The South Was Right

by James Ronald Kennedy

  CHAPTER 5

  A Moral Right to Be Free

  The principle for which we contended is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form.1

  President Jefferson Davis

  INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS

  Before we reach that other time and other form spoken of by President Davis, we must first understand that Southerners do have a moral right to be free. This is more important than any legal argument for freedom. In this chapter the authors present the reasons why it was and still is morally correct for the Southern people to assert their claim to the right of self-determination.

  We will demonstrate to the reader the way in which a government may gain or lay claim to legitimacy, and we will establish what form of government the Southern people have traditionally desired. We will demonstrate that our philosophy of government has deep roots in antiquity and was not a system dreamed up by the slaveocracy to protect its property or holdings.

  We will review the theory of “the consent of the governed,” the concept of limited government with constitutional limits upon the extent of its powers, and the right of a people to dispose of a government that violates the rights of its citizens.

  President Jefferson Davis stated in his farewell address to the United States Senate that the South was compelled to withdraw from the Union to ensure that the rights his generation had received would be transmitted to future generations. These rights represented our original inheritance of liberty. Unfortunately, this wonderful estate of freedom was lost to the invader’s sword. It is now time to begin our search to regain our lost estate.

  McCool, Bull Hill, Oklahoma, was of mixed ancestry, being of Scottish and Cherokee Indian lineage. He served as a scout for the Confederate army in the Trans-Mississippi Department and was one of many Native Americans who supported the Southern cause. (Image courtesy of Ronald G. Ward, Pocola, Oklahoma)

  A Moral Right to be Free

  Tragedy is no stranger to the South. As Richard Weaver pointed out in the epilogue to his book, The Southern Tradition at Bay, the post-war South committed two great errors. First, it failed to study its position to arrive at a basic philosophy that justified its existence. Second, it surrendered the initiative. The South had no philosophical justification for existence. The South was left with no vision for the future and was forced into a defensive political posture. The most that our leaders have been able to do is to seek meekly the acceptance of the national parties. The price for this acceptance has been for us to remain quiet, to allow both national parties to be dominated by non-Southerners and Scalawags, and to accept the ever-enlarging role of the federal government. Because of her defensive position, the South not only has failed to regain her lost estate, but also has been brought to the brink of John Randolph’s prediction of that time when “the little upon which we now barely subsist will be taken from us.”

  The political pacification of the Southern people has been so successful that today there are no Southern-elected officials who will stand above the murky swamp of political mediocrity that typifies the current Southern political condition to ask the following questions: Is the present political and economic condition best for us and our children? Are we morally obliged to accept the continuing intrusion of the federal government into the political, social, and economic life of the Southern people? Do we, the people of the South, have a right to a government that places our cultural, economic, and political development first and foremost?

  The Southern people are today ruled by an overgrown central government that has taken unto itself the power to make decisions for us under the assumption that it knows better than we do what is best for us, our children, and our society. As early in our history as the Battle of King’s Mountain in 1780, Southerners demonstrated their desire to be left alone. The average Southerner desires to obey the law, to pay reasonable taxes, and to live his or her life undisturbed by a meddling government. The unfortunate reality is that the central government does not share this view.

  Do the people of the South have a moral right to be free, or is this an unreasonable demand? Do we have the right to expect the government to exercise its powers in a restrained manner, or should we recognize that the central government now possesses a divine right to set the limit to the extent of its powers? Should we admit that we no longer have a right to be protected from the arbitrary abuse of governmental power? Are we a free people, free to live our lives in peace and security, free from the meddling directives of an all-powerful government? Or are we a controlled people? Are we a people who have no rights or freedoms except those benevolently and condescendingly extended to us by our watchful masters in Washington? Are we the children of serfs who are at times allowed the appearance of freedom in order to keep us amused and docile, much as a parent would keep a child quiet by giving it a shiny bauble?

  The men and women of the South are by right of birth heirs to a great heritage of individual freedom and personal accountability. We have a moral right to these freedoms. Evidence of our moral right to be free is seen in the writings of our political forefathers such as Thomas Jefferson and John C. Calhoun.2

  When Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, he clearly set forth his political philosophy in the second paragraph, part of which reads as follows:

  … governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.3

  The key word is “consent.” This great Southerner knew that the only legitimate use of governmental power is through the free and unfettered consent of the people governed. Without this consent the government has no moral right to exist. The governed, according to Jefferson, have a right to a government that disciplines itself to the will of the people. Furthermore, it can be seen that the failure of the British Crown and Parliament to so discipline itself was the very justification for the call sent forth through the colonies to secede from the established central government!4

  Jefferson advocated a form of government that sought the will of the people as opposed to a government that sought to impose the government’s arbitrary will upon the people. The people, according to Jefferson, have a right to a government they consider good and just.

  What type of government have Southerners traditionally held to be good and just? John C. Calhoun both posed the question and provided its answer when he wrote, “How can those who are invested with the power of government be prevented from the abuse of those powers as the means of aggrandizing themselves? … Without a strong constitution to counteract the strong tendency of government to disorder and abuse there can be little progress or improvement.”5 A desire for a strong constitution with the resultant respect for State’s Rights, state sovereignty, and individual liberty has been the hallmark of Southern political thought.6

  The history of the American Constitution is a record of the struggle between those who sought to protect the sovereignty of the people within the states and those who desired to extend and to enlarge the power and control of the central government. A review of the current budget deficit is a giveaway (no pun intended) as to who won this struggle.

  In addition to a huge deficit, we have received from our political masters in Washington a second-rate Southern economy, a Congress dominated by liberals and Southern Scalawags, a Supreme Court that has not had a traditional Southerner on it since the War for Southern Independence, and a school system controlled by the liberal Supreme Court and the NAACP. Two generations of Southerners have grown up under numerous court orders, guidelines, government edicts, affirmative action programs, minority set-asides, desegregation consent decrees ad nauseum; yet we are still no closer to appeasing the collected wrath of our masters in Washington! One can only wonder if perhaps in their infinite wisdom our Southern leaders should reconsider the effectiveness of appeasement.

  Thomas Jefferson taught us that we do indeed have a right to a government ordered in accordance to the will of the people. From John C. Calhoun we know that the people of the
South have traditionally desired a government typified by a strong constitution with maximum freedom and civil liberties reserved to the people. Recent history has demonstrated that we do not have that type of government.

  Some Southerners have accepted the Northern assertion that Appomattox settled everything and that consequently we have no moral right to discuss the prospect of regaining our lost estate. Yet the political philosopher John Locke rejected this barbaric attitude of “might makes right.” If we apply Locke’s reasoning to the current federal system, we will see that the federal government could not and has not gained a legitimate and justifiable right to the power and authority it now exercises over us.

  Locke reasoned that an aggressor gains no rights by a successful military adventure. Indeed, he even maintained that a victor in a justifiable war could never establish moral validity that would contravene the right of the conquered and occupied people to their liberty and property.7

  The idea that the Southern people must accept the domination of the North because of their failure in the War for Southern Independence is an unfortunate confusion of force with moral validity. The two are separate and distinct. Force can never give rise to moral validity. A government that is predicated upon force can legalize its existence only by a recognition of the rights of the people making up the sovereign community. A government may indeed possess the power to infringe upon the life, liberty, or property of its subjects, but this very act in and of itself voids any claim of legitimacy by that government. Any government—be it a king, prince, magistrate, or whatever form—that either actively or passively attempts or allows such an infringement upon the rights and liberties of the people forfeits its moral validity and therefore negates its legitimate right to exist!

  The current liberal domination of our political and economic life in the South is a direct result of the North’s victory in its war of aggression waged against the Southern people. Yet military force cannot bestow moral validity upon the subsequent government. When force is used to impose a government upon a people, the moral authority reverts to the sovereign community which must then struggle to institute legitimate government.

  John Locke reaffirmed that might does not make right; therefore, the North’s successful campaign of military aggression does not bestow moral validity upon the federal system established by it. Further evidence of Southerners’ moral right to be free can be seen in the works of John Milton. In his Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, he proved from natural law, the Scriptures, and the law of England that a tyrannical king could be legally deposed and that the king stood in legitimate danger of the death penalty. Milton declared that the ultimate right to protect the public good resides with the people, not with the king. This is true because a king (and by implication any other form of government) derives authority from the people for the protection of the common good:

  The power of kings and magistrates is nothing else, but what is only derivative, transferred and committed to them in trust from the people, to the common good of them all, in whom the power yet remains fundamentally, and cannot be taken from them without a violation of their natural birthright.8

  John Milton announced a fundamental principle of Southern political thought when he proclaimed that the right to protect the public good resides not with the powers that be, not with some arbitrary central government, but with the people. The people possess an inherent right to dispose of any government that does not rule with the unfettered consent of those governed.

  The moral right of a people to be free has been accepted and enforced many times in American history. The colonies asserted this claim even though the Crown owned the colonies! So great is this moral right of self-determination that it voided the English Crown’s legitimate and legal title to its American colonies! The United States government recognized this right when it recognized the Republic of Texas which seceded from the legal control of Mexico and again when the same United States government accepted Texas (formerly Mexican territory) into the Union. The United States government actually assisted the people of Panama in their secession from Colombia less than two generations after it had denied the right of secession to the Southern people.

  We, the people of the South, do indeed have a moral right to be free. This has been demonstrated by the writings of such great Southerners as Jefferson and Calhoun. This moral right is recognized in the writings of Locke and Milton. We must begin the struggle to regain our rights. John Naisbitt in Megatrends wrote, “People whose lives are affected by a decision must be part of the process of arriving at that decision.”9 What part did the Southern people play in instituting forced busing? What part did we play in reducing and maintaining an inferior Southern economy? What part have traditional conservative Southerners played on the United States Supreme Court? When we Southerners begin to realize the moral veracity of our cause, we will see it not as a “lost cause” but as the right cause, a cause worthy of the great struggle yet to come!

  James W. Nicholson, Claiborne Parish, Louisiana. With his sophomore class at Homer College, Nicholson joined the Twelfth Louisiana Volunteer Infantry at the age of sixteen. Typical of the early settlers of the Southern frontier, Nicholson’s family was of Scottish and Irish ancestry. After the war Nicholson was to distinguish himself as a mathematician and educator, as president of Louisiana State University, and as author of books on higher math and Southern history.’” (Image courtesy of Claitor’s Book Store, Publishing Division, Baton Rouge, Louisiana)

  CHAPTER 6

  A Legal Right to Be Free

  We could have pursued no other course without dishonor. And sad as the results have been, if it had all to be done over again, we should be compelled to act in precisely the same manner.1

  General Robert E. Lee, C.S.A.

  INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS

  To understand the logic of our legal right to be free, we will review the formation of the original Constitutional Republic. A distinction is made between the original government and the current fraudulent government. The underlying reasons for the assertion that the current government is fraudulent will be explored and explained.

  Again we briefly examine the right to govern. We explore our Founding Fathers’ attitude toward government and their primary fear regarding the proposed federal government under the Constitution; how the federal government was formed; and, whether or not the states irrevocably surrendered a part of their rights to the new government.

  We then move on to describe how the North worked to destroy the Original Constitution by war and Reconstruction. After the review of Reconstruction, we analyze the political condition of the South under the new centralistic federal government. It will be shown that the North relented in its application of Reconstruction only after it had been successful in radically shifting the power of the government from the states to the central government. All this was done against the expressed will of the Southern people while we were disfranchised and under bayonet rule.

  A Legal Right to Be Free

  THE FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC

  Do the people of the South have a legal right to be free? To answer this question, we must review the history of the present federal government. It should be noted that the federal government is only the agent of our oppression. Government in and of itself is neither good nor bad. Government is the instrument of social order. It is, in fact, the tool used by those holding political power. When a people establish a constitutional republic, the limitations imposed by the constitution of that republic will be an effective instrument for the protection of the people only as long as the political leaders are philosophically loyal to the spirit of that constitution.

  Suppose a constitutional republic was established with limited power granted to the federal government, and several years later there was a change in the basic philosophy of a large segment of the ruling political leadership. Suppose the majority desired an increase in the power of the central government. The minority would refuse to yield and thereby
would prevent an increase in the power of that government. The smaller element could, by using the guarantees and limitations imposed by the constitution, stop the attempts of the majority to increase the central government’s power.

  Keep in mind that the reason for including limitations upon the central government is to prevent just this type of power grab. In such cases, the minority segment is faced with the prospect of suffering economic and political loss if the majority is allowed to use the power of the central government to advance the majority’s interest. The majority element desires to gain certain financial profits at the expense of the minority. Of course it would mask its intent with grand statements that its plans would be best for the entire country and that the minority should not be allowed to stand in the way of progress. The majority has become afflicted with the same passions that prompt and drive imperialism, passions that are as old as man himself—greed, selfishness, and unbridled ambition. When financial profits are threatened by the adherence to a given philosophy, it unfortunately becomes more reasonable (i.e., more profitable) to abandon the philosophy rather than to renounce the profits. The majority will use its greater numbers and its control of the central government to ensure continued and increased personal gain.