As we have seen, Rainbow Confederates like to pretend that race, slavery and white supremacy had nothing to do with the historical Confederacy. They like to imagine that their Confederate ancestors were cucks who shared the racial attitudes of the Baby Boomer generation.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. The Confederates believed that 19th century racial science had established the inferiority of the black race. They believed that 18th century Enlightenment theories of human equality and natural rights were antiquated and discredited.
In their eyes, the South was menaced by the threat of “Black Republicanism.” This was their term for Northerners who believed in “the doctrine of negro equality” and whose radical liberalism impelled them to undermine and destroy all social hierarchies. Abolitionism was only one of the many “-isms of the North” which were seen as a threat to the Southern social order. These included Bloomerism, anarchism, atheism, socialism, communism, Oneida incest and Mormon polygamy.
Abolitionism undermined the master-slave relationship. Bloomerism undermined patriarchy. Anarchism undermined state sovereignty. Atheism undermined our subordination to God. Socialism and communism undermined property rights. Incest and polygamy undermined Christian morality. The Confederates saw themselves as standing for hierarchy against the excesses of democracy.
In their more candid moments, the intellectual vanguard of the Confederacy declared that their objective was the defeat of American democracy. They wanted to abandon liberal republicanism in favor of classical republicanism. They admired the Greeks, Romans and the Normans of Medieval Britain. They wanted to secede from the United States to create a new conservative nation based on “the political thought of the Norman” which they believed was opposed to liberal democracy.
The Confederate view on race, slavery and white supremacy is consistent with their philosophy of inequality. The same is true of their views on patriarchy, religion and politics. They were natural conservatives who believed in preserving hierarchies, order and social distinctions. In their view, it was natural for man to be subordinated to God, wives to be subordinated to their husbands, children to their fathers, slaves to their masters, the ignorant to the wise, etc.
John Brown was seen as a wild-eyed fanatic in the South. What sense does John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry make if the Rainbow Confederates are anywhere close to being right?
Mississippi Declaration of Causes of Secession
Texas Declaration of Causes of Secession
Alexander Stephens, Cornerstone Speech
Jefferson Davis, Farewell to the US Senate
Alexander Stephens, Speech to Virginia Convention
William L. Harris, Address To Georgia Assembly
Amen. Georgia’s is better: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_geosec.asp
While I consider slavery immoral (but today, hey, 60 million dead innocent babies killed in monstrous ways, so we have unclean hands), it was the reason. You can’t find mentions of tariffs, or other things.
Lincoln’s evil war had many causes and effects, but the whole thing is complicated. Lincoln was evil, perhaps Stalin or Mao without the tech to do it (DeLorenzo, the real Lincoln).
There was a Frederic Douglass, but he wasn’t representative. Oh, and the Northerners were as if not more racist in belief and soft practice as anyone in the south.
Most people don’t know – but the writings are there. The history is there.
But it is almost impossible to have an honest conversation. One side has to be saints, the other devils. Both sides were fallen men, but brave. At least below the command level.
And while the Union won, the constitution and liberty lost. Which is lost on most libertarians.
WHY DID THE SOUTHERN STATES SECEDE?
To get away from the futility of having to negotiate our reality with those who, alien to us, felt, and still feel, it necessary to dictate to us what our reality will be.
As important as race can be, it is merely an ancillary footnote, in the entire context of the whole.
Sovereignty is the most precious thing in the world; though, today, most regard the most precious thing as doing everything it takes to have a night out on the town.
MEN AND BOYS…
Our great-great-granddaddies were real men, adults – something which, in The South, these days, is in increasingly short supply.
Now, we vote and moan – while proudly flying the flag of our oppressors.
It’s a grieving time to be a Southern patriot, but, still those of us who feel this way have no choice – we must bear up, until our brethren wake up.
Just look at where the Federals placed their District of Columbia – right on the Mason-Dixon Line. That tells me there were problems between the newly independent Northern and Southern colonies right from the start. Hamilton and Adams on one side, Jefferson and Madison on the other.
At age 16, Jefferson was at William and Mary college… and could write a thought simultaneously with both hands, one in Greek and one in Latin. Not too many politicians do that today…. they argue about which bathroom to use.
@Spahn…
‘Just look at where the Federals placed their District of Columbia – right on the Mason-Dixon Line. That tells me there were problems between the newly independent Northern and Southern colonies right from the start. ‘
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You are so very right. It was just one of those relationships that was a bad idea, from the first, and the nightmare just goes on and on.
If we are separate, we could become trade partners, and, perhaps, good neighbours – because we won’t be in each other’s hair.
The South seceded to preserve Negro slavery. That was its cause. That’s what the Confederate flag represents.
Oh—this is choice (from page 289 of the 1863 Southern Literary Messenger article you linked, Mr. Wallace):
“We of the Border States are especially interested in this matter of preventing the establishment among us, of those dens of corruption, the ‘Lowells’ and ‘Manchesters,’ ‘sores upon the body politic,’ whose contagion will spread its contaminating effect, corrupting and destroying the health and vitality of our whole system.”
Whew—even by the standards one learns to apply to the polemicists of the Confederacy, that’s delusion of a high order. The “health and vitality” of the South’s “whole system” was almost entirely dependent on the thirty-five-mile connection between Manchester and Liverpool. In the light of that sentence quoted above, the Confederacy’s final surrender, in that very territory, is perversely fitting.
A few years ago I read that the [then already (((private)))] bank of the United Kingdom helped with the secession and that the United Kingdom and France sought to intervene on the side of the Confederation to weaken the USA because they feared US economic policies and banking. Brit troops were sent to Canada in 1862 and Lincoln had to be carefull not to give the brits the excuse they eneded.
Is that anti-Confederate disinformation or true?
Two thoughts:
1) “They were natural conservatives who believed in preserving hierarchies, order and social distinctions.”
dayum- I’m a Southron, and didn’t know it.
2) Bone of Contention- just die, already, and ‘decrease the surplus population’ as Scrooge (the proto-Yankee, even while English) said. You keep coming back, like a corn on a foot, making it impossible to move forward…
In the Confederate era big business A-holes and other hot shots wanted didn’t want to pay White workers a fair sum (or Blacks for that matter, obviously) so they had slavery to drive down wages to the point of nil, with just providing some degree of housing, med care, and food. It could therefore be said that a major cause of the Confederate government and a rationale for the war was about the economics of the wealthy, which is a major cause of so many wars. No surprise. Other factors obviously came into play and there were obviously other reasons, such a a legitimate desire to independent.
I’ve noticed that Neo-Unionists and official histories ignore the Abolitionists and especially the New England Immigrant Aid Society and the actions of the Free Soilers in Missouri and Kansas. They can’t ignore John Brown. But they make little mention of him. Nor do they connect his actions in Virginia with Southern Secession.
For instance, a series of fires broke out in and around Denton, Dallas and Ft. Worth, Texas. Coincidentally, there were a series of unsolved murders in the area at the time. Now, there are claims that the fires were caused by carelessness with matches, and the dryness and heat of the Texas summer. However, at the time, documents appeared detailing New England designs on Denton, County and the counties between there and Wichita Falls, on the Red River. To be fair, there was never any solution to the cause of the fires. But it was enough to sew outrage and fear among the public in Texas.
These circumstances were mentioned in the Texas Ordinance of Secession:
“They have sent hired emissaries among us to burn our towns and distribute arms and poison to our slaves for the same purpose.”
Nonetheless, the fact that Southern politics are defensive and reactionary in nature, is ignored. Maybe Northern types don’t really see it, or just can’t relate. But the narrative seems to place secession in a vacuum, separate from everything else that was going on. Not as a reaction to Northern political activity. It was reactionary. It remains so.
I have a hard time not supporting John Brown’s actions.
I know if I were a slave, I would be willing to kill my master if necessary in order to get freedom.
You are a slave to the zio-banks and the zio-fedgov.
You gonna start the killin?
No one here is stupid enough to believe that Lincoln launched the war (the whole Ft. Sumter farce has been gone over ad nauseam) to free the slaves. The war was motivated by Northern imperialism.If the North was really concerned about slavery, it was would have much simpler to let the original states of the CSA secede in peace, which would have made it far easier to eliminate slavery in those states remaining in the Union. But if they were really intent on a holy (and bloody) crusade to end slavery everywhere they would have followed up the victory of 1865 with campaigns in Brazil, the Muslim world and Sub-Saharan Africa.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. The Confederates believed that 19th century racial science had established the inferiority of the black race. They believed that 18th century Enlightenment theories of human equality and natural rights were antiquated and discredited.
HUNTER
I think I have typed this in response to various videos 1000 times already. I have explained that the Confederacy UNLIKE THE NORTH was the nation truly built upon Modern Science, while at the same time having an emphasis on Religious Orthodoxy. It was a true paradox. The North on the other hand was divided into so many different beliefs, but the thing was the wealthy Whites in the North had begun after the Revolution to slowly reject Bible-Based Religion for the Social Gospel. It didn’t happen all at once and it was more prominent in Boston, but like a cancer it spread. That’s what the South was trying to prevent, the spread of the cancer.. Southerners understood that the average White in the North bore them no real ill will, but that they were as a whole an unthinking horde of mudsills who would do exactly what their leadership ordered them to do. Because of the North’s Ethnic/Religious Diversity, the only thing uniting them was a vague idea of American Exceptionalism.
American Exceptionalism is a plague still pushed TODAY by Republicans
was an upholder of this institution. In 1858, he said,“…I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”
In 1858, he (Lincoln)said,“…I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”
on Aug. 14, 1862, Lincoln invited free Black ministers to the White House to have a conversation. Lincoln did not hesitate to convince them of their inferiority when he candidly said the following: “You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffers very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffers from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated.”
Lincoln’s Promotion of White Supremacy
Lincoln was, indeed, a white supremacist. In his 1858 debate with Sen. Steven Douglas, Lincoln maintained, “And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
Lincoln was no supporter of racial equality. In fact, while debating Douglas in 1858, Lincoln declared the following: “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.”
While the previous quotes prove that, politically, Lincoln was not firmly insistent on freeing the slaves of the South, his following quote reveals that he personally did not want to: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
Being that Lincoln was a not concerned with racial equality or the well-being of Black slaves in the South, it should come as no surprise that he did not support the marital union of whites and Blacks. He, in 1858, remarked, “I have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it, but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.”
Lincoln was not necessarily against the expansion of slavery. But, he only had one primary request: whites and Black could not mix in the new land. When addressing the Dred Scott Decision of 1857, Lincoln quoted the following: “There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races … A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas…”
Lincoln believed that Black people living in close proximity to white people would ruin the image of the pure white family that he found ideal. He felt the birth of mixed race children would cause family life to “collapse.” He said, “Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man.”
Spahnranch1969
JUNE 1, 2017 AT 3:01 AM
Just look at where the Federals placed their District of Columbia – right on the Mason-Dixon Line. That tells me there were problems between the newly independent Northern and Southern colonies right from the start. Hamilton and Adams on one side, Jefferson and Madison on the other.
The Capital was located in Dixie because of the compromise over representation in the US Constitution. The South agreed to the 3/5 clause because the North agreed to a Southern Capital. Maryland is below the Mason Dixon BTW, its just today thats less obvious because it was the first casualty of Southern cultural genocide. Thanks to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, Baltimore Banks, and the Pennsylvania Germans and others who settled Central and Western Maryland, Southrons slowly lost that state. Maryland has seldom voted in concert with the rest of Dixie since 1920. The only time they agreed with Dixie after 1920 was during the FDR years,
I think all in all Alexander Hamilton and John Adams were right about a few things Hamilton was right about economic nationalism and high protective tariffs, Hamilton’s main issue was that he was too close to the Jews. Adams was definitely right on Immigration, his Immigration Act of 1798 had it stood would have likely PREVENTED Southern Secession, because the slow growth that the 1798 Act would have made possible, such as having very strict rules on behavior for immigrants which if broken were punished by deportation and 14 year waiting period for citizenship would never have allowed the 1848 German and German Jewish Refugees to come here in the first place.
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were OPEN BORDERS IDIOTS. They both believed that States could enforce immigration laws, that deportation wasn’t necessary and it was up to the states to admit people. They also believed that the Franchise and electoral eligibility should be given after only FIVE Years. The thing was the port cities, Boston, Providence, New Haven, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore were HORRIBLY corrupt. Jews had gigantic power in NYC and Baltimore and they made sure that the immigrants were completely un-vetted. Thus the North’s population grew unnaturally fast, radicals were given full civil rights, and soon the USA was in their hands. It took until 1876 for Conservative Whites to get back a semblance of control.
Thomas Jefferson realized in the 1790s that he would need uncontrolled immigration to build his Democratic Party, That’s why he opened the borders in 1802. What Jefferson didnt count on was that the 48’ers would come and side against his party, thus bringing the war. Still the Democrats didn’t learn their election blocking ALL EFFORTS to enforce or pass immigration laws until the Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924. Once the Dem’s gained back full control of the government under Lyndon, its been open the floodgates.
@Gary Adams
I don’t care if Abe was the most honest white man in the USA in 1861 the point of the matter is this. The conservative wing of the Republican Party had no money behind them. The business wing of the Republican Party sided with the Radicals as the Radicals promised them full ownership of the plundered South following the war. Yes it is factual that Lincoln himself make statements that seemed to indicate that he did prefer that the Negroes not remain in the United States in large number HOWEVER remember the Bankers, the Jews, and the Radical Republicans needed the Negroes for their plans and saw them as cheap labor. The cabal had the money and they held the votes. Lincoln did attempt a National Union Party with the War Democrats but remember MONEY TALKS.
I believe they had planned all along to Murder Lincoln because he was no longer useful to them. They needed Lincoln to put a folksy, less threatening face on Radicalism, and when he was reelected, he was simply no longer needed. Killing Lincoln gave their programs the cover of martyrdom and it ended the possibility of lawsuits against the Northern Government by Southerners attempting to get their property restored. The question of secession was forever clouded by the air of assassination, this meant that if you believed in secession you believed John Wilkes Booth did nothing wrong. After 1865 anyone who espoused a belief in secession was immediately labeled a reactionary kook by the media.
THE SOUTH HAD NO CHOICE BUT TO LEAVE THE UNION. THE SOUTH LACKED THE POLITICAL CAPITAL, THE MONEY, AND SUPPORT IN THE COURTS FOR THEIR SIDE. SECESSION WAS THE ONLY CHOICE. THEY HAD TRUSTED IN POLITICANS SINCE 1789 AND EVER YEAR HAD LOST A PORTION OF POWER. THEY HAD NO CHOICE WHATSOEVER