We Mean to WIN this Heritage War

"The radical view of American history is a web of lies, all perspective is removed, every virtue is obscured, every motive is twisted, every fact is distorted and every flaw is magnified until the history is purged and the record is disfigured beyond all recognition."

President Donald J. Trump,
Speech at Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota
July 3, 2020

We Mean to WIN this Heritage War

by Gene Kizer, Jr.

Going on Offense in South Carolina
with the American Heritage Association
Battles Raging Across Georgia

Multiple Georgia SCV Suits
and a Georgia Minutemen Suit,
ALL at A Critical Stage

Abbeville Institute Will Respond
to Washington and Lee University

 

I had planned to publish Part II of The War Through Women's Eyes by Douglas Southall Freeman, this week, and will soon, but so many important heritage fights and initiatives are going on, I wanted to help them all as much as possible right this minute!

There are bills before the legislature in South Carolina, and law suits raging across Georgia. The suits are all at a critical stage and those who are fighting hard for Southern honor and American history can win but desperately need us to reinforce them by calling legislators and especially giving money!

By this summer, we can have HUGE victories under our belts that protect forever the hundreds of sacred memorials in at least South Carolina and Georgia, which will set an example of highly effective legal and legislative tactics for other places fighting the same fights.

Also, Washington and Lee University will likely soon drop Gen. Lee from the school's name. The Abbeville Institute plans to respond with a high powered video featuring historian Phil Leigh.

Think where we were last summer when President Trump issued an Executive Order that included this:1

Over the last 5 weeks, there has been a sustained assault on the life and property of civilians, law enforcement officers, government property, and revered American monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial. Many of the rioters, arsonists, and left-wing extremists who have carried out and supported these acts have explicitly identified themselves with ideologies - such as Marxism - that call for the destruction of the United States system of government.

Anarchists and left-wing extremists have sought to advance a fringe ideology that paints the United States of America as fundamentally unjust and have sought to impose that ideology on Americans through violence and mob intimidation. They have led riots in the streets, burned police vehicles, killed and assaulted government officers as well as business owners defending their property, and even seized an area within one city where law and order gave way to anarchy. During the unrest, innocent citizens also have been harmed and killed.

These criminal acts are frequently planned and supported by agitators who have traveled across State lines to promote their own violent agenda. These radicals shamelessly attack the legitimacy of our institutions and the very rule of law itself.

Key targets in the violent extremists' campaign against our country are public monuments, memorials, and statues. Their selection of targets reveals a deep ignorance of our history, and is indicative of a desire to indiscriminately destroy anything that honors our past and to erase from the public mind any suggestion that our past may be worth honoring, cherishing, remembering, or understanding.

He reinforced that sentiment a few days later in a speech July 3, 2020 at Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota:

Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children. Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities. Many of these people have no idea why they’re doing this, but some know what they are doing. They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive, but no, the American people are strong and proud and they will not allow our country and all of its values, history, and culture to be taken from them.

It goes beyond that. The anti-Americanism in academia, in order to benefit the political left, not only is cheating young Americans out of the greatest heritage of freedom and opportunity in world history, it often preaches Critical Race Theory, a philosophy that rejects the approach of Martin Luther King who wanted equal opportunity in a colorblind society. Critical Race Theory demonizes white people and seeks to make up for perceived racial slights by striving for racial advantage today, especially through the law. This will guarantee unnecessary racial division forever.

Nobody is held down in America, today, and nobody has been for over a half century.

A lot of the pandering on race is to get reparations as Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the New York Times's fraudulent 1619 Project, asserts. She has said it many times.

The constant obsession with race is anathema to American opportunity. Americans rise up. They overcome. They don't whine about anything. They figure it out. Anybody who does not think there is opportunity galore in America is a dope. That's why tens of thousands of Central Americans are on the way here right this minute.

We've had a two-term black president, despite him being one of the worst in American history. That could never, ever have happened in a racist country.

The left ignores that, which is a popular Marxist technique. Push your own position and ignore anything that goes against it, no matter how appropriate.

Trump got more black and Hispanic votes than any Republican president in a long time and that trend will continue. We are looking for American excellence. We want all Americans to achieve great things, make money, be happy, live in a great country. We are not obsessed with race like the left. Without the false charge of racism, the left stands for nothing.

Ending censorship, cancel culture, depravation of free speech and election corruption are the worst problems we face today.

Gina Carano was kicked out of her successful part as Cara Dune in The Mandalorian for posting the intelligent and prescient observation that, before you start killing people, you have to hate them, and you have to preach your hatred and humiliation against them. She pointed out that in Nazi Germany:

Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors . . . even by children.

"Because history is edited, most people today don't realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?"2

It's not.

It's not one iota different.

William Gilmore Simms went on a lecture tour in the North in 1856. He was a well-known American writer and thought he would be well received or at least listened to. He wanted to refute some Northern writings that said South Carolina had been "imbecile" in the Revolutionary War, and cowardly. Simms was an expert on the Revolutionary War and knew better.

He started OK but soon Northern hate took over and he ended up having to cancel the tour. He lost a good bit of money. He came back to Charleston and told Southerners to prepare for war because the North hates your guts.

They lusted after political power, just like the left today. In the late 1850s, Northerners knew if they could just rally their votes they could take over the Federal Government and rule the entire country for their own benefit. They could vote themselves all the tariffs, bounties, subsidies and monopolies they wanted. The entire power of the country and its wealth would be in their greedy hands.

Hatred of the South was their method of rallying votes, just like today's Democrat Party hatred of conservatives, as Gina Carano observed.

The anti-slavery movement in the North was political, to rally Northern votes. It was not pro-black, it was anti-black. It was racist. They hated slavery because they hated blacks and didn't want blacks anywhere near them. Historians acknowledge this.

Simms talked about his failed lecture tour in a series of lectures in 1857 in Charleston at what is today, Hibernian Hall. He said:

Do you not see that, when Hate grows into open insolence, that the enemy is prepared to gratify all his passions? --- that, having so far presumed upon our imbecility as to spit his scorn and venom into our very faces, he feels sure of his power to destroy!3

John Remington Graham writes in his Principles of Confederacy:

. . . in six short years, from 1854 through 1860, the United States had been transformed into a sea of passionate hatred.4

As divided as our country is, it is quite obvious that the political hate of the left in 2016 against President Trump and Republicans, was exactly like the political hate of the North in 1860 against the South, which led directly to the War Between the States.

Every war has a turning point such as our Revolutionary War whose turning point in the South was the Battle of Kings Mountain right here in South Carolina.

Let NOW be the turning point of the heritage war we are in. Pledge to call legislators in support of heritage bills, and please give money. Give anything you can. Give a lot if you can! This is IT! We need victories NOW. Give something.

Make a sacrifice just as our Confederate ancestors sacrificed their lives for independence thus leaving us a legacy of honor and valor unsurpassed in world history.

Going on Offense in South Carolina
with the American Heritage Association

Get on the newsletter list of the outstanding American Heritage Association. Visit their website at www.AmericanHeritageAssociation.org.

They state:

WHO WE ARE

The American Heritage Association was formed out of necessity.   Across the country we have seen vandalism, removal of America's historical monuments and direct attacks on the founding principles.  It is these recent events that served as a catalyst for the formation of the American Heritage Association.  We are citizens who simply recognize the value of our history and its importance in maintaining a free society and the American culture itself.

WHAT WE DO

The American Heritage Association has four main functions:

1.  To advocate for policies which both protect historical monuments and properly present American history.

2.  To advocate for the teaching of American History in public schools.​

3.  To educate the public through living history events.

4.  To preserve current and erect new historical monuments and markers.

I joined their email list and got this nice Welcome:

Good Morning,

Thank you for subscribing to the American Heritage Association (AHA) website. We are dedicated to the preservation of America's national memory. Based in Charleston, SC, the AHA is active throughout the Palmetto State and part of an informal coalition of groups which covers a larger part of the country. Our mission is simple: Preserve America's historical monuments, defend American history from politically motivated revisionism and restore patriotic history education in schools.

For 2021, we have chosen to support three bills in South Carolina that are inline with our mission and known collectively as
THE STORY OF AMERICA legislative package:

HB 3249 sponsored by Rep. Bill Taylor (Aiken), provides severe penalties for local governments that violate state monument protection laws;

HB 3326 sponsored by Rep. Steven Long (Greenville), prevents historical plaques and markers from becoming editorials for activist viewpoints; and

COMING SOON: Restore America's Foundation Act sponsored by Rep. Lin Bennett (Charleston), will put patriotic history education back into schools.

Statewide polling shows overwhelming support for these policies but most people do not even know the bills exist. AHA is trying to solve the problem by playing radio ads statewide to raise awareness. This week we have started running ads on 94.3 WSC in Charleston during the Kelly Golden show and the Sean Hannity show. We will be expanding across the state next week.

These ads cost a significant amount of money to keep on the air. Please consider visiting the website to make a donation :

www.AmericanHeritageAssociation.org

Lastly, please do your part and call your state representative today and ask them to co-sponsor all three bills in the STORY OF AMERICA legislative package.

Thank you for your interest and support!

Regards,
American Heritage Association

There is much more excellent information on their website including a recent poll showing strong support for our history and monuments. You can donate with credit card or PayPal on their Home page.

 

Battles Raging Across Georgia
Multiple Georgia SCV Suits
and a Georgia Minutemen Suit,
ALL at a Critical Stage
GA Div SCV Logo

February 19, 2021

***CALL FOR HELP***

SCV LEGAL BATTLES

Litigation up-date from Georgia Division Spokesman
Martin K. O'Toole

This is both a report and a plea to the members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and our supporters.

In 2019 we were able to amend the Official Code of Georgia Annotated Section 50-3-1 or the Monument Protection Act. This was providential and that we have been faced with an unprecedented assault on traditional America in 2020.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans responded to this assault with a series of lawsuits. We now have three cases headed for the Court of Appeals and five others in litigation at the trial level. It has been a learning experience, so we have drafted amendments to O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1 to defeat some of the defenses raised by the politically correct government censors. We will provide you with more on that in the very near future so that you can begin to express your opinion to your state legislators.

The SCV was also able to participate in removing sovereign immunity as a defense by government agencies effective 1 January through a constitutional amendment. A constitutional amendment passed unanimously through both houses of the Georgia General assembly and was approved by the voters 3-1. To date, every defending government county, city or consolidated government has raised sovereign immunity as a defense. We believe we can defeat them on appeal but, if we do not, they will no longer be able to use it in the future anyway. That is a battle which we have won.

At the moment the Sons of Confederate Veterans have pending appeals monument cases and Newton County, Rockdale County, and Henry County. We also have an appeal concerning censorship of a parade by the city of Alpharetta. The cases that are presently at the trial level include: Brunswick, Cuthbert, Athens/Clarke County, Columbus/Muskogee County and we have filed a motion to intervene in the Gwinnett County action brought by the Gwinnett County solicitor. We are planning to file lawsuits in Rome, DeKalb and are cooperating with a local group in a northwest Georgia community which will remain nameless for the moment. Additionally, we have provided financial support in the Silvia Cotriss case.

You may recall that Sgt. Cotriss was fired for flying a Confederate flag from her home while employed by the Roswell Police Department. If she loses this case, it can be cited as a precedent that no one may display any Southern heritage item at their home while a public employee.

The plan has gotten out to cities and counties that if they violate Georgia law by removing our Georgia Confederate veterans’ monuments, we will sue them. But they know they are playing with other people’s money – at least thus far – so they would prefer to pander to the mob rather than to obey the law. One government official even went so far as to state that in the media that he knew he was breaking the law, but they were going to do it anyway. I wonder what laws you can break in his jurisdiction and suffer no consequences.

We are doing our best to see that these lawbreakers do suffer consequences. But the fight has been long and hard thus far and we still have plenty of distance to travel.

Here is the battle plan: if we can win the appellate level cases in Newton, Rockdale, and Henry Counties, I do not believe any jurisdiction would dare defy the law further. With the passage of the sovereign immunity repeal, our cases are now stronger than they were before January 1.

At least two jurisdictions have recognized this, and we have entered into agreements “staying” any further litigation until the appellate courts give a final ruling. The Court of Appeals will be as follows: we will start in the Georgia Court of Appeals. If the verdict is unsatisfactory to either side, it can be appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court. If either side is dissatisfied with their ruling an appeal can be taken to the United States Supreme Court. In reality, the chances of the United States Supreme Court hearing our cases is pretty slim. Consequently, the most likely conclusion of our cases will be the decision of the Georgia Supreme Court.

Now I must turn to the toughest part of this letter. That is a plea for yet more money. Thus far we have spent approximately $100,000 in litigation in these cases and supporting the affiliated case of Silva Cotriss. We have been asked to support at least two other cases. At this moment we have to decline to support those other affiliated cases down because the well is running dry. Despite the generosity of our members and supporters fighting City Hall in the County Courthouses around the State of Georgia is not cheap.

The good news is that we are not that far from the finish line. If we can sustain our cases and keep the monuments cases either tied up at the trial level or in the appellate court once we win a final verdict all the other jurisdictions will have no choice but to obey the law. If they do not do so, O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1 provides stiff penalties which I am sure would be applied.

If we lose on the appellate level, we will have an answer as to whether or not O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1 has teeth or not. If our laws mean nothing, then the monuments will fall all over Georgia.

This is the fight for which the Sons of Confederate Veterans was formed. Our ancestors left as markers to commemorate the heroism and courage of our Confederate soldiers, sailors, Marines, and civilians decorating the entire state. If we cannot win this fight, we will lose it all.

If you know anyone with deep pockets now is the time to ask them to contribute to the Heritage Defense Fund. If you have any money you can spare, now is the time to send it. I would suggest that if you cannot send a substantial contribution now is the time to send regular modest contributions to keep our lawyers in the courtrooms fighting the good fight.

This is it. If we lose now this state will never be the same again. Already monuments have been squirreled away in storage bins even cast in pieces into fields. When you sit by and permit this? If you have not given any money to the Heritage Defense Fund, why not? If you have given to the heritage Defense fund already, I sincerely thank you. But we must call on you to be generous once again.

The passage of the Confederate Army could be marked sometimes by bloodstains in the snow of shoeless soldiers. No one needs to make the sacrifices our ancestors did. But in order to honor them, we all must make some contribution to the fight.

Credit Card Donations can be made on-line (click the link below).

Mail-in Donations:

Georgia Division, SCV
P.O. Box 1081,
Macon, Ga. 31202

Please Donate Now

Please visit the Georgia Division, SCV, website

www.GeorgiaSCV.org

 


 

1-RAY-MCBERRY-LOGO-MINUTEMAN-GEORGIA-300x300

THE GEORGIA MINUTEMEN

From an email notification Monday, Febraury 22, 2021

Please post this on Facebook, share it, and forward it to
your email
lists of like-minded Georgians.

OUR CONFEDERATE MONUMENT CASE HEADED
TO
GEORGIA COURT OF APPEALS

FIRST CONFEDERATE MONUMENT CASE TO BE HEARD
BEFORE THE GEORGIA COURT OF APPEALS

In response to a motion by the defendants in December, Henry County Superior Court Judge Brian Amero signed an order to dismiss the case on the grounds that the Georgia Minutemen do not have “standing” in the case to sue. The Georgia Minutemen steadfastly contend that if they do not have standing to use Georgia’s “Monument Protection Law,” then there is no person nor entity on the planet that does have standing to use the law. The Georgia Supreme Court has ruled on more than one occasion that the General Assembly has the authority to confer standing by statute… which is exactly what they have done in this law. It is plain enough for any literate person to see clearly.

The ink was barely dry on Judge Amero’s order to dismiss the case before attorneys for the Georgia Minutemen had an appeal filed with the Georgia Court of Appeals. The case will now be heard by that court on appeal before being sent back down to Judge Amero if the appeal is won on the matter of standing.

This is the first case in the nation in which officials responsible for the removal of a statue have been sued in their individual capacity. In so doing, the case has already set a precedent as the first in the nation to overcome the legal hurdle of the “sovereign immunity” defense.

This is going to be a precedent-setting case in not only Georgia but in all of American jurisprudence for years to come. If we fail to win this case, there is NO statue in the country which will be safe from the cultural Marxists and their practice of cultural genocide. We MUST win this case. If we lose this case, literally scores of other cases across Georgia and across the country will fall because the courts are watching our case closely.

I am asking every American reading this to please make some donation to our efforts. The enemy thinks that he is going to simply outlast us because we won’t have the funds to continue. We MUST have the funds to continue this and our other efforts to stop the cultural Marxism going on in America.

Would you please stop what you’re doing and click on the link below to make some contribution to our efforts? How much is it worth to YOU to have us stay in this fight? Your children and your grandchildren cannot afford for you to sit by on the sidelines and just watch for the outcome. What will you say when they ask you years from now what you did to stop what is happening in America when you had the chance?

I am not asking anyone to do anything that I have not already done and continue to do personally. To date, I have personally spent more than $5,000 in this effort. I was also arrested for being the only one who refused to vacate the sidewalk when the officers said, “The crane company can’t remove the statue until we clear the sidewalk.” So I refused to move until they arrested me. They have since trumped up the charge against me from a local city violation to a state criminal offense… all because I have refused to plead guilty and accept their “gracious” offer of reducing the charge back down to a local ordinance violation with a $100 fine if I will just plead guilty. I am not pleading guilty to anything but love for God, for Georgia, for my ancestors, for their Cause which was right, for my children, and for America.

Please join me and make a generous contribution to our efforts today by clicking the link below. Time is of the essence!

Then click the next link to join the Georgia Minutemen for as little as $10 per year.

Then forward this email or post to every patriotic American that you know. We can NOT afford to lose this battle!

For Georgia First,
Ray McBerry, Founder
Georgia Minutemen

MAKE A DONATION TO THE CAUSE TODAY

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP US WIN?

1. Click HERE to join the Georgia Minutemen if you haven't already.

2. Click HERE to make a contribution so that we can continue our efforts in this case and other fronts.

3. Click HERE to Like the new Facebook page for the Georgia Minutemen and send invites to your friends to like it.

P.S. Please note that the Facebook page called "Georgia Minutemen" is NOT our group. Our original page was disabled and removed by Facebook when we eclipsed 1,000 followers in just a little over a week's time. The enemy is not happy at our popular support or our audacity to oppose their plans.

For more information, please contact the Georgia Minutemen through our website at www.GeorgiaMinutemen.com.

Georgia Minutemen Founder, Ray McBerry, is a Christian, father, businessman, Baptist pastor, television host, and former Republican candidate for governor of Georgia. In 2013, he became the first "public figure" in more than 100 years of Georgia history to win a libel suit when he sued those responsible for lies about him created by our enemies during the 2010 governor's race. He has previously served in the Southern Heritage movement as both SCV Georgia Division Commander and Georgia Chairman of the League of the South. In 2010, he organized and hosted the first-ever national Tenth Amendment Summit and has been a guest on FOX News, CNN, HLN, MSNBC, and hundreds of other media outlets as one of America’s foremost spokesmen on issues related to States’ Rights, Southern Heritage, and the Constitution. He is also the founder of the Georgia Minutemen, organized on April 19, 2020 as a voice for patriotic Georgians who have had enough of the cultural war being waged against them and their heritage. Ray McBerry is no stranger to fighting for our heritage and freedoms.

Join the Georgia Minutemen or visit us online at www.GeorgiaMinutemen.com.

Membership in the Georgia Minutemen is growing rapidly across Georgia! Join today for as little as $10 annually.

--------------------------------------------------

Abbeville Inst Logo
Abbeville Institute Will Respond
to Washington and Lee University

Last summer 80% of the Washington and Lee University faculty voted to remove Lee from the institution’s name. The school has not yet made a decision but presumably will not wait long.

W&L's Administration has been providing Internet presentations, which we believe are too critical of Lee. Most significant among them during the past five months are lectures by Allen Guelzo and Ty Seidule. The one by Seidule is obnoxious as you can see from this YouTube video he did for the Association of the United States Army earlier this month.

Their accusations should be answered. Therefore, the Abbeville Institute is seeking donations of $7000 to finance production of a six minute video by Phil Leigh like the one he did here on Confederate statues.

After watching Seidule’s video linked above we trust you will agree that this is a battle we must fight.

Support Our Videos!

Abbeville Institute

Please visit their outstanding website by clicking below

Abbeville Institute | What is true and valuable in the Southern tradition

PO Box 10 | McClellanville, South Carolina 29458
8433230690 | [email protected]

NOTES:

1 President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order on Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence, June 26, 2020.

2 Lee Brown, "See Gina Carano's tweets and posts that got her fired from 'The Mandalorian'", February 11, 2021, The New York Post, https://nypost.com/2021/02/11/see-gina-caranos-tweets-and-posts-that-got-her-fired/, accessed 2-25-21.

3 William Gilmore Simms, "South Carolina in the Revolution. The Social Moral. Lecture 1", unpublished 1857 lecture housed in the Charles Carroll Simms Collection of the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, 4-5.

4 John Remington Graham, Principles of Confederacy, The Vision and the Dream & The Fall of the South (Salt Lake City, Utah: Northwest Publishing, Inc., 1990), 660.

The War Through Women’s Eyes, Part I

"[July 23 1861] Witnessed for the first time a military funeral. As that march came wailing up, they say Mrs. Bartow fainted. The empty saddle and the led war-horse---we saw and heard it all, and now it seems we are never out of the sound of the Dead March in Saul. It comes and it comes, until I feel inclined to close my ears and scream."

From Mary Boykin Chesnut's
A Diary from Dixie.

Part I of

The War Through Women's Eyes

by Douglas Southall Freeman

Chapter VI of
The South to Posterity,1
1939.


[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr.
: This is a fascinating article in which I have inserted 11 illustrations, mostly photographs. There is much on Phoebe Pember, who was born and raised in Charleston, and there are several dramatic passages from A Diary from Dixie at the end of this post. The style of the citation, and content of each note, are Douglas Southall Freeman's, verbatim.]

SCARCELY A WOMAN'S NAME appears in Lee's confidential dispatches to President Davis. Not many are mentioned in the Official Records outside the correspondence on espionage and "suspected disloyalty." To assume on this account that women made no contribution to the writing of Confederate history would be almost as unreasonable as to ignore their influence on the morale of the armies. Their letters brightened many a night-watch; their formal publications soften the hard lines of military narratives.

Few of their letters are extant. Most of those taken from the dead bodies of soldiers mercifully were destroyed, but occasionally one finds in family papers a closely and carefully written sheet that passed to the battle front and, in some fashion, found its way back home again. At least one such letter should have a place here to illustrate in what spirit the women heartened the men at the front. The letter selected as typical of the best was penned June 29, 1863, by Sallie Radford Munford of Richmond, to her first cousin, John Henry Munford, Lieutenant of the Letcher Battery, which was making its way along Pennsylvania roads. Miss Munford was then about twenty-two and was the first of the ten daughters of Col. George W. Munford, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Virginia, by his second wife, Elizabeth T. Ellis. Miss Sallie's half brother, Col. Thomas T. Munford, had distinguished himself in a score of cavalry actions. The lieutenant, her correspondent, was the elder of the two gallant sons of Doctor Robert Munford and his wife, who had been Anne Curtis. The connections of the family were of the widest and highest in Virginia.

Gettysburg Battlefield, marker for Hill's Corps, ANV, Pegram's Battalion, Brander's Battery, and Letcher Artillery.
Sallie Munford's half brother, Col. Thomas T. Munford.
Sallie Munford's half brother, Col. Thomas T. Munford.

Here, then, is what Miss Sallie Munford wrote to her kinsman on the day that General Lee ordered his infantry to converge on Cashtown and Gettysburg:

Richmond, June 29th 1863.

My Dear John,

I had promised myself the pleasure of sending you a long letter by Willie Pegram, as I had not been able to write by the last opportunity which carried you letters from home, but I was so unwell the day before he left, I would not inflict upon you one of my stupid epistles. Now I can only write, hoping if it ever reaches you, it will serve to show how much we all constantly think of you, through I much fear, from the present state of the Army, my letter will never find your Battery. We are kept in the most constant state of anticipation and suspense concerning the present movements of our troops; everything is shrouded in mystery, except the one fact that our gallant boys are at last in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and are by no means idle there. I can not learn whether your Battery has yet crossed the Potomac, though as Pegram's Battalion of Artillery was bringing up the rear when last heard from, I supposed you are with Gen. Lee's portion of the Army. I know you will have a fine chance when you cross the river, and only wish I could be there to witness the entrance of our troops in some of those Union towns. War at all times, and especially such a war as we are engaged in, makes all classes fearfully bloodthirsty, and I am oftentimes astonished at the force of my feelings against the Yankees, but when I remember what we have suffered and lost, when I think of all the horror they have inflicted upon our people, and of the shameful display of barbarity and uncivilized warfare they have always displayed, I cannot wonder at the strength of such feelings, not blame the merest child for desiring retaliation. And if the accounts in the papers are true Ewell, Imboden and Jenkins, are at last carrying this fearful war into the enemy's territory, and causing them to feel some of the horrors of burning houses, homeless families, desolated fields, and an impoverished country. While such rumours as the burning of Harrisburg, the vast destruction of public and private property slowly reach us, we, the good people of Richmond are by no means quietly moving on the "even tenor of our way"; raids, and intended attacks by the Yankees upon our town, caused a good deal of excitement last week, which culminated when we learned the Yankees, reported 20,000 strong, were advancing in our direction. The Militia, were all called out, and yesterday, Sunday, the entire male population from 16 to 55, were occupied in drilling and manning the fortifications. There has been no alarm at all, for no one dreamed that the city could be taken, but as Gen. Lee has telegraphed for more troops, before we could send them, it was necessary to find out what militia force we could count upon, and the display has been a most satisfactory one.---I have been enjoying Kate Corbin's visit most amazingly; the weather has been entirely too warm for any unusual exertion, so we spend our time mostly in sewing, in reading aloud, and of course talking, for who ever knew a parcel of girls assembled together who did not talk. And what do you supposed we talk about? Our noble, brave, and gallant soldiers,---the deeds of daring and heroism which has made this the most unsurpassed of all wars, where one common feeling animates the breasts of high and low, old and young. And such a subject is inexhaustible; I do long sometimes to be a man that I too might fight for so glorious a cause, never had I felt more than now how hard it is to do a woman's part,---to wait, and that patiently, until others shall strike the decisive blow.---We have suffered a good deal of anxiety about Bro Tom recently; for the last fortnight, he has had a fight with the Yankees, either in Fauquier or Loudoun, every day, and some of these have been most desperate, hand to hand encounters.---In the first, on the 17th, Jemmie Tucker was very badly wounded, by a pistol ball in the back, the ball lodging under the right shoulder blade, and rendering his right arm perfectly useless---After great exertions uncle Bev succeeded in reaching him, and last night they arrived here, but the wound has healed entirely, and the ball not yet being found, the Surgeon will be obliged to probe it, and I fear it will be a tedious and most painful wound. It seems so hard that such a boy, (he is just 18,) should have to suffer so much.---I know you will be glad to hear that your Mother's school closes tomorrow; it will be a great relief to her I know, and I hope she will entirely recruit during the summer.---The Munfords had intended to have paid their visit to the Prices' last week but the approach of the Yankees deterred their going, and they will wait now until all is quiet. Nannie has grown to be a very pretty girl, and seems to greatly enjoy the freedom of being away from Yankee rule.---Congratulate Robert, for me, upon his well merited promotion. I was so very glad to hear of it, and hope before long you will also earn the title of Captain.---I expect to hear great things from your Battery this summer, and I know I shall not be disappointed. And what a campaign we are to have; hardships, toilsome marches, and wearisome nights of watchings I know will be your portion, but the end that is before our gallant soldiers is a sufficient recompense, and when our loved country is free, who will not be proud to tell that he was one of that army which so nobly fought for her independence. My paper gives out, and I must close, with the ever fervent prayer that our Heavenly Father may guard Robert and yourself, and bring you safely through all the perils that surround you. All join me in warm love, ever

Your much attached cousin,
Sallie R. Munford2

(Please read endnote No. 2, below.
It identifies all the people she mentioned
in her captivating letter.)

 This typical letter has been preserved because it never was delivered. Ere it could reach the Army of Northern Virginia, by the long route through the Shenandoah Valley and across the Potomac, Gettysburg had been fought and lost. John Munford had fallen, with a desperate head wound, in the ghastly action of July 3 when Lee had attempted to storm Cemetery Ridge. The young lieutenant was brought with other wounded back to Richmond where, babbling in delirium of charges and ranges, he died within a week.

Miss Sallie later married Charles H. Talbott, lived to great age and, ere the end, had unique distinction. In November, 1927, Virginia received again the State flag that had been hauled down from the Capitol on the day the Union army had entered Richmond. Maj. A. H. Stevens, Jr., of the 4th Mass. Cavalry, had won that prize and had kept it with care. His grandson, Frederick A. Stevens, Jr., of Arlington, Massachusetts, decided that the long blue standard should be returned to the Old Dominion. When announcement of the coming ceremony was published, Mrs. Talbott, who was then eighty-seven, remarked casually that she believed she could identify the flag for the quite sufficient reason that she had made it. Her father, she explained, had been responsible as Secretary of the Commonwealth for the supply of standards for the Capitol. Late in the war he had observed that he was having difficulty in procuring a new banner to take the place of the wind-ripped one then flying. He could procure the bunting, he said, but he had no one to paint for the center the figure of Liberty conquering Tyranny. Miss Sallie then had volunteered to make the flag and, with her sisters, had done so. Sixty-three years later, in the old Hall of the House of Delegates, when the flag was returned, she ran her fingers along the seams she had sewed as a girl.3

Last Virginia state flag over Richmond capitol at end of war, sewn by Miss Sallie Munford.
Last Virginia state flag over Richmond capitol at end of war, sewn by Miss Sallie Munford.
Nice-piece-59K
Sallie-R-Munford-Talbott-Grave 65K

Unfortunately, Mrs. Talbott did not write her memoirs, nor did many of the older women who played a conspicuous part in the war. For example, Mrs. Arthur Francis Hopkins, wife of the Chief Justice of Alabama, apparently left no record of her great labors for the South. Born Juliet Opie, of the high blood of the Lindsays, she married Capt. Alex. G. Gordon of the Navy while she was quite young. After early widowhood, she became the wife of Judge Hopkins. On the outbreak of the war, she was forty-five, wealthy and the mother of several children. Without hesitation she gave herself to the service of the Alabama volunteers and, when the first of them went to Richmond, she followed and organized in the Confederate capital the Alabama Hospital, one of the best of many. It is of record that she and Judge Hopkins gave $200,000 to the maintenance of this hospital and to similar works. Alabama honored her by formal legislative thanks and by placing her fine, aristocratic face on two of the State's bank-notes. She had the still higher honor of shedding her blood for the South. On the field of Seven Pines, where she went to succor the victims, she received two wounds, and to the day of her death, limped from the effects of her injuries.4 She is buried in Arlington among the brave, her peers, and by that very interment she is memorialized; but what a monument her own narrative of her experience would have been!

Juliet Ann Opie Hopkins, the Florence Nightingale of the South.
Juliet Ann Opie Hopkins, the Florence Nightingale of the South.

From the diaries of the few who recorded their experiences, Doctor Matthew Page Andrews has quoted most effectively in his Women of the South in War Times.5 Probably the first in date of publication among these journals and certainly among the very first in interest was Mrs. Judith Brockenbrough McGuire's Diary of a Refugee, issued in 1867.6 Mrs. McGuire was of devoted Virginia stock and was the wife of Reverend John P. McGuire, principal of the Episcopal High School, near Alexandria. At forty-eight years of age, she fled before the oncoming Federals and moved to Richmond. Ere she left her home, she began a daily record which, as she subsequently explained, she kept "for the members of the family who are too young to remember these days." The diary was not one of those spuriously confidential documents written with an eye to subsequent publication. In its naturalness and informality, it is a perfect picture of the mind of the high-bred, religious Southern woman of middle life. The gentility it displays without a single self-conscious touch, the faith it exemplifies, and the light it throws on the hopes and fears of the South make it as interesting psychologically as it is historically.

More diverting than the Diary of a Refugee, though about ten years farther removed from the scene, is Mrs. Phoebe Yates Pember's A Southern Woman's Story.7 Mrs. Pember had journeyed to Richmond in her desire to relieve the suffering troops, and at the instance of the wife of the Secretary of War, she accepted the superintendency of a "division" of the vast Chimborazo Hospital. Except as she appears in her own pages, we have only a glimpse of her elsewhere. T. C. de Leon, the Confederate St. Simon, describes her as "brisk and brilliant . . . with a will of steel, under a suave refinement, and [a] pretty, almost Creole accent [which] covered the power to ring in defi on occasion."8 She found the hospital under excellent general management, with one of the great men of the south at its head; but she discovered among the war surgeons some drunkards and some incompetents. Medical attention was negligent, graft was not lacking. The average ward was anything but what a patriot would like to credit to an institution where, on occasion, as many as 7000 soldiers simultaneously were under treatment for wounds or disease.

Phoebe Yates Levy Pember, around 1855. She was born and raised in Charleston, SC.
Phoebe Yates Levy Pember, around 1855. She was born and raised in Charleston, SC.

The story of Mrs. Pember's war on waste and thievery, of her struggle with indifference, and of her battle to save the lives of individual soldiers would be heartbreaking were it not told with an odd humor. She wrote as she talked, always to the point; wherefore one almost can hear her relate the story of the family that descended on the hospital and refused to be ousted, or that of the patient's wife who presented him with a baby daughter on his own hospital bed and had the temerity to name it after the outraged matron. These and a hundred other emergencies Mrs. Pember met with a decision which, one ventures, even the most besotted surgeon learned to respect.

Her most charming story, which she must be permitted to tell at length in her own words, dates from a cold day in 1862, when a "whining voice from a bed in one of the wards drawled, 'Kin you writ me a letter?'

"The speaker was an up-country Georgian, one of the kind called 'Goubers' by the soldiers generally; lean, yellow, attenuated, with wispy strands of hair hanging over his high cheek-bones. He put out a hand to detain me, and the nails were like claws.

"'Why don't you let the nurse cut your nails?'

"'Because I aren't got any spoon, and I use them instead.'

"'Will you let me have  your hair cut then? You can't get well with all that dirty hair hanging about your eyes and ears.'

"'No, I can't git my hair cut, kase as how I promised my mammy that I would let it grow till the war be over. Oh, it's onlucky to cut it!'

"'Then I can't write any letter for you. Do what I wish you to do, and then I will oblige you.'

"That was plain talking. The hair was cut (I left the nails for another day), my portfolio brought, and sitting by the side of his bed I waited for further orders. Then came with a formal introduction---'For Mrs. Marthy Brown.'

"'My dear Mammy:

"'I hope this find you well, as it leaves me well, and I hope that I shall git a furlough Christmas, and come and see you, and I hope that you will keep well and all the folks be well by that time, as I hopes to be well myself. This leaves me in good health, as I hope it finds you and---'

"But here I paused, as his mind seemed to be going round in a circle, and asked him a few questions about his home, his position during the last summer's campaign, how he got sick, and where his brigade was at that time. Thus furnished with some material to work upon, the letter proceeded rapidly. Four sides were conscientiously filled, for no soldier would think a letter worth sending home that showed any blank paper. Transcribing his name, the number of his ward and proper address, so that an answer might reach him---the composition was read to him. Gradually his pale face brightened, a sitting posture was assumed with difficulty (for, in spite of his determined effort in his letter 'to be well,' he was far from convalescence). As I folded and directed it, contributed the expected five-cent stamp, and handed it to him, he gazed cautiously around to be sure there were no listeners.

"'Did you writ all that?' he asked, whispering, but with great emphasis.

"'Yes.'

"'Did I say all that?'

"'I think you did.'

"A long pause of undoubted admiration---astonishment ensured. What was working in the poor mind? Could it be that Psyche had stirred one of the delicate plumes of her wing and touched that dormant soul?

"'Are you married?' The harsh voice dropped very low.

"'I am not. At least, I am a widow.'

"He rose still higher in bed. He pushed away desperately the tangled hay on his brow. A faint color fluttered over the hollow cheek, and stretching out a long piece of bone with a talon attached, he gently touched my arm and with constrained voice whispered mysteriously:

"' You wait.'"9

Surely this reveals as much of Southern character, male and female, and explains as much of the war as does any page of Mr. Davis's or any ream of Mr. Stephens'. If historians have lapsed since Mrs. Pember's day in realistic treatment of the war, the fault assuredly is not hers.

United States postage stamp, 1995, honoring Phoebe Pember.
US stamp, 1995, honoring Phoebe Pember.

One of the most remarkable of all the women's commentaries on the war was never written. That is to say, it was spoken---presented as testimony before a Senatorial committee. The upper house of the 48th Congress in 1883 directed the committee on Education and Labor to investigate "the relations between Labor and Capital." As chairman served Henry W. Blair of New Hampshire. Among the eight other members were Gen. William Mahone of Virginia and Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island. As the committee was dispatched, apparently, on a serious quest for information and not on a smelling expedition, it travelled (sic) widely and held hearings in many cities. In November, it came to the town of Birmingham, Alabama, which was then twelve years old and boasted 12,000 population. As witnesses, Congressman G. W. Hewitt brought before the committee the town's best---Doctor H. W. Caldwell, President of the Elyton Land Company, which developed Birmingham from an old field, Mrs. Caldwell, Mrs. R. W. Boland, and, as a special attraction, Mrs. George R. Ward.

This notable woman, born in Augusta, Georgia, December 8, 1841, had been Margaret Ketcham, and, through her mother's line was a grandniece of Samuel Griswold Goodrich, better known to the juvenile readers of his school histories as Peter Parley. All the long line of the Connecticut Griswolds was her kin. At sixteen, Margaret Ketcham had married George R. Ward, by whom she had several children, among them George B. Ward, who later became a renowned mayor of Birmingham. During the war, Mrs. Ward lived in Georgia and shared most of the horrors of the invasion, but in 1871 she went to Birmingham with her husband. By the time the Senatorial committee arrived, Mrs. Ward, though only forty-two, was revered as one of the "pioneers" and was a social arbiter besides.

On the evening of November 15, she took the stand. After some formal questions about herself, Mrs. Ward was asked by the chairman: "Had you opportunity of observing the course of life in [Georgia] upon plantations and in society generally prior to the war?" When Mrs. Ward admitted that she had "very full opportunity," the chairman said, "Give us an idea of how things were in Georgia in those days." Then Mrs. Ward fairly began. She talked admirably, without a stumble or a pause for correction, and she had a humor, an aptitude for illustration, that entranced the committeemen. After a time, Doctor Caldwell chimed in; Mrs. Boland added her observations; so did Mrs. Caldwell; Colonel Hewitt corrected their history and gave general direction to the hearing. After Mrs. Ward had said about all the committee seemed to need concerning the "servant problem," one of the members of the committee asked her to relate her experiences during the war. Without a second's preparation she started and, as the evening wore on, held the committee breathless with her narrative which, after more than fifty years, is as fresh and authentic as when it came from her lips. At the end occurred this colloquy:

The Chairman. Well, Mrs. Ward, on the whole what do you think of the situation?

Mrs. Ward. I think I am going to try to make myself as comfortable as I can with the darkies under existing conditions.

The Chairman. Do you blame us Northern folks for it all, or how do you feel about it?

Mrs. Ward. Yes: I blame you for a great deal of it. I think if you had stayed at home and let us go out of the Union we would have avoided all this trouble. I don't see what you wanted to keep us in for. When we wanted to go out, you wouldn't let us, and then when we got back you kept all the time dinging an dinging at us as if to make us go out again. You "reconstructed" us as thought we had never known anything at all, and as though we were indebted to the Northern people for the very first ideas of civilization.

The Chairman. You will get over that feeling after a while.

Mrs. Ward. Oh, yes. You have no idea how soothing it is to be able to say what you please to somebody on the other side, and this is the first opportunity I have ever had to air my sentiments before a Republican Senator.

The Chairman. I have enjoyed it very much, haven't you?

Mrs. Ward. Intensely. I am very glad to have had an opportunity of saying it to you face to face, and I never say anything worse about people behind their backs than I say to their faces.

The Chairman. Well, speaking for myself, I must say that I like you Southern people down here very much.

Mrs. Ward. We are all very glad you do like us. We thought all the time you would like us if you knew anything about us, but you weren't willing to take our say-so in the matter. You just seemed to make up your minds you wouldn't like us and that you weren't going to like us, but I hope that is passed now, and I do reckon that the times will be better hereafter.10

Margaret Ketcham Ward finally gets to confront the Yankees to their faces!
Margaret Ketcham Ward finally gets to confront the Yankees to their faces!

She had the last word, and she deserved it. "I hope you will not think me foolishly enthusiastic when I write you," Margaret Mitchell told George G. Ward, in 1936, "that I think your Mother's testimony is undoubtedly the most perfect and valuable complete picture of a long gone day that I have come across in ten years' research into the period of the Sixties." She added: "If I had had that book, I am sure I would not have had to read hundreds of memoirs, letters and diaries to get the background of Gone with the Wind accurately."

The most famous war-diary of a Southern woman probably is that of Mrs. James Chesnut, Jr. She was born Mary Boykin Miller, daughter of Stephen Decatur Miller, South Carolina Congressman, Governor and United States Senator. Two years after her father's death in 1838, Mary Miller married James Chesnut, Jr., the inheritor of a distinguished Carolina name and the son of a rich planter. As she was only seventeen at the time of her marriage, Mrs. Chesnut entered with exuberant zest into the social life of the Palmetto State. Her husband, a Princeton graduate, made politics his avocation and devoted to it far more of his time than to his profession, the law. Gradually he came to the front of the secession party, which sent him to the United States Senate in 1858. On the outbreak of the war, he accepted a place on the staff of General Beauregard, but later he took similar service with President Davis, who had a high opinion of Chesnut's judgment. Varied as were his duties and titles, James Chesnut was, in reality, liaison officer between the Confederacy and South Carolina. On his numerous missions, he often was accompanied by Mrs. Chesnut, who had friends everywhere in the South. Her diary, as published in 1905,11 begins November 8, 1869, [Publisher's Note: This is a typo. The "9" should be a "0". The diary begins November 8, 1860.] and ends August 2, 1865. Although she intended to write daily, there are gaps of some length. The internal evidence indicates also that, for some reason, occasional passages of different dates are confused or are connected with disregard of the precise chronology. Despite these blemishes and the exclusion of many items, the printed text of A Diary from Dixie is a remarkable human document. Of the complete devotion of Mrs. Chesnut to the Southern cause, there could be no question; but occasionally the reader hears champagne corks pop while boys are dying in the mud. Then again there is all the poignancy of woman's understanding of the sorrows of her sisters.

A Diary from Dixie started Nov. 8, 1860 and ended August 2, 1865.
A Diary from Dixie started Nov. 8, 1860 and ended August 2, 1865.

Here, for example, are her entries on the death of Col. Francis Bartow in the First Battle of Manassas:

July 22 [1861] Mrs. Davis came in so softly that I did not know she was here until she leaned over me and said: "A great battle had been fought. Joe Johnston led the right wing, and Beauregard the left wing of the army. Your husband is all right. Wade Hampton is wounded. Colonel Johnston of the Legion killed; so are Colonel Bee and Colonel Bartow. Kirby Smith is wounded or killed."

I had no breath to speak; she went on in that desperate calm way, to which people betake themselves under the greatest excitement: "Bartow, rallying his men, leading them into the hottest of the fight, died gallantly at the head of his regiment. The President tells me only that 'it is a great victory.' General Cooper has all the other telegrams."
Still I said nothing; I was stunned; then I was so grateful. Those nearest and dearest to me were safe still. She then began, in the same concentrated voice to read from a paper she held in her hand: "Dead and dying cover the field. Sherman's battery taken. Lynchburg regiment cut to pieces. Three hundred of the [South Carolina Hampton] Legion wounded."

That got me up. Times were too wild with excitement to stay in bed. We went into Mrs. Preston's room, and she made me lie down on her bed. Men, women, and children streamed in. Every living soul had a story to tell. "Complete victory," you heard everywhere. We had been such anxious wretches. The revulsion of feeling was almost too much to bear. . . .

A woman from Mrs. Bartow's country was in a fury because they had stopped her as she rushed to be the first to tell Mrs. Bartow her husband was killed, it having been decided that Mrs. Davis should tell her. Poor thing! She was found lying on her bed when Mrs. Davis knocked. "Come in," she said. When she saw it was Mrs. Davis, she sat up, ready to spring to her feet, but then there was something in Mrs. Davis's pale face that took the life out of her. She stared at Mrs. Davis, then sank back, and covered her face as she asked: "Is it bad news for me?" Mrs. Davis did not speak. "Is he killed?" Afterwards Mrs. Bartow said to me: "As soon as I saw Mrs. Davis's face I could not say one word. I knew it all in an instant. I knew it before I wrapped my shawl about my head." . . .

Col. Francis S. Bartow signed the Georgia Ordinance of Secession. He was wounded at First Manassas and died shortly after.
Col. Francis S. Bartow signed the Georgia Ordinance of Secession. He was wounded at First Manassas and died shortly after.

[July 23] Witnessed for the first time a military funeral. As that march came wailing up, they say Mrs. Bartow fainted. The empty saddle and the led war-horse---we saw and heard it all, and now it seems we are never out of the sound of the Dead March in Saul. It comes and it comes, until I feel inclined to close my ears and scream.12

Two more glimpses of Mrs. Bartow appear and then, in May, 1862, occurs this:

Mrs. Bartow, the widow of Colonel Bartow, who was killed at Manassas, was Miss Berrien, daughter of Judge Berrien, of Georgia. She is now in one of the departments here [in Columbia, S. C.], cutting bonds---Confederate bonds---for five hundred Confederate dollars a year, a penniless woman. Judge Carroll, her brother-in-law has been urgent with her to come and live in his home. He has a large family and she will not be an added burden to him. In spite of all he can say, she will not forego her resolution. She will be independent. She is a resolute little woman, with the softest, silkiest voice and ways, and clever to the last point.13

It is from touches of this nature that characters take life and stand out from Mrs. Chesnut's pages. She said of herself and her sister: "We keep all our bitter words for our enemies. We are frank heathens; we hate our enemies and love our friends."14 Of this, if it were not playful exaggeration, little appears in her diary. Those whom she did not like she dismissed with few words. About those she admired she wrote again and again. Her finest sketch is of her father-in-law, who fascinated her always. Curiously enough, the figure of her own husband, though it was strong and forceful in public life, is almost shadowy in her pages. Her qualities are oddly gallic: One has to pinch oneself to realize that she is writing of hungry Richmond and of the Anglo-Saxon South.

End of Part I.

NOTES:

1 Douglas Southall Freeman, The South to Posterity (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939).

2 The individuals mentioned in Miss Munford's letter are easily identified. Several of them are well known. "Willie Pegram," of course, was Col. William Johnson Pegram, the gallant commanding officer of the Pegram Battalion, A. P. Hill's Third Corps, Army of Northern Virginia. Colonel Pegram was a son of Gen. James W. Pegram and Mrs. Virginia Johnson Pegram, of Richmond, and a brother of Gen. John Pegram, C. S. A. "Kate Corbin" was a devoted friend of Miss Sallie Radford Munford, and was of the well-known family of that name of Caroline County. She later was the wife of Com. John M. Brooke, Confederate States Navy, who after the conclusion of the war was a member of the faculty of the Virginia Military Institute, at Lexington. "Bro Tom" was Col. Thomas Taylor Munford, Cavalry Corps, Army of Northern Virginia. He was a son of George Wythe Munford by that gentleman's first marriage to Lucy Singleton Taylor. Colonel Munford, consequently, was an older half-brother of the writer of the letter. "Jemmie Tucker" was James Ellis Tucker, a son of Nathaniel Beverly Tucker and Jane Ellis, and a first cousin, through the maternal line, of Miss Sallie Radford Munford. A brother of James Ellis Tucker was the late Rt. Rev. Beverly Dandridge Tucker, D.D., Bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Southern Virginia. "Uncle Bev" was Nathaniel Beverly Tucker, father of "Jemmie" who had been wounded, and one of the sons of Judge Henry St. George Tucker and Ann Evelina Hunter. The reference in the letter to "the Munfords" is to Maria, Sally, and Nannie Munford, daughters of John Durburrow Munford and Eliza Roper. Their parents had been residing at the old "Tazewell Hall," in Williamsburg. These girls, who were among the first cousins of the writer, were at this time "refugeeing" in Richmond at the homes of relatives. Their father, John D. Munford, was a son of William and Sarah Radford Munford. One of these Munford cousins of the writer, Sally, later married Judge J. D. Coles, of Chatham, Pittsylvania County, and Nannie married Capt. Robert A. Bright, of Williamsburg, who was an aide to Gen. George E. Pickett. Maria Munford, the oldest of the three sisters, died unmarried. "The Prices" were the old family of that name which resided at "Dundee," a lovely old Hanover County home. The Prices were related to Maria, Sally, and Nannie Munford, who, as the letter states, had been planing to pay a visit to their Hanover County cousins. When the writer says "congratulate Robert for me" the reference is to Robert Beverly Munford who had been promoted to the rank of Captain and assigned as the A. Q. M. of the Pegram Battalion. He was the second son of Dr. Robert and Anne Curtis Munford and a brother of John H. Munford to whom the letter is addressed.

3 Richmond News Leader, July 19, 1927, p. 1; Nov. 28, 1927, p. 1, and Nov. 29, 1927, p. 8.

4 Cf. T. C. De Leon, Belles, Beaux and Brains of the Sixties; New York (G. W. Dillingham), 1909; pp. 383-85.

5 Baltimore (The Norman, Remington Co.), 1920.

6 New York (E. T. Hale & Co.), 1867.

7 New York (Carleton), 1879.

8 De Leon, Op. cit., pp. 146, 162, 166.

9 Mrs. Pember, op. cit., pp. 37-40.

10 Rept. of the Sen. Committee upon the Relations between Labor and Capital . . . ; 48th Congress (Washington), 1885, v. 4, pp. 311 ff.

11 New York (Appleton).

12 Mrs. Chesnut, pp. 87-88.

13 Op. cit., pp. 146, 162, 166.

14 Ibid., p. 162.

The Story of the Beginning of the War, from Stories of Dixie

"I believe the world has never produced a body of men superior, in courage, patriotism, and endurance, to the private soldiers of the Confederate armies. I have repeatedly seen those soldiers submit with cheerfulness to privations and hardships which would appear to be almost incredible; and the wild cheers of these brave men when their lines sent back the opposing host of Federal troops, staggering, reeling, and flying, have often thrilled every fiber in my heart. I have seen, with my own eyes, ragged, barefooted, and hungry Confederate soldiers perform deeds, which, if performed in days of yore, by mailed warriors in glittering armor, would have inspired the harp of the minstrel and the pen of the poet." --- Gen. Jubal Early, CSA

The Story of the Beginning of the War
The Irrepressible Conflict
From
Stories of Dixie
NY: American Book Company, 1915.
Chapter VI

by James W. Nicholson, A.M., LL.D.
Professor of Mathematics
Louisiana State University

[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. : This is a GREAT story, which today would be classified as "YA" or "Young Adult." The only difference in YA fiction and regular short stories and novels, is that the YA protagonist is a teenager or young adult, as opposed to an adult. Since so many of our Confederate boys were this age during the war, this story gives us a vivid and realistic glimpse into their lives and the lives of their families before the war, how they enlisted and departed from home, and what they faced initially.

The story's pages in the book that have illustrations on them I have scanned so you can enjoy the drawings as you read the text. The author, James William Nicholson, says that northern Louisiana, where the story starts, is a microcosm of the Old South.]

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WHEN IT BECAME KNOWN that Mr. Lincoln had been elected president of the United States (November, 1860) there was great excitement all over the country. It is hard for one, at the present time, to realize how widely the North and the South had become separated in thought and feeling, especially with regard to certain leading questions and issues. It really seemed that an "irrepressible conflict" had arisen between them. So the Southern states, believing that the Union had become hurtful rather than helpful to their peace and welfare, resolved to withdraw from it, just as a partner would leave a business concern which had ceased to be pleasant and profitable to him. They seceded from the Union (annulled the compact which bound them to it), formed a government of their own, and called it the Confederate States of America.

Mr. Lincoln was an intense unionist; he believed and affirmed that the breaking up of the Union would be the greatest evil that could befall all the states. So he determined to preserve the Union at all hazards, and to this end sent an army into the South to quell the "rebellion."

How little the common people of the two sections really knew of one another---their thoughts, habits, characters, and ideals! This came from their living so far apart, and having no opportunity or means of mutual communication. Their knowledge of one another was based on hearsay, and this was distorted by partisans and fanatics. The South misjudged and undervalued the North in many ways, and evidently Mr. Lincoln himself had a poor idea of southern conditions; for, to subdue the South, he called out 75,000 troops for three months, whereas as a matter of fact it took 2,750,000 soldiers four years to accomplish it. Had the common people North and South known each other better---their patriotism, devotion to the Union, and ideals of right and wrong---probably their differences would have been healed without the cost of so much blood and treasure.

Nick Goes to War

It was on a superb spring morning that Nick, with his gun and dog, was strolling through the dark green woods near his father's country home. What lad would not have been happy under the same conditions! For him there had just been substituted outdoor freedom for indoor restraints, hunting for studying, the songs of birds and the murmur of running water for a stillness unrelieved except by the rattle of chalk or the clatter of slate pencils. No sound or sight of the landscape evaded the lad's quickened and responsive senses. A buttercup quivered and bowed under the flutter and weight of a bee extracting its honey; a "news-carrier" (syrphus fly), just arrived from fairyland, poised in mid air and cheered the boy with its fanciful message; a sapsucker flopped from a distant tree to one nearby and ran in dismal spirals about one of its big branches. All nature was "laughing in the madness of joy"; never seemed the sky so blue, the foliage so green, nor the odor of the honeysuckle so sweet.

It is dreadful how quickly a delightful situation may be changed. Over the hills came the long swelling blasts of Uncle Wash's hunting horn. Nick knew at once that it was a call to him to come home. He struck a bee line for the house, feeling that it must be something about the war, for people now thought and talked of little else. At the front gate he met his cousin Billie [who was actually W. C. Boring, Shreveport, La.] who lived in the western part of the parish. He was also a lusty lad, a little

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hall. Lying on these rough beds and lulled by the roar of wind and rain, they fell asleep. What an experience---the ride, the storm, the bed! What a fitting introduction to the career of the Dixie soldier! Was it an accident or a harbinger? God only knows.

After a sound two-hour nap they mounted their mules, continued their journey, and had the joy and honor of being enrolled as members of the "Claiborne Rangers," of which Thomas M. Scott was captain.

The first day of July, 1861, was fixed as the time for the company to assemble in Homer and start to the war. These were now busy and exciting times. Every soldier was to have a uniform---a round-about coat with large horn buttons---and all the ladies joined in to help make them. The ladies met, in groups at different places and there was a great deal of planing, measuring, sewing, and chattering. The young people lived in a fever of excitement. Uncle Wash made Nick a great bowie knife that was nearly a foot long. On the night before the day of departure, Nick was so wrought up in mind that he could scarcely go to sleep. He rose early the next morning, put on his uniform and also his belt, to which was attached a scabbard carrying his big knife. "Ah," thought he, "Mr. Yank had better keep out of my way." His little sister dashed into

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was simply a part of the natural optimism of the people. Nick almost prayed that the war would not close before he got into one battle; but after he got into one he then prayed that it would close before he got into another.

It was sixty miles to the nearest railroad. This distance was to be traveled by the Claiborne Rangers in wagons or on foot. They knew nothing of drilling; this was the first time many of them had ever seen one another. But few had even heard of "fall in." So there was no attempt to form or march them in military order. When they started every fellow went as he pleased.

When the order was given to march there was much cheering and shaking of hands, and good wishes were showered upon the departing soldiers. Oat said it was really a relief when they had gone so far that friends and relatives could no longer say to them "good-by" and "God bless you." The poor fellow did not dream that many a long day was to pass before they again saw faces so beaming with looks of love and good will. With Aunt Martha's last embrace of Nick there came a far-away, dreamy look into her eyes. She was staring at him, but he felt himself almost outside the range of her vision. Nick never forgot that look, piercing as it were the realms of the future, and in after years wondered if she then had a premonition of her own passing away before his return from the war. While her beautiful eyes bespoke fear, anxiety, and sorrow, there was no dimming of the indomitable light that lived in their clear depths.

There were enough wagons and hacks to haul the entire party, their baskets of food, and their luggage. Some of the men rode and others walked, and when tired of the one they did the other. All along the road, people cheered them with their smiles, kind words, and good wishes, the men waving their hats and the women their handkerchiefs.

Late in the afternoon they reached the Gee Place, and there they pitched camp for the night. Most of the men had been on camp hunts and camp fishings, and were more or less familiar with camp life. They knew what to do and how to do it to make themselves quite comfortable. There was a great stir and bustle in feeding and watering the stock, preparing and eating supper, and making pallets of blankets and comforts. After that the men became more quiet; they sat in groups on logs or pallets and told stories, cracked jokes, and sang familiar songs. As the night wore away they went by ones or twos "to bed," until none were left. On their rude couches they slept as soundly and as sweetly as if they had been in their soft beds at home. While they slumbered, the stars shone brightly in the skies as if keeping watch over them, and the stillness of the night was broken only by the whippoorwill as in the deep shadows of the forest, it poured forth its plaintive call, "chuck, will-widow."

The men rose early the next morning, fed the stock, prepared and ate breakfast, and continued the march. The scenes and events along the road did not differ much from those of the day before. One mile west of Vienna they passed the old Wafer Place, the home of Nick's maternal great-grandfather. The second night they camped at the "Gum Spring," and the third night, in the courthouse yard of the beautiful city of Monroe.

A new railroad ran from Monroe to Vicksburg, and this was the first one many of the Rangers had ever seen. Some platform cars were provided with seats made of rough planks, and on these the soldiers were transported from Monroe to Vicksburg. The terminal of the road at that time was DeSoto, a small village just across the river from Vicksburg. It has long since been destroyed by the changes in the channel of the great river. From DeSoto they were ferried across the river to Vicksburg. Here they stopped a few hours, during which time Nick went to an art gallery and had his "ambrotype" taken, a copy of which faces page 18.

Nick-as-a-soldier-98K

From Vicksburg the company went by rail to Jackson, Mississippi, and thence journeyed to Camp Moore, Louisiana.

Camp Moore

In the piny woods of Tangipahoa Parish there is a certain old field neglected and overgrown with pine bushes. Thousands have seen it from the passing trains of the Illinois Central without suspecting that it was the site of a great military encampment in the stormy days of  '61. Here Camp Moore, named after the governor of Louisiana, was located. Hardly could a more appropriate place for the purpose have been found---seventy-five miles from New Orleans, sufficiently rolling for easy drainage, and level enough for military evolutions. Situated as it was in the ozone belt, the air was pure and sweet, and redolent with the odor of fresh pine straw. On one side was Beaver Creek and on the other the Tangipahoa River, both running streams of clear sparkling water.

Here the sons of Louisiana went to enlist in the army and to be trained in the duties of soldiers. When the war began these sons knew nothing of drilling, guard mounting, and many other duties which alone make men efficient in the camp and on the march and the battle field. Camp Moore was

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arms!" "Forward, guide right, march!" "Company, left  half wheel, march!" The welkin rang with these and other commands, each having something of the clear crack of a rifle.

When the Rangers received their tents they at once put them up in two rows, facing one another, and Captain Scott said, "They look as well as any on the ground." The next day officers were elected, and the company mustered into service for one year. Then they drew guns---all kinds, scarcely any dozen of them being of the same pattern. Thus equipped, they entered upon all the duties of soldiers; namely, drilling, guard mounting every morning, dress parade every afternoon, policing, inspections, cleaning quarters, washing clothes, drawing rations, cooking and eating the frugal meals.

When a regiment was formed and sent to the "front" its place was soon filled by new companies coming in from all parts of the state. A few of these were Irish, more French, and still more English. Ten of the English companies from North-Central Louisiana, including the Claiborne Rangers, were formed into a regiment, known as the 12th Regiment, Louisiana Infantry. Of this regiment Captain Scott, of the Rangers, was elected Colonel.

The 12th was formed of a thousand young men---stalwart, muscular, dauntless hobbledehoys. They were the sons of lawyers, doctors, business men, and farmers, and having been reared largely in Christian homes they had that pride and morale which make men towers of strength in peace and in war. Of course their military potency could not be estimated before training and trial, but there was the assurance in advance that "blood will tell" for there flowed in their veins the blood of the heroes of Hastings and Marston Moor, Valley Forge and Yorktown, Horse Shoe Bend and New Orleans, Buena Vista and Chapultepec.

It was a short walk from camp to the Tangipahoa River, and early in the morning and late in the afternoon the soldiers were permitted to go there to bathe and swim. This was much enjoyed by all, and every day the river was lined with the jolly and noisy swimmers. Indeed, throughout the war, the range of their pleasures being so narrow, the men went in the creeks, mill ponds, and rivers whenever they had a chance, even in pretty cold weather, that being about their only pastime. They often took their soiled clothes, washed them, and spread them on the bushes to dry, while they bathed and played in the water.

It was at Camp Moore that Nick learned to swim. That was queer, for, as a rule, Louisiana boys take to water almost as soon as they can walk. But after that, Nick made up for lost time by swimming in, if

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punished for drunkenness by being put under guard with a chain and ball attached to his ankle. Kelly had been a steamboat roustabout, and was a giant in size and strength. Nick happened to be on guard that day and had to guard Kelly. Now the big Irishman, moved by a spirit of humor or desperation, seemed to be watching for a chance to spring on Nick and beat the life out of him. So every time he moved down would come Nick's gun. It was loaded with an ounce ball and Kelly knew it. When the corporal of the guard came, Kelly said to him in a whisper: "Would ye be after putting a man in the place of that spalpeen of a lad? The little cuss has got so he won't let me turn over."

Nick was as glad to go as Kelly was to have him go.

Exposure and other causes produced much sickness among the troops. At the beginning of the year each camp was supplied with a hospital in which the sick were cared for. In it were clean beds, medicines, and nurses, and many ladies came with flowers and delicacies for the patients. But year by year, as the war went on, camp hospitals became poorer and the medicines scarcer, until they really disappeared altogether. At first the chief kind of sickness was measles, which is usually a harmless disease, but a very fatal one when the subject is exposed. More men died of it during the war than of all other dis-

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now hears the "mournful song" of the pine straw as it is swept by the passing breeze.

Many years after the war the Daughters of the Confederacy induced the legislature to appropriate enough money to buy the old graveyard, clean it off, build a strong iron fence around it, and erect a monument in memory of the men, living and dead, who served there. When the monument was unveiled (1907) Nick, then a professor in the state university, made the dedication speech.

Two large beech trees were left standing in the inclosure on account of the many names of the soldiers cut into their bark. Among these old carvings Nick's attention was called to his own initials, "J. W. N.," which were probably cut by him just forty-six years before.

In the latter part of August, the 12th was ordered to "the front." With what a thrill of excitement was the order received by the men! At last their hopes of getting into a battle were to be realized! Up to his time they had had no news to write home except the details of camp life. Now they were to go far away into Kentucky, where the storm of war would soon be raging.

There was a great hurry and bustle in preparing to move---taking down tents, packing luggage, and cooking three days' rations. When they boarded the train each man carried a knapsack, a haversack, a canteen, two blankets, and a gun and cartridge box. It was a long freight train that was to carry them, and some took passage in and some on top of the box cars. When it "pulled out" a long and loud hurrah was shouted by a thousand jolly fellows. Poor boys! They little dreamed of the hardships and privations in store for them.

NOTE: [from the story's author]
It is not the intention of this book to give any account of the battles and conflicts of the War between the States. As to how the Dixie boys acquitted themselves as soldiers is briefly told in the following tribute to them by General Early:

"I believe the world has never produced a body of men superior, in courage, patriotism, and endurance, to the private soldiers of the Confederate armies. I have repeatedly seen those soldiers submit with cheerfulness to privations and hardships which would appear to be almost incredible; and the wild cheers of these brave men when their lines sent back the opposing host of Federal troops, staggering, reeling, and flying, have often thrilled every fiber in my heart. I have seen, with my own eyes, ragged, barefooted, and hungry Confederate soldiers perform deeds, which, if performed in days of yore, by mailed warriors in glittering armor, would have inspired the harp of the minstrel and the pen of the poet."

The 1776 Report by The President’s Advisory 1776 Commission

The 1776 Report
by The President's Advisory 1776 Commission
Accurate Identification of Today's Hate-America Enemy
Identity Politics and Academia Called Out
References to the South Are Incorrect
Lincoln, Who Destroyed the Republic of the Founders, Glorified
Despite Flaws, Report Is Definitely Worth Reading and Following
The Emphasis on Our Magnificent Declaration of Independence
and Constitution Is Excellent
Many Other Excellent Solutions
by Gene Kizer, Jr.
The 1776 Report by The President's Advisory 1776 Commission.

President Trump had the very best of intentions with The President's Advisory 1776 Commission and its 45 page report that came out in January, 2021 and was the first thing removed from the White House website by Joe Biden.

The Democrats don't want anybody thinking America is a great country as in MAGA. The hate that holds the Democrat Party together is not only hate of most of the "deplorable" United States population (which must be diluted by the foreign hordes of new Democrat voters that Biden waved through on day one), but hate of the founding of America, itself, as a place where all men and women are created equal.

After all, academia and the news media have told us that America was founded on slavery and stealing land from the natives (who had been stealing it from other natives from the beginning, but I guess they didn't know that or they would have said it, because academia and the news media never lie).

The New York Times's 1619 Project lays it all out: The Revolutionary War was fought by those bad old white guys because the British were about to abolish slavery.

Nikole Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer for the 1619 Project, which proves it must be true because the NY Times also won a Pulitzer reporting that Trump colluded with Russia, and that was true too.

Oh, wait! That wasn't true! Mueller proved there was no Trump collusion with Russia! I guess if you get a Pulitzer today it proves your work is a fraud.

The strength of The 1776 Report is its showing, analytically and in depth, how our history has been politicized for decades now, and how horrible that is for America's future. It points out that we are as divided today as the Colonists were with the British in 1776, and the North was with the South in 1860.

The points it makes about America's founding and especially our magnificent Declaration of Independence and Constitution are outstanding.

It exposes the deliberate hate coming from the left and the left's institutions such as academia, the news media and the Democrat Party with its racist identity politics. They have let our country down enormously. Our history should be a source of cohesion and pride for everybody.

Despite what the left says, we are a great nation founded on solid rock and nobody is held down these days. There is opportunity galore for everybody.

The report takes on slavery, head on.

It does vilifies the South, in some places, though that is not the main focus. It does show its Northern bias and cheats readers by leaving out the fact that the North with its slave trading that went on until 1878, brought all the slaves here and made huge fortunes in the process

The report acknowledges that we have fallen short at times, as all nations have, but, by and large, everybody on the planet still wants to come here and will often risk death to get here. Go to a naturalization ceremony and look at the pride and happiness in the faces of new American citizens. That tells you all you need to know.

President Trump's speech last summer at Mount Rushmore was inspirational and this report has a similar voice, but, as stated, it is much more analytical about the forces aligned against America, our defeat of Fascism, Communism, and the dangerous, unjustified hatred of our country being taught today for the political advantage of the left.

It might be good for the left politically but it is terrible for the people who buy into that loser narrative that tells them they are being oppressed when they are not. The only thing holding them back is the Democrat Party and their own minds.

We are a nation and people who worship success like the pioneers who came here for freedom and conquered a continent, building great states all along the way. Any one of our states could stand on its own as a nation on this earth, and many may choose to do so, if we don't correct the massive election fraud that took place in November. That absolutely has to be corrected in the next couple years despite Democrat plans to make it permanent. They will not succeed because nobody wants our country to fall apart.

We want it to be strong, united and happy, with unlimited opportunity for everybody, and we will settle for nothing less.

Below, I have included five sections from the report, in their entirety, because they are eye-opening and important:

Racism and Identity Politics

A Scholarship of Freedom

The American Mind

Conclusion (Part VI)

Appendix III: Created Equal or Identity Politics?

I also have a few short quotes from early on. There is a link to a PDF of the entire report that you can save, at the end of this post.

The 1776 Report begins with a literary flourish: "In the course of human events there have always been those who deny or reject human freedom. . . . ".

They should have written "When in the course of human events" so they'd match up with the Declaration of Independence, but I'm sure they were concerned about being censored by dopy Facebook, which one time listed the Declaration of Independence as "hate speech."

The Introduction states:

The declared purpose of the President's Advisory 1776 Commission is to "enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union."

It wisely encourages the study of primary sources:

The principles of the American founding can be learned by studying the abundant documents contained in the record. Read fully and carefully, they show how the American people have ever pursued freedom and justice, which are the political conditions for living well. To learn this history is to become a better person, a better citizen, and a better partner in the American experiment of self-government.

Under III. A Constitution of Principles:

It is one thing to discern and assert the true principles of political legitimacy and justice. It is quite another to establish those principles among an actual people, in an actual government, here on earth. As Winston Churchill put it in a not dissimilar context, even the best of men struggling in the most just of causes cannot guarantee victory; they can only deserve it.

Churchill must have been thinking about the South because there was never in the history of the world a people more deserving of their independence. That's why it took four bloody years and 750,000 deaths for the North with four times the white population, 100 times the arms manufacturing, a navy, and an army of which 25% were foreign born, to, not beat, but wear out the South.

Here's Ronald Reagan famous quote that especially has meaning today because we are seeing what he warned about before our very eyes:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

A Constitution of Principles continues:

Our first freedom, religious liberty, is foremost a moral requirement of the natural freedom of the human mind.

Like religious liberty, freedom of speech and of the press is required by the freedom of the human mind. More plainly, it is a requirement for any government policy. To choose requires public deliberation and debate. A people that cannot publicly express its opinions, exchange ideas, or openly argue about the course of its government is not free.

Finally, the right to keep and bear arms is required by the fundamental natural right to life: no man may justly be denied the means of his own defense. The political significance of this right is hardly less important. An armed people is a people capable of defending their liberty no less than their lives and is the last, desperate check against the worst tyranny.

In Section IV. Challenges to America's Principles, are sections on Slavery, Progressivism, Fascism and Communism. This part, under Communism, nails academia:

Led by the Soviet Union, Communism even threatened, or aspired to threaten, our liberties here at home. What it could not achieve through force of arms, it attempted through subversion. Communism did not succeed in fomenting revolution on America. But Communism's relentless anti-American, anti-Western, and atheistic propaganda did inspire thousands, and perhaps millions, to reject and despise the principles of our founding and our government. While America and its allies eventually won the Cold War, this legacy of anti-Americanism is by no means entirely a memory but still pervades much of academia and the intellectual and cultural spheres. The increasingly accepted economic theory of Socialism, while less violent than Communism, is inspired by the same flawed philosophy and leads down the same dangerous path of allowing the state to seize private property and redistribute wealth as the governing elite see fit.

Here is the entire section, Racism and Identity Politics:

The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, passed after the Civil War, brought an end to legal slavery. Blacks enjoyed a new equality and freedom, voting for and holding elective office in states across the Union. But it did not bring an end to racism, or to the unequal treatment of blacks everywhere.

Despite the determined efforts of the postwar Reconstruction Congress to establish civil equality for freed slaves, the post bellum South ended up devolving into a system that was hardly better than slavery. The system enmeshed freedmen in relationship of extreme dependency, and used poll taxes, literacy tests, and the violence of vigilante groups like the Ku Klux Klan to prevent them from exercising their civil rights, particularly the right to vote. Jim Crow laws enforced the strict segregation of the races, and gave legal standing in some states to a pervasive subordination of blacks.

[Publisher's Note: With all due respect, the postwar Reconstruction Congress was more concerned with its political power than helping the newly freed blacks. They were some of the most despicable people ever to serve in American government, like the hatemonger Thaddeus Stevens. During Reconstruction, former Confederates came home to a devastated country where even feeding themselves and their families was almost impossible. Their families were in constant danger. Radical Republicans, to keep blacks voting Republican, told black that their former masters were going to put them back in slavery. Corrupt Republicans such as the Union League members threatened blacks and made them violent toward their former white masters and friends. A man's barn could be burned in the night and he'd have no recourse or law to help him. Many former Confederate soldiers said Reconstruction was worse than the war. Many lost all hope. As to Jim Crow, it started in the North according to esteemed historian C. Vann Woodward in his book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow. It was up North a long time before moving into the bi-racial, non-segregated South. The Supreme Court that affirmed "separate but equal" in 1895, was composed of all Northerners except for one justice. So to mischaracterize and slander Southerners is low, dishonest, and extremely historically inaccurate.]

Back to Racism and Identity Politics:

It would take a national movement composed of people from different races, ethnicities, nationalities, and religions to bring about an America fully committed to ending legal discrimination.

The Civil Rights Movement culminated in the 1960s with the passage of three major legislative reforms affecting segregation, voting, and housing rights. It presented itself, and was understood by the American people, as consistent with the principles of the founding. "When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every America was to fall heir," Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his "I Have a Dream" Speech. "This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

It seemed, finally, that America's nearly two-century effort to realize fully the principles of the Declaration had reached a culmination. But the heady spirit of the original Civil Rights Movement, whose leaders forcefully quoted the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the rhetoric of the founders and of Lincoln, proved to be short-lived.

The Civil Rights Movement was almost immediately turned to programs that ran counter to the lofty ideals of the founders. The ideas that drove this change had been growing in America for decades, and they distorted many area of policy in the half century that followed. Among the distortions was the abandonment of nondiscrimination and equal opportunity in favor of "group rights" not unlike those advance by Calhoun and his followers. The justification for reversing the promise of color-blind civil rights was that past discrimination requires present effort, or affirmative action in the form of preferential treatment, to overcome long-accrued inequalities. Those forms of preferential treatment built up in our system over time, first in administrative rulings, then executive orders, later in congressionally passed law, and finally were sanctified by the Supreme Court.

Today, far from a regime of equal natural rights of equal citizens, enforced by the equal application of law, we have moved toward a system of explicit group privilege that, in the name of "social justice," demands equal results and explicitly sorts citizens into "protected classes" based on race and other demographic categories.

Eventually this regime of formal inequality would come to be known as "identity politics." The stepchild of earlier rejections of the founding, identity politics (discussed in Appendix III) values people by characteristics like race, sex, and sexual orientation and holds that new times demand new rights to replace the old. This is the opposite of King's hope that his children would "live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," and denies that all are endowed with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Identity politics makes it less likely that racial reconciliation and healing can be attained by pursuing Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream for America and upholding the highest ideals of our Constitution and our Declaration of Independence.

Here is the entire section, A Scholarship of Freedom:

Universities in the United States are often today hotbeds of anti-Americanism, libel, and censorship that combine to generate in students and in the broader culture at the very least disdain and at worst outright hatred for this country.

The founders insisted that universities should be at the core of preserving American republicanism by instructing students and future leaders of its true basis and instilling in them not just an understanding but a reverence for its principles and core documents. Today, our higher education system does almost the precise opposite. Colleges peddle resentment and contempt for American principles and history alike, in the process weakening attachment to our shared heritage.

In order to build up a healthy, united citizenry, scholars, students, and all Americans must reject false and fashionable ideologies that obscure facts, ignore historical context, and tell America's story solely as one of oppression and victimhood rather than one of imperfection but also unprecedented achievement toward freedom, happiness, and fairness for all. Historical revisionism that tramples honest scholarship and historical truth, shames Americans by highlighting only the sins of their ancestors, and teaches claims of systemic racism that can only be eliminated by more discrimination, is an ideology intended to manipulate opinions more than educate minds.

Deliberately destructive scholarship shatters the civic bonds that unite all Americans. It silences the discourse essential to a free society by breeding division, distrust, and hatred among citizens. And it is the intellectual force behind so much of the violence in our cities, suppression of free speech in our universities, and defamation of our treasured national statues and symbols.

To restore our society, academics must return to their vocation of relentlessly pursuing the truth and engaging in honest scholarship that seeks to understand the world and America's place in it.

Here is the entire section, The American Mind:

Americans yearn for timeless stories and noble heroes that inspire them to be good, brave, diligent, daring, generous, honest, and compassionate.

Millions of American devour histories of the American Revolution and the Civil War and thrill to the tales of Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Franklin, Lincoln and Grant, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglas. We still read the tales of Hawthorne and Melville, Twain and Poe, and the poems of Whitman and Dickinson. On Independence Day, we hum John Philip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever" and sing along to Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land." Americans applaud the loyalty, love, and kindness shared by the March sisters in Little Women, revere the rugged liberty of the cowboys in old westerns, and cheer the adventurous spirit of young Tom Sawyer. These great works have withstood the test of time because they speak to eternal truths and embody the American spirit.

It is up to America's artists, authors, filmmakers, musicians, social media influencers, and other culture leaders to carry on this tradition by once again giving shape and voice to America's self-understanding--to be what Jefferson called "an expression of the American mind."
To them falls the creative task of writing stories, songs, and scripts that help to restore every American's conviction to embrace the good, lead virtuous lives, and act with an attitude of hope toward a better and bolder future for themselves, their families, and the entire nation.

Here is the entire section, VI. Conclusion:

On the 150th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, President Calvin Coolidge raised the immortal banner in his time. "It is often asserted," he said, "that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776 . . . and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions."

[Publisher's Note: Of course, President Coolidge was right but the consent of the governed in the South made no different to Abraham Lincoln when his money and power were threatened. The most widely quoted phrase in the secession debate in the South in the year leading up to states actually seceding, came from the Declaration of Independence:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.]

Back to VI. Conclusion:

America's founding principles are true not because any generation---including our own---has lived them perfectly, but because they are based upon the eternal truths of the human condition. They are rooted in our capacity for evil and power for good, our longing for truth and striving for justice, our need for order and our love of freedom. Above all else, these principles recognize the worth, equality, potential, dignity, and glory of each and every man, woman, and child created in the image of God.

Throughout our history, our heroes---men and women, young and old, black and white, of many faiths and from all parts of the world---have changed America for the better not by abandoning these truths, but by appealing to them. Upon these universal ideals, they built a great nation, unified a strong people, and formed a beautiful way of life worth defending.

To be an American means something noble and good. It means treasuring freedom and embracing the vitality of self-government. We are shaped by the beauty, bounty, and wildness of our continent. We are united by the glory of our history. And we are distinguished by the American virtues of openness, honesty, optimism, determination, generosity, confidence, kindness, hard work, courage, and hope. Our principles did not create these virtues, but they laid the groundwork for them to grow and spread and forge America into the most just and glorious country in all of human history.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of our independence, we must resolve to teach future generations of American an accurate history of our country so that we all learn and cherish our founding principles once again. We must renew the pride and gratitude we have for this incredible nation that we are blessed to call home.

When we appreciate America for what she truly is, we know that our Declaration is worth preserving, our Constitution worth defending, our fellow citizens worth loving, and our country worth fighting for.

It is our task now to renew this commitment. So we proclaim, in the words our forefathers used two and a half centuries ago, "for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, our sacred Honor."

Here is the entire section, Appendix III, Created Equal or Identity Politics?

Americans are deeply committed to the principle of equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that all are created equal and equally endowed with natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This people everywhere, no matter their race or country of origin. The task of American civic education is to transmit this creed from one generation of Americans to the next.

In recent times, however, a new creed has arisen challenging the original one enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. This new creed, loosely defined as identity politics, has three key features. First, the creed of identity politics defines and divides American in terms of collective social identities. According to this new creed, our racial and sexual identities are more important than our common status as individuals equally endowed with fundamental rights.

Second, the creed of identity politics ranks these different racial and social groups in terms of privilege and power, with disproportionate moral worth allotted to each. It divides Americans into two groups: oppressors and victims. The more a group is considered oppressed, the more its members have a moral claim upon the rest of society. As for their supposed oppressors, they must atone and even be punished in perpetuity for their sins and those of their ancestors.

Third, the creed of identity politics teaches that America itself is to blame for oppression. America's "electric cord" is not the creed of liberty and equality that connects citizens today to each other and to every generation of Americans past, present, and future. Rather, America's "electric cord" is a heritage of oppression that the majority racial group inflicts upon minority groups, and identity politics is about assigning and absolving guilt for that oppression.

According to this new creed, Americans are not a people defined by their dedication to human equality, but a people defined by their perpetuation of racial and sexual oppression.

The Historical Precedent for Identity Politics

Whereas the Declaration of Independence founded a nation grounded on human equality and equal rights, identity politics sees a nation defined by oppressive hierarchies. But this vision of America is actually not new. While identity politics may seem novel and ground-breaking, it resurrects prior attempts in American history to deny the meaning of equality enshrined in the Declaration. In portraying America as racist and white supremacist, identity politics advocates follow Lincoln's great rival Stephen A. Douglas, who wrongly claimed that American government "was made on the white basis" "by white men, for the benefit of white men." Indeed, there are uncanny similarities between 21st century activists of identity politics and 19th century apologists for slavery.

John C. Calhoun is perhaps the leading forerunner of identity politics. Rejecting America's common political identity that follows from the Declaration's principles, he argued that the American polity was not an actual community at all but was reducible only to diverse majority and minority groups. Calhoun saw these groups as more or less permanent, slowly evolving products of their race and particular historical circumstances.

Like modern-day proponents of identity politics, Calhoun believed that achieving unity through rational deliberation and political compromise was impossible; majority groups would only use the political process to oppress minority groups. In Calhoun's America, respect for each group demanded that each hold a veto over the actions of the wider community. But Calhoun also argued that some groups must outrank others in the majoritarian decision-making process. In Calhoun's America, one minority group---Southern slaveholders---could veto any attempt by the majority group---Northern States---to restrict or abolish the enslavement of another group. In the context of American history, the original form of identity politics was used to defend slavery. (their emphasis)

[Publisher's Note: Apparently, the 1776 Report writers are referring to Calhoun's doctrine of the concurrent majority. In defense of Mr. Calhoun, here's what Margaret L. Coit, editor, says in John C. Calhoun, Great Lives Observed [Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970, 10-11:

During his last years, when his intellect was at its most incandescent, he wrote the two books upon which his reputation as a political philosopher rests: A Disquisition on Government and A Discourse on the Constitution of the United States. In these books he discussed in full his revolutionary doctrine of the concurrrent majority, of which nullification was but one aspect---his concept of a government, not "of a part over a part," but of "a part made identical with the whole," each division or "interest" armed with either a voice in making the laws, "or a veto on their execution." He recognized that "only a few great and prominent interests could be represented," but even Richard Hofstadter acknowledges that "Calhoun's analysis of American political tensions certainly ranks among the most impressive intellectual achievements of American statesmen." [Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition (New York, 1948), 87-88]. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., on the other hand, while conceding that Calhoun's theory was devised to protect a special group, denies that it was any mere lawyer's brief "to advance the pretensions of slavery, but a brilliant and penetrating study of modern society, whose insights remain vital for any minority." [Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston and New York, 1945), 405.|

As for slavery, the more Calhoun saw its doom, the more passionately he argued for its preservation. He knew that the North was rapidly outnumbering the South, that simple majority rule was ever more the law of the land. He knew that, whipped on by the abolitionist minority, more and more people were coming to see slavery as a sin and any compromise with slave-holders as treason. The South was at bay, her way of life and her "peculiar institution" doomed.

Yet, for all the power and clarity of his thinking, Calhoun saw no way out of the dilemma. Even had he seriously considered abolition as a possibility---an act which would have ended his public life and fame---there seemed to be no feasible answers. Colonization was impractical; the freedmen did not want to go back to Africa. The life of a freed black could be miserable, as Calhoun discovered for himself when he freed a shoemaker who later came back from the North and begged to be reinslaved. [The incident of the returned slave was observed by the Calhoun family governess, Mary Bates. See Mary Bates, The Private Life of John C. Calhoun (Charleston, 1852), 21]. Even some of the new "free" states denied settlement to freed men. The North had no plans beyond abolition; the South had even less, because the Southerners saw no way out of what, even more than an economic question, was a social one. How, other than by slavery, were the relations between the races to be regulated?]

Back to The Historical Precedent for Identity Politics:

As American history teaches, dividing citizens into identity groups, especially on the basis of race, is a recipe for stoking enmity among all citizens. It took the torrent of blood spilled in the Civil War and decades of subsequent struggles to expunge Calhoun's idea of group hierarchies from American public life. Nevertheless, activists pushing identity politics want to resuscitate a modified version of his ideas, rejecting  the Declaration's principle of equality and defining Americans once again in terms of group hierarchies. They aim to make this the defining creed of American public life, and they have been working for decades to bring it about.

Intellectual Original of Identity Politics

The modern revival of identity politics stems from mid-20th century European thinkers who sought the revolutionary overthrow of their political and social systems but were disillusioned by the working class's lack of interest in inciting revolution. The setback forced revolutionaries to reconsider their strategy.

One of the most prominent, the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, argued that the focus should not be on economic revolution as much as taking control of the institutions that shape culture. In Gramsci's language, revolutionaries should focus on countering the "Hegemonic Narrative" of the established culture with a "Counter-Narrative," creating a counter-culture that subverts and seeks to destroy the established culture.

Gramsci was an important influence on the thinkers of the "Frankfurt School" in Germany, who developed a set of revolutionary ideas called Critical Theory. Herbert Marcuse, one member of the Frankfurt School who immigrated to the United States in the 1940s, became the intellectual godfather of American identity politics. With little hope that the white American worker could be coaxed to revolution, Marcuse focused not on instigating class conflict but on instigating cultural conflicts around racial identity. He saw revolutionary potential in "the substratum of the outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other races and other colors."

These ideas led to the development of Critical Race Theory, a variation of critical theory applied to the American context that stresses racial divisions and sees society in terms of minority racial groups oppressed by the white majority. Equally significant to its intellectual content is the role Critical Race Theory plays in promoting fundamental social transformation. Following Gramsci's strategy of taking control of the culture, Marcuse's followers use the approach of Critical Race Theory to impart an oppressor-victim narrative upon generations of American. This work of cultural revolution has been going on for decades, and its first political reverberations can be seen in 1960s America.

The Radicalization of American Politics in the 1960s

Prior to the 1960s, movements in American history that sought to end racial and sexual discrimination, such as abolition, women's suffrage, or the Civil Rights Movement, did so on the ground set by the Declaration of Independence.

In leading the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., was aware that other, more revolutionary groups wanted to fight in terms of group identities. In his "I Have a Dream" speech, King rejected hateful stereotyping based on a racialized group identity. The "marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust all white people," he warned. King refused to define Americans in terms of permanent racialized identities and called on Americans "to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustices to the sold rock of brotherhood" and see ourselves as one nation united by a common political creed and commitment to Christian love.

"When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir," King wrote. "This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

As the 1960s advanced, however, many rejected King's formulation of civil rights and reframed debates about equality in terms of racial and sexual identities. The Civil Rights Movement came to abandon the nondiscrimination and equal opportunity of colorblind civil rights in favor of "group rights" and preferential treatment. A radical women's liberation movement reimagined America as a patriarchal system, asserting that every woman is a victim of oppression by men. The Black Power and black nationalist movements reimagined America as a white supremacist regime. Meanwhile, other activists constructed artificial groupings to further divide Americans by race, creating new categories like "Asian American" and "Hispanic" to teach Americans to think of themselves in terms of group identities and to rouse various groups into politically cohesive bodies.

The Incompatibility of Identity Politics with American Principles

Identity politics divide Americans by placing them perpetually on conflict with each other. This extreme ideology assaults and undermines the American principle of equality in several key ways.

First, identity politics attacks American self-government. Through the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances, American constitutionalism prevents any one group from having complete control of the government. In order to form a majority, the various groups that comprise the nation must resolve their disagreements in light of shared principles and come to a deliberative consensus over how best to govern. In the American system, public policy is decided by prudential compromise among different interest groups for the sake of the common good.

Identity politics, on the other hand, sees politics as the realm of permanent conflict and struggle among racial, gender, and other groups, and no compromise between different groups is possible. Rational deliberation and compromise only preserve the oppressive status quo. Instead, identity politics relies on humiliation, intimidation, and coercion. American self-government, where all citizens are equal before the law, is supplanted by a system where certain people use their group identity to get what they want.

Second, by dividing Americans into oppressed and oppressor groups, activists of identity politics propose to punish some citizens --- many times for wrongs of their ancestors allegedly committed --- while rewarding others. Members of oppressed groups must ascend, and members of oppressor groups must descend. This new system denies that human being are endowed with the same rights, and creates new hierarchies with destructive assumptions and practices.

On the one hand, members of oppressed groups are told to abandon their shared civic identity as Americas and think of themselves in terms of their sexual or racial status. The consequence is that they should no longer see themselves as agents responsible for their own actions but as victims controlled by impersonal forces. In a word, they must reject, not affirm, the Declaration's understanding of self-government according to the consent of the governed. If members of oppressed groups want to become free, they must rely upon a regime of rewards and privileges assigned according to group identity.

On the other hand, members of oppressor groups merit public humiliation at the hands of others. Diversity training programs, for example force members of "oppressor" groups to confess before their co-workers how they contribute to racism. Education programs based on identity politics often use a person's race to degrade or ostracize them.

These degradations of individuals on the basis of race expose the lie that identity politics promotes the equal protection of rights. Advocates of identity politics argue that all hate speech should be banned but then define hate speech as only applying to protected identity groups who are in turn free to say whatever they want about their purported oppressors. This leads to a "cancel culture" that punishes those who violate the terms of identity politics.

Third, identity politics denies the fundamental moral tenet of the Declaration, that human beings are equal by nature. This founding principle provides a permanent and immutable standard for remedying wrongs done to Americans on the basis of race, sex, or any group identity.

Repudiating this universal tenet, activists pushing identity politics rely instead on cultural and historical generalizations about which groups have stronger moral claims than others. They claim this approach offers a superior and more historically sensitive moral standard. But unlike the standard based on a common humanity---what Lincoln called "an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times"---their historical standard is not permanent. Rather, it adjusts to meet the political fashions of a particular moment. By this standard, ethnicities that were once considered "oppressed" can in short order turn into "Oppressors," and a standard that can turn a minority from victim to villain within the course of a few years is no standard at all.

Fourth, identity-politics activists often are radicals whose political program is fundamentally incompatible not only with the principles of the Declaration of independence but also the rule of law embodied by the United States Constitution. Antagonism to the creed expressed in the Declaration seems not an option but a necessary part of their strategy. When activists are discussing seemingly innocuous campaigns to promote "diversity," they are often aiming for fundamental structural change.

Conclusion

Identity politics is fundamentally incompatible with the principle of equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

Proponents of identity politics rearrange Americans by group identities, rank them by how much oppression they have experience at the hands of the majority culture, and then sow division among them. While not as barbaric or dehumanizing, this new creed creates new hierarchies as unjust as the old hierarchies of the antebellum South, making a mockery of equality with an ever-changing scale of special privileges on the basis of racial and sexual identities. The very idea of equality under the law---of one nation sharing King's "solid rock of brotherhood"---is not possible and, according to this argument, probably not even desirable. [Publisher's Note: The "old hierarchies of the antebellum South" were often not fair but neither were the many Northern and Western states that did not even allow free blacks to visit for more than a few days, much less take up residence. In Lincoln's Illinois, a free black staying too long would find his new residence the country jail. Perhaps the writers of this report should have included some knowledgeable Southerners to give the report more accuracy rather than taking cheap shots at the South when nobody is there to refute them.]

All Americans, and especially all educators should understand identity politics for what it is: rejection of the principle of equality proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. As a nation, we should oppose such effort to divide us and reaffirm our common faith in the fundamental equal right of every individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

 

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