Make Your Sons Americans

(November 24, 2021) The great irony about those wanting to vandalize, destroy, and remove Confederate statues is that their objective is opposite to that of Abraham Lincoln’s during the Civil War. Lincoln wanted to reunite the country whereas those who deface Confederate memorials are dividing it. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the memory of General Robert E. Lee. Today’s historians focus on reinterpreting obscure incidents, and alleged incidents, to reframe him as first and foremost a racist. Not only are the interpretations deliberately sinister and sometimes obvious lies, but they miss a greater truth about Lee. While today’s social justice warriors are doing all they can to break America apart, they fail to see how Lee’s leadership—call it myth if you must—was a unique power that helped reunite our country. 

During his postbellum years from 1865 to his death in 1870 his absence of the resentment, so common among the defeated of any age, raised him high above sectional hatreds to become a role model for reconciliation.  Although he wished Southerners to remain faithful to the old traditions of honor, virtue, and hospitality, he wanted them to drop any feelings that would impede reunion. He saw only ruin in continued bitterness.

As he was traveling through one Southern town years after the war, a mother widowed by the war stepped forward to introduce her two young sons while loudly expressing her hatred of Yankees. No doubt she assumed that his feelings would match hers. Although he stopped momentarily to greet the family, before moving on he looked her in the eye and said, “Madam, don’t bring up your sons to detest the United States Government. Recollect that we form but one country, now. Abandon all these local animosities and make your sons Americans.” What better inscription for a Lee statue than that?

Indeed, what better message for the race-obsessed among us today? Abandon your racial animosities and make yourselves first Americans and only secondarily blacks or whites.

Although it is true that Lee was sometimes a slaveholder, it was not often. At age 22 he graduated second in his West Point class the very month his mother died in 1829 leaving a few slaves to her sons. But Robert had little use for slaves during the military career he was just then starting. More as an act of responsibility toward a dependent than one of arrogant ownership, he took an aged houseslave with him on his first assignment near Savannah where the milder climate might benefit the older man. Between then and 1857, when he was fifty years-old, he had little to do with slaves. But when his father-in-law died that year, his wife inherited over a hundred. They were mostly at her family estate in Arlington, across the Potomac River from Washington City.

Although the slaves belonged to his wife, he was the estate executor. The deceased’s will required that the slaves be freed within five years but also required Lee to set aside monetary legacies for each of the deceased’s granddaughters. Lee worked the slaves to fund the legacies. He set them all free at the end of the five years, shortly after his Civil War victory at the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862. By then, many had already left since the Arlington plantation had been occupied by Federals when the war was scarcely a month old in May 1861. Two that had served him in the Confederate army he converted to salaried employees. In contrast, the slaves in Union General Ulysses Grant’s wife’s family were not freed until January 1865, three years after those of General Lee’s wife. 

Regarding slavery, Lee was a man of his time and place. He was born into a place and era where and when slaveholding was common. Everybody is influenced by the circumstances in which they are born, whether they admit it or not. Some politicians deeply honored today may one day be criticized for their beliefs if those beliefs are contrary to the norms of a future America. Consider, for example, how President Obama could lose stature if America in 2070 is hostile to the infanticide of abortions. No doubt his advocates will plead that he should be honored for other qualities. 

The same applies to Robert E. Lee. His perspective on slavery and blacks were consistent with those of most Americans of his time. In 1854, for example, Abraham Lincoln publicly stated that he opposed slavery in the western territories because he wanted those lands reserved for “free white people.” In his 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas for an Illinois Senate seat he stated, “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

Ultimately Lee was admired most for a persistent spirit of self-denial that was the source of his leadership. Whether he was inspired by the “let-[the-follower]-deny-himself” directions in Mathew and Luke is speculative. But on one visit to Northern Virginia after the war a young mother brought her baby to him to be blessed. He took the infant in his arms, looked at it and then at her and said, “Teach him he must deny himself.” That is all.

All is Lost

(November 23, 2021) When courage is lost, all is lost. — Johan Wolfgang von Goethe.

When Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted last Friday, many in the mainstream media and even the White House condemned the jury’s decision as racist. In truth, it’s more likely that the accusers themselves engaged in reverse racism. Kyle is no hero, but he was a victim.

America’s power elite and almost all major institutions were united against him. Despite his unanimous acquittal, FaceBook and Twitter banned donations pages for him only three days after the Kenosha riots started over a year ago. One Virginia policeman who donated to such a fund elsewhere lost his job and is now asking to be reinstated. Nonetheless, FaceBook and Twitter allowed funds to support jailed Black Lives Matter activists who were arrested during the 2020 riots. Even Vice President Kamala Harris contributed to one such fund.  Following Rittenhouse’s acquittal, the usual suspects rioted, storming into upscale stores to loot expensive merchandise and stuff it into getaway cars waiting at curbside. 

None of this is going to stop until Americans demonstrate the courage to call it what it is: a media and elite culture that perpetually excuses criminal conduct by so-called victimized minorities. After Darrell Brooks drove his car through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, killing five adults and injuring eighteen children (two critically), CNN declined to even identify that he was a black male hours after they knew. It did not fit their inflexible narrative of white male oppressors and black victims. In truth, blacks account for 53% of all murders even though they represent only 13% of America’s population. Thus, they account for four times as many murders as their proportional population share. 

This does not mean that the great majority of blacks fail to be law abiding. They are law abiding. The disproportionate murder statistics largely result from a small minority of offenders within the black community who commit most of the crimes. Thus, it is not racist to explain that the greater proportion of crimes is caused by blacks. It is, however, racist to stereotype blacks as criminals. Nothing is going to change until America develops the courage to identify the false narrative for what it is: an agenda-driven movement to demonize all those who oppose the Democrat Party in its quest for dictatorial power. 

Much of the same can be said for Confederate memorials. Few supporters of them would object to organizations erecting memorials to those resisting slavery and promoting Civil Rights, just so long as the Confederate memorials remain. We can share our heritages. But the practice of destroying them and replacing them with mocking memorials such as Richmond’s “Rumors of War” or its memorial to Nat Turner who hacked to death dozens of white women and children with an ax during a slave uprising, is deliberately provocative. Nothing is going to change until America musters the courage to call such conduct what it is: Hate.

They hate, not slavery or racism; they hate those of us who want to commemorate the ancestors who defended our homeland. To complete Goethe’s quote: “When honor is lost, much is lost. When courage is lost, all is lost.” We lose honor with each statue vandalized or destroyed. We lose everything if we lack the courage to identify blacks who perpetually call whites racist, at anti-white racist themselves.

Finally, I witnessed the radical counterculture of the 1960s. They opposed the establishment. Today is different. Today the establishment is the counterculture. Nothing is going to change until we are courageous enough to call them what they are: wannabe dictators and anti-white racists. Bear in mind the only systemic racism in America today is affirmative action, which penalizes white males the most.   

Emancipation: North and South

(November 22, 2021) Most Civil War students don’t know the history of emancipation. They don’t, for example, know anything about Confederate emancipation. Those who do dismiss it as a last desperate gasp. Most of the latter don’t realize that Lincoln was reluctant to emancipate and finally did so only when he was also desperate. 

The first three Northern emancipation proposals were poorly received, and all rejected by Lincoln. He did not seriously consider it until July 1862 when “we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics, or lose the game!” A month later Attorney General Edward Bates reported that Lincoln was so depressed over military reversals that “he [Lincoln] felt almost ready to hang himself.” Concerning the prior proposals:

First, on August 31, 1861, General John C. Fremont ordered emancipation, which he restricted to his military district in Missouri. Lincoln overruled him and soon sent him to a more modest command. 

Second, when War Secretary Simon Cameron was preparing his departmental annual report in December 1861 he wrote, “it is . . . clearly the right of the government to arm slaves . . . and employ their service against the rebels.” After Cameron prematurely released the report to the press, Lincoln had him revise, dropping any implication of emancipation.  The President sent him to St. Petersburg the following month to be America’s ambassador to Russia. 

Third, General David Hunter’s May 19, 1862, General Order 11 emancipated slaves in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida. Ten days later Lincoln revoked it.  

Lincoln delayed emancipation because he wanted to keep the border states loyal to the Union. Nonetheless, seven months after he sent Cameron to far-off Russia, he presented his own emancipation plan to his cabinet on July 22, 1862. After the battle of Sharpsburg two months later, he announced the plan publicly through a dubiously legal executive order. 

The Confederacy was also heading toward emancipation, but it had a bigger hill to climb because she had many slaves whereas the North had none and the border states comparatively few. While modern historians credit Lincoln with “evolving toward justice” on the matter of emancipation they give no credit to Jefferson Davis for also “evolving.” The truth is as follows:

In January 1864 Confederate General Patrick Cleburne and a dozen colleagues submitted a plan that was passed up to Jefferson Davis. Cleburne proposed to emancipate slaves who volunteered as combat soldiers. Most of his superiors, including Davis, rejected the idea. 

Just as Lincoln changed his mind seven months after War Secretary Cameron’s departmental report, however, seven months after Cleburne’s proposal Davis told Union peace emissaries Gilmore and Jacques, “We are not fighting for Slavery. We are fighting for independence . . .” 

The chief difference was that President Davis respected his Constitution whereas Lincoln would readily usurp his. Davis required:

1. That the Confederate Congress pass an Act authorizing slave enlistments. He would not do it by mere executive order.
2. Once the Act passed in March 1865, he stipulated by executive order that no black would be enlisted that had not volunteered and that each volunteer be accompanied by manumission papers from their former owner.

Davis was much more respectful of the law than Lincoln. Even after Lincoln assumed executive authority for the Emancipation Proclamation, he later realized it was probably illegal. He asked, therefore, for the 13th Amendment. That Amendment did not get ratified until December 1865, which was seven months after the war had ended. Significantly, many of the pre-carpetbagger legislators (composed entirely of white Southerners) voted in favor of it. In fact, 8 of the 11 former Confederate states voted in favor the Amendment by December 1865 when it was ratified nationally.

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Calling Evil Good, and Good Evil

(November 14, 2021) In his fifth chapter the prophet Isiah warned, “Woe to them that call evil good, and good evil; that call darkness light, and light darkness; that call bitter, sweet and sweet bitter.” 

Yet, that is precisely what America’s cultural elite have been doing for years and most especially since they’ve vandalized, destroyed, removed Confederate and other statues. The Administration, Faculty, and Trustee Board of Washington and Lee University have grown ashamed of Robert E. Lee and are doing everything but removing his name from the school to minimize the general’s influence on campus. It is likely only a matter of time before they will once again try to remove even his name.  Similarly, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney destroyed Lee’s 130-year-old statue on the city’s Monument Avenue. America’s elites justify the demonization of Lee by labeling the general “evil” despite his abundant courage and cool leadership.  

Simultaneously Richmond paid homage to George Floyd with a laser hologram and light show superimposed on Lee’s statue, even though Floyd was a convicted criminal who served five years in prison starting in 2009 for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. On the day he died while in police custody with toxic levels of narcotics in his bloodstream in 2020, he was arrested for passing counterfeit $20 bills and resisting arrest. Similarly, Richmond erected a so-called “emancipation memorial” honoring black Virginians of the antebellum and Civil War eras. Among those glorified is Nat Turner who led a drunken slave uprising in 1831 that massacred fifty-five whites. America’s elites label Turner “good” even though most of his victims were women and children hacked to death with hatches and axes.

No doubt the prophet Isaiah was foretelling the arrival of evil tyrannical leaders and today’s Democrat Party, but I repeat myself, while warning the rest of us to fight back. Fortunately, C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters novel describes how. In the book Screwtape is a senior minion of the Devil teaching a younger one how to corrupt mankind. Screwtape says (paraphrasing): 

“We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. Whenever we have almost succeeded in doing so, God permits a war or some other calamity, and at once courage becomes so obviously important to humans that all our work is undone. Thus, there is still at least one vice of which they feel genuine shame: cowardice. The danger of inducing cowardice in people is that we may produce in them a self-loathing that leads to repentance and humility for them. During peacetime we can make many people ignore good and evil entirely; In dangerous times, however, humans may become courageous and turn against all the vices we have taught them to praise. If we cannot force them to accept cowardice as a virtue, we may force them to become courageous and thereby destroy all our work to corrupt them.”  

Therefore, when the cultural elite tells you that you are racist for resisting statue vandalization and removal, you must tell them that you are not racist and will not be silenced by their cancel culture strategy. Put bluntly, we can say: “If you think I am racist, that is your problem, not mine.” The same applies to other cancel culture terms like sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic. If we are not ashamed of cowardice, we will never have the courage to save the honor of our ancestors and country. We cannot expect others to do it for us. 

Confederate Ladies Push Back

(November 12, 2021) Earlier this week the Jacksonville, Florida municipal government tried to remove a Confederate monument but ultimately voted to delay the decision. Dedicated to the Women of the Confederacy in 1915, agitators have been trying to get it removed for the last three years. They have generally had their way the the City Council until now. Perhaps because of the recent Virginia vote, the silent voices opposing removal felt embolden to speak their minds.

When the state of Florida asked her men to go to war in 1861 they responded in such numbers that Florida had more men in Confederate uniform than it had registered voters. If America were to go to war today and California responded in a like manner, she would have 31 million people in uniform. According the British wartime observer, Lt. Colonel Arthur J. L. Fremantle, the Confederate women were more determined to resist Northern invasion than were their men. He met many women during his three month wartime sojourn in the South and was impressed with their abiding persistence, particularly considering their shockingly obvious poverty.

Watch the ten minute video above to learn more.