He defamed and belied one of the truest, purest, noblest patriots that ever graced United States soil…
J. H. Savage to editor, Jones Valley Times
Although there is no entry mentioning he who is the subject of this essay on my Confederate Calendar for this month, the man is nevertheless an interesting and important figure in Confederate history in his own right; whose blessed memory, and whose lifelong and indefatigable service to the Southland, deserves to be recounted in our generations. I am speaking of the author of the line in my epigraph, Capt. James H. Savage, of Co. I (“Cherokee Rangers”), 19th Alabama Infantry Regiment.
When I speak of Capt. Savage’s “lifelong and indefatigable service to the Southland,” I’m of course referring to more than just his distinguished service and unmatched bravery as an officer in Co. I, 19th Alabama during the WBTS; I’m also referring, in part, to his (written) service to the same as an elderly man long after war’s end, unwilling to allow Yankee versions of the Confederate Cause and Conduct in the War Between the States (as told by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt et al) to go unanswered. What Capt. Savage was contending against as an elderly man in his mid-70s and to his dying day was, in the truest sense of the term and what is now commonly referred to as, Revisionist History. To wit:
Mr. Editor: […] In Mr. Glenn’s comment, he misstates the ground I assigned as a reason why Confederate organizations should not stoop so low as to boot-lick Roosevelt. I put it on the ground that Roosevelt had denounced Confederate Veterans and Jefferson Davis as traitors, in his history to go down to posterity and to our sons. I repeat that Confederate Veterans who are and were true to the cause are out of place when such a defamor as Roosevelt, who by accident gets to be president, to be toadying around after such a creature. Mr. Glenn, in his article, says “we do well to consider the man’s point of view.” There is no point of view that mitigates slander and defamation. Especially from one of superior intelligence writing history.
(Incidentally, I wrote a series of articles for my family group some years back titled “Revisionist-Revisionist History,” wherein I revealed that we modern “Revisionist Historians,” so called, are merely doing our duty to our honorable ancestors and their righteous cause in correcting the false history, libels and slanders perpetrated against those great and good men by godless, lying Yankees, who sow the seeds of discord among brethren, or otherwise take pleasure in those who do so. As my step-mother is apt to remind from time to time, “you’ll go to Hell for that, boy!”)
I picked Capt. Savage as the subject of this edition because (1), our hero departed this life on the 12th day of this month 110 years ago; and (2), several years prior to his death, Mr. Savage wrote a series of articles for the Jones Valley Times newspaper of Birmingham, Alabama; a several weeks-running series of articles in which he recounted the “History of the 19th Alabama Regiment,” which series began in October of 1905, running through November and into the early part of the current month in that year. If you have a subscription, or can otherwise connect to Newspapers.com through your local library, you can download and read Mr. Savage’s interesting and informative articles above-mentioned for yourself, beginning here. The third and final reason I chose to write something about Mr. Savage in this essay is that he served in the same Alabama regiment as did a number of my (direct and indirect) ancestors:
What Mr. Savage alludes to by his curious turn of phrase – “toadying around after such a creature” as Roosevelt – is the obsequiousness of certain persons (certain Southerners) towards the then president upon his visit to Birmingham, in hopes of receiving favors from him of some kind or another, mainly in the form of political appointments or some other cushy make-work government job. The word “obsequious” has mostly gone out of vogue these days, but as Hamilton wrote in Federalist no. 1:
History will teach us that … of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.
It seems that obsequiousness, toadying, or bootlicking as it were, can and does work both ways to the same deleterious and nation-destroying ends. Speaking of demagogues and their demagoguery, Mr. Savage closes his scathing letter by citing that aspect of the sorry scene as he’d watched it unfold to boot:
It is all a squirt of muddy water and the worst of hypocritical demagoguery. Good Lord, deliver us from such humility and give us a large crop of Governor Vardamans and Dr. Staggs.
In the spirit of Mr. Savage’s closing lines in his letter thrice quoted from above, I hope y’all will join me in asking the Good Lord to deliver our generations from such toadying, bootlicking and hypocritical demagoguery as Mr. Savage bore witness to in his day, and that we bear witness to in our own; and to give us in the South a bumper crop of James H. Savage’s. Nevertheless, not my will, but Thy will be done, O Lord. Amen.
God bless James H. Savage, God bless y’all, and God bless and keep the Southland!
Thank you, Mr. Morris. For an excellent book about Yankee Empire President Teddy Roosevelt, buy ‘Bully Boy – The Truth About Theodore Roosevelt’s Legacy’ by Jim Powell. Roosevelt and Lincoln being two of the presidents on Mt Rushmore are the two reasons I have no interest in ever visiting that particular shrine. And the gigantic Lincoln Memorial in the putrid District of Corruption is the main reason I have never set foot in that city, and have no intention of ever doing so. An acquaintance of mine took his family on an Autumn vacation to Washington DC, and New York City. As Briscoe Darling would say, ‘more pow’r to ya!’ Why any self-respecting resident of Dixie would ever want to vacation in those two hell-holes is beyond me. But, this man is a pacified southerner who gave his only son the first name of ‘Lincoln.’ And yes, he was named for the tyrant and war criminal. Imagine that.
Great comments, sir. You wrote:
Thank you, Mr. Powell, for that recommendation. I have Roosevelt’s autobiography in my collection of “Great American Literature,” but I’ve only read about half of it, and that was many moons ago. Now and again I will dust it off and pull a quote or two from it that is relevant to those topics we often discuss at this site. He (Roosevelt) tells a story fairly early in the book about when he was a boy no more than five years-old and the war was in full swing. He had done some act of defiance against his mother (who was Southern through and through), which she told his father, who inflicted punishment for the misdeed. Later that night at bedtime his mother was kneeling beside him saying his bedtime prayer with him when Teddy, in an attempt to get back at his mother for getting him into trouble earlier in the day, threw into his prayer a “solemn” appeal to Heaven asking that the Lord would make it possible that the Yankees would whip the South in the war. To which he wrote that his mother could not help but get a good laugh out of. You wrote:
Fifteen years ago, I would have liked to have visited Mt. Rushmore, but not today, and for the very reason you cite. You wrote:
Hear, hear! Unlike Mt. Rushmore, I have *never* had any desire whatsoever to visit that sh*thole called Washington D.C. (pardon my french). You wrote:
Lord have mercy! It doesn’t surprise me, though; when I do genealogical research and start to stray away from our direct ancestors up the family surnames, invariably I will run into a given name like Abraham Lincoln or Ulysses Grant, and, yes, even William T. Sherman. Which of course are “dead giveaways” as to the namers’ loyalties in spite of their having lived in the South. If you trace them back another generation or two, almost invariably there is a “Yankee in the woodpile.” Thankfully, I’ve never run into those names directly up our tree, although there are numerous Robert E. Lees, Thomas Jacksons, George Washingtons and Thomas Jeffersons, etc.
Thanks again for the book recommendation, I’ll check it out. And thanks for the interesting comments, sir.
“There is no point of view that mitigates slander and defamation”
No sir, there is none. Brother Savage is absolutely correct, and this should be furiously immortalized on our tongues and in defense of our people.
Amen, brother! Amen, and AMEN! One thing we *have to do* in the South above all else except raising God-loving, God-fearing, Bible-thumping generations, is to relentlessly and unabashedly teach our children and grandchildren the true history of their people so that they will honor their fathers and mothers as commanded in the Holy Scriptures. We simply have to begin doing a better job of this!
Thank you for the comment, sir.