Dixie Heritage News – Fri, Sep 15, 2017
AFTER IRMA – A New Era Of Southern Reconstruction
Our offices are in Florida. We were right in the path of Irma. We were hit at around 5 am by a Cat 1. We were anticipating much worse. Still, many in our area lost their homes and businesses.
I want to begin our news coverage with an eMail received from former SCV CIC Chuck McMichael regarding what happened in Shreveport:
Dear editor,
Here is what really happened, There was a citizen advisory committee formed, Of which I was on and others like mined. That committee recommended keeping the statue!
It then went to a sub committee of the actual Parish government, the Commission, that sub committee voted 4-3 to remove after some shady dealings and completely ignoring the Citizens Committee recommendation.
Now it goes to the full Commission
So the Citizen’s Commission did NOT vote to suggest removal as we had reported. Obviously, the Associated Press was covering the backs of some less than honorable politicians. Thank you Commander Chuck for standing in Louisiana and for correcting the record.
AS A RESULT
A group we are unfamiliar with, the Gulf Coast Patriot Network, has used Facebook to get word out about the events planned for Sept. 30 and Oct. 1
The rallies were announced because Caddo Parish Commission’s Long Range Planning and Special Projects committee voted in favor of removing the Confederate monument in Shreveport. monument.
Organizers have said that “white nationalists” and members of the KKK are not welcome at the Shreveport rallies.
The rally will be held on the sidewalk on the Texas Street side of the courthouse, which is city property, Dukes said.
If the rally spills on to courthouse grounds – parish property – the group must have prior authorization from the parish director of facilities and maintenance, said Jacob Sepulvado, facilities and maintenance manager with Caddo Parish Commission.
Dukes has requested paperwork to sign releasing Caddo Parish from all liability should something happen during the rally, Sepulvado said.
The Shreveport Police Department’s Office of Special Investigations is aware of the planned rallies and will monitor them, said Cpl. Angie Willhite. No special measures are planned at this time, she said.
Supporters of the monument will wave flags, hold signs and maybe give speeches, organizers said. Rallies are planned on consecutive days, a Saturday and Sunday, so people with a conflict on one day still may attend a rally.
No concerted, organized counter-protest appeared to have been planned – YET.
To prevent violence from groups like Black Lives Matter or ANTIFA, the Louisiana Patriot Militia, made up of private citizens, will provide security.
CONFEDERATE MURAL RESTORED
A mural with a Confederate flavor will go back on display at a metro Atlanta town hall.
The Tyrone Town Council, before a full house, voted 3-1 Thursday (Sept 7) to keep the artwork, Channel 2 Action News reported. The mural includes a soldier with a Confederate flag draped over his shoulder.
“With them coming out to speak like this, they deserved a vote,” said Mayor Eric Dial, who only votes in case of a tie.
A red curtain was placed in front of the mural after the Aug. 17 council meeting, when state Rep. Derrick Jackson started the debate when he objected. The mural has been on the wall for 21 years.
ALSO IN GEORGIA
IRepresentative LaDawn Jones has proposed a bill in Georgia’s State Assembly that Stone Mountain-the largest monument to the Confederacy in the world-be rededicated as a park memorializing the Civil War. Jones is now “very much opposed to sandblasting” the 825 foot carving of generals Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis on the rock face in Stone Mountain Park. “I just don’t think that that is a reasonable idea,” she said.
Nor does she want to destroy 170 monuments and an unknown number of street names. “There are probably more than you can count,” she said. What she would like to see, however, is an effort to move all of the state’s Confederate monuments to Stone Mountain Park and then “supplement” them with “accurate history.”
According to Jones, “the park would be filled with historical information about the women of the Civil War era, the African Americans both free and enslaved who fought for the Union and the Confederacy, and the Native Americans who fought on both sides of the war,” she said.
PLAQUE PRESERVED
Jefferson County, West Virginia county commission has voted to keep a plaque honoring Confederate soldiers at their courthouse.
The commission supported forming a committee of citizens to study and recommend commemorative plaques that might be added to the courthouse.
The vote comes after six African-American women sent a letter asking the commission to remove the plaque because there were no plaques for local black men who served in the Civil War, among other reasons.
The marker was installed in 1986 and is one of four plaques on the courthouse’s front facade. It reads “In Honor and Memory of the Confederate Soldiers of Jefferson County who served in the War Between the States.”
DALLAS STATUE GETS TEMPORARY STAY OF EXECUTION
The lack of proper equipment and manpower delayed removal of the Robert E. Lee statue Friday (Sept 8) according to the contractor hired by the City of Dallas for the job.
Michael Van Enter, the chief conservator with Van Enter studio, said he had a crane and crew for the job on Wednesday when the Dallas City Council voted to immediately remove the statue from Lee Park. A temporary restraining order from a lawsuit filed Wednesday stopped that work. A federal judge dropped that order Thursday, ruling against the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the group that filed the lawsuit.
But Van Enter said large cranes and skilled workers are very busy with hurricane damage along the Texas coast and he was unable to get the statue removal underway again Friday.
The contractor had no announcement Friday about when the statue removal might continue.
IN ARKANSAS
The missing cannonball has been returned, according to Gene Page with the Bentonville Police Dept. A Bentonville Parks & Recreation employee found the cannonball under a park bench on the northeast side of the square early Friday (Sept 8) morning.
Bentonville Police were investigating the disappearance of a cannonball from the Confederate Monument in the Downtown Square.
It’s not the first time one of the cannonballs has disappeared, but the first time in a while. Former Parks and Recreation employee Brandon Ward says it happened a couple of times during the years he worked for the city.
With the ongoing debate in various cities about confederate monuments and statues, Bentonville’s statue has also received a lot of attention. Currently, there are dueling petitions to keep or get rid of the statue. The petition signed by people who want to keep the statue as is currently has more than 14,000 signatures. The petition signed by people who want the statue removed has more than 4,800 supporters.
GOVERNOR CONTINUES ATTACKS ON HERITAGE
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper is going ahead with trying to move three Confederate monuments from the old Capitol grounds. A Cooper Cabinet secretary formally asked the state Historical Commission on Friday (Sept 8) to authorize the removal. The commission meets September 22.
A 2015 state law prevents the removal of Confederate monuments on public property without legislative approval and severely limits their relocation.
Cooper last month called for Confederate monuments to be taken down from public property.
“RACIST” COLLEGE RENAMED
This week Yale University rededicated Calhoun College, making it the latest in a procession of public spaces to have America’s “white supremacist past” scrubbed from the landscape.
The College’s namesake: South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun’s vigorous defence of Southern interests from Northern political and economic threats offered a political foundation for the State’s secession.
On Tuesday the College was officially renamed the Grace Hopper College after a female U.S. Navy Admiral and co-inventor of the computer language COBOL.
SCHOOL DISCIPLINES STUDENTS FOR FLAGS AT HOME
In North Carolina several Southern Alamance High School students were disciplined this week for dress code and social media violations. When the students were NOT on campus.
Students, far away from campus, wore T-shirts depicting the Confederate flag, and a photo of them was posted to social media by someone other themselves.
When Southern Alamance administrators became aware of the photos Thursday (Sept 7), “Administrators immediately investigated to find the source and promptly took appropriate action – the issue has been addressed.” A statement from the School Board said. The same statement admitted that the “violations” did NOT occur on campus. “There have been no incidents on campus…The activity has been only on social media.”
When asked why the School was disciplining students after admitting that no violation of rules had occurred on or near school property the District representative replied that, “Students may also be disciplined for conduct that occurs off educational property.”
The students wearing Flag shirts were disciplined. When other students who altered and reposted their photos to make them appear to be wearing hoods were discovered they were NOT disciplined (according to our sources).
So this appears to be very selective discipline. And in a “Southern” school no less.
If a School system can tell its students how to dress at home, and what they can and can’t post to social media after school is dismissed – what is next?
HERITAGE GROUP PLANS RALLY OVER OPPOSITION FROM GOVERNOR
Ignoring a temporary ban on demonstrations around the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, a group has issued a statement saying it plans to move forward with a rally at that site later this month.
“This event is not canceled,” organizers said. “We will be standing up to protect the General Robert E. Lee monument from being taken down or destroyed.”
The group, called “CSA II: The New Confederate States of America,” says it wants to raise awareness about the Confederacy.
It plans to hold the rally on Sept. 16, promising to keep racist groups away and focus only on “heritage.”
“Any hate will not be stood for on our side whatsoever,” organizers said.
Public demonstrations at the monument were temporarily banned under an executive order that was signed by Gov. Terry McAuliffe on the heels of deadly violence that broke out Aug. 12 at rally over a Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia.
It is not clear how large the planned rally might be.
Richmond police are aware of the event but have not yet commented publicly on how the department will handle it.
WEDNESDAY’S BALTIMORE SUN REPORTS
The statue to Francis Scott Key, the writer of the Star Spangled Banner, was defaced overnight in downtown Baltimore, with someone painting “Racist Anthem” on the side of the Bolton Hill monument.
Baltimore Police received a report of the vandalism at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday. They are investigating, but have no suspects.
The monument – primarily concrete and marble, but with gold in the base and a gold figure atop – had been tagged with black lettering, but also with what appeared to be splashes of red and black paint.
On the ground in the area around the monument, words from the third stanza of Key’s poem were painted in black:
No refuge could save, Hireling or slave,
From terror of flight, Or gloom of grave
OKLAHOMA UNIVERSITY PROFS CALLING FOR STATUE REMOVAL
The OUDaily reported on Tuesday that several professors held a symposium which was basically a School sponsored pot stirring hoping to get the student body geared up to start calling for the removal of monuments.
MISSOURI SCHOOL NAME CHANGING
The Columbia Public School Board has voted to form a committee charged with finding a new name for Lee Elementary School. Board President Darin Preis says school officials have already removed some references to Confederate general Robert E. Lee. He says changing the name is long overdue.
WILL MERIDIAN FURL ITS FLAG?
Another Mississippi city could stop flying the State Flag.Meridian Mayor Percy Bland tells The Meridian Star he thinks the flag is “divisive.” He says the City Council could discuss removing the Flag from display on municipal property when it meets Sept. 19.
All eight of Mississippi’s public universities and several cities and counties have stopped flying the flag because of concerns about the Confederate emblem.
WTOK-TV reports a small group protested the flag Monday outside the Lauderdale County Courthouse in Meridian. Organizer Dennis Allen said the Flag represents “high treason.”
VIRGINIA MILITARY INSTITUTE REFUSES TO REMOVE STATUES
The following statement, appearing in several media outlets, appears to have been written by Superintendent Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III:
VMI’ s mission is to produce educated, honorable cadets and graduates imbued with characteristics and traits long admired by our great Nation. We produce leaders of character who are prepared and ready to serve our communities, our states, and our Nation in times of peace and in times of war. That is our singular objective. As the oldest state supported military college in the nation and a national historic landmark, VMI has produced leaders that fought in the Civil War, Mexican-American War, Spanish-American War, World War I, defeated fascism in World War II, marched for civil rights in the ’60s, fought in Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf, and has seen its alumni as the best of leaders across the spectrum of industry, medicine, the law, politics, religion and business. Like the United States itself, who we were in the past only defines in part who we are today. Hate, bigotry and discrimination are wrong, do not represent the values of the Virginia Military Institute, and will always be addressed decisively. We will learn from the past and take the best from our predecessors in shaping our cadet citizen-soldiers for today and tomorrow. We achieve this objective through the Institute’s challenging and demandingly unique education structured in a military environment that has served the Nation well for more than 178 years.
We will continue to learn from our history, yet be ultimately guided by our best judgment in how to achieve our mission. The safety of our cadets, faculty and staff, our Post and our community is always present in our mind. That is why, today, the VMI Board of Visitors endorses continuing to acknowledge all those who are part of the history of the Institute. We choose not to honor their weaknesses, but to recognize their strengths. We will continue to learn and not to repeat divisions. We strongly encourage all to move forward together in the defense and advancement of our Nation.
KENTUCKY CEMETERY TO TAKE STATUES
The Lexington Cemetery’s board voted on Monday to conditionally accept the Confederate statues of John Hunt Morgan and John C. Breckinridge, less than one month after the city’s council voted unanimouslyto move them from downtown.
“Today the Lexington Cemetery trustees have stepped up for our city. They gave us a conditional ‘yes’ to accepting the Morgan and Breckinridge statues,” Lexington Mayor Jim Gray said at a Monday afternoon press conference. “Before the move is final, the city must fine-tune an agreement with the trustees.”
RED TAPE SAVING STATUES – FOR NOW
Barring a special action by the City, a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis will likely remain in a Downtown Memphis park until at least next year.
A 30-day deadline to file for a waiver from the Tennessee Historical Commission to remove the Davis statue from Memphis Park expired Tuesday, although City Attorney Bruce McMullen on Monday said the deadline was a “miscommunication.”
The administration must wait to file the application until the City Council approves removal – a vote is scheduled for Oct. 3, he said. That means activists’ hopes of the Historical Commission approving the city’s waiver at its next Oct. 13 meeting are unlikely, punting a commission vote on the Davis statue to February at the earliest.
But that doesn’t mean the statues will remain standing until then, city spokeswoman Ursula Madden clarified Tuesday afternoon. “We continue to explore all legal options,” she said.
In a series of rallies at the statues, activists have called persistently for immediate removal despite possible legal consequences. Mayor Jim Strickland’s administration has also called for removal – but has called for patience as the City appeals an expected rejection of its waiver all the way up to the state Supreme Court, possibly pushing back the removal of the statues years.
Currently, the city is awaiting a decision from the commission about whether it will hear the city’s waiver request at its next meeting Oct. 13.
In a Sept. 8 letter asking for the hearing, McMullen said the city was willing to allow commissioners to evaluate the City’s waiver using the same criteria the commission used to reject the City’s waiver last year, possibly improving the chances the commission will vote this year on the application.
That commission vote last year was overturned because the state attorney general hadn’t approved the criteria – and still hasn’t, possibly leading the commission to delay a hearing until its February meeting.
Since the commission’s initial rejection, the effort to remove the statues has made headway, thanks to endorsements from Gov. Bill Haslam and, Monday night, from the 11 Shelby County commissioners present for the commission meeting. The Shelby County Commission voted unanimously to approve a resolution supporting removal.
The holdup has come at the state level, particularly from the Tennessee Historical Commission – a group empowered by the Legislature last year to deny waivers to remove or modify monuments to historical figures. Even if the Historical Commission hears the city’s waiver in October, there’s no guarantee its members – some of whom are members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans – will approve the request.
Once the statues are removed, the city plans to renew a push to move the underlying graves of Forrest and his wife to Elmwood Cemetery.
WISCONSIN SWEATER STARTS A PARENT RIOT
WXOW TV 19 reports that a Confederate Flag sweater has sparked a miniature war among parents in Langlade County’s Elcho High School. The building is shared by all grade levels K-12.
A student at the school who didn’t want to be named said she saw the student wearing the sweater on Monday and she went to the principal to say it made her uncomfortable. She said she thinks the sweater is a violation of the school’s dress code because it disrupts the learning process within the classroom.
Some parents then decided to escalate the situation because, “the school hasn’t done anything.”
Most parents in the Elcho area don’t have a problem with the sweater, several said to reporters that they didn’t see anything wrong with it.
We reached out to the school district, they said that they’re looking into it but that they’re moving cautiously because there’s a balancing test between the rights of free speech and the importance of the learning process. They also said they didn’t want to take any spur of the moment action.
Still, a small group of agitating parents won’t let this alone.
SILENT SAM IS ONLY THE FIRST TARGET
A New York law firm representing 12 students and a professor at North Carolina’s flagship public university is pressing the school to remove a Confederate soldier statue.
An attorney wrote Wednesday to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill officials contending the 1913 statue nicknamed “Silent Sam” violates federal anti-discrimination laws.
The warning comes from Hampton Dellinger, a Durham attorney with the firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner on behalf of the students, the professor and the Black Law Students Association.
The school’s top attorney and campus spokesmen did not respond to questions seeking comment. Chancellor Carol Folt has said the school lacks the legal authority to act because of a 2015 state law that prevents removing or altering a public monument.
If this lawsuit is successful, either through litigation, or even just through intimidation, mark it down, every monument in the country will have a bullseye on its back and the lawyers will declare open season on statues.
KIM JIN WOO SHOCKS FANS
On September 13, a photo of Kim Jin Woo and Song Min Ho was shared on WINNER’s official Instagram account. In the image, Kim Jin Woo is captured wearing a t-shirt with the Confederate Flag on the upper right chest.
THE PRESIDENT’S QUESTION
Mostly lost in the general hysteria surrounding President Trump’s post-Charlottesville press conference a month ago was an excellent question he posed. Regarding the growing demand nationwide to tear down monuments to the Confederate States of America, he asked: “I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”
His remarks were characterized by historians as “absurd” and “unacceptable” and “ignorant” and dismissed as a “red herring.” At The Daily Beast, John Avlon called Trump’s comparison “immoral” and “dangerous.” At Slate, Jamelle Bouie claimed Trump’s question was “dumb,” arguing that statues of Washington and Jefferson were safe because “the reason we memorialize them is not because of their slaveholding.”
Well. Earlier this week around 100 “students, faculty and community members” gathered at of the University of Virginia and covered a statue of Thomas Jefferson in a black shroud, adorning it with signs that dubbed the former President a “racist” and “rapist.” The protesters derided the statue as “an emblem of white supremacy,” and demanded that it be “re-contextualized,” lambasting the people who “fetishize the legacy of Jefferson,” calling on the community to “recognize Jefferson as a rapist, racist, and slave owner.”
Where does it stop? Is it asking a bit much of our progressive friends to reflect on their slapdash dismissal of President Trump’s reasonable question? Where does it stop? That is not an unfair question; in fact it is a presciently vital one.
Four weeks ago everyone said that Trump’s simple and logical question was “dumb.” This week a bunch of protesters, among them faculty on the payroll of the institution they were tacitly vandalizing, attacked a statue of Jefferson and-what was the term again?-“memorialized him for his slaveholding.”
Where does it stop? Not here, obviously.
And why shouldn’t they? It has worked in countless other cities and on numerous other campuses. Stockton University recently removed a bust of its namesake founder due to his slaveholding past, while earlier this year Pepperdine University tore downa statue of Christopher Columbus because the statue was, allegedly “a celebration of genocide and racial oppression.”
The University of Virginia tends to regard itself with a bit more esteem than your average public university, so it may hold out longer than other colleges. But for how long? UVA president Theresa Sullivan, for one, issued an almost too-tepid-to-be-true response to the vandalism, claiming she “strongly disagree[s] with the protestors’ decision to cover the Jefferson statue,” but conceding: “That there is…activism [at UVA] should not be a surprise to any of us.” This is not the voice of a confident administrator, and if I were a betting man, I would place a small but not insubstantial amount of money on protestors getting the statue down at some point. When you start hanging signs on a monument that read “rapist” and “racist,” it’s only a matter of time before you start calling for the monument itself to go.
All of which is to say that Trump was right to ask his question, and his critics-histrionic, hysterical, unwilling to acknowledge just how unhinged activist progressivism has become in twenty-first-century America-were wrong. Of course they’re going to come for the other statues; that was a given. Whether they succeed in tearing them down depends on the resolve and the integrity of the people who are in charge of such decisions. “Where does it stop?” We’ll surely find out soon enough, one way or the other.
A descendant of a slave, Al Arnold, tells his journey of embracing his Confederate heritage. His ancestor, Turner Hall, Jr., a Black Confederate, served as a body servant for two Confederate soldiers and an orderly for General Robert E. Lee.
Turner Hall, Jr. returned to Okolona, Mississippi after the War. Hall served a prominent family in that community for five generations.
His life’s journey eventually led him to Hugo, Oklahoma where he established himself as the town’s most distinguished citizen receiving acclaim from Black and White citizens alike for his service.
In 1938, his journey continued to Pennsylvania as the last veteran from his community to attend the final Civil War veteran reunion, as a Black Confederate. He also traveled to New York City and was interviewed by the national talk radio show, “We, The People” in 1940.
One hundred and three years after the War, Hall’s great-great grandson, Al Arnold, was born in Okolona, Mississippi. Raised in North Mississippi, Al would later discover the history of his ancestor and began an eight year journey of why, how and for what reasons his ancestor served the Confederate armies? To his amazement, Al discovered that seventy two years after the war, his ancestor was a proud Confederate and held in his possession a cherished gift from the Confederate general, Nathan Bedford Forrest. Al’s personal research discovered that his ancestor was owned by Forrest and was enthusiastically warm toward the general and his service to the Confederate armies.
This amazing connection to two famous Confederate generals awakened a new perception of curiosity about Confederate heritage in Al and challenged his traditional thoughts. He grew to accept his heritage and now embraces it with a desire to see African Americans embrace Confederate heritage instead of rejecting it on the notion of modern ideology.
This is a deep personal journey of faith, heritage, race and family wrapped around the grace of God through the eyes and honest thoughts of a modern black man.
Al tells the story of Turner Hall, Jr., his personal Confederate journey and how family and faith has brought harmony to his new found heritage. Arnold argues for the revitalization of the lost Black history of the WBTS era. He bestows dignity and honor on his Confederate ancestor and challenges the traditional thoughts of modern African Americans. Arnold rests in his faith as the uniting force that reconciles our colorful past to our bright future.
Reader John Merlin submits the following:
An Open Letter to Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
I can’t pretend anything could ever make me vote for you. Nothing can. So there’s no political leverage I can exert here, to be frank. You could do the right thing here and I would still know it was the exception, done for some underhanded criminal motive as always. Let’s not pretend. But I would thank you for it. Because, in the end, it’s actions that count. Whether you do the right thing for the right motive is between you and God. (No, not “your God”; THE God. Get off that lame routine) Whether you do it at all is where my interest ends. Just leave the statues, graves, monuments and memorials right where the grown-ups put them, Terry. Just fool around doing nothing, you know, like back at Georgetown. Easy That’s all I ask. And about the most anybody expects of you. Aren’t you tired yet of just being the same old failure and lurching from bungled debacle to bungled debacle? Why not shock the world: open a book, educate yourself and do something less horrible than usual. Resign, even, and leave Virginians to govern Virginia. What a concept. Shouldn’t you be ruining Syracuse instead of Richmond?
It is the height of arrogance to suppose that you know more about these men and their times than their even contemporaries. The command of God remains, “Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.” That divine command is unambiguous and apolitical. It is to God you will assuredly answer for its violation. Make no mistake, as Claudius realized in Hamlet, “In the corrupted currents of this world, offense’s gilded hand may shove by justice, and oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself buys out the law. But ’tis not so above. There is no shuffling. There the action lies in his true nature, and we ourselves compelled, even to the teeth and forehead of our faults”.
I was born in Los Angeles, California and raised in Ohio. I have taught Political Science at the collegiate level in Cincinnati, been published in The Wall Street Journal and am in my 12th year of research for a forthcoming book on Columbine.
For the past seven years I have made Rockbridge County, Virginia my home. That was a dream planted in my heart as a 14-year-old boy decades ago on my first visit to the Commonwealth. I have loved this commonwealth since then and when offered a change of life, there was never a moment’s indecision where to move. Virginia first, Virginia only, Virginia last and Virginia always.
I chose Lexington for just one reason. I had no family in Virginia. I had no prospects for employment lined up in Virginia I owned no property here. None of the factors that ordinarily move men to uproot after a lifetime in one state and move to a place where he has no ties motivated me. The one and only reason I live in Lexington, Virginia is because it is the final resting place of Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. Jackson. Their lives, character, faith, integrity, honor and testimony shone so brightly a century and a half after their decease that there is no other place on the Earth I want to be but where they lived and served.
There is something deeply and morally wrong with anyone who objects to these two great Virginians—great Americans being honored by the native State for which they gave their lives, limbs and blood in selfless patriotic service. President Dwight D. Eisenhower kept Lee’s portrait in his executive office while president. Churchill extolled him as the greatest American. Ulysses S. Grant threatened to resign from the U.S. Army if Lee were tried for treason. International ships at sea flew their national colors at half-staff when Lee left this world from Lexington.
The statue that marks the grave of “Stonewall” Jackson was paid for not only by the veterans who served under him, but by financial contributions from former slaves whom he had taught to read in violation of Virginia law. In Roanoke today, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church features a stained glass window consecrated to the honor and memory of Jackson by descendants of the slaves he taught the Bible, for the chances he took on their behalf. When a Lexington local assailed Jackson for breaking the law to “teach those people”, Jackson uncharacteristically lost his temper and shouted, “If you were a Christian you would not say so!”
After the war, it was Lee who broke social convention at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church by kneeling beside a former slave who had mortified the White congregation by kneeling at the altar. Asked afterward by a bigot why a man like himself would kneel beside a former slave, Lee simply chastised him, “The ground is always level at the foot of the cross.”
And these are the men so repugnant to your modern sensibilities? This is the course so objectionable to you? This character is what is unacceptable in your enlightened times? If so, then it is you, Sir, who is the racist bigot. If their charity and kindness, their bravery in defense of the then-defenseless offends you, it only means your own character is so depraved and your own heart so darkened as to be unworthy the mention of their names.
The anniversary of the deaths of Lee and of Jackson were long commemorated in this Commonwealth by veterans of the North who were often the honored keynote speakers invited to praise the virtues of their once-foes. You were not at Manassas. You were not at Antietam. You were not at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg. But the Union soldiers who were had more wisdom, more character—were simply better men than you because they practiced forgiveness over hatred, compassion over contempt, fraternity over fractious division. They shook the physical hands that had sighted them down hot barrels and pulled triggers to kill them—they put the war behind them in their own generation and embraced their former enemies as their brother and countrymen. You, on the other hand, lack any redeeming moral character whatsoever, obsessing over political winds, polls and a personal agenda of race-baiting anarchy. More than merely unqualified for the high office you hold, you exhibit no evidence of redemptive humanity.
Every monument to a Confederate Virginian is a war memorial to an American veteran. It has been the mark of manhood and civility and longstanding American tradition to leave politics out of the way we honor our veterans. They fought the battles; we did not. They shed the blood; we did not. They reconciled with their enemies; we did not. They were tried on the battlefield and tried by a jury of their peers in the only court of public opinion that mattered: their own generation—the generation that knew the issues, heard the speeches, read the papers, pulled the triggers and took the trenches. The battlefield determined the issues and the veterans pardoned their enemies. End of subject. It is not for children born a hundred and fifty years later to readjudicate the past and expose to double jeopardy men their own contemporaries exonerated.
There will be no alibis before the judgment bar of God. You will pull no song-and-dance, no shady backroom deals, no political payola. Almighty God will not be fooled nor bought nor charmed. Naked in the full bloom of your monstrous sin, you will stand exposed, every fault, before His avenging eye. No excuses. No patter and spiel. No schmoozing this time. To God you will answer for the slander and libel of His servants.
Meanwhile, in the unlikely event that your parents were not the abject failures your embarrassing course of conduct appears to suggest, I ask you to reconsider the wrong-headed evil you have proposed. If you find it impossible to respect your elders, attempt at least to revere your betters. The destruction of Virginia’s monuments to her war dead is sacrilege and those who urge and execute it are nothing more than cemetery vandals. There is no honor in this course of wanton destruction and, morally, you equate yourself with ISIS which shares your contempt for actual culture, something you both so manifestly lack. It is more than history, more than art. When you pursue this thing, you diminish the honor of these heroes not one bit. You only emphasize by contrast how puny and insignificant by contrast you are. You reveal how painfully short of their measure you fall.
And it is that that galls you, isn’t it? You despise good men because their virtue condemns your depravity. You know you lack their character, their courage, their integrity, their stature. You know that if you served 50 terms, you will never amount to 1/100th of the men they were. You have wasted your entire life in selfish ambition and here, at your age, you haven’t amounted to anything but a common street hooligan, the shame of your family name. Those proud of you love evil itself.
No matter. No one will remember you in any 150 years. Nothing you do can make anything like the mark these great Virginians made on history’s ledger. You are doomed to the political graveyard of insignificant bureaucrats who lined their pockets, sold out daily and slaved away in tireless service to pointless mediocrity. Just being you another day is your own punishment and yet you still face God for what you propose to do as well. Something is deeply, horribly wrong with your soul, Sir. And you know it. So does all Virginia.
If you suppose brass and marble are the only media in which their immortal valor is inscribed, you are as limited in intellect and character as I suspect. Men like Lee and Jackson, for just two, reach good men at the heart; something you won’t even comprehend, much less ever do. No one, of course, respects you and who, pray tell, could love you? Just asking is to snicker. There is nothing important about you, “Man, proud man, dress’d in a little brief authority, most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d-his glassy essence-like an angry ape”. Still, you might prolong your useless career by imitating conscience, but you have hitherto, year after year, crime after crime, failed to generate the least flicker of that vain hope.
Still, your lascivious ambition, that crying ache for power and meaning that keeps you awake on your bed at night, might reckon (for all the wrong reasons, as usual) that just perhaps doing the right thing—doing, for once, the hard thing—just might work as policy. Relax, you wouldn’t have to actually care or be right; nothing so unthinkable as all that. You would only have to play the empty part of doing the right thing as if you did have any sense. No inner reform or spiritual growth necessary, just the usual outward show you’ve performed your whole life long. Going through external motions, as ever. You know: SHOWTIME…again!
You could still wring your hands and knit your brow and pretend to care and squeak through the polls but yet accidentally do the actually moral thing for a change. Just to see how it feels. Leave the monuments alone. Muster the courage to…to…do nothing—something you’re usually proficient at. You can prate about how awful those good men were and how terrible their splendid monuments are—no one pays any attention to what you say anyway—and then resume your strong point: noisy inaction. You’ve done nothing so long this one should be easy for a pro like you. Just leave the status quo in place. Don’t worry, no one will accuse you of virtue. Have they ever?
If there were any glimmer of character down in that empty suit anywhere you might even work up the decency to strengthen the existing laws protecting Virginia’s veterans’ memorials. I no more expect it than I expect the shore to drown the sea, but miracles have happened. And God has often worked His wonders with clay as useless as yourself. Perhaps you had a loving grandmother who instilled in you something worthwhile after all a very long time ago. Evidently not. But maybe. Maybe somewhere down deep inside in a secret spot you can yet prove useful in this world by surprising everyone with an honorable act. Just one.
I have strived to be civil, but you do not make it easy. Smearing reputations, slandering saints and tearing down what better men raised has zero to do with love, unity, tolerance, acceptance, diversity and coexistence. It’s just the usual political spoils game, playing one race/class/group against another to score a win at any cost. The mean, petty loathing of Virginia’s first string heroes outs you as a raging hypocrite just as you were trying to pass for intelligent. What a piece of work!
Reader Russ Walker submits the following:
I have decided to make a special picketing sign.
It will be especially effective against white trash liberals and effective in all public spaces especially libraries, police stations, commercial stores and newspapers.
The white trash liberals have no answer and I know it.
I have used these two phrases at least 200 times and I have never received a cogent response.
It will get everyone’s attention.
Michael Martin submits the following:
These words are the most primal reasons that southern, and arguably mainstream American, history is under attack throughout the country. On August 16, 2017, I attended a protest to remove the John C. Calhoun monument in Charleston, South Carolina. While I was at this protest, I gained a lot of insight on how these “protestors” think and how to combat this movement. It was a moment of clarity.
The first thing that needs to realized is that there is hope for southerners and people that are tired of seeing this wanton destruction of history. These “protestors” are not putting together organic, true protests-rather, they are staging political dramas that the masses can consume through media obsession.
I attended this rally to understand the other side and hopefully open a dialogue about the history that was being protested. My friend and I (both young men in the Sons of Confederate Veterans), attended with an open mind and a positive outlook. Being a teacher, I was hoping to engage in a truly productive discussion. We walked around the protest and tried asking people basic questions about Calhoun and American history. Among the questions we asked were:
“Did you know that John C. Calhoun served as Vice President twice?”
“Are you aware of John C. Calhoun’s theories on limiting government?”
“Are you aware John C. Calhoun served in the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate?
“Did you know John C. Calhoun served as Secretary of State and Secretary of War?
“What do you think about the Denmark Vesey monument down the street? (Vesey was a slave that plotted a massive slave rebellion and was later executed-he also has a monument in Charleston just a few blocks from Calhoun’s)
Not surprisingly, none of the people that were asked these questions knew of these facts or would even acknowledge them. At one point, protestors asked my friend to speak but then became aggressive with him. They were posturing as if they were going to hit him because he brought up the fact that Calhoun fought the National Bank, as other members of the crowd began shouting over him with megaphones.
It was at this point that I saw how weak these “protestors” really are in their devotion and cause. Rather than dealing in reality and facts, they are dealing in abstractions. They would not open a dialogue with anyone else because they know they cannot win a logical argument. The truth is that these “protestors” are just trying to confuse people. They gather at the base of a monument, shout things like “f*** Donald Trump,” “f*** the Confederacy,” “all cops are racist KKK,” etc. There were even transgendered women with excessive armpit hair telling stories about “white nationalists” attacking them in the past. Their ultimate goal is to try and convince people, through aggressive screaming and rhetoric, that southern history and the civil war are nothing more than evidence of intolerance.
Everyone attending keeps their phones on at all times because, deep down, they are hoping someone will be attacked and they will catch it on video. In addition, they lump a lot of other confusing symbols of hate in with their protest. What do Black Lives Matter, the Green Party, homosexuals, and transgender groups have to do with John C. Calhoun? Nothing. Its just a ploy to agitate people and start violence, so that these “protestors” can take the moral high ground and claim the monuments are causing violence.
Make no mistake, this movement to destroy history is entirely political. The people running the protests were waving Green Party flags and were speaking openly about making runs at political office. My friend and I both felt as if there were people in the crowd that were simply being paid to disrupt. When we tried engaging the people that were the most boisterous, there were organizers in bright orange vests pulling the “protestors” around and steering them towards media outlets.
Where was all of this moral outrage over monuments just a few years ago? As a young native southerner, I can safely say that in my lifetime there were no movements to remove this history until after the Dylan Roof shootings in 2015. Could this just be the Democratic Party working secretly to rewrite their own past? It certainly seems that way.
Moving forward, how can good Americans deal with this social and historical crisis? One option is to counter the “protestors” in a positive and peaceful way. Most of the people advocating the monument removals are not truly educated on the past, they are acting on emotion and hoping to catch a video that will get lots of “likes.” Many are just spoiled college kids living on their parents’ dime, who have been indoctrinated with ideas about social justice and the “bad” influence of southern history on America. Some are absolutely being paid and are sticking to a script. They are not ready to be challenged intellectually.
A simple solution my friends and I are considering is to attend more rallies and distribute positive information. For example, next time “protestors” get any ideas about removing the Calhoun monument, we can distribute free information on exactly what Calhoun did and did not do. We can explain that Calhoun advocated a more limited government that might have better protected individual liberties today. Most importantly, when these revisionists continue to be aggressive and use profanity, we can take the moral high ground, stick to facts, and stand together strong.
The rally to remove the Calhoun monument was not a large one, probably not over one-hundred-twenty people. We need more intelligent people in attendance-people who want to see real change. The politicians are not going to help, they are in the mindset to remove monuments in the dead of night without popular support just to get some attention. We can stop this nonsense if we work together, act peacefully, and think logically.
Monuments are not the problem in society today. They are doing their job, and bringing people together to discuss issues. The real problem are these liberal, historical revisionists who will not be happy until America is burned to the ground.
DOES BERNIE SANDERS QUALIFY FOR SCV MEMBERSHIP?
The major headline to come out of next month’s season four premiere of the PBS series Finding Your Roots was revealed weeks ago: Bernie Sanders and Larry David (the Curb Your Enthusiasm creator and star who so brilliantly impersonated him on Saturday Night Live) are cousins. But there is a lot more where that came from.
In the episode, which will air on October 3rd, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. traces the ancestral history of both the Vermont senator and the Comedian. The first half of the show is largely dedicated to horrific revelations about how many of their not-so-distant ancestors perished in the Holocaust.
Learning about the pogroms his family faced in the Galicia region of Eastern Europe, Sanders gets emotional thinking of the social implications. “What gets you here, as ugly and horrible as war is, that’s kind of organized, an army comes in. This is by local villages. This is by the person living across the street from you,” he says. “So my father grew up in a community where you did not know who you could trust.”
But perhaps the most bizarre discoveries come late in the episode when Gates shifts to the paternal side of David’s family, nearly all of whom came from Hesse-Darmstadt, once an independent state within what is now modern-day Germany. “I’m a German boy,” David jokes.
Almost all of those ancestors settled in New York City, where David was born in 1947, with one major exception. The comedian was baffled to learn that his great grandmother Henrietta was born in Mobile, Alabama. “What?!” he asks over and over. “I’m a little more exotic than I thought I was,” he says. “Is Alabama exotic? I don’t know. Germany’s exotic? I’ve got probably some of the most racist places in the world connected.”
Even more shocking was the fact that Henrietta’s father, David’s great-great grandfather, Henry Bernstein, was a Jewish man who fought on the side of the Confederacy. “Are you telling me that my great-great grandfather fought for the South in the Civil War?” David asks. “What?! Are you kidding?! That is mind-blowing to me, I can’t believe it.”
“Oh, professor, I’m so sorry,” David jokes to Gates after discovering his family’s shameful past. “You can see why my father didn’t want to tell me anything about his family. Holy cow.” He then adds, “Well, Henry Bernstein, I hope you’re proud of yourself.”
As revelatory as David’s Southern history is, it is still the joint realization that he and Bernie Sanders are related that provides Finding Your Roots its most climactic ending yet. Each man takes a DNA test and finds out separately that they are a genetic match with someone else who has appeared on the show.
Unless a spoiler comes up somewhere we won’t find out who their common relative is until the show airs. By then we will be more interested in something else. But my BIG question is this, since the SCV allows “collateral” ancestors to qualify one for membership:
DOES BERNIE HAVE CONFEDERATE ANCESTRY?
WOULD’NT DAVID’S DIRECT ANCESTOR ALSO BE BERNIE’S COLLATERAL ANCESTOR?
Will Bernie Sanders be joining the SCV? At the very least, the Camp nearest his home, MISS CONSTANCE CARY CAMP 1913, should offer him an honorary membership. Unless their genealogists can document his ancestry. Then I say we pass the hat and buy him a life membership. I’ll even fly up to Vermont to present it to him, or would happily pass so that the honor can be enjoyed by the Commander of the Constance Cary Camp.
American Independence Won in the South
by James W. King
James W. King is the Commander of SCV Camp #141 in Albany, Georgia
In snow shoe mouth deep they came that 27th day of September 1780, a long column of mounted riflemen full of wrath and anger. The long slender rifles of the frontier (aka Flintlock American Long Rifle, Pennsylvania Rifle, Kentucky Rifle) were balanced across their saddles and knives strapped on their belts. They were “Over Mountain Men” from western North Carolina in the area that would later become northeast Tennessee in 1796. Several years earlier they had formed little settlements along the Watauga, Holston, and Nolichunky rivers on the western side of the Appalachian mountains.
The Revolutionary War for American Independence had not affected them until earlier in this year and due to their remote location they were virtually independent of British and American government. But the war in the north which had been ongoing since 1775 had been fought to a stalemate. Now England had decided upon a Southern Strategy and the war moved from the north to the south. Georgia, the youngest and weakest of the 13 American colonies had fallen to the British with the capture of Savannah on Dec. 29,1778. The British and their loyalist American Tory forces had moved into South Carolina and American Continentals and Whig militia patriots had suffered devastating defeats at Charleston, Waxhaws, and Camden.
British Major Patrick Ferguson had been ordered by British General Charles Cornwallis to invade the South Carolina back country between the Catawba and Saluda rivers and recruit Loyalists and suppress Whig Patriots. Within days of his invasion of the Carolina up country Ferguson had recruited many Loyalist Tory British sympathizers and had began to hunt down and punish Whig Patriots. During the summer of 1780 “Over Mountain Men” militia had swept eastward and engaged Ferguson and his Loyalist Tories in fierce little engagements at Woffords Iron Works, Musgrove’s Mill, Thicketty Fort, and Cedar Springs. They had recrossed the mountains back to their homes planning to resume resistance next Spring.
Ferguson made a decision that would prove fatal to him and his Loyalists. He paroled a Whig prisoner and sent him to inform Col. Isaac Shelby whom he considered the titular head of the “Over Mountain Men” or “Back Water Men” informing them that if they did not cease resistance to the British Crown that he would cross the mountains and hang the leaders, burn their houses, and lay waste to the area with “fire and sword”. Col. Shelby met with Col.John Sevier (Nolichunky Jack) and a gathering of the mountain men took place at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga river on Sept.25. A decision was made to carry the battle to Ferguson and it was to be a fight to the finish. They rode eastward, a column of about 1000 men, and were joined by Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia militia and now numbered about1800. Most were mounted but some were walking.
Spies informed Ferguson that the Over Mountain Men were coming. He retreated and his 1100 Loyalist Tories took up a position on top of King’s Mountain on the NC. and SC. line. The Patriot army selected 900 of the best rifleman and best horses to get to Ferguson quick before he received reinforcements fron Cornwallis at Charlotte NC. All through the night they advanced toward King’s Mountain in rain and at 3 PM on October 7 they totally surprised the Loyalists. The 7 American Patriot Colonels on horseback horseshoed around the mountain and led the men fighting “Indian Style” from tree to tree to the summit. Ferguson was killed and the battle was a total Patriot victory.
Then at Cowpens South Carolina on Jan.17,1781 General Daniel Morgan and American Patriots defeated British Col..Banastre Tarlton. The victories of these two battles caused a British retreat to Winnsboro SC. Later they invaded North Carolina where the American army engaged and bloodied them severely at Guilford Courthouse. With the help of the French fleet this led to surrender by the British at Yorktown Virginia on Oct. 19, 1781. On Sept. 3, 1783 England granted Independence to each of the 13 sovereign American colonies.
WHAT WE ARE UP AGAINST
On Tuesday or Wednesday of last week Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson reported that Facebook was suspending up to 1 million accounts a day for “hate speech.” In that environment I am honestly surprised that our Facebook account is still up and going. That said, Facebook has begun to censor and edit our posts. The biggest example of this is that they have taken away our ability to select which photograph we post with our weekly newsletter. They are also limiting people’s ability to find our postings in the search engine. As a result, two issues ago, our newsletter, which normally reaches thousands by Facebook only reached 60 people.
Despite Facebook’s censoring of our efforts, people are still liking the page each week. And our email subscriber base has seen over 400 additions in the last 3 weeks.
Still, the enemies of our heritage have mass-media at their disposal while we struggle to get the word out. Which is why WORD-OF-MOUTH – that means your mouth – is crucial.
The enemies of our heritage also have hundreds of full-time lobbyists in our nation’s and State’s capitols. And they are talking to our elected officials and government agencies DAILY. As you know, we just finished a lobbying trip to Gettysburg, Richmond, Baltimore, Annapolis, and Washington DC. In coming weeks I’ll share details of some of the meetings and accomplishments of the trip. But the truth is, it was too little and even with repeated trips would be too infrequently. But its the best we can do!
Donations nowhere near covered the cost of the trip. Not complaining. But there is a limit as to how frequently we can take off from work and bear the expense of such trips. Happy to do it. It just needs to do more than we can do.
And a few minutes ago I found out that shortly after we left Gettysburg, another lobby arrived, advocating for the removal of the Confederate monuments. FYI, the Park Service is NOT interested in removing monuments. That said, Wednesday’s Gettysburg Times had a survey asking if it was time to remove the Confederate monuments. While we had to go home, the enemy’s lobby is staying and working daily. Just because the Park Service isn’t currently interested in removing monuments does not mean that a few upcoming violent protests won’t change that.
The reality is that we need a FULL-TIME Southern Heritage lobby in Washington. If the funding were in place I could make it happen.It would take about $80,000 per lobbyist MINIMUM to make that happen. If anyone reading this has the ability to donate $20,000 or more to get this started please contact us!
We will continue making the rounds nationally and locally as we are able. With your help, we can and will do more.
Next week, Lord willing, I will share with you a Federal project that may have been birthed out of the trip.
Until Next Week,
Deo Vindice!
Chaplain Ed
Dixie Heritage
P.O. Box 618
Lowell FL 32663
