Let’s Hear It for the Boys in Grey

Feature Article by: Eric Shive on January 24th, 2005 at 10:50 PM

I wish I was in the land of cotton
Old times there are not forgotten
Look Away! Look away!
Look Away! Dixie Land.

---

Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson are two of the most virtuous and honorable men ever to grace the pages of American history. Both men were bastions of steadfastness and dignity in a time ripe with tension, violence, and destruction.

Robert E. Lee was the embodiment of integrity, morality, and righteousness. A devoutly Christian man, he believed that slavery was evil and that God’s providence would one day lead to the emancipation of those in bondage. Lee was the consummate gentleman and was beloved by both North and South. He was filled with patriotic fervor, and this love for America drove his impressive military career in the U.S. Army. Though always loyal to the Union, Lee could not turn his back on his home state, and when asked to lead the Northern invasion force into the South he had to decline. When Virginia seceded, Lee followed.

Other than his military prowess, Stonewall Jackson’s most notable characteristic was his deep Christian faith. Every weekend, Jackson broke the law in order to teach slaves to read the Bible. Jackson summed up his beliefs in a letter to his wife, writing “God has been our shield and to His name be all the glory.”

Lee and Jackson were two of the most decent individuals to traverse this great land, and in 1904, the Commonwealth of Virginia began an annual celebration of the lives of these gallant men in January known as Lee-Jackson Day. After Martin Luther King Day was declared a federal holiday in the early 1980s, Virginia began celebrating King’s holiday in conjunction with Lee-Jackson Day. In doing so, the state expressed a feeling of unity and pride surrounding Southerners of all races. However, four years ago the two holidays were separated, pushing Lee-Jackson Day to the Friday before. This action was purportedly taken because it was seen as insulting to King’s legacy to celebrate his life along with that of two Confederate generals.

Why has Martin Luther King Day become a popular national holiday while Lee-Jackson Day is relegated to the fringes of societal celebrations? Why are Americans so willing to honor a civil rights leader like King, but recoil at the idea of celebrating the lives of two other great men, Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson? Why aren’t Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson given their own federal holiday? The simple answer is found in the immense historical revisionism surrounding the War Between the States (or as Yankees call it, the “Civil War”) perpetuated since the Confederacy breathed its last gasp of freedom in 1865.

Revisionist historians have demonized all things Southern and created a blanket of guilt that enshrouds the lives of all white Southerners, past and present. In an effort to destroy these false stereotypes and untruths, The Cornell American has devoted its January issue to honor the other January holiday, Lee-Jackson Day and to recognize the other Southern leaders who have been wrongfully slandered.

The main reason Lee-Jackson Day is not embraced by more Americans is due to this misinformation campaign waged against the South. If more Americans knew the truth about the Civil War and not just the propaganda force-fed to them by Northern-sympathizing historians, we could one day see Lee-Jackson Day rise to the prominence it deserves. Of the many myths propagated by these bogus historians, the three most commonly advocated tenets of civil war “mythstory” are 1) The War for Southern Independence was fought over slavery, 2) Secessionists were treasonous, and 3) Abraham Lincoln was a saintly leader.

1) The Civil War was about the free North fighting the slaveholding South to free blacks from the bondage of slavery.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Abraham Lincoln himself made this perfectly clear when he stated, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or 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.”

In fact, Lincoln managed to do just that; he “saved” the Union without actually freeing any slaves. The much-touted Emancipation Proclamation was a complete political charade. In this document Lincoln claimed to have freed all the slaves in the states still in “rebellion” but made sure to exempt all slaves in Union territory or areas occupied by Federal troops.

The Emancipation Proclamation was a worthless piece of political propaganda that freed no one. Its only possible effects could have been to deter any European powers (who wouldn’t want to be seen as defending slavery) from aiding the Confederacy or to cause a slave insurrection in the South.

Secondly, most of the men who fought for the South owned no slaves. When an anonymous Confederate soldier was captured by Federal troops, he was asked “Why do you fight us Johnny Reb?” to which he responded, “Because you are here.”

When the vicious war criminal William Tecumseh Sherman marched his troops on their path of destruction through the Carolinas, several of my ancestors took up arms to defend their homes from his spree of murder and destruction. The heroic actions taken by a people defending themselves from a cruelly violent and destructive invading force have been perverted by revisionist historians into a bunch of bigots fighting to preserve slavery. The boys in grey must be rolling in their graves.

2) Lincoln’s invasion of the South was done to restore order to treasonous secessionists.

While this myth at least acknowledges that Lincoln’s primary objective was not to free the slaves, it nevertheless ignores the reality that it was the Southerners who were in line with American Constitutional principles, not dear Mr. Lincoln. In fact, by invading the South Lincoln denied the very principle of governing by the consent of the governed that he had previously advocated: “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better…Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.”

While this quote may seem to be more appropriate to Jefferson Davis than Abraham Lincoln, this is the line good ol’ Honest Abe was preaching back in 1848. I guess he forgot the clause that “any people anywhere” doesn’t include Southerners.

Before the election of Czar Lincoln, the majority of power in the United States was held by the states. It was the individual states that declared themselves independent of Britain (or dare I say, seceded from Britain). It was the individual states that ratified the Constitution.

It was the individual states who guarded their authority in the tenth amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Why would the states, which only a little more than a decade earlier had fought to defend their right to secede from Britain, willingly create a central government to which they would be bound for eternity? The answer, of course, is that the states did retain their right to secede from the Union, because the compact they had formed was that of a voluntary Union. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted, “If one of the states chooses to withdraw from the compact, it would be difficult to disprove its right in doing so, and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly either by force or right.” I think Lincoln must have skipped that chapter of Democracy in America.

3) Abraham Lincoln was one of America’s greatest presidents.

The near demigod status of Lincoln has been the result of a clever propaganda campaign exercised by revisionist historians to cover up the blemishes of his term and whitewash the actions of the Union during the War of Northern Aggression. The truth of the matter is that Lincoln was an oppressive and violent dictator who had no respect for the Constitution or the rights it was supposed to protect.

As dictator (oops, I mean president) Lincoln silenced dissent in the North by arresting and jailing newspaper editors who expressed opinions contrary to his. He decided that he held the authority to suspend the Writ of Habeas Corpus (a power granted only to Congress in Article 1 Section 9 of the Constitution) and jailed men he deemed to be political dissidents for indeterminate amounts of time, providing them with neither charge nor trial.

Lincoln also made sure that the Maryland legislature would not take any action against him by arresting popularly-elected legislators who were suspected of being secessionists or sympathetic to making peace with the Confederacy. Free elections were disrupted throughout the North by Federal troops following the orders of the Lincoln administration, intent on ensuring Unionist victories.

While Lincoln may have opposed the institution of slavery, his real dream was for all of America to be white. Lincoln was involved with several groups that advocated colonizing America’s blacks back to Africa or to the Caribbean. Hmm, a president whose main goal is an all-white America—is this not more like David Duke than “The Great Emancipator”?

Lincoln’s authoritarian rule was felt most strongly in the Southern states he invaded. In direct violations of the laws of war, including 1863’s Geneva Conventions, Union generals under Lincoln’s command ruthlessly waged war on civilians. Cities were bombarded and burned. Sherman’s march left a mile-wide swath of destruction across the south. Private property was confiscated or destroyed. Thousands were left poor and homeless. As a result of Lincoln’s invasion of the South, more than 600,000 Americans would die. Is this the mark of a “great” president?

By taking a second look at Abraham Lincoln and the so-called “Civil War,” one comes to the conclusion that the simple interpretation of Northerners being heroes and Southerners being evil is a gross distortion of the actual truth. Southerners should have immense pride in their ancestry. Descendants of the hundreds of thousands of Johnny Rebs who took up arms to defend their homeland should hold their heads up high and be proud of the bravery of their forefathers. It is because of the strength and valor of these men and heroes like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson that I am proud of my Southern heritage. To put it simply:

I wish I was in the land of cotton
Old times there are not forgotten
Look Away! Look away!
Look Away! Dixie Land.

 

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