The Colorado Confederatarian

Ben DeGrow has posted an entry ovah at his blog Mt. Virtus, which responds t' wut I wrote here las' night. I wuz feelin' a bit ornery las' night, so I e-mailed Ben privutly info'ming him of its existence and invitin' him to respond in my commints box (now that the commints is offishully open ). Ben's response is deetalyed 'n thotful, 'n it's a-gonna take me a little time to digest it all, access my sou'ces and write th' proper reply. So stay tuned y'all.

And thank ye, Ben, fo' such a well-written response. I already knew you wuz a good ole boy, but 'twould appear yir a better one thin I thot. If'n I have misjudged ye, I'm truly sorry 'bout that.

S. Jones

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OK, this here's my offishual reply:

Fellow blogger Snaggle-Tooth Jones has leveled a misguided attack :

Now Ben, while it may o’ may not have been “misguided”, it certainly weren’t no “attack”. Like the shellin’ of Ft. Sumter, it wuz more of a loud challenge designed to git a point across. I wudn’t ever attack ye, tho’ I might set out to annoy ye evah once in ahwile.

That bein' sed, I will confess that when I wrote that post I was feelin’ a bit edgy. I’d been thinkin’ on how much distain is typic’ly shown towahds us “neo-Confed’rate” types these days, not only by libruls but by neoconserv’tives like ye-seff. Ole Ron Paul, fo instance, had taken a lot of guff fo’ his commint ‘bout how That War really din’t need to be fought. George Brockler, a local feller (and a conserv’tive) who sometimes fills in fo’ KHOW tawk show hosts sed this ‘bout Paul: “The man is insane. I mean can you imagine someone contradicting our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, on this matter!?” (Alas, such is representative of the level of historical ignurnce and uncritical piety that pervades the Yankee populace.)

Thin there were them commints made ‘bout our Battle Flag by “Mitt” Romney and yo’ boy Fred Thompson durin’ a recent GOP debate, ole Mitt even goin’ as far as to imply that the Battle Flag shudn’t even be unfurled in publik.

As fir yir statements on the matter, we’ll I thot I observed sumthin’ of the same sort of distain in this here commint:

Having used the term “neo-Confederate reactionaries” in the context I did, I’m willing to stand by it: People who feel compelled to apologize for the Confederacy in defense of some current conservative-oriented idea or agenda item ( http://bendegrow.com/?p=590 ). The author I critiqued in this particular post certainly fits the bill.

And ye also called Woods an “America Hater” in-att entry, sumthin’ I don’t thank is really true of Prof. Woods, but regardless, it’s an appalachian I took be further indic’tive of yo’ aneemus t'ward “All Things Confederate.”  Even in yir latest post yir quite passhunate about ye views of the Confed'racy.

(Fir you 'n anyone else who’s intersted, I posted a response to that blog entry here ) .

Anyhow, its-ese here types o’ remarks that I run inta all the times these days, from conserv’tives as well as libruls.  And-att’s why I got t’ thinking of a more chivalrous day, whin Americans din’t generally view the ole Confed’racy or its flags with the same aneemus they seem-ta nowadays. (In fact, it was hardly any aneemus at all, if’n one takes his clues from not only such historical data as I provided in my earlier entry, but from the older litrature and even the pop’lar culture too.)  My “takeaway” from it all is-att conserv’tives these days are almos’ as prone to the PC mentality as are libruls.  (‘Course, from the paleocon purspektiv, the neocon is a form of librul.)  I mean, Thompson’s and Romney’s remarks were pure PC.

Now, them commints o’ yirs notwithstandin’, this latest blog entry o’ yirs makes me thank that yir more fair-minded thin most, so as I sed, if I musjudged ye, I do apologize. That bein’ out o’ th’ way, let me now turn to a couple of the thangs ye’ve sed in yir last blog entry.

All I can say to Mr. Jones is that he has conflated the grand political and philosophical issues at hand with the wide-ranging personal motivations of individual soldiers who donned the Union and Confederate uniforms. To answer my detractor’s question, I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant penned in his memoirs about the surrender at Appomattox .

I din’t mean to conflate ‘em, Missur DeGrow, but only show how men were more chivalrous t’ward the South back thin, like they ain’t now. (The excepshun of the time bein’, of course, the Radical Republicans and they oppurtunistic agents.  I’m obvusly speakin’ of they disastrus policy of Reconstruction.)

We can scarcely begin to scratch at the surface of deep historical complexities in the blogging venue. Untangling countless motivations and decisions momentously made, we will find plenty to respect and plenty to condemn. But all such judgments must be made with due deference to the political and cultural realities in which the historical actors lived. That being said, I believe that Confederate leaders blindly led their soldiers and civilians down a path of failure and destruction for the perpetuation of a dying and immoral institution. With pro-Southern factions effectively in control of the executive, upper legislative, and judicial branches of national government during the 1850s, states’ rights was largely a convenient excuse concocted in defense of the “peculiar institution” of racial chattel slavery.

Oh but surely ye mus’ know, Missur DeGrow, that it was precisely cuz the “peculiar institution” WUZ a “dying” one that a war such as Lincoln started, if' it wuz truly meant to end slavery, was patently a mos’ disperportionut response.  Both external and internal pressures meant that slavery in the South probably would-a gone within the next 50 years or so. The price to end slavery earlier was 600,000 dead and a trashed fedrul constitution. If’n ye ain’t red it, I’d recommend this here book by libertarian historian Jeffrey Hummel. Ain’t no Confederate apology, but he duz make this very point, among several other compellin’ ones as to why the North certainly wuzzn’t lily white.

And as fir Lincoln, surely ye mus’ know that he was a consummate politician, and accordin’ly sed whatever was beneficial to him and his policies at th’ time.  But I do thank his real feelin’s were betrayed in a letter he wrote to ole Horace Greeley:

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.

What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. (The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume V, "Letter to Horace Greeley" (August 22, 1862), p. 388.)

It’s damnin’ data such-as ese which show that the Confed’racy’s struggle wuz not so much fo’ the presurvashun of the “peculiar institution” as it were fo’ the right to secede and determine its own destiny. As ye know, the rank ‘n file Confedr’ate soldier did not so much share the economic concerns of the planters. There’s that well-know’d story about how a Reb soldier wuz captured, and whin asked ‘bout why he fought, replied, “’Cuz y’all are down here.”

Cuz the North invaded the South, when the South had the perfekt right to secede.  (I know yir probably goin’ t’ challenge that statement ‘bout secession, but the historical eveedence is so overwhelmingly agin’ ye on this-un that there’s jus’ no way you kin prevail.  Ole Mencken were right about-iss.)

Does this impugn the personal honor of men like General Robert E. Lee?  Hardly. There is much to be emulated in his life, and his devotion to Virginia despite a conflicted conscience is to be admired. But it must also be remembered that Lee’s decision was made after pro-slavery Southern radicals had forced President Lincoln’s hand and invaded federal property.

‘L, I’m-a gonna take issur with ye thar, as there’s a compellin’ case t’ be made that the Rebs fired on Sumter fir very good political and tactical reasons, and that they were even manuevered into doin’ so by that shifty Lincoln. I won’t set forth that arg’mint here, but ye kin read about it in Foote’s history, Vol. I. pp. 44-50.  ‘N so the way I see it, it truly wuz a “War of Northern Aggression” from first t’ last.

As for general North-South relations in the generations following the War of the Rebellion. . . .

A “rebellion” which the South had a perfekt right-ta, jus’ as the colonies did in the First American Revolution.

the story gets more tangled and complicated. Fatigue over Reconstruction, the lure of Westward expansion, and various internal political battles pushed the North’s focus forward onto new ventures. Because of the relative direct impacts of the War on the two regions, the North was more ready to put it behind them. In the South, various Confederate leaders constructed a Lost Cause mythology, many aspects of which eventually made their way into the accepted canon of historical understanding of the time period. The North and South had moved forward to reconcile on “the white basis.” As racism grew across the country, evidenced most strongly in the Jim Crow South, the contributions of blacks to the war effort and the emphasis on ending slavery were diminished in the textbooks. Have you not seen, for example, “Birth of a Nation “?

Yes, some facets of the “Lost Cause” argument were pushed too far, but at the end of the day it is simply the case that the South *wuz* right. The partic’lar criticisms of the “Lost Cause” argument notwithstandin’, ye got a new generashun of scholars who are staring to debunk National Mythology about the war, partic’larly the Lincoln myth but also the widely accepted notions that the war was fought “to end slavery”, that Confed’rate flags are akin to Nazi flags, and suchlike. The mo’ I read th’ mo’ I am convinced that the National Mythology is in fact-att: mythology, and pernicious mythology to boot, ‘cuz Lincoln and his successors – including the neocons of today – have effectively destroyed the orig’nul republican vision. Thankfully, we still got us a cadre of libertarians, paleocons and “neo-Confederates” who see thru the Yankee myth, and who bravely speak out ‘ginst it. I think especially of scholars such as Eugene Genovese  , whose work has built upon the historical and cultural analyees of the Vanderbilt Agrarians as well as on the works of thinkers such as Calhoun and Old Right thinkers such as Weaver 'n Kirk.

A good place to start looking is this book . It’s worth a close, critical read, to be judged on the strength of its arguments. You don’t have to be “politically correct” to accept some of the authors’ conclusions.

I’m familiar with ole Gary. Have read his book The Confederate War. But the “revisionist” folks I menshun above ‘r startin’ to do to Yankee mythology wut yir Yankee scholars did to Southern mythology. At the end of the day, ‘ppears to me it’s the Yankees of today, and not the Southrons, who have been hornswaggled. So I’ll stick with my scholarly version of the Lost Cause, thank ye. Seems to work better than anythin’ else these days. And it might even be that we seein’ the turn of the tide now that all the neg’tive ramifications of the Northern vic’try are startin’ to make thimseves know’d. Ye even got the topic of secession bein’ publikly debated once again, with libruls along with neo-Confederates now agreeing that since Rome on the Potomac is nevah, evah gonna agree to anythin' resemblin' true federalism, secession is the only way.  I for one say, “the center cannot hold.”

But all this is largely separate from the issues of soldierly camaraderie and respect between men who served in Blue and Gray uniforms. Yes, I am emotionally affected when I witness these scenes. Having the barest sense of what those men (including my ancestors who served on different sides) endured and sacrificed can not do otherwise. But it’s only one portion of the larger picture.

Yes, back to the main criticism at hand. And like-I sed, I am glad to see this response from you, cuz it indercates to me that you know sumthin’ more of the complexities of the matter, you havin’ degrees in his’try ‘n-all. I too had kinfolk who fought on both sides, tho’ mos’ were Rebs. (Had a few Tennessean great, great uncles run off to Illinois to join the Federals, damn 'em. But mos’ of ‘em -- Tennesseans and Arkansans and Alabamans and Texans – fought proudly for the Confed’racy.)  But those men, Yankee and Reb, weren’t like we is today. They were men of a diffurnt era, a diffurnt mentality, an-att’s why they cud be so chivalrous t’ward one another. So much so that I thank I can say that if the Yankees cud-a seen the way they Union wud evolve, many of 'em woulda switched sides.

Mr. Jones, you have misrepresented my views. I am glad I got the opportunity to provide some clarity, and knowing that we have only begun to touch on issues of vast import and magnitude, I am glad to continue the dialogue as opportunity provides.

‘L, I hope we unnerstan’ each other jus’ a little better as a result of this exchange. Like-I sed, I apologize if I’ve misrepresented yir views. But I still see a certain anti-Southern and anti-paleocon aneemus there in yir hed, as I’m sure you see a certain anti-Yankee and anti-neocon aneemus in mine.  But perhaps in the future we shudn’t confuse resultin' criticisms with “attack”, nesarilly. Ye thank?

S. Jones