DALTON L. HUFF writes:

Let it first be stated that the work you have done here has been nothing less than enlightening and inspiring to a twenty-year-old college student feeling his way out of the darkness of modernism. This lonely outpost of civilization has played no small part in my transformation from a warmongering neocon to the traditionalist I am today, along with other brave standard bearers of the true Right. Sites such as this one, American Renaissance, Vdare.com, Alternative Right, and Takimag are mainstays of my daily readings. I feel I must apologizing for the tardiness of my comment on this subject, but a bout with the flu, as well as my usual college work have delayed me.

But as a Southerner, I cannot allow you and Lawrence Auster to slander the cause for which my ancestors struggled, as you have both done in the post “To My Sacred Father.”

Suggesting that the Union truly would have been ‘sundered’ in any fundamental sense is pure emotionalism. Allowing the South to depart peacefully would not have destroyed the Union at all, only made it geographically smaller. To actually assert that the absence of the South imperiled the Union is laughable. You ascribe far too much power to us! 

My native state of North Carolina was reluctant to leave the Union, at least until Mr. Lincoln called for an army of 75,000 volunteers to invade and crush the South, reflecting the essential conservatism of the Southern tradition. North Carolinians, along with most of the rest of the peoples of the Upper South, had not been completely dissuaded that the rational approach to the common good would prevail, if only both sides would stop thinking of themselves and put the higher good at the forefront, as the Founders had believed. But neither the Constitution nor the Republic could reconcile the differences that must necessarily exist between two separate civilizations. The South had no future in the Union. “Just look at the census returns,” remarked one Yankee with cold cynicism. Through natural population growth, and especially immigration, the North had gained the preponderance of political power in the Union. The abolitionist minority, as zealously committed to their bloodthirsty means as they were irresponsible for their ends, were exerting more and more influence over the public mind in the North, with aid of conveniently imagined propaganda, such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Obviously the union would be chaotic if any group of states could impose its will on the rest without regard to the social stability and economic health of the region, regardless of disapproval. Yet this was exactly what was happening. The South would either be forced to leave the Union, or else be complicit in its marginalization and subordination to Northern interests.

I was appalled that you would consider the conquest and subjugation of the South to be a ‘higher good.’ But that can be no less than what you meant. It is the way of things. Two civilizations forced to associate with each other can only end in one subjugating the other. The Union had been preserved, at least geographically, if spiritually terminal, but to whose ‘higher good?” You can hardly claim that the South has been made better off by any objective measure. After having our supreme act of will denied us, my people suffered military occupation, disenfranchisement, twelve years of institutionalized kakistocracy, relegation to an exploited economic province of the United States for a full century, unending meddling in our internal affairs, as well as the perpetual demonization of our people and customs and heroes ever since. With immigration from within and without, the Southerner now walks a stranger in his own land, and can barely articulate what an injustice this constitutes. Modernism has hardly spared him from its debilitating effects on cultural consciousness and morality, and has rendered the average Southerner wholly incapable of articulating exactly why his heritage deserves to live.

But is this all justified? Was the Union worth the South being sacrificed on its altar? We had ‘serious grievances,’ but they just weren’t serious enough, were they? We were a separate and distinct people, just not enough so to justify governing ourselves, right? I don’t know the sort of Union you believe in, Mrs. Wood, but it is neither my sort of Union, nor the Union my ancestors believed in.

Laura writes:

Your response is eloquent and moving.

Truthfully, I cannot say with settled conviction that the United States is better off today because the South was not able to achieve independence and preserve its own culture. When I spoke of the higher good of the Union it was with the idea that the country would be destined to dissolve further after the Southern states permanently seceded. However, given the tremendous loss of self-determination for the American people in the twentieth century, I cannot even say that possibility would have been worse than what we face now.

                                          — Comments —

Lawrence Auster writes:

“Suggesting that the Union truly would have been ‘sundered’ in any fundamental sense is pure emotionalism.”

This is as rational as saying:

“Suggesting that, if a man had been sawed in half from his head to his groin, his body would have been ‘sundered’ in any fundamental sense is pure emotionalism.”

The commenter is your typical whining neo-Confederate, indulging in a myth in which a totally innocent South was set upon for no good reason by a bloodthirsty and tyrannical North.

If the South had good reason not to want to continue in the Union with the North (and I myself have said many times that they did), why didn’t the Southerners have enough respect for the Union to seek this division by mutual consent, which was the way the Union had been formed in the first place? Why, instead, did they secede for no other reason than the legal and normal election of a President of the U.S.? Why did they seize federal forts? Why did they bombard a federal fort with thousands of shells forcing it to surrender? These idiots waged war on the United States of America, and then, after they were defeated, they and their spiritual descendants complained about how all they wanted was to be left alone.

I once saw a black man in New York City repeatedly hassle a couple of police officers, until they finally arrested him. As soon as they put the cuffs on him, he began crying about how they were oppressing him. The neo-Confederates’ moral sense is no more developed than that black man’s.

Lisa writes:

Mr. Dalton L. Huff, I salute you.

Mr. Auster, it is a grave misunderstanding of historical facts to call the Southerners “idiots.”

Mr. Auster wrote,

If the South had good reason not to want to continue in the Union with the North (and I myself have said many times that they did), why didn’t the Southerners have enough respect for the Union to seek this division by mutual consent, which was the way the Union had been formed in the first place? Why, instead, did they secede for no other reason than the legal and normal election of a President of the U.S.? Why did they seize federal forts? Why did they bombard a federal fort with thousands of shells forcing it to surrender? These idiots waged war on the United States of America, and then, after they were defeated, they and their spiritual descendants complained about how all they wanted was to be left alone.

These questions show a great lack of understanding of what was occurring in and to the South. Mr. Dalton, again, I salute you for addressing the slander of our ancestors.

Caryl Johnston writes:

Bravo, Dalton Huff! If the Federal Government had been willing to offer a subsidy (“ransom”) to slaveholders in order to compensate them for emancipation the Civil War might have been avoided – and so much else.

Instead, the government preferred to hand out money to people rushing out to the Western frontier. Hence the pattern: instead of dealing with our problems in the United States, and learning to live within our means, we just exploit new territory and resources.

The result: the United States Government is the slaveholder. I guess they didn’t want any rivals.

Mr. Huff replies:

I’ve heard my ancestors referred to as ‘evil,’ ‘racist,’ and other such related pseudonyms, but ‘idiot’ is a fairly new description. I have never believed the South to be totally innocent of anything, but I have also never been brought to believe that she in any way invited the destruction visited upon her by her supposed countrymen. I would gladly hear why this is so.

I suppose ‘good reason’ needs no moral connotation. The North acted in self interest, in defense of its tariff system, which depended heavily on Southern exports for the government revenue. As Lincoln said after Secretary Seward advised him to simply let the South go, “What would become of my tariff?” I suppose this is as ‘good’ a reason as any to set the dogs of war upon the South. It can hardly be considered just, however.

Historically, amongst civilized Western nations, when another nation was carved out of the territory of another by peaceful means, it was often considered the standard to negotiate the terms of payment for the property of the old government to be utilized by the new one. This is exactly as the South intended. The Union, had it wished sincerely to avoid bloodshed, would not have needlessly antagonized the Confederacy by maintaining control of a federal fort in the mouth of one of the South’s most important harbors. Lincoln making the decision to send supplies to the fort, in the face of the opposition of his Cabinet, was a direct challenge to the sovereignty of South Carolina, and the Confederacy at large. You would have the South accept mere pecuniary independence, a ring of federal forts carefully watching and examining all traffic in and out of her harbors, collecting dues for a government which cared nothing for the South’s interests? It no longer belonged to the United States.

I find it highly offensive that you could implore that the South “seek divison by mutual consent.” Of course, this is exactly what the South wanted, and it would have been mutually beneficial to both regions. It was the North which was afflicted with that particular form of love, which would not let go.

The election of Abraham Lincoln could hardly be considered ‘normal.’ He was elected president with the lowest percentage of the popular vote of any in electoral history. Had all the opposition candidates pooled their votes, both popular and electoral, Lincoln still would have been president, with more than six-tenths of his country not assenting to his leadership. This is what I meant by the South having no future in the Union. The sheer advantage in population concentration that existed in North had made it possible for the usurpation of the balance of power so dear to the first generations of Americans. The North could now dominate the government without a single bit of electoral consent from the South. You are only trying to discredit the South by accusing them of being sore losers. Lincoln’s election was merely a symbol of things to come, and the South saw the writing on the wall.

Clem writes:

Well said, Mr.Huff!

Jeff W. writes:

I have ancestors who fought for both sides in the Civil War. My mother’s family is from the South, while my father’s family were Northerners. I am very familiar with Civil War history.

What I’ll say is that it was providential that the U.S. remained a strong, unified nation. The whole strength of the U.S. was needed to defeat Hitler and the Japanese. It was also needed to stop the Soviets. Had the U.S. been split, some form of tyranny would likely now dominate the world.

We are heading into dark times again. It will help Americans very much if the U.S. continues to be a strong, unified nation. If America is split by a civil, racial war, it will be much the worse for all of us. That is one major reason why immigration must be shut down. The longer unrestricted immigration continues, the greater the likelihood of racial warfare in the U.S.

Andrew Jackson, who was also a Southerner, was firmly insistent that the Union be preserved. Jackson shut down an earlier secessionist movement in the 1830’s. Jackson understood from personal experience that we live in a brutal, dangerous world where only the strong survive. He wanted a strong Union that could survive in this world. Because of Jackson and Lincoln, Americans are stronger as a nation, living under one government rather than two.

It is the all-important task of our generation to try to preserve a strong, unified, and civilized nation for young Americans such as Mr. Huff.

Laura writes:

If the United States had divided in the nineteenth century and the South had formed a separate country, the potential would have been very great, if not certain, for perpetual cultural and economic conflict between the two countries, and with any subsequent countries that formed within the existing territory of the United States, and the ability of our culture and our people to shape an identity and defend itself against outside and internal forces would have been seriously compromised. I fail to see how this union is worse than that scenario. I fail to see how defeat by the North has so warped and suppressed Southerners that they were rendered permanently incapable of asserting their distinctiveness and interests.

Mr. Huff writes,

With immigration from within and without, the Southerner now walks a stranger in his own land, and can barely articulate what an injustice this constitutes. Modernism has hardly spared him from its debilitating effects on cultural consciousness and morality, and has rendered the average Southerner wholly incapable of articulating exactly why his heritage deserves to live.

In other words, this sense of being “a stranger in his own land” is entirely due to subjugation and conquest by the North. The Southern traditionalist hasn’t ever been hindered from expressing himself by hostility from other Southerners but only by the hostile forces that directly descend from the oppressive power of the North. I cannot understand that level of ongoing grievance against an enemy that no longer exists in an age when we face an enemy that says our joint civilization and common heritage are evil.

Van Wijk writes:

As a Southerner I feel compelled to write and offer my support to Mr. Huff, whose rejoinder was eloquent and powerful. I’ll remind the Union-lovers that our revolution against and subsequent secession from the British Empire was illegal under British law. Governments always make secession illegal since it must necessarily result in a net loss of wealth and power, and it’s a rare empire indeed that will release a sizable portion of its power peacefully. Yet the right of secession is fundamental; it is the right of free association as applied to an entire people.

I believe it very likely that we will see the end of the United States in our lifetime. It is also likely that we will have to secede in some way to ensure the survival of our people. If we come to see our people under existential threat, what will we do? If we are made politically powerless and a permanent minority to be despised, what will we do? Will we be willing to break the law? Will we be willing to draw blood? Will we fire the first shot? We no longer have the luxury of considering these questions academic. Our forebears, both Patriot and Confederate, answered correctly. Our own fortitude is still in question.

Jeff W. wrote: “Had the U.S. been split, some form of tyranny would likely now dominate the world.”

Liberalism dominates the West, Caucasians are despised in their own lands and our history is seen as a long list of crimes, and Jeff W. thinks that no tyranny dominates the world?

“It will help Americans very much if the U.S. continues to be a strong, unified nation.”

America hasn’t been a unified nation for decades. We are now, in fact, several nations living within the same border. The head of state despises you, and 150 million “Americans” tacitly or explicitly agree with him. There is a low-level form of warfare already taking place, and casualties are mounting. It is nowhere written that the current borders and total population of the United States is necessary for the survival of the American people. Secessionists are growing in number, and it goes without saying that many are not Southerners. When we finally break away from this rotten federal apparatus, perhaps the Union-at-all-costs crowd will think better of the Confederacy.

Laura wrote: “I cannot understand that level of ongoing grievance against an enemy that no longer exists in an age when we face an enemy that says our joint civilization and common heritage are evil.”

I recall that this discussion began when one of your commenters referred to Sherman’s scorched-earth policy as “glorious.” Lawrence Auster derided the Confederates as “idiots.” The consensus view of the war is that it was fought over slavery, with the righteous abolitionists triumphing over the evil racist slaveholders. Often as not, the grievances of the South are voiced in response to pro-Union triumphalism and insults. Your pro-Union interlocutors should not expect their own haughty chest-thumping to go unanswered.

Laura writes:

No, that is not how this discussion began. I wrote about Virgil’s Aeneas honoring the grave of his father. A reader, Joe Long, wrote in about honoring the graves of Confederates. And we agreed about the importance of recognizing the courage of those who had died in that war for the Confederate cause. Do you see how unfair it is to say that this was a discussion started with taunts or disrespect for the South?

A reader referred in response to the initial points to Sherman’s “glorious” march but the theme was not Northern triumphalism. Mr. Auster, by the way, called the Confederates “idiots” after Mr. Huff said the South was conquered and subjugated and that Southerners to this day live under the oppressive shadow of that defeat. You say, “The consensus view of the war is that it was fought over slavery, with the righteous abolitionists triumphing over the evil racist slaveholders.” But that is not how it was presented by Mr. Auster.

In your points about secession, you do not persuade me or even attempt to prove what good would have been achieved if the country had divided at that time. You say the right of secession is fundamental but so is the right to resist the dissolution of a country itself forged after war, hardship and sacrifice. The cause of future secessionists is not pertinent; it depends on how and why they secede. You do not prove how we would be better off today if for years now we had been more focused on competition and conflict within our borders and if those of us here now did not sense that we are united in a common cause.

Lydia Sherman writes:

Lincoln claimed he was preserving the union, but he destroyed the economy of the Confederacy (named after the Confederate Papers) by authorizing General Sherman to salt the farm land and burn cities. His administration also claimed it was going to war over slavery, but other countries such as Portugal and England freed their slaves long before this without a war.

The Congressmen representing the South warned of the humanistic and empire-building influence that had entered the federal government. It was leaving the principles of the confederate writings of Jefferson and other founding fathers. That was one of the reasons that the South seceded from the union. There is a long list of articles online that give evidence through personal letters and papers of the treachery of the federal government, and descriptions of the “real” Lincoln and his goals. Karl Marx’s Workers Union sent Lincoln a letter of congratulations for how he had “handled” the South. The handwritten copy is available online, also.

Three stages of revolution were instigated by the Lincoln administration, one being propaganda, then war, then reconstruction. Reconstruction was not the rebuilding of smashed cities and bombed railroad tracks. It was a system of planting new government appointed officials in governors offices and in Congress. The southern way of life was replaced by the new governors and representatives from the north, who carried out the destruction of southern government.

Lest this become a north/south quarrel, it is perhaps heartening that many Northerners were against the war, but were drafted and forced to fight against the south. Any northerner who dared to speak against the war was jailed. There was a protest in New York against the draft, during which troops fired on the crowd and killed many.

One of the things Southern history records is the many lawless things Lincoln did, one being jailing any of his own appointed judges who warned him against going to war against the South. Some people assume that since the South fired the first shots in the war, they were guilty and deserved to be attacked. A close examination of the facts will reveal that Lincoln deliberately sent ships into a Southern harbor, intending to threaten, to encourage the South to fire first, using it as an excuse to go to war.

Lincoln did not free the slaves in northern states, another oddity of his presidency. A careful study of Southern history, on this sitefor example, sheds a lot of light on what the South was really like and what really happened to start the war. One interesting article quotes a letter written by General William Techumseh Sherman stating that he was going to wipe the people of the South off the face of the earth forever by salting the land so that no one could inhabit it for generations. Some cities and towns never recovered from this.

Booker T. Washington, who lived in slavery for a short time as a boy, wrote a book called “Up From Slavery” in which he described the interdependence of blacks and whites in the South. In it, he stated that the separation harmed the blacks, and the whites were not much better off. It is a book worth reading, and it is free online. I do wish that modernists would read from the print of those who lived at the time, to find evidence of the way people lived, rather than judge from their own experience.

The Southerners are related to many of the original settlers dating back to the 1700’s, when there was a great immigration of Ulster-Scots from Northern Ireland. These people were do-it-yourselfers who valued independence and were suspicious of hierarchy. It was principle that the Southerners were fighting for, not the right to keep slaves. Our government today is capable of the same things that the federal government committed before, during, and after that war. The president has stated that he admires Lincoln. Our federal government is an empire-builder today, which the South objected to before that war. These are just a couple of similarities.

Roger G. writes:

Hundreds of thousands of wonderful boys, who should have lived to have lots of children and die in bed.

Little Giffen

        —– Francis Orray Ticknor (1822 – 1874)

Out of the focal and foremost fire,
Out of the hospital walls as dire,
Smitten of grape-shot and gangrene,
(Eighteenth battle, and he sixteen!)
Spectre! Such as you seldom see,
Little Giffen, of Tennessee.
“Take him- and welcome!” the surgeons said;
“Little the doctor can help the dead!”
So we took him and brought him where
The balm was sweet in the summer air;
And we laid him down on a wholesome bed-
Utter Lazarus, heel to head!

And we watched the war with abated breath-
Skeleton boy against skeleton death.
Months of torture, how many such!
Weary weeks of the stick and crutch;
And still a glint of the steel-blue eye
Told of a spirit that wouldn’t die.

And didn’t. Nay, more! In death’s despite
The crippled skeleton learned to write.
“Dear Mother,” at first, of course; and then
“Dear Captain,” inquiring about the men.
Captain’s answer: “Of eighty-and-five,
Giffen and I are left alive.”

Word of gloom from the war, one day;
“Johnston pressed at the front, they say.”
Little Giffen was up and away;
A tear-his first-as he bade good-by,
Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye.
“I’ll write, if spared!” There was news of the fight;
But none of Giffen. He did not write.

I sometimes fancy that, were I king
Of the princely knights of the Golden Ring,
With the song of the minstrel in mine ear,
And the tender legend that trembles here,
I’d give the best on his bended knee,
The whitest soul of my chivalry,
For Little Giffen, of Tennessee.

Van Wijk writes:

You wrote: “No, that is not how this discussion began. I wrote about Virgil’s Aeneas honoring the grave of his father.”

I was referring to the discussion of the war.  I should have been more specific.  However, the earnest discussion of the war did begin with Fred Owens referring to the Confederates as “troublemakers” and Sherman’s calumny as a “glorious triumph.”  If those statements do not define Northern triumphalism, I don’t know what does.

This brings me to the point I attempted to make.  The comments of Owens and others hint at the strong anti-Southern sentiment that does in fact exist in the United States and, to a lesser extent, the world.  The currently accepted history of the war may be the most successful piece of propaganda ever conceived of, with a war over tariffs and ultimately the right of secession turned into a war over slavery, and a tyrant turned into a saint.  While I’ll not pretend that there are no Southerners who use the war as a crutch to excuse their failures, what you call the “ongoing grievance” of Southerners is in part a response to the many lies that continue to be propagated about the war and its causes.  How can we move on if the chests of our interlocutors swell with pride at what we consider war crimes?

“In your points about secession, you do not persuade me or even attempt to prove what good would have been achieved if the country had divided at that time.”

Because I don’t have to.  If the right of secession is a right, then those states wishing to secede can give any reason they like, or no reason at all.  It cannot be beholden to those who do not wish to see those states depart the union.  Because I respect you, I will list a few of the positive things I believe could have been achieved if the South had been successful.

• Race relations would certainly not be what they are now, with no “rednecks” to constantly vilify and play up.  When social pressure and technology made slavery unfeasible, as was happening all over the world at the time of the war, slavery would have ended without Southern men being humiliated and made powerless.  I daresay racial realism would have much more of a foothold than it currently does.  Organizations like the Klan would have had no reason to come into existence.  Since much of the pro-immigration argument today is based on “racism,” it goes without saying that the Confederacy would have been in a better position to seal borders and would have taken a firmer hand with Mexico.
• The argument of federalism vs. centralized power would have been settled for good in favor of states’ rights.  The states of both the North and the South would have benefited immensely from a suitably chastened federal government, and secession would have remained a viable Sword of Damocles perpetually swinging over the head of the president; they would have remained the experiment chambers that the founders intended.  As it stands now, the federal republic effectively ended in 1865; virtually all of the federal overreach that plagues our movement today has its roots in Lincoln’s revitalized central government.
• In 1914, France and Britain had been in a state of intermittent war for centuries, yet it didn’t stop them from uniting against Germany, which they perceived (rightly or wrongly) as the greater threat.  Therefore, it doesn’t follow that the North and South would forever be at each other’s throats to the point of shutting off commerce and diplomatic communication.  It’s possible that a strong Confederacy would have kept the North in check in various ways, with many of the mistakes made unilaterally by the federal apparatus after the war prevented.  Meaning no annexation of Hawaii, no invasion of the Philippines, and no sending of troops to ensure the defeat of Germany in WWI, which in turn may have led to better armistice conditions for Germany and a far weaker Nazi party (if any).

“You say the right of secession is fundamental but so is the right to resist the dissolution of a country itself forged after war, hardship and sacrifice.”

You do not have the right to oppose secession with force.  If you cannot persuade the seceding parties through social and political means, you must let them go.  You cannot make the argument that the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed while also affirming the right of the federal government to seize weapons if it believes those weapons threaten the fabric of the country.  One of those rights must give.

Laura writes:

Van Wijk writes:

The currently accepted history of the war may be the most successful piece of propaganda ever conceived of …  While I’ll not pretend that there are no Southerners who use the war as a crutch to excuse their failures, what you call the “ongoing grievance” of Southerners is in part a response to the many lies that continue to be propagated about the war and its causes.

We are in agreement. Southerners have ample reason to be inflamed by the ongoing demonization of the South and the beatification of Lincoln in history books, literature, movies and schools.

Van Wijk makes a thoughtful and articulate case for the positive results of a Southern secession. It’s over, but it is an interesting exercise to consider what the alternatives might have been. As far as his point on race relations, if the South under its own government had ended slavery, it would not have suffered from the claim, implicit in much of the popular literature on the subject, that it sought to maintain the institution of slavery forever.