Over the next four years Americans will be able to remember and teach our children the tragic events of the War Between the States, the War of Southern Independence, or Civil War as it is called.
Southerners don’t like the term civil war as they were not attempting to take over the country or DC in 1861 any more than George Washington and the Continental Army sought to take over England in the 1770’s.
They were seceding, physically, politically, and legally, as I will have Thomas Jefferson kindly review with us in a few minutes.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans are heading up most of the Sesqui events in their respective states. This weekend I am off to Montgomery for the parade and reenactment of Jefferson Davis’ inauguration at the Alabama capitol. BBC international radio is coming in, along with a Swiss TV station doing a documentary. Anyone in driving distance is welcome to attend this Saturday the 19th…parade at 11:00am and the capitol event at noon.
Some might ask why are were going to cover this extensively on VT. Good question.
Southerners have fought in disproportionate numbers in all of America’s wars, at times up to 70% of the ranks. Confederates were officially made American veterans by Act of Congress in the 1958, and their headstones come from the VA.
There are American soldiers on the various front lines now whose families at home are being smeared as the offspring of traitors, by ignorant and malicious individuals and groups like the NAACP and SPLC and their minions.
Have you ever heard of a Confederate heritage club in a public high school? No, despite so-called multiculturalism, they are not allowed. When it comes to abuse of history, carjacking it for political or ideological purposes, our Civil War is a target rich environment.
The United Confederate Veterans passed their flag to the Sons of Confederate Veterans with the pledge to defend the good name of the Confederate soldier. Sadly, the United States is the only country where it has to be defended.
Military academies all over the world routinely study the campaigns of the South’s great generals in their doomed struggle. All of Europe was aghast at the Northern scorched earth war of war on civilians, shocked that such warfare would be conducted in America, of all places.
The modern concept of total war, where civilians and their property were deemed fair game for destruction, is a dark stain on American history as it was copied for a hundred years at horrendous cost in innocent lives. There is correspondence between Generals Grant and Sherman where they discuss and agree that should the North lose the war they would be justly hanged as war criminals.
And lastly, sixty to eighty million Americans are Confederate descendants. Harry Truman was a grandson. Few know that General Nathan Bedford Forrest, III died over the skies of German in 1943 during a bombing mission.
His body was recovered and is buried in Arlington. Sgt. Alvin York, WWI medal of honor recipient had his grandfather dragged to death behind a horse down a mountainside, by Yankee sympathizers.
But this does not prevent a never ending supply of airheads referring to Confederates as Nazis when it suites them, the result of a long running dumbing down of America, and just plain old fashioned hatred by some.
One real bad bunch was General George Patton’s family. Great uncle Waller Patton died in Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg. Grandfather Col. George S. Patton was killed at the battle of Opequon (Winchester, VA).
Uncles John M. and Isaac Patton were Confederate Colonels. George Patton’s father knew Gen. John Singleton Mosby the cavalryman who fought under J.E.B. Stuart.
And worst of all that rebel Jim Dean…he comes from the Culpepper bunch in Co. C, 40th Alabama Infantry, every male relative between 15 and 45…Vicksburg, Look Out Mountain, Resaca, and Battle of Atlanta.
Yes Sir. You can just look in the eyes of all the above and just tell the whole bunch are traitors. Patton and Jim Dean’s ancestors fought in the Rev War, too, where all that secessionist bad blood came from.
Civil war veteran soldier footage, captured between 1913 and 1938
“I remember hearing the chargers braying on the left as the men went up the slope, the Southerners among them yip-yipping their rebel yells…Meissner’s company went up the hill with 240 men and came back with 2″… “Bubba Yates, Ole ‘Bama ’45 and a divinity student, spent his last night of combat on the forward slope of Half Moon (Okinawa). He fired his BAR bursts at the enemy till dawn. Six Nip bodies were found around him. He was bleeding from four gunshot wounds; corpsman carried him back to a field hospital. All the way he muttered, “Vicksburg, Vicksburg”… from Goodbye Darkness, William Manchester, WWII Marine…1979, (Manchester was platoon leader)
What Manchester did not realize is that when Sons of Confederate Veterans go into battle, there are ghosts that go with them. Vicksburg, Mississippi suffered a long siege and bombardment from Grant’s legions while awaiting reinforcements which never came…finally surrendering on July 4th, 1863 just as Gettysburg was winding down. The city did not celebrate July 4th for the next 80 years.
Now on to our mini history lesson today on the rebel traitor myth. All West Point serving officers from the period had used the same constitutional law text book by scholar William Rawle, where they were taught all states having the right to secede.
“The States, then, may wholly withdraw from the Union, but while they continue, they must retain the character of representative republics…If a majority of the people deliberately and peaceably resolve to relinquish the republican form of government, they cease to be members of the Union…the secession of as state from the Union depends on the will of the people if such state.”…William Rawle, from A View of the Constitution, Chapter XXXII, Of the Permanence of the Union. http://www.constitution.org/wr/rawle_32.htm
New Englands states had planned to seceed during the War of 1812 at the Hartford Convention 1814. They had sided with the British anyway…provisioning English ships in their ports and supplying the British Army in Canada with provisions. Yes they were going to join Canada. Such behavior has been called treason throughout all history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford_Convention
The Doctrine of States’ Rights
Thomas Jefferson’s Letter to Gideon Granger
[Monticello] Aug. 13, 1800
Dear Sir, — I received with great pleasure your favor of June 4, and am much comforted by the appearance of a change of opinion in your State; for tho’ we may obtain, & I believe shall obtain, a majority in the legislature of the United States, attached to the preservation of the federal Constitution according to its obvious principles, & those on which it was known to be received; attached equally to the preservation to the States of those rights unquestionably remaining with them; friends to the freedom of religion, freedom of the press, trial by jury & to economical government; opposed to standing armies, paper systems, war, & all connection, other than commerce, with any foreign nation; in short, a majority firm in all those principles which we have espoused and the federalists have opposed uniformly; still, should the whole body of New England continue in opposition to these principles of government, either knowingly or through delusion, our government will be a very uneasy one. It can never be harmonious & solid, while so respectable a portion of its citizens support principles which go directly to a change of the federal Constitution, to sink State governments, consolidate them into one, and to monarchize that.
Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents , must, from circumstance of distance, be unable to administer & overlook all details necessary for the good government of the citizens, and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite the public agents to corruption, plunder & waste.
And I do verily believe, that if the principle where to prevail, of a common law being in force in the U.S., (which principle possesses the general government at once of all the powers of the State governments, and reduces us to a single consolidated government,) it would become the most corrupt government on the earth.
You have seen the practises by which the public servants have been able to cover their conduct, or, where that could not be done, delusions by which they have varnished it for the eye of their constituents. What an augmentation of the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building & office-hunting would be produced by an assumption of all the States powers into the hands of the general government. The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest & best, that the States are independent as to everything within themselves, & united as to everything respecting foreign nations.
Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage for themselves, and our general government may be reduced to a very simple organization, & a very inexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants.
But I repeat, that this simple & economical mode of government can never be secured, if the New England States continue to support the contrary system. I rejoice, therefore, in every appearance of their returning to those principles which I had always imagined to be almost innate in them. In this State, a few persons were deluded by the X.Y.Z. duperies.
You saw the effect of it in our last Congressional representatives, chosen under their influence. This experiment on their credulity is now seen into, and our next representation will be as republican as it has heretofore been. On the whole, we hope, that by a part of the Union having held on to the principles of the Constitution, time has been given to the States to recover from the temporary frenzy into which they have been decoyed, to rally round the Constitution, & to rescue it from the destruction with which it had been threatened even at their own hand.
I see copied from the American Magazine two numbers of a paper signed Don Quixote, most excellently adapted to introduce the real truth to the minds even of the most prejudiced.
Copyright@ Jim W. Dean
Jim W. Dean was an active editor on VT from 2010-2022. He was involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews.
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