is a physical difference between the White and Black races which
I
believe will forever forbid the two races living together in terms of
social
and political equality. And in so much 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.
No White supremists in our own day have stated their racist views with
any
more clarity, and yet such a man now sits enthroned in Washington D.C.
as
the very incarnation of the "American spirit" of freedom and
equality and
the hallowed patron saint of the Civil Rights movement.
It is not widely known that the Southern state of Virginia was the very
first political body in the entire world to enact legislation to end the
slave trade. On 5 October 1778, the General Assembly passed "An act
for
preventing the further importation of slaves," in which "any
slave brought
into the state contrary to the law would be then and forevermore
free." In
keeping with such opposition to the wickedness of the slave trade, the
Constitution of the Confederate States of 1861 permanently abolished the
practice in Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1. Confederate President
Jefferson
Davis made clear his plans for the infant country when he stated,
"The slave
must be made fit for his freedom by education and discipline and thus be
made unfit for slavery."
It was Davis' prediction that slavery "will eventually be
lost"; it had
outlived its usefulness and would inevitably die a natural death.
Although
there were indeed some who believed that the natural condition of the
Black
man was servitude, the prevailing opinion in the South was that of
gradual
emancipation. Some Southern leaders, such as General Robert Edward Lee,
were
wholly opposed to African slavery.
Let the Reader contrast such sentiments with the actions of the invading
Northern forces. In a letter to General Grant, General John A. Logan
reported that his men were "capturing negroes, with or with out
their
consent.... They are being conscripted." In 1864, General Innis N.
Palmer
wrote to General Butler, "The negroes will not go voluntarily, so I
am
obliged to force them." And at the same time Black men were being
taken
against their will into "service" to the United States, Yankee
soldiers were
"committing rapes on the negroes" and were "in the negro
huts for weeks,
debauching the females." A war to free the slaves? Only a deluded
mind would
believe such nonsense.
What then would inspire a vast majority of non-slaveholding
Confederates,
many of whom were as young as fourteen years of age, to shoulder their
muskets and charge with resolve into the very face of death? What gave
these
men the mental fortitude and courage to stand firm in their defiance of
the
mightiest war machine the world had seen up to that time? I firmly
believe
that the rag-tag "Rebels" were motivated by their love for
their homeland,
their families, and for their Christian roots. These men deserve to be
honored for withstanding tremendous odds in an attempt to secure for
future
generations of Southerners the eternal "blessings of liberty."
In the words
of one Confederate soldier:
I was a soldier in Virginia in the campaigns of Lee and Jackson, and I
declare I never met a Southern soldier who had drawn his sword to
perpetuate
slavery.... What he had chiefly at heart was the preservation of the
supreme
and sacred right of self-government.
Even the editors of the London Times acknowledged this to be true when
they
stated on 7 November 1861:
The contest is really for empire on the side of the North and for
independence on that of the South....
This "supreme and sacred right of self-government" is not
based on the color
of a man's skin, but on the readiness of his soul to accept such a lofty
responsibility. As such, self-government most assuredly would have been
eventually enjoyed by the slaves of Dixie had the fanaticism and hatred
of
nineteenth-century Abolitionists not prevented her from implementing
measures for a gradual emancipation which would honor both the property
rights of Southern planters as well as humanly prepare the slaves for
the
duties which accompany freedom. Such a task did not require the shed
blood
of over half a million men and the anguish of countless grieving widows
and
mothers. Even the most noble ends do not justify violent and
revolutionary
means.
That is why, upon moving to my adopted and now-beloved Southern homeland
not
long ago, I promptly and proudly hoisted a Confederate Battle Flag above
my
home. I am no racist; I do not have a sheet and hood tucked away in the
closet; I don't even chew tobacco. And yet, this Yankee-born convert to
the
"Lost Cause" (it ain't lost, by the way) feels his heart swell
with pride
and love for the Old South when he sees the Battle Flag floating
majestically in the Mississippi breeze and sometimes even gets a lump in
the
throat when he hears the sweet strains of "Dixie." My own
ancestors "wore
the blue," but I now make my stand with the "boys in grey"
and wait for the
day when native Southerners will no longer be ashamed of their rich
heritage
and will join with those who are turning their backs on the siren song
of
modernity in order to return to the cherished principles of the past.
Deo
Vindice!
Recommended Materials
George Edmonds, Facts and Falsehoods Concerning the War on the South
1861-1865 (Wiggins, Mississippi: Crown Rights Book Company, [1904]
1997).
Mildred Lewis Rutherford, A True Estimate of Abraham Lincoln and
Vindication
of the South (Wiggins, Mississippi: Crown Rights Book Company, [1923]
1997).
Greg Loren Durand, essay: "The War Powers of Abraham Lincoln: How
the
Sixteenth President of the United States Suspended the Constitution And
Why
It Has Never Been Restored to the American People."
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