Why I Support “Neo-Confederates”

Some ten years ago, I received a rebuke from a gentleman I had gotten to know “electronically.” We had exchanged e-mails and other information over a period of time and had, I believed, a rather amicable relationship though he was of the “Yankee persuasion” while I was not. He is a published author on many Civil War topics, and we communicated mostly on my own “interest,” Col. John Singleton Mosby. Obviously, his opinion of the man was somewhat different than my own, but we both held that the other was entitled to his/her own opinion though we did often debate charges made against Mosby’s actions during the War.

Then one day, I received the above-mentioned reproof, but it wasn’t about our usual subject but about an article of mine that appeared in a “non-professionally” printed publication. I asked what I had said in my article that had been offensive to him, but it turns out that he had taken no offense at what I had written but rather at the publication itself that he considered “racist” and “antisemitic.” He stated that he would never allow anything that he wrote to appear in such a publication, and he was very disappointed that I had seen fit to do so. As an addendum, he then asked why I was involved with “neo-Confederates!” Now, you must remember that this was a time at which the assault on all thing “Confederate” was in full swing and the public forum was awash with opinions and assaults on both sides of the issue.

First, to answer my “friend’s” point about my article appearing in such an “unworthy” source, I pointed out that his claim about not using such sources for his own articles was more than a little naïve. He was a published author and well known at least in his own field. Anything he wrote to any publication was assured of exposure. I, on the other hand, was a nobody (I had not yet written my own book but even so, my name has never become “well known”) so that if I wished my viewpoint to appear in print, I had to send it to sources that I believed would print it. I would even have accepted a “letter to the Editor” in The New York Times though I have no respect at all for that publication, feeling about it much as he felt about the publication in which my article appeared.

It was at this point that he asked why I seemed to be “getting involved” with “neo-Confederates” as if this were something rather beyond the pale. Below is my answer to his question. And although, at the close of our “discussion,” he did admit that I had not “offended” him, yet he ended our “relationship” such as it was. Of course, I understood that if he could not maintain contact with someone with whom he disagreed strongly – though I could have done so despite my own rejection of his viewpoint – it was not worth my time and energy to debate the matter and so we parted if not as friends, at least not as enemies from his viewpoint. Below is the final communication I sent to him in hopes of explaining why things were not as he believed. Did it matter? Probably not, but I think it’s a damned fine explanation for why we should not surrender to a false historical narrative:

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Dear Name:

I have given considerable thought to your query on my “neo-Confederate” contacts. If I put in everything involved, you would have an essay and I’m sure your curiosity does not extend to that degree so I will try to keep it short.

The South was right, and I am not alone in that belief. Read the considered opinion of Lord Acton – a giant of his and any other time. In a letter to Robert E. Lee, Action wrote:

“I saw in States’ rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy…. Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization, and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.”

After over ten years of research, I now know that what I revered for most of my life was an illusion and that our present national condition is the consequence of more than 150 years in which the original vision of most – but not all – of the Founders has been replaced by a central tyranny which at least used to pay “lip service” to the will of the people. My conclusions are summed up by Professor Jay Hoar, an historian from Maine (not Mississippi) who said:

“The worst fears of those Boys in Gray are now a fact of American life—a Federal government completely out of control.”

Of course, I have been assured that Hoar’s opinions are suspect because he spent time in the South. But if Hoar had lived on the moon, that would not change the fact that he is correct. Our “no-longer-federal” government is completely out of control and cares nothing for anyone’s consent, much less that of “the governed.”

And finally, I must bring forth the words of Ulysses Grant who said:

“The questions which have heretofore divided the sentiment of the people of the two sections—slavery and state’s rights, or the right of a state to secede from the Union—they (Southern men) regard as having been settled forever by the highest tribunal – arms – that man can resort to.”

And with that unchallenged sentiment, I realized that we no longer have any law but the law of the jungle – the survival of the strongest. Justice Antonin Scalia – a conservative – said the same thing when asked about the constitutionality of secession. Grant and Scalia were not talking about what was called after the war “the arbitrament of the sword” – that is, acceptance of a military defeat by such men as John Mosby and Robert E. Lee – but the actual belief that triumph in arms somehow bestowed legitimacy upon one side of an issue! If right is determined by might, then Hitler wasn’t “wrong,” he was merely bested in war! Had he won, his adherents would have every moral “right” to build the same type of monuments to him that we have built to another tyrant and war criminal, Abraham Lincoln! As well, if we accept Grant’s and Scalia’s premise, then we are then forced to agree with another “well-respected” conservative, John Bolton, who said that the United States government killed many Southern civilians during the Civil (sic) War without due process and it was the right thing to do! I reject that philosophy which apparently is now – and has been – the philosophy of this country for at least 150 years – ask the American Indian! If the right is determined by the strong rather than by the law, then why bother with the law except as a subterfuge to hide that fact from the ignorant and the naïve?

I stand with those whom you call “neo-Confederates” because they are waging an admittedly losing battle to preserve their history, their symbols and their way of life – Christian Western civilization – and I would prefer to die with the righteous than live in cooperation with the Spirit of the Age. They cannot win because the tide of history is against them but for those who think that their loss means nothing to “America,” I assure you, the symbols, history and heritage of the “The United States” will soon follow the symbols, history and heritage of The Confederate States. The latter can no more be allowed to remain in our Brave New World than the former. Already we see American – not Confederate – flags being censored in our schools lest they “offend” our Third World “guests” – invited or otherwise.

I am almost 72; my husband is almost 75. We are already “dead” in the eyes of Obamacare as is my handicapped son who is considered by our elite rulers just another expensive “useless eater.” My daughter and her husband have no problem with the current regime – and by that, I mean all of them and not just one political party. Indeed, I echo the sentiments of Patrick Buchanan who stated that the two parties are merely two wings on the same bird of prey. I have no grandchildren, nor will I have any, so I am not overcome with angst about the future at least with regard to my family.

It is sad to see the end of “the Great Experiment,” but actually it ended before it really began. The seeds of its destruction were sown at its birth. Patrick Henry was right when he declared that the Constitution was nothing but a plan for the installation of a tyrannous central government despite every effort to prevent that from happening (bye-bye Bill of Rights!). Benjamin Franklin was also right when he said that when the Congress discovered it could use the People’s money to buy elected office in perpetuity, the Republic was dead. Today, we are merely seeing these warnings played out. The final death blow was struck in 1865. We are only now coming to the last dying gasps.

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-By Lady Val