The South Was Right

by James Ronald Kennedy

  The Baptists did this less by deliberate missionary efforts than by accepting Negro members on a basis of Christian brotherhood that seems strange in the twentieth-century South. There were many instances in which gifted Negroes were allowed to preach to congregations of both races.97

  These stories of a warm and close relationship between black and white people in the Old South are not isolated stories. There are many others.

  BILL YOPP, FORMER SLAVE AND CONFEDERATE SOLDIER

  Bill Yopp was born a slave in Laurens County, Georgia.98 As a young man he and Thomas Yopp played and grew up together. When war broke out, Thomas Yopp volunteered in Company H, Fourteenth Georgia Regiment. Bill asked and received permission to go with his master to the war. Bill served his master as cook and assisted him during sickness and when his master was wounded.

  As the war progressed, Thomas Yopp was promoted to the rank of captain of his company. Captain Yopp and Bill were sent to what is now West Virginia, where Bill was often between the lines of the Confederates and United States armies. Had Bill wanted to run away from Captain Yopp and the Confederate army he could have done so without any problem, but as Bill said, “I had no inclination to go to the Union side, as I did not know the Union soldiers and the Confederate soldiers I did know, and I believed then as now, tried and true friends are better than friends you do not know.”99 Note how Bill, the slave of a Confederate soldier, describes the Confederate soldiers as “tried and true friends.”

  Even after Yankee-induced freedom, Bill and many other ex-slaves stayed loyal to their former masters. During this time many former masters were worse off than the freed slaves. Many such white people were protected and fed by their former slaves. In the story of Bill Yopp the author relates how Bill and other ex-slaves cared for their former masters:

  … [D]uring the transition period, many of the ex-slaves, Bill among them, supplied the white families with freewill offerings of such supplies as they had. In some plantations for a year or more the writer knows of instances where the negroes brought food each Saturday to the families of their former owners.100

  Just before the outbreak of World War I, Captain Yopp was admitted to the Confederate Soldiers’ Home in Atlanta, Georgia. Bill made many visits to Captain Yopp and all the old soldiers at the home. At Christmas Bill would visit the home and bring gifts of food and money to the residents. At this time Bill would be taken into the chapel, where he would make a speech to the veterans. In honor of his affection and gifts to them, the old Confederate soldiers had a medal struck and given to Bill.101 By a unanimous vote, the board of trustees offered Bill a permanent residence at the Confederate Soldiers’ Home.

  Bill Yopp, former slave, Confederate veteran, and friend of the old soldiers of the South, died on June 3, 1936, and was buried in the Confederate Cemetery in Marietta, Georgia.102

  SUMMARY

  No other issue in American history has been abused more than the history of African servitude in the South. People who dare to speak about slavery in a light other than that demanded by the neo- Abolitionist left will find themselves an outcast from modern “P.C.” society. Nevertheless, when we look at America, we find that many names that we associate with the development of this country have been associated with slavery. The names of the Puritan Fathers of New England loom foremost in that group of slave holders. Even men such as Josiah Franklin, stepbrother of Benjamin Franklin, was associated with slavery, being active as a slave dealer in Boston.103 Yet the Franklin name is never held up for scorn because of the action of the Boston Franklin family. John Hancock, the most prominent signator of the Declaration of Independence, was both a participant in a slave trading venture and a slave holder. But have you ever heard the cry to take down any monuments to John Hancock? Hancock was not the only New England signator of the Declaration of Independence who was a slave holder.104 Samuel Huntington of Connecticut105 and Stephen Hopkins of Rhode Island106 were also slave holders, and their names can also be found on the Declaration of Independence.

  A list of New England slave holders would read like a “Who’s Who” in the early history of that region. Nearly every family name that is cited by any historian can be found among the slave traders or slave holders of New England. Yet, these people, or more properly the descendants of these slave holders and slave traders, are the very ones who take it upon themselves to “teach” the South about lofty ideals of morality and virtue. After New Englanders saw fit to do away with the institution of slavery, at a profit to themselves, they then embarked upon a rabid crusade not only to stamp out slavery, but also to destroy the culture, power, and very lives of the people of the South.

  From every part of Northern society there poured forth lies and distortions about the nature of Southern slavery and about the South in general. To the average person in the North, the South was a place of wicked, lazy, and ignorant people. A false notion of life down South was advanced as reality. This notion made it easy for the people of the North to rationalize any evil behavior in order to “save” the nation from Southern influence. All this was being done, even though the North was as much involved in the slavery issue and was just as guilty of the actions the South had been accused of perpetrating. This hypocritical action of the rabid Yankee Abolitionist killed any hope for Southern emancipationists in their efforts to bring a peaceful end to slavery.

  Even more costly to America than the loss of an easy end to slavery, was the lost of respect by the North for the South. Having embarked on its “moral” crusade, with its false notion of what Southern slavery was like, the North focused on the South and not slavery as the chosen enemy. From that point on, no amount of logic could dissuade the North from its unholy crusade against the South. This Abolitionist view of the South magnified the cultural differences between the North and South until it became possible for the North to view Southerners as less than civilized humans. This then marked the beginning of cultural bigotry. With this attitude in place, the Northern troops had little or no qualms about committing any number of atrocities against Southerners. This attitude remains in vogue today. The cultural bigots of the North will overlook their own culture’s faults while they demand the demise of Southern culture.

  The cultural bigotry of the North and the enforced “politically correct” dogma of left-of-center politicians, journalists, and academics stem from a distorted view of the South as a people, and Southern slavery. This view is stated and reinforced by all means of information (i.e., propaganda). Repeatedly, Americans in general and Southerners in particular are fed lies about what life in the Old South was really like.

  As we have revealed in the preceding pages, what the victor has enforced as truth is not always true. We have used the words of former slaves to prove that life in the South was not the way the neo-Abolitionists love to depict it. On the contrary, we have shown that the system of African servitude was one in which many blacks were happy and free from want and violence. One of the most frequently voiced requests made by blacks in the inner cities of America today is the desire to be free from violence. Inner-city black-on-black crime is epidemic. In the United States of America more blacks die at the hands of fellow blacks in one year than ever died from lynching or beatings in all the years of Southern slavery! Never has the family unit been stronger in the black community than it was during slavery days. Crime was never a problem for the black community during the time of slavery as compared to the situation in today’s black community where one-fourth of black males have a criminal record by the age of thirty. In the past, venereal disease was never a problem in the black community as it is now. Today more families are broken in one year in the black community than were ever separated by white masters during the slavery era.

  Now, if the foregoing sounds as if we are advocating the return of the system of African servitude, let us restate emphatically that this is not what we are suggesting; rather, we desire that people look at Southern slavery with an open mind. If indeed the black people were better off in s
ome respects under the system of slavery, that does not justify or warrant its return. As Jefferson Davis stated, the system of slavery would proceed to a natural end. Just as we would no longer desire to return to the days of oil lamps, we do not desire to restore slavery. Just as in the North, if given time, slavery would have ended in the South. It has done so in every civilization known to man; why should anyone think it would have been any different in the South?

  The question of slavery is much like the idea of a glass of water that is half full. If one person sees it as half full, that does not mean that the person who reports it as half empty is preaching a falsehood. As long as each individual will recognize that different people will judge events in a different light, we can hope at least to agree that all have a right to their judgment and perception of the event. For too long the South has been excluded from the arena of public discussion. We have been systematically denied the right to teach our views, by those who only see us as evil and ignorant.

  Three different sources make the argument that blacks were well treated as a whole under the system of Southern slavery. The words of Dabney (A Defense of Virginia and the South), Nobel Prizewinner R. W. Fogel and Engerman (Time on the Cross), and the former slaves themselves (The Slave Narratives), all point to the fact that, in many ways, slavery was a positive institution for blacks.

  One fact that no historian can dispute is that nowhere in Europe or America were blacks granted the rights that whites enjoyed. The very nature of civilized society in that day would not allow for equal rights under the law. The principle of the innate worth of each individual was yet to be propounded. Even if every black person had been given freedom, where would they have gone, what rights would have been accorded them, and who would have been their friend when the only family they had known were denied them? These questions the fanatical Abolitionists did not want to ask or answer. The politicians of the North who abused the question of slavery for their own political gain cared little for such considerations. Northern liberals sought only to use the agitation of race as a means to destroy their political enemy, the South.

  The time has come for America to put away the divisiveness of the past and to look at the question of slavery with an open mind. If the South is an evil place because it had slaves, then so is the North. If Southerners were wrong for owning slaves, then what about the Northerners who sold them those slaves? If the South is to be castigated because a small minority of its citizens made money from slave-grown cotton, then what about the North whose textile mills made money from that same slave-grown cotton? If all Southerners are evil because of the mistreatment of their slaves by a few slave holders, then what about the Yankee capitalists who mistreated their Irish laborers? Is free enterprise to be condemned as evil because some capitalists abuse their workers? Sober reflection will be enough to convince anyone that there is more to the issue of slavery than the Abolitionists would have us believe.

  The issue of slavery, like the issue of race, has been used to keep the people of the South fighting one another while allowing the victors to enjoy the fruits of their victory. But never let us forget that the real issue of the war as the South saw it was liberty and freedom.

  We have spoken about how the black Republicans of Mississippi in 1890 spoke and voted for the erection of the Confederate memorial in Jackson. On June 3,1891, the memorial was dedicated in Jackson, Mississippi, and the ceremony was attended by all officials of the state and city, as well as more than twenty-five thousand people. In his invocation, the Reverend Father H. A. Pitcherit boldly stated why the South fought the War for Southern Independence, when he prayed:

  O, Lord Jesus, who whilst upon this earth, didst ever show Thyself the friend and defender of the oppressed, we ardently beseech Thee to look down in love and honor to our lamented brothers-in-arms, who have fallen in the holy cause of right and justice.

  Thou, O Lord, who wert falsely charged with being a traitor to Thy country, and didst unjustly suffer a cruel death, Thou at least will sympathize with us in our Lost Cause, and we pray Thee to vindicate and to guard the memory of our comrades, who likewise wrongfully accused and condemned, willingly, aye, cheerfully laid down their lives on the consecrated altar of patriotism and liberty.107

  Deo Vindice

  CHAPTER 4

  Yankee Atrocities

  The soldiers are hunting for concealed things and these searches are one of the pleasant excitements of our march.1

  Major George W. Nichols

  Aide-de-Camp to General Sherman

  INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS

  The truism that “to the victor go the spoils” is very true when it comes to writing the history of a conflict. If we never read beyond the “accepted” history of the war, we would likely think that the War for Southern Independence was just a “civil war” in which the noble, freedom-loving North had to force the evil, slave-holding South to free its slaves. Once that deed was accomplished everyone shook hands, and everything since then has been grand.

  Yankee myth and Southern reality are not brothers. They are not even related. In the following pages we will look at some of the handiwork of the people who are held up to our school children as noble and righteous defenders of human rights.

  Volumes could be written about the hideous actions of the men who came down South to rape, pillage, and burn. No doubt some were sincere (although misdirected) in their desire to assist the slaves in Dixie. But they were to be disappointed by their fellow invaders who saw only loot to be had. Also, the blacks refused to cooperate by not revolting against their masters. Many refused to turn their backs on their white families. The idealistic Yankees became disillusioned. Disillusionment comes easy to those who have been fed a steady diet of lies about how things should be, as opposed to how they actually are. This was the fate of many do-gooders from Yankeedom, and the scenario has been repeated every few decades since then.

  The Yankee apologist will attempt to discount this record of Northern atrocities by claiming that both sides committed terrible acts of violence during the war. No doubt this is partly true, human nature and war being what they are, but the United States committed far more such acts and those acts were committed with the knowledge and consent of United States officers and officials. This stands in sharp contrast to the orders of Gen. Robert E. Lee and other Southern officers and officials who instructed their troops to protect the property and civil liberties of the civilian population. Edward Pollard noted that President Jefferson Davis was urged to adopt a cruel war policy similar to the one President Abraham Lincoln had adopted. He was urged to do so in retaliation for the sufferings inflicted upon the Southern people at the hands of United States authorities.2 Confederate Cabinet member Judah P. Benjamin noted that:

  James Dinkins, Madison County, Mississippi, was a member of the corps of cadets, North Carolina Military Institute, Charlotte, North Carolina. At the age of sixteen he took part in the first land battle of the war, the Battle of Big Bethel, which the cadets were instrumental in winning.9 (Image courtesy of Tulane University Libraries, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, New Orleans, Louisiana)

  … when it was urged upon Jefferson Davis, not only by friends in private letters, but by members of his cabinet in council, that it was his duty to the people and to the army to endeavor to repress … outrages by retaliation, he was immovable in his resistance to such counsels, insisting that it was repugnant to every sentiment of justice and humanity that the innocent should be made victims for the crimes of such monsters.3

  Compare this, the official stand of our president, with the Yankee president Lincoln’s inquiry to Gen. George McClellan asking if he could get close enough to Richmond to “throw shells into the city.”4

  The facts that will be presented here have been carefully documented. Lest anyone find these stories too hard to believe, we enclose a list of books and documents for the unbeliever to review. There will, of course, be those who will dismiss out of hand any evidence whatsoever because their minds are
already made up and they don’t care to be bothered with facts. To them, no matter what the evidence of history says, the South was and still is wrong. But it is to those who are open-minded and fair that these pages are submitted.

  Yankee Atrocities

  THE RAPE AND MURDER OF NEW MANCHESTER, GEORGIA

  Most people would not look to the American “Civil War” if they are looking for stories of genocide and of the destruction and death of a town. Most people would look to the invading armies of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union for such accounts. If they would take the time to look beyond the accepted version of the history of the war, they would find many Nazi-like accounts of brutality in the Yankees’ actions during the war. Such is the case of the Union invasion of Georgia. Here we find accounts of wholesale genocide and of kidnapping of women and children.