by Paul H. Yarbrough (January 2024)
I will sing a new song unto thee, O God— Psalm 144:9
The monster is out. Its call of the wild is a screech by the mind-inert television wannabe professors of pomposity and pretentiousness. It comes not from those who deliver like (maybe as) pretty people on the high school set of CNN, MSNBC, etc. (you know the usual bunch of 50-year-old teenagers). There is no hope for that set of humanoid elements. They are lost in a spate of historical histrionics. The woods closed in around them long ago. Hansel followed Gretel’s portraits because they are supposedly two “pees” in a pod. These mounted misinformation and artless “national” criers are plenty and pitiful. They are merely, but natural, the rot of life.
However, such is not the witch. This witch of evil is the collective progressives in conservative camouflage. These are the beasts. The Hugh Hewitts et al who claim John Calhoun is evil, perhaps even the Hillsdale hectors who pretend love of country; or, as well, the Fox Newsies who seemingly use books as doorstops so that they do not only gather dust.
The real point men of political posturing are of the unread tutors and such types usually heard on some talk network or some cosmetic news channel of the Fox-type doublespeak sorts: Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Larry O’Connor, and on and on into the rotted nest of Republican professionals—hundreds perhaps thousands of them. Like termites and Democrats, they talk with their mouths full and do nothing but smack their food for thought while simultaneously painting self-portraits of rudeness and obliviousness. These same Trump pretenders are the heirs and political bloodlines of the Goldwater and Reagan pretenders (both of those candidates were backstabbed by their “supporters”).
These sorts would lie to their own mothers. For those who know their daddies, they would salute with a forward-arched arm at 45 degrees, mimicking “Heil Abe.” They often praise “democracy” and will most likely never understand “republic.” Though, for God’s sake, they constantly swear they are a republic, not a democracy.
Good grief, a guy such as Mark Levin calling someone a “stupid idiot” is first-rate for the “pot calling the kettle black”!
Their cosmetic history lessons are like the cheap makeup of the rented whore. Wash it off, and the real face of history can be seen with the natural facial lines. That is, whatever it is, it is, and NOT what you think it should be. But if not with makeup, then with Deep State masks. They are of the same breed as those who conned Goldwater and Reagan.
Initially, Hansel laid down stones to mark the trail. Next, he foolishly laid down breadcrumbs. The damn birds ate the trail—like Yankee birds. The witch smiled.
Why Nikki Haley spouted the truth recently, one can never be sure. Politicians of character and honor are as rare as congressional thrift. But she dared blister as false in a conference the tattered canard that the “Civil War” (she did, erroneously, call it that) was “about” slavery.
No, the modern monster is what many people believe is the voice and political savior sacrament of what so many have fallen victim to and from whom they lay claim to hugs and kisses from “the conservative primordial” of something magically designed as “the American Dream.”
Tragically, these folks have been led, like the aforementioned Hansel and Gretel, by real breadcrumbs (in an imaginary world). If someone could take them by the hand into the field of useful fictitious styles of the greats of yesteryear, such as Homer and other fellow old-timers, where fiction presents truth—fabula est veritas.
Like Homer, in the original sense of what he wrote was imagined as the “truth” i.e. it was written as a best guess without the help of modern historical research. The poetry simply aided in presenting a rhythmic presentation to the reader. He sought revelation of truth through myth, not some pre-Anno Domini free verse, simply to become a poet quizmaster of the Mediterranean world.
But these monster voices today cry out for history by The Brothers Grimm and not by Homer, poetic or not. After all, if they are not going to understand Aristotle’s theories on government, they sure as double damnation ain’t going to understand Homer’s historical disclosures.
Currently, the historical subject is what we have today in the brashness of many claims that Conservatives are those robust lovers of Lincoln and who claim Joe Biden is the worst president ever. Maybe Biden is no more than a thug, as his seedling, Hunter, and much of his family are. But if Homer were alive today and had access to the modern library he could write an epic poem about Lincoln that would make Biden look like no more than John Dillinger up against Al Capone.
Depending on recent polls, 40% of Southerners and 23% of those polled support the former oft- “Lost Cause.” This is in an age of pervasive PUBLIC EDUCATION where the brainwashing of history students is almost formal. But the numbers above are a bit more than “only a few” in any school. And people are rethinking more about a subject that the posturing presentist have attempted to dictate.
More conservatives now realize that conservatism stands for a republican union—not a national state. People who believe in the “Lost Cause” stand and/or salute the Star-Spangled Banner—not a national anthem.
Perhaps more people are reaching back and studying history from original sources and not the silly presentism of the Dinesh D’ Souza, Brian Kilmeade, or Mark Levin types—Republicans in Conservative clothing—and the original secession of 1776 and its future facsimile in the CSA. As well, these same students are going to sites like The Abbeville Institute and not to Fox Nation, with its pervasive presence of pseudo-historians writing their own jabberwocky. Those who reach back are digging up the true dirt on the Republican Party, which supported “no blacks” in the territories. Not “no slaves” in the territories.
Neither political party was especially for or against slavery in 1860. The Republicans aligned themselves with some abolitionists. Those who mostly wanted blacks expatriated. Lincoln’s political bilge is filled with statements as such. Not only that but his offering bribe to the South of the Corwin amendment is pure politics. It stated for all south of the Mason Dixon Line to hear that he would accept the amendment if such passed.
The Democrats were split north and south and were indifferent, but knew that slavery would soon die under its own weight in any event.
The literature of history told from the South’s point of view is pervasive. But few want to believe anything except that the South kidnapped blacks in order to get free labor and to practice cruelty. And the CSA declared war on the United States to keep this “system.” This nonsense is perpetuated within and throughout every public school and most private ones to this day, although its foundation is weakening.
The general nonsense about states, particularly Georgia and Mississippi, making statements when they seceded about “standing on slavery” has deliberately been misinterpreted. The comments meant that the political parties outside the South wanted abolition and repatriation of negroes. Thus “freeing” massive numbers of poor, uneducated negroes to be scattered to the winds to die; or to be shipped back to Africa, such as in Liberia. If they remained with their owners, they could ultimately be freed through manumission, education, or the general collapse of slavery (which was happening worldwide outside Africa).
Consider that no slave ship ever sailed from a Southern port. In fact, they were all of Northern registry. The South had no ships. They were the agrarian society. The North, the navigation society. As a matter of fact, only 4-5% of the African slaves ended up in the American South. But how many cities outside the American South were burned, looted, and pillaged by brutes like Grant and Sherman?
The great generals and statesmen of the South and their forebears were instrumental in forming and believing in an original republican union. The leadership of the CSA and the people of the South almost certainly had more forebears who signed the Declaration of Independence than the rest of the Union. It was in the spirit of this same Declaration, principally written by a Virginian, that the Southern states seceded.
Apart from that, all 13 of the original states ratified the Constitution with the understanding that they could leave if dissatisfied. Just as they had seceded from the governing body under the Articles of Confederation, And they never forgot the following:
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
This is a fundamental statement to the world that any people have a right to secede.
“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Lord Acton. I offer more of Lord Acton. Writing to Lee after the Confederate surrender: “I mourn for the stake which was lost at Appomattox more deeply than over that which was saved at Waterloo.” And Acton was no supporter of slavery. He did support The Lost Cause.
From Dr. Clyde Wilson, Professor Emeritus of History at The University of South Carolina:
When we speak about the causes of war should we not pay some attention to the motives of the attacker and not blame everything on the people who were attacked and conquered? To say that the war was “caused” by the South’s defense of slavery is logically comparable to the assertion that World War II was caused by Poland resisting attack by Germany. People who think this way harbor an unacknowledged assumption: Southerners are not fellow citizens deserving of tolerance but bad people and deserve to be conquered. The South and its people are the property of the North to do with as they wish. Therefore, no other justification is needed. That Leninist attitude is very much still alive judging by the abuse I receive in print and by e-mail. The abuse never discusses evidence, only denounces what is called “Neo-Confederate” and “Lost Cause” mythology. These are both political terms of abuse that have no real meaning and are designed to silence your enemy unheard.
The monster howls as it, hopefully, dies. Deo Vindice.
Table of Contents
Paul H. Yarbrough has written for The Blue State Conservative, NOQ, The Daily Caller, American Thinker, The Abbeville Institute, Lew Rockwell, and more. He is the author of 4 novels: Mississippi Cotton, A Mississippi Whisper, Thy Brother’s Blood, and The Yeller Rose of Texas, in addition to many short stories and poems.
Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast
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13 Responses
“Neither political party was especially for or against slavery in 1860.”
This statement above is incorrect.
The Republican party was formed in the late 1850s specifically to oppose the extension of slavery.
I googled this for you:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Republican-Party
The Republican party was opposed to blacks. free or slave, into the territories. The Republicans (with Lincoln at the head of the charge) wanted to repatriate blacks to Africa. He, was a heavy supporter of the American Colonization Society.
Lincoln changed his view from repatriation to abolitionism; worth mentioning don’t you think?
If the South was the guardian of the Constitution and the Lincolnites were tyrants why then was Lincoln barred from the ballots of all the southern states?
Please provide historical sources that state that Republicans were opposed to black people in the territories as opposed to black slaves and the slavery system. Good luck.
Dr. Wilson’s comment/question below is absurd and a logical and historical fallacy:
To say that the war was “caused” by the South’s defense of slavery is logically comparable to the assertion that World War II was caused by Poland resisting attack by Germany.
The comparison is ridiculous and likely purposefully misleading. It is not at all, as he claims, “logically comparable.”
Is such a comment/rhetorical question a statement of historical analysis by a history professor or is it a partisan political statement of a polemicist pushing an agenda?
I would suggest THE REAL LINCOLN by Thomas Dilorenzo as an excellent starting point for your bevy of questions (which I certainly welcome). You might find that much you have “learned” is inaccurate. As far as Dr. Wilson is concerned, I suggest you study some of (or at least make a cursory effort) his voluminous historical works. He is, by the way, a five-star historian. You seem to want to seek the truth. So do I. I’m just suggesting, perhaps, a study of what the South was, though imperfect, with more objectivity.
Thankyou for your reply.
I think that the mission, an impossible one, for southern partisans is to separate the Confederacy (and the war that they caused) from slavery, the “cornerstone” of Southern society. Rescuing Confederates from the slave system that they fought for is not possible regardless of any constitutional justifications for secession that are presented. This does not mean that they are not worthy of study or respect or public memorial/ commemoration such as the Confederate memorial at Arlington that should NOT be removed supported as it has been by no less than four presidents who spoke there to talk about reconciliation, forgiveness, and national unity. The fundamental truth of the Confederacy was slavery. Denial of this truth is to deny history which is both unfair and inaccurate.
No disrespect intended, sir.
No disrespect taken. I can only say that the “fundamental truth of the Confederacy was slavery” is to misunderstand “confederacy” as a common noun, its roots to the Anti-Federalists (the original Republicans) and to misunderstand the history of slavery not only in the American states but worldwide from its roots, centuries past.
I am not angered at your comments. I think you have been misled historically. But that’s just what I think. Again, I recommend THE REAL LINCOLN and perhaps some of Dr. Wilson’s essays and writings: FROM UNION TO EMPIRE or DEFENDING DIXIE are excellent historical comments.
Again, I appreciate your comments. And have a Happy New Year.
Sir,
In the Constitution of the Confederate States of America the following is stated in Article One, Section 9.4:
“No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.”
By its own founding document the Confederacy places slavery at the core of the building blocks of the country. This is then confirmed by Alexander Stephens (Vice president of the CSA) in his speech of March 21, 1861, in which he said,
“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.”
The legal character of slavery, and the nature and details of the president’s term in office are two of the only differences between the CS constitution and the US constitution.
It seems to me that there is no misunderstanding on my part as to the character of the Confederacy and its founding principles.
As before, rescuing the Confederacy and individual confederates from the stain of slavery is not possible. It is not possible because slavery is at the core of the Confederacy itself.
Can we then say with assurance that Stonewall Jackson, for example, is free of the stain of slavery because he taught black children how to read? No. Can we say that Robert E. Lee is free of the stain due to his exceptional character as a man and as a military leader? No. Can we say that Patrick Cleburne is free of the stain because he emigrated to the south from Ireland? No.
Can we say that the Confederacy itself is free of the stain of slavery because they voted to arm the slaves of the south in exchange for their freedom in March, 1865? No.
Does this also mean that it was correct to remove Stonewall Jackson’s statue from the school where he taught prior to the war (VMI)? No.
What this is all about, in my view, is that we are obligated to accept, as difficult as it is, the profound contradictions of our history.
We’re supposed to learn from the mistakes of the past so that the present and the future can be even more just and brighter. This is why the Confederate monument at Arlington is so important with its associated lessons of toleration and unity.
The current zeitgeist affirms that these lessons were never learned and that the country is a hell hole of racism and fraud. This is a great lie of self-hatred, self-destruction, and most importantly – revolutionism.
I do assert however, that we must be as honest as humanly possible about our history, the mistakes that were made, the people who were harmed, and the lessons that were then learned.
You wrote: ” I think you have been misled historically. ”
I have not been misled by history. I know many however who are.
If you have read the article you would find each of your comments was answered before you made them. Not the least of which was Alexander Stephens’ “cornerstone” comment. You might reread the EP (I assume you have read it) that Lincoln actually freed NONE of the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation which he had no authority to edict, in any event, freed only those slaves in Confederate territory and left in slavery those within Confederate areas that the Union had occupied. In other words, he “freed” those he could NOT free and left those in servitude whom he COULD free.
If you would perhaps research some of Charles Dickens (quite the 19th century liberal-and supporter of the South ) you would also find that he recognized that the slaves in the South were better off for the time than the Northern textile mill owners via the so-called “Lint-Head” mill workers. The North made the great fortunes off slavery through its slave trading continuously up and into the War Between the States and with its vast textile mills fed by its great market demand for Southern cotton.
I didn’t see Alexander Stephens’ comment addressed in the article anywhere… nor did I see any of the points “A new reader” addressed in his comments addressed in the article above. I think Yarbrough’s piece was interesting and gave me some food for thought, but “A new Reader” actually makes a stronger case and Yarbrough was unable to refute the points.
Also, of course the South fought ALSO to keep slavery. To deny this is to deny facts and evidence which it appears Yarbrough is doing. This doesn’t mean all Southerners were awful and it doesn’t mean every general we grew up respecting isn’t worthy of that respect. These were complex and flawed men and, at the time, complex issues for people and the economy. But denying that they fought to defend slavery is absolutely false.
The concept of “slavery” is one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented concepts in historical nomenclature—at least by the modern media/academia/ radio-talk-blowhards. Where and how the slaves came, who was responsible for their destination, and what to do with them at what point was a question that had (should have been) to be answered with careful consideration and thought.
To the Yankee North and to today’s above-mentioned media-historical ilk there was only one solution because there was simply one problem in their minds: slaves were like prisoners who were locked up and forced to work for nothing. The solution: FREE them.
It is this woeful mentality that drives not just The New York Times, CNN et al but even what people consider “Conservatives,” the like of such being Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and the many, many, many others (you hear them every day) suspects who have never read any history south of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Well, the term slavery isn’t really misunderstood, but I agree with your assessment that to the Yankee North and to most of today’s population, slavery does, in fact, mean people locked up and forced to work for nothing, and that most people would say the only solution would be to “free them.” I get that. But, it occurs to me that this is a very similar argument that conservatives use about unborn babies– we dislike abortion and believe pre-born babies have a right to exist. And, they do. And, this is the same argument we used against slavery. All men shall be free and have a right to live freely and act as their own agent. It’s the argument we still use today while, again, more democrats (as they did way back when), call for slavery of blacks, now slavery of society, and for the continued killing of unborn babies.
It’s also true that there will be repercussions in all this– that more babies will be born into poverty and that we have another society that is now pretty much calling for a revolution. I don’t have the answer to that, since we can’t send an entire population to Liberia, and we cannot condone slavery just to keep a certain element “in check” just as we can’t start advocating for the killing of children just because that might decrease poverty and cramped living conditions.
As always, we deal with earthly evil.
Last things first: “As always, we deal with earthly evil.”
I would come close to agreeing, but would (I don’t believe I’m splitting hairs here) suggest a belief that C.S, Lewis shared: That there is no such thing as good and evil, but good and good-gone-bad. Satan did not want to destroy God, but to be like God, “I will be like the most high.” Isaiah 14:14. This is pride. This is the closest man has to facing any sort of pure evil (just my opinion)
My comment on slavery was actually that the “the concept” of slavery is misunderstood, not the “term”. Paul’s letter to Philemon regarding the slave (servant) Onesimus is a more appropriate Southern understanding and not that of the Pharaoh of Egypt carrying slaves through severe bondage.
The modern Yankee concept (like their Puritanical forefathers) is that the South owned people for free work and like the “evil” Egyptians beat and misused them for profit and these moderns(Southerners) deserved the “Civil War” Red Sea that destroyed them.
This is slavery for their contemporary minds. This from the traders of Yankee-ville who with their partners-in-trading, the African (black) tribes, who sold them to these white Yankee slave traders in the first place, were comparable to the “Egyptian brutes” of severe bondage, and such traders who chained them to ships (of Northern registry) and often threw them overboard if shortages of ship-supply so deemed.
Abortion? The modern safety valve for birth control. This is good (sex, for husband and wife) gone bad—whorehouses, sodomy, etc. Those who accept it as a right are of the same tribe as those who think it was wrong to execute Ted Bundy.
I do thank you for your thoughtful and disciplined comments.