2,129 words

You should do your duty in all things.
You can never do more, you should never wish to do less.
— Robert E. Lee

Several Southern states observe state holidays at this time of year to remember the men who died fighting for the Confederacy during the War Between the States. For Alabama and Mississippi, that date fell on April 29 of this year. Florida and Georgia celebrated it on April 22, and North and South Carolina will observe Confederate Memorial Day on June 10.

Though I do not hail from Dixie, I can boast of having an ancestor who served in the Confederate army. A native of New Orleans, he served in the 7th Louisiana Infantry Regiment under Brigadier General Harry T. Hays. This regiment was present at First Manassas, Sharpsburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Appomattox, among many other battles. While I love all of the branches of my heritage, I am especially proud of the fact that I can claim a genetic connection to the Confederate cause. This year, as I reflect on these great men and the cause that they fought for, I feel compelled to write down a few thoughts about their legacy. It is a legacy that can and should be a source of inspiration for all who care about the future of white people in America today. It certainly is for me.

Southerners in 1861 believed that membership in the Federal Union was not serving their interests. Because of the high tariffs that subsidized Northern industry at the expense of Southern planters, the cotton states felt exploited. They knew that it would be very profitable for them to secede in order to avoid paying these taxes. I argue that whites in America today are likewise not benefiting from the Federal Union. We find ourselves under the heel of a government that is actively working to demographically replace us, constantly invades our privacy, and expects us to fight in — as well as finance — overseas conflicts in which we have no vital interest. Ours is a government that will go to court in order to stop states from defending their borders. It is a government that honors the perpetrators of a racially-motivated massacre of whites. The tyranny that plagues us is far more despotic than anything ever experienced by the white people of the antebellum South.

On the other hand, the tyranny that plagued the South after the war — and parts of the South during the war — was far more horrific than anything we have endured in our lifetimes. The depth of the despair that once permeated Dixie is illustrated by way of a poem by Father Abram Joseph Ryan that was written in June 1865 and is titled “The Conquered Banner.” As it is a somewhat lengthy poem, I will include only the first and last stanzas here, though I recommend reading the full poem:

Furl that Banner, for ’tis weary;
Round its staff ’tis drooping dreary;
Furl it, fold it, it is best;
For there’s not a man to wave it,
And there’s not a sword to save it,
And there’s no one left to lave it
In the blood that heroes gave it;
And its foes now scorn and brave it;
Furl it, hide it — let it rest!

Furl that banner, softly, slowly!
Treat it gently — it is holy —
For it droops above the dead.
Touch it not — unfold it never,
Let it droop there, furled forever,
For its people’s hopes are dead!

This sense of hopelessness was not unjustified. At the time, the South found itself ruled by a class of vengeful occupiers. Southerners were demonized by the press, thanks in no small part to Lincoln’s ruthless campaign of censorship. Atrocities against Southern civilians were excused, for they were tarred as “traitors” who deserved whatever they got.[1] Eventually the usurpers were driven out of power, but not before the people of the South went through years of humiliation.

Another tragedy brought about by the Union victory was the abandonment of the Constitution. President Lincoln showed little regard for the liberties of Northerners who questioned the war’s merits. Tens of thousands of dissidents were imprisoned, including 31 Maryland legislators, the Mayor of Baltimore, and the Democratic candidate for the Ohio governorship. In Missouri, residents of four entire counties were expelled from their homes. For the duration of the conflict, the federal government operated as a quasi-dictatorship. After the war came the three “Reconstruction Amendments.” One of these, the Fourteenth Amendment, would later be used by the Supreme Court nearly a century later to justify such disastrous rulings as Brown v. Board of Education and Shelley v. Kramer. Former Arkansas congressional candidate Neil Kumar aptly characterized the amendment as one of the “Foundations of the Egalitarian Regime.” We can also draw a direct line from the defeat of the Confederacy to the later loss of freedom of association.

Furthermore, if one takes the view — as I do — that the United States Constitution was designed as a compact between sovereign states, that the powers of the federal government were meant to be derived from the states, and that states have the right to secede from the Union, then Lincoln’s government was not justified in waging war against the South.[2] Judge John Henry Rogers, in a 1903 speech that was recently republished at Identity Dixie, made the following point:

As the States entered the Union, each under acts of ratification of its own, so secession meant the resumption by each State of its delegated powers, by repealing the acts under which each seceding State entered the compact; but the repeal of such acts did not and could not affect the acts by which the remaining States entered into the Confederacy. The States of North Carolina and Rhode Island did not ratify the Constitution until long after Washington’s administration began, and of course were not members of the Union. But the Union existed nevertheless, and existed under the Constitution, as much as it did after these States became members. So when the Confederate States seceded from the Union, the States remaining under the compact were as much a Union under the Constitution as before.

Thus, the seceding states did not betray the Constitution. Instead, it was the Lincoln administration, with its revolutionary claim that the Union was not based on a voluntary compact of sovereign states, that brought about the end of the initial constitutional paradigm. Historian Lyon Gardiner Tyler, the son of President John Tyler, once observed that “[t]he old Union was a union of consent, the present Union is one of force.”[3] How right he was.

The Confederacy, both its memory and its symbols, are being relentlessly assaulted in our time. It is inevitably associated with slavery, even though there were several Union states in which slavery remained perfectly legal throughout the war, and despite the fact that the Confederate states did not secede from the Union to preserve slavery. This last point is most clearly shown by Lincoln’s tacit endorsement of the Corwin Amendment, which would have provided slavery with permanent constitutional protection from any attempts to abolish the institution at the federal level.

There is plenty to lament about the war’s outcome, but I wonder if it might be the case that the most unfortunate legacy of the War Between the States is the subsequent association of secession with treachery and immorality in the minds of so many Americans today. Notice that I intentionally do not call it “the Civil War.” This is because it was not a civil war. The Confederacy was not looking to topple the government in Washington. It only desired to go its own way – peacefully, if possible. In this, it was well within the tradition of the author of the Declaration of Independence and the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. As historian Thomas J. DiLorenzo noted:

In a January 29, 1804 letter to Dr. Joseph Priestley, who had asked Jefferson his opinion of the New England secession movement that was gaining momentum, he wrote: “Whether we remain in one confederacy, or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, I believe not very important to the happiness of either part. Those of the western confederacy will be as much our children & descendants as those of the eastern . . . and did I now foresee a separation at some future day, yet should feel the duty & the desire to promote the western interests as zealously as the eastern, doing all the good for both portions of our future family . . .” Jefferson offered the same opinion to John C. Breckinridge on August 12, 1803 when New Englanders were threatening secession after the Louisiana purchase. If there were a “separation,” he wrote, “God bless them both & keep them in the union if it be for their good, but separate them, if it be better.”[4]

A national poll released last October, which involved more than 2,500 participants, found that 38% of respondents thought that America needs “a leader who is willing to break some rules,” while 23% believe that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.”[5] A 2022 poll found that 43% of respondents believe that a civil war within the next decade is “at least somewhat likely.”[6] This is a precarious situation that cries out for a peaceful resolution.

A March 2023 poll found that 20% of Americans support the idea of a “national divorce.”[7] I think that this number is surprisingly low, however, considering the relative openness respondents have shown toward a “rule-breaking” leader and political violence, as well as the widespread fear of a looming civil war. Surely a non-violent separation ought to be preferable to the prospect of resorting to warfare in order to keep the Union together. Anecdotally, whenever I have brought up the idea of a national divorce to individuals I know, their knee-jerk reactions to the idea have been almost invariably hostile. I wonder if widespread popular acceptance of the Lincolnian perspective on the legitimacy of secession, as opposed to the Jeffersonian one, may be preventing millions from seriously entertaining what I see as a rather obvious solution.

Finally, it would hardly be appropriate to write an article about the Confederacy without mentioning Dixie’s greatest son, General Robert E. Lee. This is a man who I think about often. On more than one occasion I have found myself in some difficult situation and asked myself, “What would Lee do?” It is worth reflecting on the magnitude of the choice he faced when he was asked by Postmaster General Montgomery Blair to command the Union army. Lee was the son of a veteran of the American Revolution, and the husband of Mary Anna Custis, a great-granddaughter of Martha Washington. He had spent his entire adult life in the United States army. When his home state of Virginia was debating secession, Lee thought it was a bad idea. He was undoubtedly a man who felt a deep affection for the Union. Furthermore, rejecting Blair’s offer and joining the Confederates would jeopardize his economic prospects. Indeed, the Lees ended up losing their family home as a result of the war. Nevertheless, he turned Blair down. His first loyalty was to Virginia, for he saw Virginians as his people. Leading a campaign against them was out of the question.

Robert E. Lee realized that unquestioned loyalty to the Union would be a betrayal of his people. Can we not now say the same? If the current system remains intact, whites are bound to become a hated and persecuted minority. As I see it, getting racially conscious white people into positions of power and influence in state and local governments, and then advocating for a non-violent national divorce that would establish one or more “red state” confederations with white supermajorities, is the most promising path toward securing a future for our people. If this is so, then it is our duty to continue the legacy of the Southern “fire-eaters” of yesteryear, and make the case for secession in a calm, reasoned, and non-violent manner.

This is how I honor the memory of the Confederacy, and this is what I believe Lee would do if he were with us today. We should not wish to do less.

Notes

[1] Two books on Union war crimes that I recommend are Jeffrey Addicott’s Union Terror and Walter Brian Cisco’s War Crimes Against Southern Civilians.

[2] For a thorough legal defense of Southern secession, I highly recommend Is Davis a Traitor by Albert Taylor Bledsoe.

[3] Lyon Gardiner Tyler, A Confederate Catechism (Toccoa, Ga.: Confederate Reprint Company, 2014), p. 13.

[4] Thomas J. DiLorenzo, “The Jeffersonian Secessionist Tradition,” Mises Institute, July 9, 2014.

[5] “Threats to American Democracy Ahead of an Unprecedented Presidential Election,” PRRI, October 25, 2023.

[6] Taylor Orth, “Two in Five Americans Say a Civil War is at Least Somewhat Likely in the Next Decade,” YouGov, Aug 26, 2022.

[7] Margaret Talev, “Two Americas Index: 20% Favor a ‘National Divorce,’” Axios, October 16, 2023.