Confederates and Yankees in Middle-earth

Two areas I have studied that have fascinated me are the Old South and author J.R.R. Tolkien and his creation of Middle-earth. Examining both, I found remarkable similarities in their portrayals of good and evil, piquing my interest.  It seems the “free peoples” of Middle-earth lived lifestyles and built societies similar to those which the South had, and the orcs and tyrants, such as Sauron, fit very nicely with the Southern view of the Yankees and progressives. At heart, Tolkien was, in many ways, a Southerner.

On the surface, there were differences between Tolkien and many Southerners. He was an Englishman, born after the events of the American Civil War, and was deeply in love with his land; a feudal monarchist and a devout traditionalist Catholic, while most of the South was Protestant. But the differences were not in substance, but method. Further, as I show in my book Defending Dixie’s Land, the Old South had strong aristocratic, feudal, and monarchical tendencies, a great admiration for the Middle Ages, and, in many ways, resembled a Protestant version of medieval Europe, a significant period of Professor Tolkien’s study and strong interests. Also, the South’s form of Protestantism was the “High Church,” and Catholicism played a more impactful and accepted role in the South than in the North. Traditional Catholics sided with the Old South rather than the progressive North during the Civil War due to cultural, religious, and political similarities.

In my book The Road Goes Ever On and On: A New Perspective on J. R. R. Tolkien and Middle-earth, I define Tolkien’s politics as a Christian, libertarian, feudal monarchist, or ancho-monarchist. Tolkien’s own preferences closely follow those of Anglo-Saxon England and early medieval kingship. Misinformation and falsehoods aside, the feudal Middle Ages’ Catholic monarchies provided the longest-lasting, libertarian, decentralized, self-governing societies ever known to man. Only the Old South has come close.

Tolkien despised modernity, centralized power, communism, and all forms of totalitarianism. Thus, he would have rejected the North’s push for expanding governmental powers and centralized policies. He held to traditional beliefs and regarded liberalism and intrusions into the Church, home, and families, as has become the norm, as evil.

Southerners in Middle-earth

Hobbits

Tolkien is best known as the creator of Middle-earth. His hobbits dwelt in the Shire and are perhaps his most beloved characters, reflecting who he was. Tolkien once described himself as “a Hobbit in all but size.” The hobbits represented Tolkien’s societal ideals and would seem very familiar to a Southerner.

Hobbits lived in an agrarian, libertarian society where the government’s only role was delivering the mail and supplying a few sheriffs to protect the borders and return stray animals. The community was made up of moral, close-knit extended families who passed on trades and farmlands to their descendants. Most everyone was engaged in agriculture in one way or another, usually on self-sufficient family farms while growing a cash crop to barter.

Tolkien describes the Shire, as I might the Old South, as a “half republic half aristocracy.” It was led by upstanding, respectable, gentle hobbits like Bilbo Baggins, and like in the Old South, hobbits kept to the old laws of free will. Families did almost all the governing. Tolkien tells us that, in the Shire, “Families, for the most part, managed their own affairs” where “many generations of relatives lived in (comparative) peace together in one ancestral and many tunneled mansion. All hobbits were, in any case, clannish.” The Shire was broken down into many subdivisions based on these leading families; in other words, decentralization as they would not force themselves on others (as Yankees do).

Hobbits were slow to change and held onto traditions. “I can’t abide changes,” said Old Gamgee. They were also in no hurry. Describing the Southerner, Avirett writes:

“As there was no hurry among us in those days, no need of haste, men took time to be truly conservative and fastened the taproot of their every-day life deep down into the soil which was pressed by the foot-prints of George Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Henry, and such others as gave dignity and honor to American citizenship.”

James Battle Avirett, The Old Plantation How We Lived in Great House and Cabin Before the War, F. Tennyson Neely Co. New York Chicago London, 1901

Hobbits enjoyed leisure. Perhaps the best-known hobbit, Bilbo, tells the wizard Gandalf, “There is no hurry. We have all the day before us.” They could be described by the word “contented.” They spent most of their time growing food and eating it and were also known for smoking a pipe, drinking a few beers, writing, thinking, singing, fishing, walks in nature, gardening, and other similar pursuits. They were “plain folk” who were not in a hurry to “progress.” Their enjoyment of tobacco [the number one export] and beer might not sit well with the Puritan-minded Yankee. 

Pursuing money, industry, and materialism (like the North) holds no sway over hobbits. On his deathbed, the treasure and money-focused dwarf, Thorin Oakenshield, admits to Bilbo, “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

Kingship

Throughout the several diverse realms of the free people, many similarities distinct from the evil territory under the “Shadow” are displayed: honor, family ties, freedom, morality, and a love for the environment, and more, seen as the artwork of the creator god (Eru) of Middle-earth.

They were followers of Eru’s (the god and creator of Middle-earth) design. They did not use force or numerical superiority to impose their way on others, as the North did to the South. Rather, they allowed each realm to live autonomously under their own customs and laws, similar to how the Old South wanted each section of the Union, via states’ rights, to conduct their own affairs unhindered by majorities, more powerful militaries, or distant politicians. 

Aragorn, the heir of Elendil, rightful heir to the throne of Gondor, is given as an example of an ideal king, ruling and judging his kingdom with wisdom. He allows self-rule to certain peoples who are under his authority and protection. Rulers did not lord it over their people, coerce them, or burden them with taxes and regulations. Within the free peoples’ realms, there are no states enacting legislation to control the people. The lords allow maximum free will and liberty to those living in their realm.

Despite the vast territory under his authority, Aragorn practiced decentralization. The Shire was given full autonomy, as well as a gift of land from Aragorn. Faramir was given Ithilien to rule as his princedom. To the Ents, Aragorn gave the valley surrounding Orthanc and more land west of the mountains to allow expansion of their forest.

Dwarves, elves, hobbits, and men are allowed to maintain their own cultures without the need or desire to control any other. Treebeard, leader of Fangorn Forest, says to Celeborn the lord of Lórien whose lands border it, “I know mine, and you know yours. Let neither side molest what is the other’s.” Even when various groups live in the same areas, they respect and practice self-governance.

For example, in what is described as an excellent situation in the town of Bree, hobbits, men, dwarves, and elves all pass through or live in peace. Men are the most numerous and govern Bree, yet the hobbits who also dwell there do so, “minding their own affairs in their own ways.” And Bree itself, like so many of the trade towns in medieval Europe, is entirely autonomous; the men of Bree are described as “independent; they belonged to nobody but themselves.” The practice of self-government cultivated contentment and happiness. Mr. Butterbur said he would not leave Bree for any money. In and around Lake-town, Dale, Erebor, and the Woodland Realm, dwarves, men, and elves live in peace, alliance, and friendship. The men of Dale and Lake-town apprentice their sons to the dwarves of Erebor, renowned for their crafting abilities. When the Easterlings attacked the region during the War of the Ring, the dwarves allied with and fought alongside the men of Dale and their king Brand, grandson of Bard who had killed the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit.

Within the realm of Rohan, we also see a decentralized form of ruling. Rohan has its king and lords, including the three marshals of the Mark, who govern within Rohan with their own capitals of Helm’s Deep, Aldburg, and Edoras. Éomer said, “The East Mark is my charge, the ward of the third marshal.” King Théoden’s son,  Théodred (killed at the battle of Isen), was the second marshal of the Mark and his capital was at Helm’s Deep. King Théoden himself was the first of these marshals, and he relied on his vassals, who willingly sent men to his aid. Like Anglo-Saxon England, the king’s army comprised a minimal number of professional soldiers – the king had to call on his vassals for a muster as Theoden did. The majority of “soldiers” were full-time farmers who loyally served their local lords, who, in turn, served the king. Outside the gates of Edoras, we encounter other lesser lords of the house of Eorl, such as Dúnhere, the lord of Harrowdale. The men of Rohan are identified by their home regions, an example of which is “the men of the Westfold.” Their local lord is Erkenbrand, who rules and commands independently of Edoras. When the men of Rohan are killed in battle, they are buried separately by place of birth; for example, the men of the Westfold were buried separately from the men of the East Dales (similar to how the Confederacy raised regiments by states). Rohan’s libertarian politics are summed up by Éomer, when he states, “We desire only to be free, and to live as we have lived, keeping our own, and serving no foreign lord, good or evil.” (Think Abraham Lincoln.)

Yankees in Middle-earth

“The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against Kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion.”

J. R. R. Tolkien, “Letter 144”

Sauron rejected god (Eru Ilúvatar) and wanted his followers to be atheists, so they would treat him as god with no resistance. He hated and destroyed the environment because he only ever saw and desired power and control. He only valued it for what he could get out of it. Further, his hatred of god made him angry to see the beauty of the designer; he wanted wasteland and destruction. Likewise, he despised creations of god such as men, ents, hobbit sane elves and so waged war to destroy them.

Peace and self-governance were not to be found in the realms ruled by the tyrannical Sauron, nor his own prior master Morgoth, or the fallen wizard Saruman. They all operated using a highly centralized form of government driven by fear, power, and control. There was no law nor any ancient customs in Mordor. Sauron was the law. His dictates, his desires, and what he declared was law. Sauron’s orcs had nothing to protect them; they were only tools to an end.

The free people are superior individual fighters, fighting for a good cause and defending their homeland. However, like Northern armies, full of mercenaries and perhaps less incentive, the Shadow has endless numbers and sends wave after wave against the free people, driven only by fear of Sauron.

The Shadow’s forces operated like modern totalitarian states, with the government controlling the realm in a highly centralized way to benefit the supreme tyrant. Any disobedience was punished, and countered with force, much as the invaded Southern states discovered.

Any tyrant who seeks centralization wants complete control. Sauron wanted the whole earth under his domain. Robert E. Lee warned as follows about what would occur if the United States was to centralize:

“The consolidation of the states into one vast empire, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of ruin which has overwhelmed all that preceded it.”

The clearest symbols of power and control offered by Tolkien are the Rings of Power crafted in the Second Age, with the aid of the Dark Lord Sauron. His ultimate purpose was to bring all the free peoples under his dominion through the One Ring, secretly made in Mordor, “one ring to rule them all.” Sauron, who fashioned the Ring and infused it with evil, knew its true purpose. He would use the Ring’s power to increase his might, to wage war against, overwhelm, and enslave the free peoples. That was his only intention, absolute domination. That is why he made the Ring, “forged secretly in the mountains of fire, The One Ring to be their master.”

Destruction of the Shire

The scourging of the Shire in many ways resembles the American Civil War. At the end of The Lord of the Rings, the Shire has been invaded by outside forces that transformed the Shire’s government. These invaders bring socialism, industry, and moral decay. The new government ignored all the old laws and traditions, instituting a multitude of oppressive ones of their own. These laws all limited the liberty of the hobbits and expanded the power of the state.

New laws are continuously passed to govern business, lay taxes on exports, limit free speech, regulate housing, and then expand the police state to enforce them. These laws destroy commerce, and many businesses are eventually forced to shut down. Substances are deemed illegal (beer and pipeweed are confiscated), and subsidized industrial factories replace independent farms. Now, hobbits must work for the government through a collaboration with local industrial businesses. Taxation and regulation force the formerly leisurely agrarian hobbits to give up the farm and work as laborers in a hurried industrial setting where the profit is then used to benefit those in power colluding with the industrialist. “Gatherers and sharers” are sent around to collect the hobbit’s earnings “for fair redistribution.” But, in reality, it just relocates to the pockets of the new industrialist and those in power. Like the Master of Lake-town, Yankees and those who scour the Shire, are just known as money-grubbers.                

The new centralized government’s factories pollute the water, air, and land, destroying the Shire’s beauty. The government gobbles up private property, with no one left to care for and love their local farms and the land’s beauty. Hobbits and their land have become but a means to grow the resources and power for the new socialist government.