"Any
society which suppresses the heritage of its conquered minorities, prevents
their history and denies them their symbols, has sown the seeds of its own
destruction."
-- Sir William Wallace, 1281
A.D.
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"The Gettysburg speech is at once the shortest and the most
famous oration in American history. Put beside it, all the whoopings of the
Websters, Sumners and Everetts seem gaudy and silly. It is eloquence brought
to a pellucid and almost child-like
perfection—the highest emotion reduced to one graceful and irresistible
gesture. Nothing else precisely like it is to be found in the whole range of
oratory. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely
stupendous.
But let us not forget that it is oratory, not logic; beauty, not sense.
Think of the argument in it! Put it into the cold words of everyday! The
doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg
sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination — “that government
of the people, by the people, for the people,” should not perish from the
earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers
in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the
Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.
What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than
the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i. e., of the people
of the States? The Confederates went into battle an absolutely free people;
they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and vote of the
rest of the country—and for nearly twenty years that vote was so effective
that they enjoyed scarcely any freedom at all. Am I the first American to
note the fundamental nonsensicality of the Gettysburg address? If so, I
plead my aesthetic joy in it in amelioration of the sacrilege."
-
H. L. Mencken
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To those who yet contend that Lincoln and the Union went to war "to make
men free," how do they respond to the fact that when the war began, with
the firing on Fort Sumter, there were more slave states inside the Union
(8) than in the Confederacy (7)?
Four Southern states, Virginia, North
Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas, had remained loyal. They did not wish
to secede; they did so only after Lincoln put out a call for 75,000
volunteers for any army to invade and subjugate the Deep South.
Also study the Corwin Amendment.
The War was not about slavery --
click here to read the
truth
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Lord Russell, British foreign minister during
the War Between the States, wrote: “It is dreadful to think that hundreds of
thousands of men are being slaughtered for the purpose of preventing the
Southern States from acting on those very principles of independence which,
in 1776, were asserted by the whole of America against this country.”
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The cause of the so-called "Civil War" in one sentence:
"Whether the Federal Government should be an agent (and subservient) to
the States and the People or whether the States and the People shall be
subservient to the Federal Government."
This is the crux of the whole matter. It wasn't about slavery except in
the broad sense that the People would become slaves if the Federal
Government was victorious. It wasn't even about tariffs or crony
capitalism (fascism) or Sectional strife.
It was, first and foremost, to determine whether we would be a nation of
laws or a nation of men; whether we would truly be a republic or an
oligarchy; whether we would have a government with enumerated powers
determined by the People and the States or a government with total power
under which the States were mere counties and the People mere subjects.
Of course, we all know which side was triumphant and never has that fact
been made more clear than in our current situation in which our Masters no
longer deign to hide their tyranny and "We the People" are reduced to
serfs.
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Lincoln started the war, not the South.
"You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced
by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail; and
it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by
the result."
--Lincoln, in a letter to Gustavus Fox on May 1, 1861.
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"Does the propriety of discussing the causes of the War Between the States
belong exclusively to Northern writers and speakers? Did the South, when
she laid down her arms, surrender the right to state in self-justification
her reasons for taking them up? If not, I fail to see how it can be
improper, when perpetuating the memory of the Confederate dead, at least
to attempt to correct false and injurious representations of their aims
and deeds and to hand down their achievements to posterity as worthy of
honorable remembrance."
--
Robert Catlett Cave 1911
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"We feel
that our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of
mankind that we desire peace at any sacrifice save that of honor and
independence; we ask no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any
kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is
to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall not now
attempt our subjugation by arms.”
--
President Jefferson Davis, 29 April 1861
"I tried all in my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, for twelve
years I worked night and day to prevent it, but I could not. The North was
mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came,
and now it must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his
tracks, and his children seize the musket and fight our battle, unless you
acknowledge our right to self government. We are not fighting for slavery.
We are fighting for Independence, and that, or extermination."
-- President Jefferson Davis, CSA
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Lee Defends His Actions
“. . . General Robert E. Lee, now president of Washington College . . . was writing
a letter to R.S. McCulloch which showed that Lee too was in the same
unrepentant state. ”Every brave people who considered their rights
attacked and their constitutional liberties invaded,” it ran, “would
have done as we did. Our conduct was not caused by any insurrectional
spirit, nor can it be termed a rebellion; for our construction of the
Constitution under which we lived and acted was the same from its
adoption, and for eighty years we had been taught and educated by the
founders of the Republic, and their written declarations, which
controlled our consciences and actions. The epithets that have been
heaped upon us of “rebels” and “traitors” have no just meaning, nor are
they believed in by those who understand the subject, even at the
North…”
(Jefferson Davis, Joseph McElroy, Smithmark Books, 1995 (original 1937),
pp. 614-615)
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Quote from John W. Flinthaw, Sgt. CL 8 VA. Cav. 2
BrigG 2 Div. Cav. Corps: To Horse To Horse The Sabers
Gleam High,
Sounds our bugle call combined by honor sacred tie.
Our word is Land and Liberty,
March Forward One and All. FROM WALLIN BCORWS WAR BARG. APRIL 1
1864 RICHMOND,VA
(inscription found in a Bible)
More on this quote:
mash here
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"I say we cannot know your suffering, but this we do know; We love and honor
you, veterans, and are justly proud of the heritage you have given us. Just
so long as warm blood flows in the veins of man, so long will the words
'Confederate Veteran' cause that blood to tingle with glorious pride, and,
if there be one among us, born in our glorious Southland who is not so
thrilled, every drop of stagnant blood proclaims him bastard to the South -
a coward to all the world."
--
Joseph Powell Pippen, Esq.
(Brock Townsend's Grandfather)
Excerpt from his speech on August 10th, 1911 to a Confederate Veteran
gathering on Confederate Memorial Day at "Mosby Hall," Littleton, NC, the
plantation of Brock's great-Grandfather,
Private, "Captain" Lt. Colonel John Pelopidas Leach.
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"All we ask is to be let alone – that those who never held power over us
shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms...The moment that this
pretension is abandoned, the sword will drop from our grasp...So long as is
maintained...we must continue to struggle for our inherent right to freedom,
independence, and self government."
President Jefferson Davis, Confederate States of America
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"Duty is the most
sublime word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do
more. You should never wish to do less."
-- General Robert E. Lee
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"The Confederate Soldiers were our kinfolk and our heroes. We testify to
the country our enduring fidelity to their memory. We commemorate their
valor and devotion. There were some things that were not surrendered at
Appomattox. We did not surrender our rights and history, nor was it one of
the conditions of surrender that unfriendly lips should be suffered to tell
the story of that war or that unfriendly hands should write the epitaphs of
the Confederate dead. We have a right to teach our children the true
history of that war, the causes that led up to it and the principles
involved." Senator Edward Ward Carmack, 1903.
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"If the Union was formed by the secession of
States then the Union may be dissolved by the secession of States."
-- Daniel Webster, American statesman and senator from Massachusetts,
February 15, 1833 |
