You know, I started this blog basically to be a very cheap form of advertising. I just want to get the word out about my books that I reprint and sell via my lulu.com storefront. I just wanted to keep it simple. I have actually resisted even having a blog for years just because it was another inane "web presence" to be maintained at the expense of time that might just be better spent elsewhere.
But...since I have this blog, I decided to go ahead and add my two cents' worth here and there, so here goes:
There has been controversy over the Confederate Battle Flag for years, but Southern/Confederate cultural cleansing in the past 15 years has spread like some virulent disease that has gone amok from a Frankensteinian lab. Why now? Didn't the South and all her citizens feel at home singing Dixie at the home games and flying their beloved flag in the parades for all those long decades since the end of the War Between the States? Yet the beloved flag has been targeted by "Civil Rights" activists who are interested in the rights of everyone except those they don't like.
Our response as Southern people? Show that the South was not a lillie-White oligarchy of plantation owners contemplating moonlight and magnolia while sippin' whiskey on the front porches of the "big houses" of the South. My wife has Cherokee ancestors. That almost guarantees Confederate soldiers in her ancestry. Our historic flag collection includes the Cherokee Braves flag. "How White was their cause?" I once asked a White Supremist who tried to recruit me via email some time back.
A wonderful Filipina I used to know in Oregon assured my wife and me of her love for us, but opined that Asians would not be welcome in our beloved Old South. Only after losing contact with her did I learn of a whole company of Filipinoes who fought under the Stars and Bars from Louisiana.
Then there are Black Confederates. Mention them and a whole new firestorm rages around you. "They were just slaves who were forced to serve by their masters," the professional race-baiters and court-jesters cum historians scream. Well, that is true in some cases. The "Chandler Boys," -- one White and one Black -- would refute that thought. The Black Chandler was a former slave of the White, but had been manumitted. They went to war togetheras friends and brothers and when the White Chandler was wounded, the Black Chandler protected him with his own life until he could get him home to mend up.
Yes, most of those Black Confederates were teamsters, valets, cooks and so forth, but to loosely quote Frederick Douglas, runaway slave and Civil Rights demigod, there were at that very minute Blacks who voluntarily fought with "guns on their shoulders and bullets in their pockets." And most of them got no pay because the Confederate Congress had not yet authorized the enlistment of Blacks of any state [in life]. They simply picked up a gun from among the battlefield fallen and moved to the firing line. They were most certainly NOT coerced!
The FACTS of history are there. Southern Blacks loved the South and hated the Yankee invader as much as their White brothers did. Just read The Slave Narratives and you'll see a great many stories that embarass the Civil Rights cabal. Several "emancipated" slaves in that area of Missouri where I grew up ran to the camps of Colonel William Clarke Quantrill after escaping from Jayhawkers who had "liberated" them. (In fact, many "Abolitionists" in the Bleeding Kansas period were, in fact, "freeing" slaves, only to re-sell them in Louisiana or Texas.) Paul R. Petersen in his book, "Quantill of Missouri" documents this. O. S. Barton records John McCorkle (a scout of Quantrill's) telling of free and slave Blacks joining that command and spying for it.
In modern times, I know that Blacks still love the South and her heritage and history. While living in Kansas City, Missouri in the late 1990's, there was a Black family with a big Ford truck that had a Confederate Battle Flag grill cover living in the minority-dominated Northeast neighborhood. While living in Texas, I recieved as many smiles and compliments on my kepi, slouch hat and shell jacket from Blacks who loved the South as I did from Whites. In Bryan, Texas, there is Dixie Tire Company, a Black-owned and operated business with the Confederate Battle Flag right in the company's sign. My friend, John, a former trucker told me once of a Black man repairing his rig in Mississippi who commented on being angry at all the activists who thought they needed to bus themselves in for every flag and statue flap that came up. He apparently expressed (much to John's suprise) anger at their hatred of his flag. I could go on and on with the examples.
Let me chime in one last set of thoughts here:
A) If you are an historian, professional or not, quit reading into history what you want to be there. Stick to the FACTS that you can document in active voice and not passive voice. Blacks loved the Confederacy then and many still do today. Just ask H.K. Edgerton over at www.SouthernHeritage411.com or the good folks who run www.37thTexas.org.
B) If you are an activist, work your home plot. Leave ours alone. You don't belong here. We don't need your busloads of B--- S--- artists coming down to Dixie and race-baiting and hate mongering. We love our home, it's heritage and it's history. And we love it quite in spite of its flaws and warts. Get over yourself and go home. You have plenty to do there. Almost all of the major White Supremist groups are headquartered NORTH of the Mason-Dixon Line.
And, finally, C) Morris Dees, you are not wanted in Dixie. Please leave now. Your strong-arm hate monger tactics are not welcome in our Southern, Judeo-Christian society where we still extend the 5th Commandment to the point of honoring the "Fathers" of our culture and our ancestors, too.
Okay, enough of my rant for now. Next time perhaps I will have a good book to tell you about!
Deo Vindice!
No comments:
Post a Comment