Spirit of the South

Alabama

“No National Party can save us; no Sectional Party can do it. But if we could do as our fathers did, organize Committees of Safety all over the cotton states (and it is only in them that we can hope of any effective movement) we shall fire the Southern heart — instruct the Southern mind — give courage to each other, and at the proper moment, by one organized, concerted action, we can precipitate the cotton states into a revolution.”
– William Lowndes Yancey

Hopefully, some excerpts from this little essay about my illustrious ancestors – who spent a decade plotting the destruction of the Union – will shed some cultural light on why I happen to be sitting here behind this computer running the most radical, uncompromising fire-eating Southern secessionist website on the internet.

This except comes from “The Eufaula Regency: Alabama’s Most Celebrated Secessionist Faction”:

“Eufaula, Alabama occupies an important but little understood role in the events leading to the secession of Alabama in 1861. During the decade prior to the outbreak of the Civil War members of a small but vocal group based in the city, the so-called “Eufaula Regency,” worked as outspoken advocates for the rights of slaveholders and urged consideration of secession as a viable remedy for Southern grievances over the issue of slavery. The group has been recognized widely by historians as perhaps the most consistent secessionists in the state of Alabama in the 1850s. It was involved in the publication of one of the most stridently secessionist newspapers in the South, and some of its members were responsible for an outrageous pro-slavery scheme during the 1850s which briefly placed it in the middle of a national controversy….

Especially in the early 1850s, some even backed independent, “Southern Rights Party” or “State-Rights Party” candidates for office. William L. Yancey, who was quickly becoming widely recognized as a leading spokesman for Southern interests on a national level, took the lead in urging the formation of Associations throughout Alabama. Revealing the level of political agitation in the state, by February of 1851 there were an estimated 25 Southern Rights Associations operating in 14 Alabama counties. Five centers of this “fire-eating” sentiment soon emerged as the loci of Alabama’s nascent secessionist movement: Cahaba, Montgomery, Mobile, Jacksonville/Talladega, and Eufaula.

The Eufaula Association, in which the Regency played an important role, soon separated itself from its peers and established itself in the vanguard of the secession movement with its radical agenda. Rejecting the Compromise of 1850 and the cautionary nature of the wait-and-see stance of its fellow associations publicly endorsed, the Eufaula group thought in bolder, and large, terms than most Alabamians. They urged Southerners to “discard all past political differences” and “turn aside from the submissionist as your worst enemy.” Striking a dramatic if provincial tone, they also suggested that Southerners “exclude all Northern newspapers from our midst” and “patronize Southern ministers and churches.” In the words of historian J. Mills Thornton III, whose illuminating study of antebellum Alabama discusses the Regency as a somewhat unique factor in state politics, the Eufaula Association “embraced long-term agitation to convert the entire electorate to resistance” and desired to “launch a crusade to convince the citizenry of the justice of the southern rights cause.” One of its primary moving forces, Regency member Jefferson Buford, clearly illuminated its position in an editorial printed in Eufaula and Montgomery newspapers in 1851 by arguing that it took: “a very long time for new ideas to enter and imbue the public mind, and then they must, as it were, sink into our very bones and marrow and become a part of our being before they develop the fruit of action … we must organize, agitate, persevere, endure; if we cannot, we are unworthy of our rights.” …

Many other prominent citizens of Eufaula and the surrounding region, including newspaper publisher John Black, and later Confederate Brigadier General Cullen A. Battle and lawyer, Confederate colonel and later governor of Alabama William C. Oates, lawyer, publisher and soldier Tennant Lomax, were also associated to varying degrees with the Regency. Politicians and editors elsewhere in the state and region were known to sympathize with the group, none more so than William L. Yancey. Yancey was not only one of the primary reasons for the group’s existence by way of his support for the formation of Southern Rights Associations, but a constant ally of the Eufaula group and a personal friend of many of its members.

Regency members formally announced their stance, and informally, the extent of the local influence, on October 15, 1850 when the weekly Eufaula Democrat officially changed its name to the Spirit of the South. Featuring a masthead boldly proclaiming “Equality in Union or Independence Out of It,” editors Alpheus Baker and proprietor John Black positioned the paper to become the foremost publication in the region to work in support of Southern interests as well as the unofficial organ for the Regency …

The paper continually and forcefully agitated in favor of secession throughout the 1850s to a degree almost unrivaled in the state of Alabama and only rarely so in other Southern states. A leading forum for secessionist thought, it continued in publication until the middle of the Civil War. It regularly featured articles and editorials from around the South and nation discussing the growing sectional tension over the issue of slavery and closely followed debate over legislation that might impact the institution. Especially in its early years, it also carried updates on the activities of other Southern Rights Associations in the region and lashed out at fellow Southern citizens who refused to join them in their crusade.

The paper’s editors claimed it would not support any political party, but rather, attempt to “unite all Southern men in firm resistance to Northern aggression.” Repeatedly, they attempted to remind readers of its bipartisan nature  by claiming that “our friendship has not been for Whig or Democrat, but for him who was ready to rise up strike for his country.”

There was jubilant celebration in Barbour County upon hearing of the secession of South Carolina in December 1860. Admist the parading of militia companies, fireworks, ringing of bells and booming of cannon, Regency members Alpheus Baker and Eli Sims Shorter gave public addresses heralding the occasion. Less than a month later, the entire scene would be repeated when Alabama voted to secede on January 11, 1861. Regency member Jeremiah N. Williams was one of several to address a raucous crowd in Clayton at a party that lasted into the early hours of the morning, while Lewis L. Cato threw a party at his home in Eufaula which, according to legend, was attended by William L. Yancey.

Among the group of men that had led the state out of the Union at the Alabama secession convention in Montgomery were two of the Regency’s most recognized spokesmen, Alpheus Baker and John Cochran. John W. Izner, a delegate to the secession convention from St. Clair County, would later recall the Regency members present and leave a colorful account of the scene of their triumph. When several local woman came to present the convention a flag featuring patriotic mottoes emblazoned on it, convention president William McLin Brooks turned to Alpheus Baker and asked him to accept the banner. In “a perfect Niagara of eloquence,” Baker spoke to the assembly as if “the speaker seemed to have dipped down from the eternal world for that special purpose and on that extraordinary occasion.” Regency members must have relished the moment, as the prospect of an independent Southern nation seemed on the verge of becoming a reality.

Symbolically, though, the high point for the Eufaula Regency came in August of 1861 with the election of John Gill Shorter as governor of Alabama after a campaign begun by a few Regency members. In what must have certainly seemed like a triumphant vindication of over a decade of effort to shape public opinion, one of the most respected Regency members took office as the state’s chief executive.”

Here’s another account of that glorious day:

“When word reached Eufaula in mid-December of 1860 that South Carolina had seceded and Alabama would soon follow, the town exploded in a gala celebration of passionate speeches and flag-waving parties. In the words of one reveler, the grand houses along Broad Street seemed “studded with diamonds in a glorious sunlight, so brilliant were the bonfires. From Eufaula, John Shorter rode west to Montgomery to claim his seat as governor of the Confederate state of Alabama.”

The day that this Africanized farce of a country that is ruled by Wall Street bankers and Washington bureaucrats, the Union or BRA or the Lincoln system or the Jewocracy, whatever you want to call it, collapses from its own mismanagement, cultural degeneracy and fiscal bankruptcy, which can’t be that long from now, will be the greatest day here since that historic celebration in 1861.

We are going to party all night long. I’m personally going to take a trip to Yancey’s grave and pour out a bottle of fine wine to celebrate the occasion.

Note: This SBPDL article on the racial decline of Montgomery is illustrative of why Alabama must secede from the United States. There is a photograph on this website of the “Enough is Enough: Stop the Violence” signs in Montgomery. There is one of those less than a quarter of a mile from the Carpetbagger Poverty Law Center.

Montgomery is yet another Southern city that is being destroyed by the Black Undertow. The fundamental cause of that is the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which were imposed on Dixie by a Northern Congress that voted 9 to 1 for that legislation.

MLK was a reviled figure in the South. He gave his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. The people who watched that speech and who identified with its anti-racist ideals were Yankees whose ancestors had fought for Lincoln’s Union. Neither “Honest Abe” or MLK were ever liked around here – it must have been an apocalyptic scene to Southerners, MLK standing in front of Lincoln’ statue.

When the “Freedom Riders” came to Montgomery, mostly Jews and Northern Whites and a few negroes, a mob of locals at the Greyhound Bus Station beat the living the shit out of them. Such was the local sentiment.

The Greyhound Bus Station in Montgomery has been turned into a Medieval shine to BRA like the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. Both Selma and Montgomery were charming cities before they were destroyed by African-Americans because – and I stress, because – we are part of the United States.

Eugene “Bull” Connor was a hero who fought the Black Undertow in Birmingham to preserve Dixie as a “White Man’s Country.” Naturally, George Wallace was from Barbour County, reprising the same role as John Gill Shorter in defense of Southern Rights in 1861.

Jim Zwerg got his ass whooped because he was a Yankee busybody who came here for the sole purpose of flagrantly violating our laws and customs. It would never occur to Southerners to travel all the way to Wisconsin to engage in “demonstrations” against the prevailing mores there.