A Tale of Two Statues

When Robert E. Lee died in 1870, a memorial association was formed in the City of New Orleans.  After six years had passed, the association raised an amazing $36,400 - during the throes of Reconstruction - to construct a monument.  The world-famous New York-based sculptor Alexander Doyle (who studied in Bergamo, Rome, and Florence) was commissioned, and it was installed at Tivoli Circle - renamed Lee Circle - in 1884.  The statue was placed atop a granite pedestal consisting of a 60 foot column.  The statue itself is 16.5 feet high and made of bronze.  Attendees at the dedication included Jefferson Davis, two daughters of General Lee, and former Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregard.

Monuments such as these also memorialized the many common soldiers whose bodies were never recovered for burial, or who lie strewn across battlefields in unknown, unmarked, or even mass graves.  The postwar monuments provided solace for survivors and healing between the regions as monuments to the dead of both sides in the war were erected as the veterans were dying off.  The Lee statue was a rare early monument erected during the post-war federal occupation of Louisiana.

In time, Lee Circle and the monument became an important landmark and meeting point for locals, especially for Mardi Gras parades.  The Circle stands at basically the intersection of the Garden District, the French Quarter, and the Central Business District.  The statue became iconic to the landscape of the city.  The monument made the National Register in 1991, and in 2011, New Orleans Magazine declared it one of the most important statues in the city (along with another striking Doyle piece, the equestrian statue of P.G.T. Beauregard).

Six years later, after 133 years, the monument was declared "racist" and removed, being placed in a shed in a city junkyard where it remains - along with three other historical monuments (including Doyle's Beauregard) hidden to this day.

The column remains in place with nothing on it.

On January 22, 2022, a new statue was erected at the ground level of the pedestal where it will remain for several months.  It was executed by another New York sculptor named Simone Leigh.  The statue is entitled "Sentinel (Mami Wata)" and it "takes the diversity of African cultures in New Orleans as a starting point, evoking African folklore and spiritualities."  The statue is supposedly an African idol, described as a "water spirit or deity."  The deity is sometimes associated with lust and prostitution.  This representation is a nude female form wrapped by a snake with the unique and unusual element of having a head shaped like a spoon.  

Yes, a spoon: 

"The ceremonial spoon form of the sculpture references a symbol of status in Zulu culture, so honored in New Orleans," according to the exhibition. "Leigh’s sculpture holds forms of knowledge that have been passed down through spiritual and masking traditions of the city and beyond, wherein masking signifies transformation, not simply concealment."

Rather than locate it on the top of the sixty foot pedestal, it sits on the ground.  It is claimed that this was intentional:

"Not looming over people but rather emerging from among us," the exhibition statement said. "This constellation de-centers whiteness and the legacies of colonialism, renewing access to knowledge and culture that has been suppressed by the falsehoods of white supremacy."  

Of course, that may just be a flowery way of saying that they lacked the know-how and the money to hoist it to the top of the six-story column.

At any rate, this is a fitting symbol of New New Orleans: a crime-ridden, violent, impoverished, drug-invested, culturally-debased, infrastructure-ruined, politically-destroyed and corrupted city, a shell of its former historical greatness.  The naked woman with the head of a spoon is wrapped by a serpent, calling to mind Eve and the original sin of mankind, a primitive hot-mess of a superstitious idol, representing the decay of civilization, culture, art, history, and craftsmanship.

This is a fitting display of public art that fits in with the city's other offerings, such as electrical boxes painted in what appears to be finger paint, often with depictions that look like stick figures, or a large scrap-heap of junk bicycles painted white and piled on one another, and murals that are indistinguishable from the seedy graffiti and rat-infested blight that dot the landscape where majestic statues once stood in manicured public spaces.

And like most displays of inferior-quality "modern art," people will stare at it, rub their chins, and applaud, like the townspeople in The Emperor's New Clothes, wanting not only to appear sophisticated, but in today's reality, to prove their politically-correct bona fides by pretending that this somehow represents an improvement instead of decay.

On 'Good Uses' for the Confederate Battle Flag

One of my colleagues in the ministry of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (LCMS) recently wrote that among "good uses" for the Confederate battle flag are "diaper, shop rag, kindling, stuffing for a pillow, burping cloth," and "toilet paper."  In the ensuing discussion - which I was not a part of - he added, "It's a treason/slavocracy flag.  Plain and simple.  It's the revisionists that have a complete lack of understanding of history."

Fortunately, this kind of churlish and disrespectful rhetoric is not common among my brethren in the ministerium.  

But it is a helpful window into how much our education system and culture have degraded.  There was indeed a time when the movie Idiocracy was a farcical comedy and not a documentary.

His assertion is that anyone who disagrees with him is a "revisionist" with a "complete lack of understanding of history."  My colleague is quick to point out that he is a Ph.D. student.  I wonder if his Declaration of Historical Ignorance applies to scholars like Clyde N. Wilson, M.E. Bradford, Richard M. Weaver, Jr., or the twelve scholars known as the Southern Agrarians - among many others in the Southern intellectual tradition. 

Maybe these men, unlike my enlightened and brilliant colleague, were all just stupid.

My colleague's hubris is the inevitable result of history being taught in our schools as "social studies," as political activism, where intelligent discussion is replaced by an iron-fisted intolerance of dissent, where history is not permitted to be a dialogue between different schools of thought, but rather a Pharisaical, virtue-signaling, one-size-fits-all interpretation to be determined by the state and its interests.  And in such a Soviet-style 1619 Project-based "education" paradigm, there is no room for historiography or the examination of original source material from differing sides of a conflict.

In the current paradigm, there are not many perspectives and voices in the study of history, only the right view (which is politically-correct) and the wrong view (which is deemed "white supremacist").  The arrogance and ignorance in my colleague's rhetoric takes the tack that he has read deeply on the subject, and has considered various perspectives.  And having done so, anyone who disagrees with him is a "revisionist."  

But just what has been revised?

In any conflict, there are different assumptions and interpretations.  That's why there are conflicts.  This is why there are debates and disputes, and this is why there are wars.  Johnny says the toy is his.  Mary says the toy is hers.  Each child sees his claim as valid.  If the children cannot agree, an adult will have to step in and resolve the dispute.  And lacking such a judge, the larger and stronger child will simply prevail.  And the smaller child's perspective may or may not be remembered.  The result of the bigger child winning may well simply be accepted by all as the outcome.  But the point is that there is a dispute because there are two different claims of ownership.

In the war of American secession from Great Britain, there were two rival claimants as the legitimate overarching government of the colonies/states.  And in international disputes, there is no authority, no adult to decide to which child the toy belongs.  And so there is sometimes war to "settle" the matter.  In the case of the First American War of Independence, the secessionists won, and American government schools generally teach the school of history friendly to the rebels, while the loyalist point of view, if taught at all, is downplayed.

And yet, regardless of who wins or loses, there are differences of opinion.  To really understand what happened, it is important to consider all points of view - even if, and especially if, one's opinion is biased toward one side or the other.

Our Confederate ancestors - be they the politicians who led, the military personnel who fought, or the civilians on the home-front who supported the war effort and suffered depredation - had a point of view.  It was based on the Jeffersonian understanding of the Union, the compact theory of the Constitution.  Their opponents held to the Hamiltonian perspective of the Union, the nationalist interpretation of the Constitution.  This dispute predates the Constitution itself, as manifest in the debate between the so-called Federalists and the Anti-Federalists.  To this day, both views are held by different camps of Americans.  Without understanding this nuance, it is impossible to make sense of the conflict.  Nor is it possible to go beyond the churlish historiography of "the toy is mine and anyone who disagrees with me is a poopy-head."

Unfortunately, the "poopy-head" theory of history is precisely what is being taught in our schools and on our ubiquitous TV screens.  It is pushed in popular culture and shrieked by activists.  It is how most of our politicians operate.  And it is, of course, based on the victors' perspective and the Big-Government Hamiltonian school.  It ignores the Jeffersonian model that has, of course, been around since the beginning of the Republic.  It ignores the fact that there has been no "revision" - as the Southern perspective on the War for Southern Independence has been consistently taught for a century and a half.  The idea that there was a consensus and a united historiography until now - when all of the sudden, people invented a new history, a revised history - is simply objectively untrue.

The radical changes in our culture and worldview: the resurgence of socialism, the new interpretation of all American history as "racist," the plummeting test scores for Americans in literacy and math, the politicization of every educational subject, and even the normalization of the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory in matters of race and sex are all evidence that we are not dealing with historical revisionism, but rather a social and cultural revolution.  And the teaching of history has been coopted by this movement.  The 1619 Project agenda - with its demonstrable falsehoods - has been mainstreamed.  Sadly, my colleague has fallen for it.  But it is also part of a psychological agenda to be on the Hegelian "right side of history."  People want to be part of the "winning team."  And from where we stand right now, the malleable and political "right side of history" is with the iconoclasts who are toppling monuments - not only memorials to Confederate history, but to American history as a whole.  My colleague will either one day scratch his head when statues to Washington, Jefferson, and even Lincoln and Grant come down (which has already begun), or he will be so invested by that point that he will be part of the mob, self-righteously calling for their eradication.

But perhaps more disturbing than his shocking ignorance of history and historiography is his hatred toward people who hold the Confederate battle flag with reverence.

Symbols are, by nature, subjective.  Most Americans hold the Stars and Stripes dear.  And this can be for many reasons.  It may be as simple as a love for one's home.  It may be that one's family members fought in past wars for the nation.  It may be that one sees in the flag the principles of liberty.  Or it may be a combination of all three.

But there are also other opinions. 

Perhaps someone is a recent immigrant without any particular sense that the flag represents his home.  It may be that one's ancestors - like perhaps the American Indians - fought against the United States, and may have even been oppressed by the United States or by individual Americans.  It may be that one believes that the premise of liberty is a lie, as one's family may have been transported as slaves on boats flagged with Old Glory, or one's recent family were interned in camps for Asians during World War II with the Stars and Stripes on the flagpole, or maybe one has been railroaded by a crooked prosecutor representing the federal government.

How might a victim of the My Lai massacre see the US flag?  How about those whose families were incinerated by bombs dropped on civilian targets by the United States?  What if one's entire family, innocent of any wrongdoing, were wiped out in a drone strike?  Do such events in history mitigate against a family in Peoria putting out Old Glory on the house for the 4th of July?  Would it be within the grounds of propriety to suggest that the flag of the United States should be used as toilet paper?  

After all, as the 1619 Project will gladly point out, just as Robert E. Lee was an aristocratic Virginia rebel who fought for a county that had black slaves, so too was Washington.  In fact, Washington's image appears on the great seal of the CSA.  Every stripe on the current US flag stands for a slave state in 1776.  Nearly every signer of the Declaration of Independence was a slaveholder.  And on that 4th of July, the slaveholding United States seceded from a nation that had abolished slavery.  The 1619 Project holds that the entire reason for being for the United States was the preservation of slavery, and thus slavery must be the single interpretive lens for reading American history.

The narrative sounds vaguely familiar, doesn't it?

Another similar disagreement over history and symbols is seen in the intertwined history of England and Scotland.  For centuries, Scottish rebels fought in wars of independence against their English overlords.  In the 13th and 14th centuries, Sir William Wallace led the Scottish bid for independence, until he was captured.  He was tried for treason, tortured, and executed as an enemy of the state.  His head was put on a pike to discourage any further rebellions.  Centuries later, following another Scottish rebellion in 1745 - one that members of my own namesake ancestors participated in - the defeated Scots, who had already been banned from speaking their native language, were proscribed from wearing their traditional tartan symbols of their tribal allegiances.  

And yet today, a monument and statue of William Wallace stands at the site of one of his greatest victories over England.  Today, members of the English royal family wear kilts bearing the tartans of their own Scottish ancestors.  The flags of Scotland and England are both part of the flag representing the political Union between the two.  And in spite of both waving the Union Jack, both singing God Save the Queen, they are separate countries.  When there is a soccer game between England and Scotland, the English sing their national anthem Jerusalem, while the Scots sing their anthem of rebellion Flower of Scotland.  Both sides have a perspective, a narrative, a historiography, but as a people coexisting in a Union, there is mutual respect.  And while the flags of England and Scotland are waved by the rivals in the stadium, and while both sides see their own view as correct, neither side considers it to be its duty to crush a different perspective, or use the other side's symbols for toilet paper.

Southerners are like their British cousins, being inclined to remember their ancestors and nations, while the denizens of other regions of America scoff at such nostalgia.

I have no particular affection for the national symbols that are not my own nor of my heritage.  But I certainly understand that other people do hold these symbols with reverence.  I could not imagine telling my Russian, Kenyan, or Brazilian friends that I would like to use their flags for toilet paper.  I may not respect their symbols as they do, but I respect the people who do respect them, and I understand that which they hold dear may not be that which I view with reverence.  

The Confederate battle flag as we know it today became a unifying symbol for the defeated South, and has since also become a symbol of many things: rock and roll rebellion, motorcycle culture, Southern music, food, and folkways, as well as a symbol of political liberty - as it was waved in East Germany and other Iron Curtain countries as Communism fell and nations held captive were permitted to secede and establish home rule apart from colonial oversight.  It continues to be treasured the world over.  It is a symbol that we continue to place at the graves of our ancestors - a characteristic of Southern culture that often mystifies people from other regions who perhaps could not even tell you the names of their own grandparents, have no particular attachment to familial land, and who care little for their heritage.

How many bumper stickers or tee shirts have you seen that say, "American by birth, Midwestern by the grace of God"?

I have been a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans for nearly 30 years.  It is in one sense a genealogical society, but it is really much more than that.  When the Confederate veterans returned to civilian life, they received no federal pensions, and in many cases, their destroyed states were too poor to provide for their needs.  And so, they created a veterans' organization, the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) in 1889.  And their daughters stepped up, establishing the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) in 1894 to establish homes for the aging veterans and to erect monuments and grave markers.  Their sons established the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) in 1896 to be the legal successor organization to the UCV.

There has been a continuum from the veterans themselves, to their sons and daughters, to their grandchildren who continue to honor their memories today.  We are the guardians of their history, their stories, and their artifacts.  We have their diaries and their writings. We have their uniforms and their flags.  We meet each and every year, as we have without fail since 1896.  We are the inconvenient speedbumps to the 1619 Project and its Orwellian scheme to rewrite history and crush dissent.  And we are also living monuments, whose very existence is repugnant to the keepers of the Marxist oppression narrative.

Perhaps the most repugnant aspect of my colleague's words is the obliviousness to the fact that other people, those who have a different historiography than he, those with family ties to the South, hold the Confederate battle flag with affection, see it as a symbol of their own families - ancestors and descendants alike - and use it as a funerary device.  Of course, we continue to mark and visit the graves of our veteran ancestors - some of whom lived full lives after the war and were buried in family plots, and some of whom fell in battle and were thrown into unmarked trenches and mass graves.  The monuments across the South serve as grave-markers for those who were never found.  

Today, not only are these statues, many more than a century old, being toppled by mobs (often while police watch passively) and removed by legislatures, mayors, and governors - even grave markers and tombstones are being vandalized and destroyed, all with self-righteous justification.  And of course, this cancer of the vandalism of graves has metastasized and spread even to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution.

When nothing is sacred, even funerary symbols are treated with contempt.

And the Confederate battle flag is not only used to mark the graves of Confederate veterans.  For it is a symbol of our heritage, and our families are a continuation of that heritage.  For example, when my fifteen year old son died suddenly and tragically last year, he was buried with certain symbols.  First, of course, was the cross that he wore to serve with me at the altar for seven years.  The cross is the symbol of his redemption and of his impending resurrection.  Second, he was buried in the dress blue uniform of the US Air Force Auxiliary: the Civil Air Patrol.  He loved serving his community, state, and nation, and held the rank of Cadet First Lieutenant.  He saluted the US flag and was even called on a live mission for the Air Force on one occasion.  Like many Confederate descendants, he was an American patriot and served his country insofar as he was able to do so at his young age.  

I do regret that I didn't also bury him with a piece of the MacBean family tartan, as he was proud of that aspect of his heritage as well, and the DNA in his bones reflect our brave ancestors who fought for their country and clan, as well as for political liberty and independence.  That too is part of who we are as a family - past, present, and future.

But I did bury my boy, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, with two Confederate battle flags (a generic one, and the flag of a Virginia military unit) - the symbols of which my colleague thinks should be used as toilet paper.  By contrast, that symbol meant a great deal to my son.  He knew his heritage.  And just as he saluted Old Glory, he also saluted the flags of the Confederacy.  He stood for Dixie.  Along with his favorite pop music, he listened to the old songs of our ancestors: Dixie, The Bonnie Blue Flag, I'm a Good Old Rebel, and many others.  He understood that God created him incarnationally as part of a family, bearing flesh that was given to him from his ancestors: including men who fought for Scottish independence, American independence, and Southern independence.

Tolerance is the hallmark of a civilized and intelligent people.  Only barbarians and savages cannot understand that there are many different sides to a conflict, and that it is natural and laudable to honor one's fathers and mothers and respect one's heritage while being respectful of the heritage of others.  Our country and our culture have descended to a dark and sinister place, one where there are masters on the top of the pyramid, who dictate history and historiography to the rest of us, who sit in judgment of our heritage and of our ancestors, who tell us what we are permitted to believe and hold dear, a place where we who dissent are being increasingly marginalized, proscribed, and even subjected to violence.

And no matter how crass, vile, hateful, and churlish people like my colleague are, and will continue to be, I am honored that my son awaits the resurrection with symbols of who God created him to be in this life: a Christian, an American, and a Southerner - as well as a dissident against an increasingly intolerant and totalitarian culture and state.  

May he rest in peace until I see him again.  Deo vindice.

Racism and Reputation

Note: This article was published by my friends at the Abbeville Institute.  You can read it either there, or you can read it here at FH.

Two terms that are tossed about with great liberality today are “racist” and “white supremacist.”  Like other words with specific definitions, such as “fascist” and “Nazi,” these labels are losing their specific social, economic, political, and legal meaning, and have essentially become nondescript slurs thrown at anyone a Progressive disagrees with.

All of these words are routinely used against those who might describe themselves as “conservative,” “traditionalist,” “Christian,” “capitalist,” “patriotic,” or “libertarian.”  This is a clever Orwellian strategy to recast mainstream people as outcasts of society – a carefully crafted linguistic trick to marginalize, dehumanize, and eliminate an opponent by rhetoric and dishonest implication. 

And given the politically correct power of academia, government, and Big Tech, nobody wants to be on the business end of this kind of name-calling.  It has a chilling effect on freedom – and even the ability to hold a job – and thus pushes a totalitarian narrative that is a betrayal of not only our American ethos, but of natural law and Christian anthropology and theology itself.  It is a way to demonize nearly half of the country, and it is almost always based on a lie.

Just to take the first term: “racist.”  What is the concept of “racism”?  Racism is a form of bigotry against a person’s “race.”  The term “race” is not very precise, as the older classifications of humanity into three or four taxonomic groupings is no longer standard.  And so “racism” can mean bigotry against a person based upon his skin tone or other characteristics derived from his ethnicity.  Obviously, a typical seventh generation Norwegian and a typical seventh generation Ethiopian look very different.  Bigotry or hatred against people based on these differences is a clear and reasonable definition of “racism.” 

It is not racism for a Norwegian to cheer on his own Olympic team, or for an Ethiopian to feel at home among people who speak his language and share his culture and history.  Nor is it racism if a Norwegian or an Ethiopian is a Christian or votes for a conservative political candidate.  Nor is it racism if an Ethiopian and a Norwegian disagree with each other in terms of economics or politics.

And as the world has shrunk, and as race-based slavery, segregation, and apartheid (political and social arrangements based on an actual legal arrangement of “white supremacy”) have long since become condemned historical relics, actual racism is likewise drifting into cultural and political insignificance.  Interracial marriages and people of mixed ethnic backgrounds have today become common – even though such marriages were illegal only a few decades ago.  Moreover, there has never been a better time to be black in the West than today.  Thirteen years ago, America elected a black president – even as the black population of the United States is a mere 13% of the population. 

But the term “racism” remains politically and socially powerful and useful.  It is a word of subjective and fluid meaning, and can thus essentially be used by anyone to accuse anyone else of repugnant views – and those views being vilified often have nothing to do with either race or bigotry!

I recently learned that some users of Twitter (I am not on the platform), apparently members of Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod churches – have been throwing the term around to denounce the more conservative members of the synod, accusing our church body of being “institutionally racist.”  And I have also learned that I have been called “racist” by name. 

Again, the term is becoming meaningless.  It has almost been so watered down as to be an adult version of the childhood playground taunt: “poopyhead.”  And yet, the word remains a cudgel that can ruin someone’s life – especially in our “cancel culture” world. 

Applying the actual meaning of the word “racist,” it is as an odd charge to make about me – especially by people whom I have never met.  I was not raised to hate people based on skin tone or ethnicity.  I spent my childhood and some of my teen years talking to people all over the planet via ham radio.  To this day, I have dear friends all around the world, from every continent, of every skin tone, ethnicity, and from diverse religious traditions.  I’m a fan of the international language Esperanto because I enjoy communication and friendships that transcend all such barriers, and believe such contact is godly and edifying to all. 

In my secular, academic, and pastoral careers, I have had colleagues and friends of every ethnicity – many of whom I have been friends with for decades. 

I believe that all people are related to one another, as revealed in the Book of Genesis, and skin tone and differences in appearance of people groups is nothing more than a response to how much sun one receives combined with generational genetic traits. 

If I’m a racist, I’m not a very good one.

As a pastor, I do deal with my parishioners according to their ancestry.  Namely: we are all sinners who inherited our mortal nature from our forebears going back to the Fall.  There is no Jew or Greek, male or female, free or slave, white or black where it comes to sin and grace (Gal 3:28).  We don’t segregate people in our sanctuary by ethnicity, and we all drink the Lord’s blood from the same chalice no matter what color we are.

One of my beloved parishioners is a delightful lady from the Caribbean.  She has been my parishioner now for 16 years.  She knew my son from the time he was born.  And when his body was brought into the church 15 years later, she was the first person there.  She mourned with my wife and me.  Our relationship can only be described as one of deep, abiding Christian love.  I am always happy to see her in the pews, and it is my honor to place the Holy Sacrament upon her tongue with the confession: “The body of Christ,” and to hear her “Amen” spoken with her beautiful island dialect.

Maybe I need to brush up on my racist skills, because I seem to be a failure in that department.

And, of course, in the modern Orwellian context, to deny being a racist is evidence of being a racist.  To be white is to be racist.  To be a Christian, conservative, libertarian, and/or traditionalist is to be a racist.  Having no black friends is evidence of racism.  Having black friends is evidence of racism.  Being race-conscious is evidence of racism.  Being color-blind is evidence of racism. 

Precious few people are willing, like the little boy in the Hans Christian Andersen tale, to point at the naked emperor and state the obvious.

So why is this Twitter-mob calling me racist?  It has nothing to do with race or bigotry.  They don’t even claim as much.  Their beef against me is historiographical.

I’ve been a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans for about thirty years.  It is a genealogical society.  It is fraternal, benevolent, and non-political.  Our members include men of all ethnicities – including black members.  What binds us together is descent from at least one member of the Confederate States armed forces in the War Between the States.  And as such, we are proud of the service of our great-grandfathers, and we defend their reputation against slander.  As such, I oppose the iconoclastic removal – whether by governments or by mobs – of historical statues, whether of Confederate or Union soldiers, whether of Davis or Lincoln, whether of Lee and Jackson, or Washington, Jefferson, Mark Twain, and Christopher Columbus.

The study of history includes many “schools” or historical interpretations – which change over time, as different fashions of interpretation come and go.  Historians – at least until recently – debated with one another about cause and effect, about the reliability of historical sources, about the complex nature of human motivation, etc.  This study of the study of history itself is known as “historiography.”  And today, just as in ancient times, historians are subject to influence based on money and power and who is in the ruling class, who won the war, who has the favor and the ear of the ruler, and who has the power to make or break one’s career.  Ancient emperors assured that their court historians made them look good – whether by omitting embarrassing events, by playing up victories, by exaggerating, or even by lying.  And political enemies were even written out of historical memory.

Totalitarian regimes today continue this tradition. 

In America and the West, there is more freedom to write, to challenge, and to dissent – although pressures from moneyed institutions who fund academic research, and now, stifling political correctness, conspire to narrow the window of acceptable historical interpretation.  A historian or professor may well have to lie and sweep historical evidence under the rug in order to keep his job.

And so, some people call me a “racist” because of my historiographical interpretation of the war of 1861-1865, and because of my opposition to removing historical monuments of all eras of American history.

In 2017, I stood with peaceful defenders of the historical monuments in New Orleans.  And when violence broke out, as Antifa activists attacked while the police stood down, I came and conducted a Vespers service and prayed for peace. I gathered men and women of every age and racial/ethnic demographic into a circle and led prayers.  I was, of course, called a “racist” for doing so.  I saw no clergy and nobody leading prayers on the other side of the divide.  Rather, I heard threats and taunts and racial epithets against black allies of the monuments. Instead of crosses, I saw hammers and sickles. In spite of the heavy Roman Catholic presence in New Orleans, not one clergyman was there except me.  The Archbishop could have shown up to call for peace, but he was nowhere to be found – even when a monument to the poet-priest Father Abram Ryan was painted with red paint and smeared with human feces.  The Archbishop said nothing other than advocating the monuments’ removal, and all from the safety of his office.  He did nothing to promote peace, probably because his desire to see the monuments removed was served by the violence that his absence promoted.  And this is why the mayor ordered the police to do nothing as the mob attacked. 

I had ancestors on both sides of the War Between the States, and have studied a lot over the years – primary sources and dissenting views that are seldom read in school.  It is my belief that secession was an entirely constitutional remedy for growing federal power, and that taking up arms against an armed foreign invader was an honorable act.  The evidence is overwhelming that the ordinary solder on both sides fought for his country and not for “social justice” issues.  Obviously, in the 19th century, Americans of both regions were “racist” by today’s standards, and slavery was legal and practiced in both the north and the south.  Leaders of both the USA and the CSA included slaveholders, and advocates of slavery, as well as non-slaveholders and opponents of slavery.  Free blacks and slaves alike wore the gray uniform, and some were even under arms.  The much-maligned Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest had dozens of slaves who voluntarily fought under his command to the end of the war.

Our racial history in Louisiana is even more complex, with wealthy black slaveholders and even black officers in the service of the state militia.  Our slaveholding class generally opposed secession and wanted to maintain the status quo.  They were overwhelmingly outvoted in the secession convention.  During the war, invading Union officers were shocked to find that some of our large sugar plantations with hundreds of slaves were owned by free black women.  History often defies facile deductions and summaries that fit on a bumper sticker.

Obviously, people approach history in different ways – whether it is from the perspective of the Federalists vs. the Antifederalists, various arguments about the economic cause of the Great Depression, and trying to figure out the long term effects of World War I on politics, economics, and western culture.  For actual academic work to occur, there must be academic freedom and free debate.  And for a free society to prosper, there must be freedom of speech.

A few years ago, I had a cyber-stalker accuse me of racism.  He harassed me and some of our lay leadership by means of anonymous emails – which we quickly identified by means of the IP address.  He placed the “racist” label on me, not for any negative words or actions against anyone for any reason, but because I am a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.  After months of harassment – including being sent several emails of footage of Hitler’s Kristallnacht (when houses of worship were blown up) in the hours leading up to our annual Christmas Eve Midnight Mass – he decided to “dox” me.  He accused me of “racism” to my district president (bishop), our synod president (archbishop), and to my colleagues of an ecclesiastical journal that I write for, and others.  Nobody took the bait.

He then wrote to the general headquarters of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod – using a form on the website.  He claimed to be me, using my name and email address as the signature line, and then proceeded to tell lies, including that I was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.  In order to try to get me accused of racism, he had to actually engage in deliberate and open falsehood.  Why this didn’t make him check his premises is beyond me.  If you have to lie to cast someone as a racist, maybe that person isn’t a racist. 

At any rate, the church website sent me an automated reply that included “my” email.  The IT Department shared the IP address of the sending computer, and it was indeed my cyber-stalker.  Online impersonation is a crime in the State of Louisiana, and so I went to the police.  My accuser was arrested and spent the night in jail until he could raise bail.  He was charged with two crimes.  We went to court.  He was ordered to undergo three years of counseling, pay fines including my legal fees, and has been ordered to comply with a court order under penalty of being re-charged with the original charges.

And all of this was not because of even the accusation of racial bigotry, but because of my opinions about American history.  That is how cancel culture works.

And so, if anyone could send me screenshots and/or identify my recent accusers on Twitter, I would be grateful.  I will defend my reputation in accordance with the Eighth Commandment.  To attack the pastor’s reputation is to attack the congregation’s reputation – including all of the individual members.  This accusation is also an attack on my Caribbean parishioner.  It is the pastor’s job to defend the flock and to go after the wolves with a stick.  If my accuser is a rostered church worker, such as a pastor, I will seek a meeting with that person’s district president.  If he is a layman, I will contact his or her pastor and will consider legal action.  I have no qualms about wielding the shepherd’s crook.  It’s part of my calling.

Although the word “racism” has essentially lost its meaning, the ability to stir up hatred and even violence against our congregation by its use is a serious matter.  I will come after such a person.

Christians must not tolerate “cancel culture” and its underlying philosophy of Critical Theory (including Critical Race Theory) and Cultural Marxism to take root in the church.  This is a manifestation of the weeds sown by Satan to divide our people and to cripple our ability to cast the seeds of the Gospel (Matt 13:24-43).  It is based on lies, and the father of lies is the same Satan who sews the weeds in our Lord’s parable.  We must insist that words have meaning, or else our ability to even read the Word of God and understand it is in peril.  We must defend those who are falsely accused, even if it draws the accusing finger to point at us too.  In every system in which words lose their meaning and people are dehumanized for holding the “wrong” historiography or political or economic beliefs, we see the hand of the devil and the attempt to silence the Word of God.  Historically, we also see bulldozed churches and innocent people being sent to labor camps or shot.

The time to resist this is now.

Pastors especially must be diligent and go on the attack against any such attempts to introduce chaos and suspicion and the destruction of reputations that are clearly aimed at harming the proclamation of the Gospel and destroying the lives of our brothers and sisters.  As followers of the Word (John 1:1), we have an obligation to hold the users of words to the objective meaning of those words, and to disallow a subjective and deceptive use of language for the purpose of harassment and false accusation. 

As we recite in our catechism concerning the commandment “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor,” we Lutherans know by heart: “We should fear and love God so that we do not tell lies about our neighbor, betray him, slander him, or hurt his reputation, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain everything in the kindest way.”

This is most certainly true.

Who is an American?

Gov. Francis T. Nicholls

In the comments section in a news article about the State of North Carolina now disallowing the logo of the Sons of Confederate Veterans to be displayed on their vanity license plates, a young person referred to the Confederates as those who "fought against and killed Americans."  I pointed out the obvious that both sides fought against and killed Americans, that this is the nature of an interstate war, and that this same phenomenon happened in 1776.

Her reply was that the "Confederates chose to be on the opposite side of America.  They declared war on America.  They created [sic] to be Americans with that choice."  I believe autocorrect probably "corrected" her word "ceased."

I do find this narrative increasingly common, especially young people.  History, which is complex with various contours of culture and politics and economics - has been reduced to a couple multiple choice questions on a quiz, a simple "good guy/bad guy" dichotomy, and from there, has been retreaded to be a Maoist tool for ideological indoctrination.  While everyone uses history in a political way, the current paradigm is to completely upend not only the historiography but even the facts themselves in service to a larger Marxist interpretation.

This is the very idea of the Party controlling the future by controlling the past in George Orwell's 1984.

So who were the Americans in the conflict of 1861-1865?  I tried to draw analogies from history.

Was Julius Caesar a Roman when he crossed the Rubicon?  Were Pompey, Cato, and Cicero Romans?  How about Mark Antony?  Who were the Romans and who were not?

Who were the Greeks: the Spartans or the Athenians?

Who were the Russians: the Reds or the Whites?

The soldiers who supported Bonnie Prince Charlie in the '45 - were they Scots?

Was George Washington a Virginian when he took command of the Continental Army?

What nationality was John Brown?  And should we consider Red Cloud, Geronimo, Sitting Bull, and Chief Joseph - all of whom took up arms against the United States - to be American heroes?  

Wars have divided Ireland and Korea resulting in there being a ‘North’ and a ‘South’ to this very day. Maybe in your ethnographic and historiographical brilliance, you could tell us which are actually Irish and which are Koreans. 

So, I take it that the day before Brexit, the millions of people living in the UK were European.  But the next day, they weren’t?  What continent is the UK part of now?  And did they cease being European when the referendum was passed, or was it when they left the chamber, or was it when the arrangement took effect on Jan 1, 2021?  

When the Germans reunited after the Berlin Wall fell, both sides recognized each other as Germans. 

And you know what?  That same thing happened in 1865 among the Americans as well at Appomattox. 

There is irony in the young woman's FB profile.  It seems that she is a fairly recent graduate of Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana. It was named for a former governor of Louisiana, Francis T. Nicholls (1834-1912).  By her understanding, Gov. Nicholls was not an American.  

He was a remarkable person with a long history of American public service.

Francis Nicholls was an 1855 graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point.  He served in the Seminole War in Florida, resigned his commission, went back to school, and became an attorney.

When the War Between the States broke out, he accepted a commission as a captain in the infantry and fought at First Manassas.  He lost his left arm in the Shenandoah Valley campaign, but continued to serve.  In the course of time, he was promoted to brigadier general.  In subsequent battles, he lost his left foot and one of his eyes.  He continued to serve the army in a non-combatant role until the war's end.

After the war, he returned to practice law.  He ran for governor as a Democrat in 1876.  Although he won the election, the Republican Party controlled the election board and declared his opponent the winner.  This was overturned by Republican president Rutherford Hayes (who himself won a disputed  election that was decided along party lines in Congress) as part of the Compromise of 1877 that demilitarized the South.

Nicholls served as governor - in spite of his physical handicaps - from 1877-1880, and again from 1888-1892 - fighting corruption in the state government.  He chaired the 1879 state constitutional convention.  At the age of 58, he embarked on a new career.  From 1892-1911, Nicholls was the Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court.

Several schools were named after Nicholls, including a girls' vocational school, a public high school, and the aforementioned Nicholl's State University - which began as a junior college.  A street in the French Quarter was named for him.

Francis Nicholls and his wife Caroline had seven children.

Was Governor and Chief Justice Nicholls an American?  I wonder what the graduates of Nicholls State University are taught - if anything - about their namesake.  Clearly, they don't do a very good job of teaching History.

American by Birth, Southern by the Grace of God

The old saying: "American by birth, Southern by the grace of God" certainly applies to me.

I'm an ethnic Southerner who was raised in the north - but who, for the past 25 years (with the exception of my three year educational exile to the permafrost of Fort Wayne, Indiana) has lived in the Deep South.  In fact, for the past 17 years, I have lived so far in the Deep South that it is really barely Southern at all - being south of the South.  But we were graciously permitted membership in the Confederacy, given the tolerance and ethnic diversity of that particular manifestation of American federalism.  Moreover, only two other states suffered as long as we did in the so-called Reconstruction as did Louisiana.  So we - my state and my person - have earned the bona fides to consider what it means to be Southern, though perhaps by means of a circuitous route.

So permit me to ponder - while pondering is still permitted in our Reunited States.

The South is an embarrassment to many in the various other regions of America as it is constituted today.  We are especially anathema to our Betters on the coasts. 

Indeed, we talk funny. We’re slow and dumb and backwards and conservative. We cling to our Bibles and guns. We got Donald Trump elected. That alone should make our separated brethren in the Disunted States to want to retroactively secede us.  Typically, our kids say “sir” and “ma’am” and, shockingly, we treat men and women differently, and hold comically to the long-since discredited fantasy that only women bear children. We still put flags and flowers on our ancestral graves - especially those of our our veterans - which is apparently why some folks come South for the winter in their black socks and sandals, wagging their heads, and honking nasally and incredulously: “Look Martha, these people are still fighting the civil war.”

Apparently, we are not Enlightened and Educated like our brethren from the Better Regions. We don’t read the New Yorker. We don’t listen to NPR and watch CNN. We don't care what Whoopi and Joy have to say on the View. We don’t realize that we hate our black next door neighbor (whom we are so deluded as to believe that we actually like) on account of our persistent and systemic ‘white privilege.’  It is so systemic and persistent that we don't notice it.  And we don’t know this because we are ignorant, for our children don’t go to Columbia and Stanford.  In fact, most of us dropped out of school in the third grade, when the booklarnin' began to exceed our cerebral potentiality.  

It seems that we go about in bare feet and overalls. We spit tobacco all over the place and drop our R’s and final G’s. We marry our cousins - but only after asking our uncles for their hand in marriage. Moreover, we eat roadkill and still have outhouses. In Louisiana, we speak gutter French and eat bugs. In that sense, we are apparently better than the people of South Carolina who apparently eat dirt.  There are experts in the field of judging groups of people and rating them according to their human worth.  This is apparently called "Intersectionality" and is taught at Columbia and Stanford.  Eating bugs, per se, is good for the environment.  And so it's good when we do it - not our Betters, of course.  The exception is when they come to Bourbon Street to debauch themselves, vomit on the streets, and disrobe publicly, thus providing us locals with a free spectacle.  Regardless, many of our fellow Americans mock us and treat us like the drunken uncle sleeping on the couch. 

Of course, they don’t mind when Billy Bob pulls off to the side of the road to help them change a tire, or when thousands of Billy Bobs join the military and fight America's wars.

Just so long as we and our filthy kids with mullets don’t move next door to them with our truck on blocks and our dog on a chain blaring our country music and slaughtering our chickens in our back yards, right?

But you dummies had a golden opportunity to be rid of us in 1861 without firing a single shot or spending a dime. You people hate us, but wouldn’t let us leave!  And you’re supposed to be the smart ones!  

Now you’re stuck with us. You created an ‘indivisible union,’ and hence you are joined at the hip with the very people that make you roll your eyes in disgust, the ones that cost Hillary Clinton her destiny, the impediments to Progress, the ones who make you cry and shriek at the sky and dye your hair various and sundry shades of magenta. Yep.  We did that.  And worst of all, nous ne regrette rien.

And now, in spite of the largely successful program to vilify our region, our culture, and our ancestors, to destroy our monuments, rewrite our history, amnesiate even the memory of our memories - Deo vindice, people even in the belly of the beast of the People's Republic of California are once again speaking the forbidden word, thinking the unthinkable thought, dreaming the impossible dream, and considering the unconsiderable consideration: secession.  And so, you might just yet get rid of the people you loathe.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But in spite of all y'all's vitriol and opprobrium, we’re still always and ever hospitable to all who come to visit.  We will gladly share some possum stew with y’all, but only after we all gather around the old table, rise for prayers, and sing Dixie. 

I have shocking and scandalous news to deliver to my perhaps soon-to-be ex countrymen, so I do hope you like the smell of irony in the morning: We're all Southerners now.

Might Makes Right or Bigger is Better

We are conditioned to believe that might makes right, that the bigger entity has power over the smaller.  Perhaps this is rooted in family life, where the smaller and weaker children are subject to the rule and power of the bigger and stronger parents.

As we approach 250 years from the establishment of the United States, and as we are more than 150 years after the clash of visions of the American Union that led to the War Between the States, most of us simply assume that in the United States, the federal government is where sovereignty resides.  And as the world becomes smaller, the Might Makes Right (or the Bigger is Better) dictum leads to the idea that the United States should yield its sovereignty to a larger entity, be it a regional trans-national government (like the European Union) or the United Nations.

The idea that sovereignty resides at a smaller level strikes us as incongruous.  To defy a UN decree or a federal law sounds rebellious and treasonous. 

But this is only because we have been conditioned to believe so.  We have been dumbed-down by our schools.  We have been brainwashed by television.  We have been manipulated by global elites to place our trust in government - and the bigger the better.

But in the United States - as borne out by history and the U.S. Constitution, sovereignty does indeed reside with the states.  This is what "federalism" actually means, and this is why the United States used to be treated as a plural noun (even in the Constitution itself!), and why the United States was often referred to as a "confederation" by the founders - including the so-called Federalists who truly did desire a national government.

In spite of more than a century and a half of court precedents and federal laws that have encroached upon state sovereignty, and in spite of the aforementioned stultification of our public and private school systems, a remnant of this sovereignty still remains.

In 1973, President Richard Nixon issued an executive order mandating a "national" speed limit of 55 mph.  This was done under the color of an emergency order to conserve gasoline .  After the order expired in 1974, Congress passed the National Maximum Speed Law (NMSA), which most people simply think was a "national" 55 mph speed limit.

But that's not what it was.

Congress had no authority to mandate a "national" speed limit (by the way, the word "national" never appears in the Constitution, and the word "national" was deliberately replaced by "federal" by the Constitutional Convention).  So in order to impose a "national" speed limit over the sovereignty of the states, the law doesn't actually set a speed limit.  Rather it penalized states that had speed limits in excess of 55 mph by threatening to take away federal highway funds.

And this is how the federal government bullies the sovereign states. 

Since the passage of the 16th Amendment in 1913, the federal government taxes individuals.  Some of this money is held in abeyance and redistributed back to the states based on some federally desired behavior.  It is really more of a bribery - or perhaps more accurately, blackmail - scheme.

If the federal government truly had sovereignty, they would simply pass a law and enforce it.  They didn't, and they don't.  They had, and have, to make the states "an offer that they can't refuse."

This is how "national" laws and policies - like the No Child Left Behind and Common Core disasters were imposed upon the American people (under Bush and Obama respectively), by reducing the sovereign states to groveling provinces, slavishly licking the hand of their federal master for money taken from the people in the first place.  This modern view of America is at odds with the words and writings of the founders themselves.

We should be studying our American history - for example reading the Federalist and Antifederalist papers - as well as researching the "compact theory" of the Constitution.  The vilification of the Confederate States has also led to a lack of understanding of the nature of our Constitutional Union, the re-writing of our history, and the sending of important parts of that history down the proverbial Orwellian Memory Hole.  The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government by Jefferson Davis includes a recapitulation of the nature of the Union, as does Alexander Stephens's A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States.  There are several works of U.S. Secretary of State Abel Upshur (1790-1844) that inform the reader of the compact theory that is today largely ignored by jurists and suppressed by universities. 

The military defeat of the compact theory by the national theory in 1865 - in which the question was "resolved" by force of arms instead of reasoned debate - has only reinforced the Might Makes Right and Bigger is Better theses.  And even then, many of our "national" laws depend on bribery and blackmail of the states to achieve these "national" laws - and hardly anybody asks "Why?"

The American people, wrongly believing, teaching, and confessing that America is a "nation" - a unitary state - instead of a voluntary union of sovereign states, that the states must obey the federal government, and that sovereignty resides in Washington instead of with the people of their own states - are ripe for a global takeover.

After all, Bigger is Better and Might Makes Right.

On the American Tapestry

The modern United States is a tapestry.

We honor Geronimo, Red Cloud, Chief Joseph, and Sitting Bull as great Americans with statues and monuments even though they took up arms against the United States.

We honor King Kamehameha and Queen Liliuokalani even though they were royalty of a foreign country. Moreover, the flag of Hawaii includes the British Union Jack.

We honor the Texans at the Alamo even though they were not part of the United States at the time.

We honor my state’s French and Spanish heritage, as we were a foreign colony when the US was established.

When the Constitution went into effect, Rhode Island and North Carolina were foreign countries.

The flags of New Mexico and Oklahoma honor the era in their histories when they were not part of the United States, but were Indian lands.

The flag of California honors its period of independence as the Bear Republic.

Rest areas on the Gulf Coast still fly the Republic of West Florida flags (they look like the Bonnie Blue Flag) along with the federal and state banners.

The Confederate States of America included 11 of our current United States (13 counting the two states that had dual state governments competing for legitimacy) in addition to West Virginia (carved out of Virginia), Maryland (who supplied troops but were prevented from seceding), and Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico - which were territories allied with the CSA.

After the war, US presidents including Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Donald Trump acknowledged the Confederate States as part of our American heritage, many of whom unveiled monuments to the Confederate veterans.

Eisenhower had a bust of Robert E. Lee in the Oval Office.

Confederate widows were eventually awarded federal pensions from the government of the re-United States.

Veterans of both the blue and the gray came together for reunions and monument dedications.

All of the former Confederate States were readmitted to the United States, and confederate citizens were restored to federal citizenship in the years following the war. Thirteen of the stars on Old Glory are confederate stars from the Southern National Period.

On "Southern" Slavery

It has become fashionable to bash the South - not only by removing war memorials or looking the other way as they are vandalized, but even in discussions of things like slavery.  It's never just slavery; it's Southern slavery.  The existence of slavery in the North has been whitewashed and sent down the memory hole.

Frankly, most of our American history as we learn it in school - especially in recent decades - is court history.  It is a narrative.  In the age of political correctness, our American history has been rewritten, often by Socialists and extreme leftists who have a Marxist (Economic or Cultural) agenda.  Often the best history books are the older texts.  And the very best ones are based on the original sources themselves - the compilation of which is painstaking and a great exercise in patience. 

John Shipley Tilley (1880-1968) was an attorney and historian with a law degree from Harvard.  His book Lincoln Takes Command unequivocally proves that Lincoln unilaterally started the War Between the States, that he wanted war, and used duplicitous tactics to do so.  It was the Union, and not the Confederacy, that was the aggressor, that on Lincoln's orders, the Union committed acts of war prior to the bombardment of Fort Sumter.  The Union violated several armistices, and at one point even flagged a military ship with the British Union Jack in a literal false flag operation to inflame war.

Tilley proves this not by means of conjecture and simply quoting other historians.  Rather he cites the United States government's own Official Records of the War of the Rebellion (OR) - which is a massive collection of 128 volumes of official reports, memos, orders, and other primary source material that is there for anyone with the patience to comb through it all.

Tilley was also the author of Facts the Historians Leave Out, a small introduction to the Southern side of the story.  He wrote another book called The Coming of the Glory which delves into the three controversial topics of the War Between the States, namely slavery, secession, and reconstruction.  In 267 pages of text, Tilley has 721 cited source endnotes.  Since this book doesn't deal with the war per se, these are not from the OR but from other original sources and historians.

The Coming of the Glory includes well-documented facts that have long been laid aside in favor of a standard revisionist narrative - such as the narrative that slavery was a Southern thing.

The first eight pages of chapter one deal with the slave trade - which is itself damning to the North - especially to New England.  But even laying aside the traffic in slaves (which amounted to a large portion of the New England economy), slavery was itself practiced in the North until it became economically burdensome. 

In a section entitled "Northern Ownership of Slaves," Tilley reports some notable Northerners who were slaveowners: Gen. Ulysses and Julia Grant, the Rev. Jonathan Edwards, Gov. William Penn, and Dr. Benjamin Franklin. 

He also reports:

In 1840 there were slaves in Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Delaware, District of Columbia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Wisconsin, as well as in the states to the South.  More noteworthy still, at the very date of Southern secession citizens of Delaware, Kansas, Nebraska, New Jersey, Utah, and the District of Columbia held in bondage African captives; in Delaware the number reached eighteen hundred.

Looking further backward in point of time, in 1830, among other members of the slave-holding commonwealths were Maine, Massachusetts, and Michigan.  In 1790, more than twenty thousand negroes were owned in New York.  A leading American historian is authority for the information that about 1785 there were between three thousand and four thousand colored bondmen in Rhode Island.  In the day of the American Revolution Connecticut's population included some six thousand, five hundred negroes.  Around the year 1750 the people of Pennsylvania held title to blacks by the thousands.

Tilley does not exonerate the South by any means, but is quick to point out that there is blame enough to go around. 

It is little known that before the war, Virginia had a considerable anti-slavery movement.  Tilley reports that John Letcher, the wartime governor of Virginia, was anti-slavery.  He ironically points out that "the Virginia colonel of the United States army who captured John Brown at Harper's Ferry [Robert E. Lee], the governor of the state in which the execution of the abolitionist leader took place [John Letcher], and a majority of the citizens of that commonwealth, were at heart opposed to slavery."

He also reports:

Lundy's Genius of Emancipation records a little-appreciated anomaly, one attesting to the strength of Southern anti-slavery sentiment.  This is that of the one hundred and thirty anti-slavery societies operating in the United States in 1827, four-fifths of the number and an equal proportion of the membership were in the states of the South.  Indeed, a careful student sponsors the finding that, at the very time when Garrison began his abolition crusade, the South was more interested in emancipation than was the North.

While it is true that the death of slavery got a reprieve in the South thanks to the invention of the cotton gin in 1793.  Slavery was not abolished in the Northern states owing to the goodness of the Northerners and the evil of the Southerners, but rather because of the divergent economies of the regions. 

It is also important to note that the slaveholding class of the South was small, as Tilley reports, about one-sixth of the white population. 

So when you hear slavery referred to as "Southern slavery," you are being misled by a narrative.  It's time to dust off the old books and learn what the primary sources have to say instead of politically-correct court historians.

Tolerance, Part Two

As a postscript to my previous post on tolerance, my interlocutor replied in an interesting way.  He revealed that he cannot possibly see any other point of view - not even theoretically - than that the hundreds of thousands of men who fought in the Confederate armed forces - and the millions of civilians who supported them - were "traitors," saying, "How else could they be described?"

He says, "They fought against the Governing Authorities, the United States Government, and they lost."

His reference to the "governing authorities" comes from the English Standard Version translation of Romans 13:1-6, in which St. Paul writes:

"Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed."

The implication is clear, our Confederate ancestors were sinning against God, because God had apparently determined that the Hamiltonian legal theory is correct and the Jeffersonian legal theory is not.  And also notice that he adds "and they lost."  According to this logic, the sinfulness or righteousness of a particular act depends upon the outcome.  So if your state secedes and you defend your state, there is no way to know whether this is sinful or not at the time.  If the mother country recognizes your independence, then it is not sinful.  If the mother country does not recognize your independence, and unleashes a military invasion - then it is still up in the air.  If there is a war of independence, and you win the war, your act of secession is, ex post facto, not sinful.  But if you lose your war of independence, your act of secession is, ex post facto, sinful.

This exposes a remarkable flaw in the ethics of my interlocutor's view.

It is akin to saying that if a guy shoplifts, it is only sinful if he gets caught.  It is also a variation of "might makes right," that an act is moral if one has the sheer force to get away with it.

The question of whether or not secession is legal or illegal, moral or immoral, cannot be grounded in the ultimate success of the action without adopting a kind of moral relativism.

Moreover, in appealing to a particular historiography of the United States Constitution combined with the "might makes right" premise, what does this say about slavery?  To use my interlocutor's reasoning, under the "governing authorities" of the day - both that of the private slaveholder and the United States government as authorized by the Constitution, slaves are obliged not to rebel, and anyone giving a runaway slave aid and comfort (such as the Underground Railroad) are condemned under the same moral principal laid down by my interlocutor.  Slavery was legal according to the United States Constitution.  And according to the Fugitive Slave Acts, anyone discovering runaways were obliged to turn them in and return them to their masters.  Hence Lincoln's misnamed Emancipation Proclamation not only protected slavery in the Northern states where it existed, but specifically exempted Confederate territory occupied by Union forces, such as my own Jefferson Parish, Louisiana (mentioned by name in the Proclamation).  In other words, the Union Army, under the auspices of the Constitution, made it their policy to return runaway slaves to their masters and bolstered the institution of slavery.  My interlocutor's belief that federal law trumps all is a pro-slavery assertion.

He also accuses Confederate officers who were "graduates of our service academies" of "betraying their Oaths as Officers of the United States Army or Navy" and compares them to "Tomoya Kawakita" and "Max Haupt."  He also works in the Rosenbergs.  He misunderstands the nature of oaths.  They are no longer in force when a person is no longer a citizen of that country or a member of its armed forces.  For example, if a person were to emigrate from Canada and become a United States citizen - his obligations to the Crown cease and his nationality becomes American.  If he were to join the US military, the president of the United States would be his commander in chief, and the American forces would be his chain of command.  And even if he had served in the Canadian military forces, he is no longer bound by that chain of command.  When I lived in Ohio, I became a notary, and was under oath to the Constitution of the State of Ohio.  When I was no longer a resident of Ohio, my oath was (and is) nullified.

The officers of the United States military forces resigned their commissions with the United States before accepting commissions in their state militias or the military forces of the Confederate States.

This is similar to the argument that I have heard by some Roman Catholics that Luther broke his monastic vows by leaving the authority of the pope and getting married.

Modern American history is taught in a terribly anachronistic way that conveniently serves a narrative.  There is the assumption that the American Nationalism we take for granted today was the same as it was in antebellum America.  It simply was not the case.  There are ulterior motives in vilifying half of the American population of 1861, just as there are reasons why half of the population that voted for Donald Trump are similarly denounced as traitors, Nazis, and racists.  In 1861, people owed their primary allegiance to their states.  That is a fact that is seldom taught in our schools.  One of the results of the Union victory was to establish the supremacy of DC over nearly every aspect of American life.  The federal government today even regulates how big one's toilet bowl may be.  This kind of micromanaging in the lives of our people and states would have been unthinkable in 1861.  Today, DC micromanages school curricula (which explains the self-serving way the War Between the States is taught).  The vast expansion of the powers of Washington that resulted from the Union victory is the subject of Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel (no friend of the South and no fan of the CSA).

1861 was very close in time and thought to 1776.  In fact, the last veteran of the Revolutionary War was still living and receiving a pension at the close of the War for Southern Independence.  Men who were brought up to lionize the Virginia General George Washington (whom my interlocutor would have called a traitor and accused of violating Romans 13 had a couple battles gone the other way) likewise lionized Washington's grandson in law, Robert E. Lee.  Many a Southerner went off to war carrying his grandfather's Revolutionary War musket.  Historian James McPherson (a strong partisan of the Union who makes no bones about his biases) conducted a study of letters from the soldiers North and South to determine their motivation for fighting.  His 1994 publication What They Fought For reveals that the Southern soldier saw himself as defending the ideals of 1776, similarly defending his home from invasion just as his secessionist grandfathers did.  The seal of the Confederate States of America features an image of George Washington on his horse.  In the same way that Lutherans see themselves in continuity with the ancient church and not in rebellion against it, Confederates saw themselves in continuity with America - and not in rebellion against it.  They saw their enemies as perverters of the Constitution.  I would bet that not one in a thousand Americans has a clue of any of this.

Moreover, the USMA at West Point taught constitutional law using an 1825 text written by Philadelphia lawyer William Rawle, (1759-1836) a friend of George Washington and an active abolitionist.  Rawle's View teaches the Jeffersonian compact theory of the Constitution.  It argues for the legality of secession and essentially gives a step-by-step guide to how it would be done.  The Jeffersonian view was mainstream in those days.  This is the view of the Constitution that was taught to the military and government leaders in antebellum America.  The Jeffersonian view was so established in antebellum America, that a secession convention was called in Hartford, Connecticut by New England states considering secession in the waning days of the War of 1812 (the war's end brought the secession movement to a close).  There were threats of secession made in Northern states over the annexation of Texas.  Abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison proposed secession of non-slave states from the Union.  There was no suggestion at that time that secession was treason, as the Jeffersonian view was the mainstream legal theory of the time.  Those court-historians who write the current American school curricula who deny this are either ignorant or engaged in gaslighting, if not outright propaganda.  I would bet that not one in ten thousand Americans knows this.

To have an actual understanding of the conflict instead of an oversimplified Schoolhouse Rock-style self-serving cartoonish court-historian view, it is necessary to examine the motivations of both sides - even if ultimately one disagrees with the Southern argument.  Simply dismissing us as traitors and racists is no different than the modern sepsis of Trump Derangement Syndrome.