The South Was Right
Page 36
We reviewed the right of the Southern people to a government that rules with the consent of those governed. We demonstrated that the current federal bureaucracy has violated this first principle of free governments. We have shown that, due to its failure to gain the unfettered consent of the Southern people, the current federal government is an illegal governmental force.
We continued our review of the tactics used by the Northern majority to destroy the Original Constitutional Republic and to replace it with a centralist federal government under its control. We saw that this new centralist federal government was forced upon the Southern people against their expressed desire and in violation of their right to equal representation in Congress. This new government is the source of innumerable acts of oppression conducted against the South.
We have seen that the Southern people were removed from a position of equal power in the original Union and were forced into a new position as second-class citizens. We have seen that, as a result, Southerners have been forced to endure an inferior economy, constant poverty, and the absence of political leadership dedicated to the improvement of the Southern condition.
After reviewing these crimes, fraudulent political maneuvers, oppressive acts, unfair legislation, and general attitude of disregard for the condition of the Southern people, you the reader must now make a decision. Either you must decide that everything you have read is substantially untrue, in which case you are now finished, or you must decide that what you have read is substantially true, in which case you now have two choices facing you:
You can decide that even though what you read is substantially true, you do not choose to do anything about it, or
You can decide that it is time to join the ranks of the New Unreconstructed Southerners.
People who want to do something about the political, social, and economic condition of the Southern nation must begin with an understanding that nothing can be accomplished until the rank and file of the South once again begin to believe in themselves. As New Unreconstructed Southerners, our first task is to instill (or re-instill) in our people a healthy dose of Southern pride.
After we have started the process of restoring Southern pride, we have another task before us. We must begin the Southern political revolution. For more than a century and a quarter, Southerners have placed their faith in party politics and the hope that one day the “powers that be” in Washington D.C. will cease and desist their hostile activities and recognize our legitimate complaints. Business-as-usual, party politics requires the status quo to conduct its affairs. This status quo is the very problem that we, as Southerners, need to change. How then can we expect typical party players (be they Republican or Democratic) to challenge and destroy the very thing that they need to conduct their affairs and maintain their positions of power and prestige? The fact is that (as our recent history demonstrates) they will not. Undoubtedly, at the appropriate time they will make an impassioned appeal for home consumption, but nothing more! For instance—when we had a chance to put a real conservative on the Supreme Court, who do you think led the fight against this conservative? None other than Southern Democrats who all go home at election time and assure their constituents that they are true conservatives and will represent the views of their middle-class, conservative constituency. When a liberal or a black extremist from the NAACP demands that a Confederate flag be removed from a school or public building, how easy is it to find an elected official to stand up for our rights? Take it from two who have been there—such officials are as hard to find as the proverbial hen’s teeth! Help will not come from Washington. Help will not come from weak and spineless elected officials. We must elect Confederate Freedom Fighters!
First, how do we begin the process of instilling pride in our people? The one advantage we have is that the majority of our people want to feel good about themselves and their native Southland. Even after generations of propaganda in the form of Yankee myth, our people still respond to our flag and the singing of “Dixie.” The best way to instill pride is to display the flag at various living-history events, C.S.A. memorial services, and historical re-enactments. Every true Southerner should be an active member of an organization dedicated to the preservation and perpetuation of the truth about the Southern cause. The Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy are two examples of such organizations. A word of caution though; remember, you are a New Unreconstructed Southerner, or as we prefer, a Southern Nationalist. You may join a local unit that is dedicated to doing book reviews and hiding their heritage in the closet lest they offend someone. Don’t disregard these Southerners—they too can be converted. Remember, this is a new struggle and it will take some time for the rank-and-file Southerner to understand what we are about.
As an activist, you should make yourself available to the local schools to do living-history discussions and demonstrations for their history classes. We have found that the knowledge gained from the S.C.V. and our involvement in War for Southern Independence re-enacting makes for a great opportunity to convey to local Southern school children, black as well as white, the truth about their ancestors and the real reason they fought the War for Southern Independence. If you have enough support from yourunit, you will want to march in local parades, making sure to carry several traditional Confederate battle flags. If you have never heard the response of a crowd of Southerners when our nation’s emblem is proudly displayed, then you are in for a real treat.
The important thing is to remember that you must start small and work your way up. This year you may have to settle for a letter to the editor on Confederate Memorial Day, but next year you should have enough support to pay for a nice advertisement in addition to your letter to the editor. The opportunities for promoting good pro-Southern public relations are almost endless. The important thing is that a portion of our message is constantly being presented to the public. The message is clear and easy to understand: Be proud of your heritage. The last thing we need is for Skin-Heads and neo-Nazis to be seen as the ones who are represented by our nation’s flags. Our aim is to re-establish a constitutional republic in which everyone, including Southerners, is treated equally; or, if we fail to convince our Northern neighbors of the wisdom of such a change, then we will establish our own separate Southern nation.
The second phase will be to move from the educational phase (i.e., the activities designed to restore Southern pride) to active political struggle. This phase must not come too soon; otherwise, we will expend our limited resources before the educational phase has done its work and won for the Southern cause workers and supporters, and generally made the public receptive to the message. Though it sounds as if we are describing two separate activities, in reality the educational phase will continue until the revolution (or counter-revolution as General Beauregard called it—see Chapter 10, “New Unreconstructed Southerners”) has completed its task of freeing the Southern people.
Too often in the past our people have placed all their hopes in one person. We have seen them all: Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, or some trendy New South Scalawag. This is wrong for two reasons: first, one man will not be able to free an entire nation of people. What is needed most is a belief in a cause. Once a large portion of our people have this belief, then no matter who is elected or not elected, we will know what we want and how to go about getting it. The second reason that it is wrong to place all our hopes in one man is that when we do so our political base becomes like a balloon. It looks very large,but it has no substance and can be ruptured very easily. It is more important to have one elected town alderman than to have a candidate running for the governor’s office. The small local offices will be the proving grounds for the next generation of Southern National elected officials. It gives us a chance to explain our cause at the local level. It also allows a small group to exert more clout. If we are running a candidate in a state-wide election, our resources will be spread very thin. But when we run candidates on the
local level, we can concentrate our workers and other resources into a small area where our numbers can make a difference.
This summary is not intended to give full details of how to go about conducting a Southern political revolution. It is only to show in the most general of terms how Southerners can, if they believe in themselves, rid themselves of the chains of federal bondage and reclaim for the next generation of Southerners their birthright of liberty. The important thing to remember is that first comes the educational phase in which we instill pride of our cause within our people; then we make our presence felt on the local level. Before we attempt to gain a single governor’s office, we must first establish a strong presence in each chamber of that state’s legislature. This should come only after we have proven ourselves on even a more local level.
The Southern people have all the power we need to put an end to forced busing, affirmative action, extravagant welfare spending, the punitive Southern-only Voting Rights Act, the refusal of the Northern liberals to allow Southern conservatives to sit on the Supreme Court, and the economic exploitation of the South into a secondary economic status. What is needed is not more power but the will to use the power at hand The choice is now yours—ignore this challenge and remain a second-class citizen, or unite with your fellow Southerners and help start a Southern political revolution.
Deo Vindice
ADDENDUM I
Northern Voices Advocating the Principles of Southern Freedom
I do not desire to survive the independence of my country.
General Thomas J. (“Stonewall”) Jackson
We had received this free government from our fathers, baptized in their blood; we had received from them the sacred injunction to preserve it. … The heritage of freedom which our fathers left us, we have not been able to bequeath to you.
Robert L. Dabney, D.D., LL.D.
June 15, 1882
Freedom of speech and freedom of the press, precious relics of former history, must not be construed too largely.
General William T. Sherman
Sherman’s Other War
Addendum I presents selected quotes from notable Northerners all advocating the same principles of self-determination as did the South when it seceded in 1861. Yankee myth-makers find it difficult to explain away these contradictory quotes from such unlikely pro-Southern advocates as Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln, and Horace Greeley.
First to Threaten to Secede From the Union
Timothy Pickering, of Massachusetts, was the first to threaten secession.
Josiah Quincy, of Massachusetts, was the first to mention secession in congressional halls. The year was 1811.
John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, was the first to petition Congress to dissolve the Union.
Charles Francis Adams testified that there was no doubt but that his grandfather, John Quincy Adams, believed that a state had the right to secede.
The New England states were the first to hold a secession convention. The convention was held in Hartford, Connecticut, for the purpose of discussing the possibility of seceding because of the unpopularity of the War of 1812.
Secession as a Natural Right Belonging to the States
When the Constitution was outlined and read, the words Perpetual Union which had been in the Articles of Confederation were omitted. Alexander Hamilton and others noticing it, and desiring a Union, opposed the adoption of the Constitution. Some one moved to have it made a National Government, but this motion was unanimously defeated. Senator Ellsworth of Connecticut and Senator Gorham of Massachusetts have testified to this.
Elliot’s Debates, Vol. V, p. 908
The attributes of sovereignty are now enjoyed by every state in the Union.
Alexander Hamilton
The Thirteen States are Thirteen Sovereign bodies.
Oliver Ellsworth
The States are Nations.
Daniel Webster
Commentaries on the Constitution
Vol. III, p. 287
The States acceded to the Constitution.
Benjamin Franklin
Franklin Works Vol. V, p. 409
If the states were not left to leave the Union when their rights were interfered with, the government would have been National, but the Convention refused to baptize it by the name.
Daniel Webster
U.S. Senate
February 15, 1833
If the Union was formed by the accession of States then the Union may be dissolved by the secession of States.
Daniel Webster
U.S. Senate
February 15, 1833
The Union is a Union of States founded upon Compact. How is it to be supposed that when different parties enter into a compact for certain purposes either can disregard one provision of it and expect others to observe the rest? If the Northern States willfully and deliberately refuse to carry out their part of the Constitution, the South would be no longer bound to keep the compact. A bargain broken on one side is broken on all sides.
Daniel Webster
Capon Springs Speech, 1851
John Quincy Adams, in 1839, and Abraham Lincoln, 1847, make elaborate arguments in favor of the legal right of a State to Secede.
Judge Black of Pennsylvania
Black’s Essays
Any people whatever have a right to abolish the existing government and form a new one that suits them better.
Abraham Lincoln
Congressional Records, 1847
Had [President] Buchanan in 1860 sent an armed force to prevent the nullification of the Fugitive Slave Law, as Andrew Jackson threatened to do in 1833, there would have been a secession of fifteen Northern States instead of thirteen Southern States.
Had the Democrats won out in 1860 the Northern States would have been the seceding States not the Southern.
George Lunt of Massachusetts
Origin of the Late War
If the Declaration of Independence justified the secession of 3,000,000 colonists in 1776,1 do not see why the Constitution ratified by the same men should not justify the secession of 5,000,000 of the Southerners from the Federal Union in 1861.
We have repeatedly said, and we once more insist that the great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence that government derives its power from the consent of the governed is sound and just, then if the Cotton States, the Gulf States or any other States choose to form an independent nation they have a clear right to do it.
The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless; and we do not see how one party can have a right to do what another party has a right to prevent. We must ever resist the asserted right of any State to remain in the Union and nullify or defy the laws thereof; to withdraw from the Union is another matter. And when a section of our Union resolves to go out, we shall resist any coercive acts to keep it in. We hope never to live in a Republic where one section is pinned to the other section by bayonets.
Horace Greeley
New York Tribune
We of the North couldn’t make it [slavery] pay, so we are convinced that it is the sum of all villainy. Our plan is more profitable; we take care of no children or sick people, except as paupers, while the owners of slaves have to provide for them from birth till death. So how we view the issue depends on what kind of glasses we use.
If we of the North were called upon to endure one half as much as the Southern people and soldiers do, we would abandon the cause and let the Southern Confederacy be established. We pronounce their cause unholy, but they consider it sacred enough to suffer and die for. Our forefathers in the Revolutionary struggle could not have endured more than these Rebels.
A nation preserved with liberty trampled underfoot is much worse than a nation in fragments but with the spirit of liberty still alive. Southerners persistently claim that their rebellion is for the purpose of preserving this form of government.
Private John H. Haley
Seventeenth Maine Regiment, U.S.A.
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ADDENDUM II
Jefferson Davis’ Farewell Address to the U.S. Senate
Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was considered a moderate Southerner. He remained loyal to the Union until the political extremists in the North left Mississippi no choice but to withdraw her delegated rights. Senator Davis gave the following address to the United States Senate when he learned that Mississippi had voted to secede.
Note that he made a distinction between the doctrine of nullification and the doctrine of secession. The first was a means to preserve the Union, whereas the second was the supreme method by which a sovereign community could preserve the rights and liberties of its citizens.
He was very careful to explain the fact that with secession the laws of the United States are no longer legally enforceable within the limits of the seceded state. The United States might choose to make war against an independent nation, but it had no authority to demand obedience to United States laws.
Senator Davis also reminded the Senate that when Massachusetts chose to nullify the fugitive slave law that had been upheld by the United States Supreme Court and declared that it (Massachusetts) would secede from the Union before complying with the Supreme Court decision, he as a senator had refused to support efforts to use force to compel Massachusetts to obey the United States laws. Indeed, he defended her right to withdraw from a union in which she felt her rights were disadvantaged. This of course stands in sharp contrast to the aggressive and destructive venom soon to issue forth from the state of Massachusetts and her Northern co-conspirators.