Confederates and Catholics, Unite!
July 21 marks the 146th anniversary of the beginning of the First Manassas (or First Bull Run, in Yankese). On that day, Washington citizens went out to the battlefield a-picnicking, to watch the onslaught of the Confederates under General Beauregard. While it was a victory for the South, a number of considerations (including the exhaustion of his men, and the early Confederate delusion that merely expelling all Federals from the soil of their new country would secure victory) Beauregard did not cross the Potomac and end the war.
Tactical and strategic considerations aside, however, this anniversary brings the Sunny South to my mind, in all her splendor and tragedy. To be sure, I have never lived down there; but more than a few turns in the South (to steal a phrase from V.S. Naipaul) have lost my heart to her (although her Summer weather has freed her from the spectre of my ever taking up residence within her boundaries). Just where do those boundaries lie? For the purposes of this article, she’ll take in the border states of Delaware , Maryland , West Virginia , Kentucky , and Missouri , as well as Texas and Oklahoma . Even New Mexico and Arizona were considered a territory of the CSA, for all that the Confederate hold on Santa Fe was brief, and Tucson even briefer. But Kansas just missed becoming Southern, thanks to a bloody civil war before the Civil War; even Los Angeles was carried by Breckenridge in the election of 1860, and suburban El Monte (about ten miles from where I am writing this) flew the stars and bars over their city hall every time news arrived out here of a Confederate victory. Those who have been to Wilmington , Baltimore , Kansas City, or Tulsa may dispute my assignation of those areas to Dixie , but travel a bit deeper into the countryside, and the reason for their allocation will become obvious.
Responding to a recent article of mine on New England in this venue, a number of commentators cited the masterful Albion’s Seed as an introduction to understanding the cultural differences already at play in the settling of New England , as well as the Middle and Southern Colonies. I would cite two others as well, both by renegade Republican Kevin Phillips: The Cousins’ Wars and his much earlier work, The Emerging Republican Majority. While the latter book covers a time that has come and gone, its analysis of the religious, cultural, and ethnic influence on voting was prescient, and Phillips used the same methodology in his brilliant, later tome. These all-important factors are too often left out of consideration of American history and politics, and nowhere are they more crucial to understanding an area than they are in considering the South.
For one thing, the settlement of the Southern colonies was layered, from Maryland to Georgia : English (with pockets of Scots) and their black slaves in the Tidewater; Germans in the Piedmont ; and Ulster Scots (or Scotch-Irish as they came to be called) in the mountains. As Americans pushed West and Southward after the Revolution, these patterns retained a certain amount of influence. Those who have noted the cultural similarities between the Appalachians and the Ozarks will hardly be surprised to find out that the settlement roots of the latter lie in the former.
There was another difference from the North, however. As the South expanded, it encountered pre-existent Spanish and French settlements that were as old as anything on the Atlantic Coast (in the case of St. Augustine, Florida, much older), and were far more populous than similar sites in the Old Northwest. Florida , the Mississippi-Alabama Gulf Coast, Louisiana, and Texas were all affected by the encounter between the old, Catholic, Latin cultures and the new Anglo-American one. As Appalachia settled the Ozarks, Catholic sections of Maryland seeded central Kentucky (called even today the “Holy Land,” and boasting villages with names like “Holy Cross” and “Loretto.”) The French Revolution and the slave risings in Haiti sent French refugees of both colors not only to Louisiana , but to such ports as Savannah, Charleston, and Norfolk, where they had a large effect on the local culture (Gone with the Wind readers will recall that Scarlet O’Hara’s maternal grandparents were among these). German and Irish immigrants were important locally, though not on the scale of their brethren up north. The “Irish Channel” in New Orleans earned its name honestly, and it was said that were it not for Yellow Fever, the Crescent City would have been as Irish as it was French. Even so, the urban blue-collar accent spoken there (popularly called “Yat”) which sounds so much like Brooklynese apparently owes its origins to the same Irish-German mix that produced the New York version. Immigrant Germans would play a big role as well in Texas and Missouri.
Added to this diversity among Europeans was of course the African presence. Coming as they did from different parts of Africa, partly melted together in the crucible of slavery, and soon deprived of their native languages, these unwilling newcomers were no more uniform than their masters. Differing attitudes toward color on the part of the French and Spanish led to the rise of a mixed-race aristocracy in the Gulf States, many of whom owned plantations and slaves of their own, as well as boasting French educations (there was a similar but distinct Spanish-based group in Pensacola). In a sense, American blacks are the most American of us all (save the Indians); for the most part they have no really identifiable ties to their specific homelands, other than biology. What cultural traits they did retain have become our common property, as fans of Elvis Presley, the Blues, and the Rolling Stones must admit.
Nor may we forget the natives. The Five Civilized Tribes are well-known indeed, as is the tragic tale of their expulsion to Oklahoma . But not all left, and those that did remained loyal to the South—and seceded with her. But there were and are other, smaller, broken tribes in out-of-the-way places. Produced by remnants of these, runaway slaves, and outcast whites, here and there in the South arose such groups as the Moors of Delaware and the Melungeons of the Appaclachians, whom the anthropologists dub “Tri-Racial Isolates.”
As one might guess, despite the popular notion of all antebellum Southerners (the white ones, anyway) living in Tara-like palatial homes, the South in 1860 was extremely diverse. Nor was it uninfluenced by the North, culturally. Many wealthy Southerners sent their scions to study at Princeton (although they had their own perfectly good universities at Williamsburg, Charleston, and elsewhere). Although the Episcopal Church had been the established one in the Southern colonies prior to the Revolution, it was swiftly disestablished after that war (even though most of its Southern members had been on the revolutionary side). The spiritual vacuum in the South was filled primarily by the Methodists and Baptists, in no small part because they required little education in their ministers, and so were able to establish congregations at a prodigious rate. But the latter faith had come to the South directly from New England and Philadelphia in 1727, with the erection of Shiloh Church in Cisco, North Carolina. The area soon mushroomed with similar congregations, but they in turn generally converted to Calvinist or “Particular” Baptistry. We outsiders tend to think of the South as heavily Calvinist. She may well be, but she got it from the North.
This shared heritage did not form ties that bound, however. After 1808, when the importation of slaves from Africa became illegal, thus ending to a great degree the “Triangle Trade” that had made New England seaports wealthy (although some illegal activity of this sort continued; the last Slaver put out of Portland, Maine in 1859), Abolitionism gathered strength in the New England States. Southerners then and now would claim that the Yankees “got religion” on this point when slavery was no longer profitable for them. But however that may be, tensions on both sides rose, and in turn, on this very issue of slavery, the Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists split (the first two would reunite in the 20th century, but the gulf between the latter only gets wider).
So things stood at the election of Abraham Lincoln, when the split of the Democratic Party into three pieces allowed the new Republicans in—and convinced the Southern politicians that abolition was imminent. Oceans of ink have been shed over the rightness or wrongness of secession. It seems to this writer that there are two separate questions here, actually. Is (or was, since we know now that no State will ever be permitted to do so today—whatever provocation she may face) secession morally permissible in the abstract? And, was this particular act of secession, at this point in time, justified?
As regards the first question, one is reminded of the comment of a comedian-friend of Lincoln’s. When the new president asked him what he thought of the Southern States breaking the Union. “Well, Mr. President, if Secession be a valid concept, then my sympathies must lie with the South. If not, then I can only say, ‘God Bless His Majesty!’” This points up an uneasy truth for a quasi-Calvinist nation like ourselves—if one of our foundational conflicts was moral, the other cannot be. But in any case, the Southerners themselves pointed to the example of their grandfathers’ rebellion against the Crown—which is why the coat-of-arms of the Confederacy featured Washington astride a horse. Moreover, since my native State of New York only acceded to the Constitution on the proviso that it could withdraw from that contract should it prove annoying, I myself could hardly condemn the concept. It is interesting to note, however, that, in my lifetime, the attempts at secession I have seen—the unsuccessful ventures of Biafra , Rhodesia , and Katanga , and the rather more victorious efforts of Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Slovakia—were all opposed to varying degrees by Washington—a town that can’t seem to stand seeing small regions escape the grip of a central government.
But if we admit that secession can be a valid concept, what about this particular case? The immediate issue, of course, Lincoln ’s election, would perhaps seem a little flimsy, given that he had not actually done anything against the South. But its residents were sure he would. The underlying issues were, of course, slavery and States’ Rights. Since 1865, Southern apologists have maintained that slavery was tangential to the issue. But of course, this is belied by the actual declarations of independence of the individual Confederate States. Reading these texts would seem to make an open and shut case. However, there is more to the story. Each of these documents invoke 1776, of course, and as with the conflict that was in progress then, there were divisions of opinion. In the South large areas opposed Secession, to include what became West Virginia, eastern Tennessee (which almost seceded from her home State as well), and smaller areas, like Huey Long’s native place, Winn Parish, Louisiana. But much as these enclaves opposed secession, they did not embrace abolition (although the immigrant Germans of Texas and Missouri did, for the most part). The pro-Southern Copperheads of the North, for the most part, did not support the “Peculiar Institution” either—certainly not ex-President Franklin Pierce, who vocally supported the Confederacy from his New Hampshire home, or Catholic convert James McMaster, whose paper, The Freeman’s Journal, was shut down and himself imprisoned when he accused Lincoln in print of being an enemy of free speech. Indeed, in the prosecution of the War, the president introduced the draft, income tax, and suppression of habeus corpus. He also unwittingly did damage to the English language in this country, since after his victory, the grammatically correct usage “the United States are…” was replaced in most people’s mouths with the illiterate “the United States is….”
One may argue forever (and doubtless people will) over the rights and wrongs of the War Between the States. What cannot be argued is that the War whose tactical commencement we are remembering today in large part created the Southern mystique. The wide vein of Walter Scott-derived Romanticism that flowed through the Southern psyche before the War (giving birth to such as Edgar Allan Poe) poured into the endless tragedy of a battered, defeated, and occupied land. While one may or may not share the politics of the Confederate leadership, one cannot but admit the powerful emotions evoked by the “Lost Cause.” To visit any of the many Confederate memorials around the South—such as the Confederate Memorial Chapels in Richmond and Blandford (Petersburg) Virginia and in Higginsville, Missouri; the Confederate Museum in New Orleans; Beauvoir, Jefferson Davis’ last home in Biloxi, Mississippi (the house, heavily damaged in Katrina, will reopen in 2008, while the cemetery, with the tomb of the Unknown Confederate Soldier, is open now); the “White Houses” and Capitols in Richmond and Montgomery; and the Episcopal Churches in those cities where the President and his family worshipped, to name a very few locations—well, whether one considers oneself Blue or Gray, he cannot come away unaffected by the horror that rained down upon the South.
The sadness left behind by that conflict, the feeling of exile in one’s own land, certainly affected Southern writers as different as William Alexander Percy, William Faulkner, and those “Fugitive” poets of Vanderbilt University who morphed into the Southern Agrarians of I’ll Take My Stand. This latter group’s dream that the innate nature of the South could somehow regenerate itself, and perhaps even the nation at large, remained a dream. But they did leave behind a powerful legacy, as fans of Richard Weaver and his confreres will know—and other writers left us that literary mood called “Southern Gothic.”
But all was and is not sadness in Dixie—although its most jovial elements retain a touch of melancholy. This emotion is certainly present in the folk music, which beguiled outsiders even before the Civil War. Stephen Foster, for example, although born in Pittsburgh (he would die in New York City) and a decided opponent of Secession, is widely remembered as a Southerner—and much of his music is now an indissoluble part of the Southern tradition. Even more remarkable, Al Jolson (born Asa Yoelson in Seredzius, Lithuania ) carved out quite a career in the early 20th century singing truly maudlin tunes about Dixie and Mammy. While he had no real connection with the area, he transmogrified his yearning for the homeland he could barely remember into a metaphor an American audience could understand.
There was, however, one group, for whom the South was not so appealing in those days—American blacks. The issue of race certainly does cut through Southern history like a knife. Nevertheless, in addition to lynchings and segregation, we should remember a few other things about its history down South. The interrelationship of two very different groups, one subject to the other but in very close quarters, is extremely complex, to say the least. As we know, slavery was on the wane—until the invention of the cotton gin made it profitable once more. Stories of Haiti, and such outbreaks as the Nat Turner revolt in 1831 Virginia made the prospect of slave revolt quite fearsome to Southern whites. But here is where the story gets interesting. When most of the white male population marched of to fight the Yankees, those who had them necessarily left their women, children, and property in the care of their slaves. Although there are numerous stories of these bondsmen being tortured and killed by Union troops for refusing to reveal the whereabouts of the family silver, there are none that I can find of slaves taking advantage of the situation to murder their charges or rob their masters’ kin. As in most periods of history, the situation was rather more complex than we of the 21st century are taught to think.
When what was left of the “Boys in Gray” came home, it was to a country where they had no civil rights. Under Reconstruction, Confederate veterans or government workers (most of the white male population) could neither vote nor bear witness in court. This left them completely vulnerable before the Carpetbaggers, Scalawags, and emancipated blacks who now ran their stricken region. It does not take a genius to see that unscrupulous folk would take advantage of the situation. Bereft of legal redress, a group of Confederate veterans founded the Ku-Klux-Klan in 1866. The following year, General Nathan Bedford Forrest became its leader. Forrest, however, saw the main foes of the Klan as the Carpetbaggers and Scalawags. Disgusted by the Klan’s increasingly violent tactics and its targeting of Blacks (the latter annoying because he had commanded Black troops in battle), he soon resigned.
Reconstruction ended by 1877, when the traditional leadership of the South (or what remained of it) made a deal with the Federal government. They would be allowed back into politics, in return for guaranteeing the civil rights of the Blacks. This gentlemen’s agreement lasted until the 1890s, when the generation that remembered the Antebellum period shuffled off or died out, and were replaced by the young Fire-eaters whose memories began with Reconstruction. They would have their revenge, and his name was Jim Crow, the bastard son of the Carpetbaggers.
Another group who aroused the ire of the renascent Klan, during and after World War I, were the Catholics. As indicated earlier, in antebellum times, Catholics were a presence, if a small one, in various parts of the South.
Because of their relatively high social standing, members of that Faith wielded an influence all out of proportion to their numbers—there was a Catholic in Davis ’s cabinet, as well as a Jew who later converted. The three arguably best known Southern war songs were all written by Catholics—“Dixie” by Daniel Decatur Emmet, “Maryland, My Maryland” by James Ryder Randall, and “The Bonnie Blue Flag” by Harry McCarthy (beautifully performed by Damon Kirsche in the extraordinary 2003 film Gods and Generals). Such verses as “The Conquered Banner” and “The Sword of Robert Lee” were written by Confederate Army chaplain, Rev. Abram Ryan, the “poet-priest of the Confederacy.” The soon to be canonized Pope Pius IX was the only foreign ruler to recognize Davis ’ presidency. After the war, while Davis languished in Fortress Monroe, Pope Pius sent Davis his portrait and a crown of thorns he had made with his own hands (this second class relic may be viewed at the Confederate Museum in New Orleans). Davis had himself attempted to convert to Catholicism at 14, but the Dominicans who taught him demurred on account of his age; nonetheless, his rosary and scapular were on display at Beauvoir.
But this alliance proved a somewhat costly one for the Church. The Catholic elites in the South were as damaged any of their confreres—and this included those of color, who found their position eroded after Reconstruction and destroyed by Jim Crow. Moreover, Catholics had to contend with direct enmity from the occupiers, in the form of Freedmen’s Bureau, an office erected by the Federal government, ostensibly to guide the newly-liberated slaves onto the path of freedom. In Louisiana, at any rate, that mandate was interpreted by the local Bureau leadership as entailing getting as many of their charges to abandon Catholicism as possible (during the same period the Bureau of Indian Affairs replaced Catholic with Protestant missionaries on many Indian reservations). One of the Bureau’s most notable successes was with a black couple in Franklin, Louisiana, named Seymour. Although they had baptized their son William Catholic, under the influence of their northern mentors they raised him Baptist. He would go on to lead the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles , generally recognized as the birth of Pentecostalism.
At any rate, after the War, the same generation that brought in Jim Crow began to identify Catholics as both “foreign” and Yankee. This would hamper the work of the Church in the South for generations. Moreover, it produced a mindset among Catholics not unlike that of the old Recusant in England. As a suspect minority, each had to choose for himself how far he could accept the prevailing ethos—racially and otherwise. Typical of these folk were the writers Margaret Mitchell and Flannery O’Connor. The latter, in particular, explored the odd position she and her co-religionists occupied in a region that, despite its suspicion of her creed, had more in common with it in many ways than did the more tolerant (and Catholic-filled) North. Her clearest statement on the topic was her brilliant essay, “The Catholic Writer in the Protestant South,” where famously referred to her native region as “Christ-haunted.”
In recent decades, however, much of this has changed. The invention and propagation of air conditioning after World War II allowed many Northerners, tired of the winters and urban blight of their homes, to flock south. Not merely to Florida, either: Northern Virginia; Fayetteville and Charlotte, North Carolina; Dallas, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; and many other places are becoming quite Yankee. In very recent decades, Mexican migrant workers have appeared in many places (I know one Catholic Church in rural North Carolina where, due to the high infant mortality rate among that segment of his flock, the priest has taken to burying their children for free as a special apostolate). Moreover, thanks to the end of segregation and the same unpleasant conditions in the North and West that white folks notice, many Blacks have begun returning to the land they or their families left. Adding a bizarre element to the mix, many Californians are heading to North Carolina, as their own state decays.
But not unlike the unfortunate results when hipsters discover an old tavern, love the atmosphere, and then begin pushing to turn it into the kind of fern-bar they fled, so too with many newcomers to the South. Raised on a strictly Northern view of the Civil War, they unite with local Blacks (whose motives are far more legitimate) and agitate for removal of the remnants of Confederate memory. Thanks to pressure of various kinds, the University of Mississippi rarely plays Dixie any more. Due to “massive litigation,” in 1997, the Confederate Memorial Hall in Washington, D.C. , owned by its sponsoring association since the late 19th century, had to be sold. Richmond’s “Battle Abbey of the South” has been swallowed up by the Virginia Historical Association. But the most memorable fight has certainly been the “ Battle of the Flags,” as state house after state house has been forced to bring down the Confederate flag. One may understand why that flag would annoy many blacks (although perhaps not those whose ancestors fought for the South). But I would like to suggest that they should be equally annoyed at the Stars and Stripes—which flew for much longer over legal slavery, and later became the symbol of Reconstruction-era oppression.
Despite all of this, however, the South today remains a pleasant place to visit, indeed. Without a doubt, my favorite part is New Orleans , as well as the Cajun country, about which I have written elsewhere. But the old coastal and river towns, each with their own identity and culture—ah, what can compare, this side of the water? San Antonio and Houston , St. Louis and Natchez and Louisville , Mobile and Pensacola , St. Augustine and Savannah and Charleston, New Bern and Edenton, Richmond and Williamsburg, and so many other beside! The old plantations, the forts, the homes of famous writers, the small museums, the battlefields! For a writer of antiquary bent, there is quite simply nothing like it.
The tradition of liberal education, practically banished from the Ivy League continues with some vigor in small colleges and universities dotted around the former Confederacy. Certainly, religion plays a much bigger part in public life there than it does in the rest of the country—including, deplorably, heavily Catholic regions such as Boston and New York City. It would be hard to imagine a man like Chief Justice Moore defending the Ten Commandments so heroically in any other part of America.
So too with the innumerable small groups of people, like St. Augustine’s Minorcans, Key West’s Conchs (although these Tory descendants are being pushed out), the Gullahs of the Sea Islands! Folklore and folk music yes, but above all, hospitality and gentility. And the food they serve.... There are regional specialties of all types (she-crab soup and turtle steak come to mind, but there are many others), but even more generally cooked specialties are mouth-watering Bring me collard, turnip or dandelion greens, rich with pork-filled pot-likker, and corn bread to sop it up with! Hush puppies and fried chicken, or biscuits and red-eye gravy! The list goes on and on, and even chain cafeterias like Piccadilly routinely turn out meals to die for. Taken all together, even a born-Yankee like me can feel why Southerners should love their land so, and once have been willing to die for it.
But outside of pleasure, the problems of the South remain. She too is slowly being absorbed by the Hideous Strength that seems ever more dominant throughout the land. What can be done to unify her, to make her able to play a part in the battle that looms around us?
Two things come to mind. One is that, in many ways, as Walker Percy, Margaret Mitchell and Flannery O’Connor perceived, in the current struggle between the “Modernity” foisted on us by our elites and those who hold to the traditions they brought to this country--religious and cultural--Protestant Southerners and Catholic Midwesterners and Yankees are natural allies. Both sides must realize this.
On the other, the race issue must somehow be laid to rest. It seems to me that the best way to begin with this is an honest reevaluation of the historical relationship between the races, freed from current political agendas. One thing that I have noticed in candid conversations with white Southerners is that while they have often expressed to me disdain for blacks as a group or (more often) as a political force, when asked if they know any personally, the answer is generally “yes.” When pressed as to whether they dislike any of these acquaintances, the answer is just as often “no.” In the North and West, when folk are asked how they feel about blacks, the response is usually some variation on “they’re wonderful.” But when asked if they know any, these same people will usually say “no.” The Southern attitude would appear to be something to build on.
Beyond that, Southern whites really need to look at Black history. Some of it is propaganda, some of it is not. The Jim Crow-era led to many evils (not least of which were spoiling literacy tests for voting by making them racially based) from which the country still suffers. But blacks too must look at their history, and realize that all is (if you’ll pardon the pun) black and white. There were black Confederate troops, such as the Louisiana Native Guards, and the steadfastness of Slaves under Yankee occupation we have referred to. The South as it is, and as it was, is as much the creation of blacks as whites, and Southerners of both races have more in common with each other than they do with their fellows in the rest of the country. I personally would make the 1942 autobiography of Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road, required reading in every high school in the South—or the North, for that matter. A more realistic—and mutually sympathetic—commentary on the relationship between the races would be hard to find; of course, in one of her novels, the protagonists are all white, a feat that few black authors would be able to get away with today. The epitaph on Miss Hurston’s grave is particularly fitting—“A Genius of the South.” When Confederate-descended Blacks can happily and proudly join the SCV, and when Southerners of both races can together defend their beliefs against those who would impose an alien and materialistic set of values upon them, and deprive them of the traditions that give them their identity, then the South will truly be healed—to the great advantage of us all. For the forces that are dominant in this land today mean to end all that our fathers held dear: in religion, in customs, in law. They would replace these with a manner of life, conceived in New York and hatched in Hollywood, which is as immoral as it is oppressive—far worse than anything either Whig or Tory, or Rebel or Yank, could conceive of either imposing upon or receiving from the other.
Of course, I am an outsider, and my views may well be inaccurate, irrelevant, woefully naïve—or worse, simply annoying to the actual denizens of that enchanted corner of this country. If such be the case, however, perhaps they will not object to my closing with the words of the first verse of the Confederate national anthem, “God Save the South”:
God save the South, God save the South,
Her altars and firesides, God save the South!
Now that the war is nigh, now that we arm to die,
Chanting our battle cry, “Freedom or death!”
Chanting our battle cry, “Freedom or death!”
Charles A. Coulombe is a writer descended from Jacobite, Tory and Confederate veterans.
Comments
An amazing summary of the historical roots of our
modern political landscape, I’m inspired to re-read my
copy of “The Cousin’s Wars” this weekend.
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We need more Yankees like Charles A. Coulombe! Only to add:
1. It wasn’t a “civil war”. A civil war is when two or more groups are attempting to take control of the government. Jeff Davis didn’t wish to be president in Washington. Rather, it was the “War Against Southern Secession”, the WASS, started by Lincoln. Just call it “Lincoln’s War”.
By the way, we also didn’t have a “revolutionary war”. A revolution is when there is an overthrow of the government. George Washington didn’t wish to rule in London. Rather, it was “The War Against American Secession From the British Empire”; the WAASEFBE will do.
2. Lincoln’s War was about tariffs, of tariffs, by tariffs, for tariffs (so to speak). Period. Full stop (for y’all in Albion).
3. Germans in the Piedmont [...] and Ulster Scots (or Scotch-Irish as they came to be called)
There was indeed a sprinkling of Germans in the Piedmont, mostly Dunkers (are they Anabaptists?) and in my own home town, Winston-Salem, Hussites (“Moravians”). But the overwhelming Piedmont settlers were the Borderer/Backcountry men – a mouthful, but better than “Scots-Irish”. We Backcountry boys aren’t Scottish (neither Highland or Low) or Irish. And Ulster was just our first place of migration from the Borders.
4. Those who have been to Wilmington , Baltimore , Kansas City, or Tulsa may dispute my assignation of those areas to Dixie , but travel a bit deeper into the countryside, and the reason for their allocation will become obvious.
I ain’t disputin’! If Delaware south of Wilmington, and East Shore MD ain’t Dixie, then I don’t know Dixie. MO south of the Missouri and outside of German settlements is very Dixie, and has one of the most dynamic chapters of The League of the South. Oklahoma has been Dixie from the start, settled by a mixed group of Borderers and “The Aboriginal Peoples”.
5. We outsiders tend to think of the South as heavily Calvinist. She may well be, but she got it from the North.
Only big boo-boo in this fine article. Take a gander at a dull but very informative book, Griffin, Patrick, The People With No Name : Ireland’s Ulster Scots, America’s Scots Irish, and the Creation of a British Atlantic world, 1689-1764 . Already in Ulster in the late 17th Century there was a split in the Presbyterians between the “Subscribers” (to the Westminster Confession) and the “Non-Subscribers” who emphasized the “Inner Light”. This latter group in the Backcountry became Arminian Methodists and Particular Baptists during the first Great Awakening from the preaching of Englishmen: Asbury and Whitefield. New England witch burning Puritan Cromwellian Calvinists ain’t had nuthin’ to do with it no way! By the way, the only surviving General Baptists whom I know of are the Free Will Baptists of eastern NC.
6. Thanks for some Black History that’s ignored. And some Catholic history!
7. EVERYBODY who wishes to know ANYTHING about Gringo history needs to drop everything and get a hold of Albion’s Seed! Fischer teaches at Brandeis; along with St. Judah P. Benjamin, just call it the Dixie-Jewish connection.
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Thank you, Mr. Coulombe, for this excellent article. (I am descended from Jacobites and Confederates, too.)
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We may have the same enemies but we are scarcely friends. The South is a byword for anti-Catholicism (interestingly, Lincoln was one of the few major politicians of his time who was friendly to Catholics. Most of the rest were ferocious bigots!).
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In regards to Mr. van Oosbree’s comment.
Lincoln used the Irish and Germans who had left Germany after ‘48 as his cannon fodder.
After the war, the North imposed a Carthaginian peace, which forced just about any Southerner with any ability to go north or west if they wished to make anything of their potential.
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Tut, tut, Mr. Van Oosbree, tut, tut.
The Know-Nothings were from Dixie? Hardly, sir. Try Salem, MA. Al Smith had no opposition in Yankeeland? Sir! What is more, the Klan in the 1920s, the “Second Klan”, was primarily an Anti-Catholic camorra; indeed my grandfather Cundiff joined it then because he was (regrettably) Anti-Catholic, only to quit two days later because it was also Negrophobic, which he (and most white Southern Appalachians) was not. (West VA, by the way, voted for Kennedy in 1960 [Humphrey’s MN was settled first by New Englanders]) Well, sir, this 1920s Klan had as many members north of the Potomac and the Ohio as South. Cf the Wikipedia on the q.v. Klan and the q.v. “Black Legion”.
Peter Viereck says “Catholic baiting is the anti-Semitism of the liberals.” Dixie ain’t liberal, sir. She also ain’t feminist, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered—another bunch of Catholicphobes. I know of no ACT UP and WHAM! chapters in The Land of Cotton. From where Amanda Marcotte hails, I can’t say, but I’d put money on Boston.
For the byword, sir, for Anti-Catholic frenzy is “New England”. Get yourself and ed-ja-kay-shun and cast your eyes upon the Wikepedia article on q.v. Anti-Catholicism, for starters, and find out what part of the country Catholicphobia had its source. Granted the atrocity against the Urslines in Charleston MA isn’t common knowledge.
Tut, tut, sir; tut tut.
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With that out of the way, Mr. Van Oosbree is gravely mistaken. The South was, indeed, made up of Catholics at every level: cabinet members, generals, colonels, and almost a president. New England Puritanism, however, is the source of American anti-Catholicism. The famous Rev. Henry Ward Beecher of the American Bible Society, in fact, instigated the arson of the Boston convent in 1834. Even political parties such as the Know Nothings, as seen in the blockbuster movie Gangs of York, grew out of Northern anti-Catholic sentiment.
A new field of New England anti-Christian literature has even begun: history books about how only in the North, Protestants were extraordinarily intolerant of Catholicism.
The anti-Catholicism that is more recognizable today comes from the KKK, which except for a couple of years after Reconstruction, had its highest numbers in mostly Northern states (Michigan, Indiana, and Washington). The myth of the South as anti-Catholic was a coincidental byproduct of NAACP’s campaign over the last 20 years associate the Confederate flag with the KKK---an association which the KKK welcomed, hoping its numbers might grow.
But even now, anti-Catholicism has not made significant headway in Dixie. The only Southerners who’ve bought that story are the occasional Baptists who’ve been infiltrated by Northern evangelists, or the unusual group of homegrown converts to Northern religions, such as Mormon, Jehovah Witness, and Seventh-Day Adventist.
Yet, among the mainstream in the South of Presbyterians, Lutherans, Southern Baptists, and Episcopalians (yes, they’re still conservative down here), there is almost no hint of anti-Catholicism.
Tim Manning, Jr.
Assistant Editor
Southern Partisan magazine
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“Southerners of both races have more in common with each other than they do with their fellows in the rest of the country.”
Surely the author can’t be serious. How many blacks listen to country or bluegrass? How many follow NASCAR? How many vote Republican?
Why is their so much black-on-white crime in both the north and south? Why are blacks demanding the removal of all Confederate statues, flags and memorials? Why do we never hear of black southerners attacking black northerners (or vice versa)? Why is the south so segregated (churches, schools, neighborhoods, social events)? Why did white southerners fight so hard to resist integration?
The race issue will not be “laid to rest”—at least not by blacks.
Sam Francis called this way of thinking an “infantile disorder.” This is from his February 1998 column in Chronicles:
“I mention this racial dimension of the secession controversy not because of the obvious conflicts that will arise in its wake but to suggest that the majority populations of the South in the near future will either be blacks, who have only hostile memories of what secession and the historic South meant to them and their ancestors, or Hispanics, who will sympathize with secession only if it means union with Mexico. It is unlikely that either the black or the Hispanic populations will evince much sympathy for Jefferson Davis and his legacy.
But the racial composition of the future South is significant also because the racial consciousness and solidarity non-whites will exhibit is already plain, in the frenetic, hate-driven language of their leaders and organizational vehicles, in their political behavior, and in the whole fabric of their subculture. It is a consciousness that readily identifies whites as an enemy and their institutions and values as alien and oppressive.
The only prospect of white Middle American resistance to this racial and political engulfment is our own solidarity; instead of snorting at white Northerners as “Yankees” who lack good table manners and the rudiments of culture, white Southerners should be standing firm with them in opposition to more immigration and more domination by the federal leviathan that serves as the political instrument of the overclass-underclass alliance.”
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Sid makes an excellent point: “Catholic baiting is the anti-Semitism of the liberals.” Every major university has a Religious Studies department devoted to exposing the “myth” of Christianity. That’s genuine anti-Catholicism. And worse, it throws the Orthodox (of which I’m a convert) under the bus.
Murray Rothbard wrote an essay on how anti-anti-Semitism was more dangerous than anti-Semitism. The same is not true with anti-anti-Catholicism, but it still doesn’t amount to much. And, clearly, Mr. Van Oosbree’s comment was rooted in lack of knowledge about the South.
Bernie’s point is well-taken, also. But the problem still remains… that the South does not have a Negro Problem as much as it has a Yankee Problem. Almost all of the notorious racial animosity that exists today is rooted in problems that occurred when self-righteous Northerners came down and tormented the South during Reconstruction and the Civil Rights era, and mucked up everything.
Murray Rothbard’s statement about anti-Semitism could easily be applied to this question: Anti-racism is far more dangerous and a much greater agitant than racism.
And, while, yes, it is true that blacks in the South today suffer from a very poor state of affairs, that does not excuse the Yanks for bringing it all on. I happen to know, however, that Bernie is one of the few Copperheads with whom the South has more in common than we do with our blacks. But… rightwing non-evangelical Christians are about the only Northerners with whom this is true, and there are so few of them that there is virtually no Northern culture to speak of.
As far as the sectionalism-versus-nationalism question… that debate was crystalized for me when Tom Fleming and Clyde Wilson (sectionalism) debated Sam Francis and Christian Kopff (nationalism) at a mid-’90s John Randolph Club. Fleming and Clyde made the best of it, in my mind. And thank God they created the League of the South, instead of just joining the CCC.
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Mr. Manning. My family can attest to the accuracy of your testament.
In the early 1930s, my then Methodist Grandfather converted to Catholicism.
His neighbors celebrated his conversion by burning a Cross in his backyard.
He was living in Springfield, Vt.
Of course there are all sorts of similar examples from the North.
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The late William Styron (a Virginia Tidewater man) wrote about the hypocritical “anti-racism” of the all too racist North, in “Sophie’s Choice.” He also wrote about the little-known sympathies of the Old South for Jews, and he suggested a parallel between the complex love-hate relationships between Southern Whites and Blacks to those of the Poles and Jews. (cf Pope John Paul the Great, a Pole who did more to heal old wounds between Catholics and Jews than any other Pope in history.)
“The South” arguably extends (or used to until recently) all the way up to parts of southeastern Pennsylvania, where I’m from. I speak with a very mild kind of Tidewater accent (sounding like “Maryland-Lite"), typical of many southeastern Pennsylvanians until the recent flattening-out of all American speech into a Californianised MTV swill.
In my college days one of my roommates was a Georgian who told me, “John, you ain’t a real Yankee. You ain’t from the Deep North.” And that was a matter of manners even more than of accent.
I agree with some of the above commenters who said anti-Catholicism runs deepest in New England. So does its close cousin, anti-Quakerism. When William Penn the Quaker was sailing to his newly appropriated colony, Pennsylvania, in 1682, Cotton Mather of Massachusetts wrote to the Governor of Massachusetts, urging him to capture Penn and sell him into slavery:
“...a letter with the news had just arrived on a British ship, that 100 or more of the heretics called Quakers, with William Penn their leader, was headed their way.
After meeting with the general court of Boston, a plan of action was unanimously agreed upon. In a letter to John Higginson, Mather told of their decision: The ship, Porpoise, would be sent out at once to waylay William Penn’s ship, the name of which was Welcome, on the high seas off Cape Cod. Then having taken them all as prisoners, the plan was to “sell the whole lot to Barbados, where slaves fetch good prices in rum and sugar, and [we] shall not only do the Lord great good by punishing the wicked, but we shall make great good for His minister and people” (quoted in Frank L. Yost, Let Freedom Ring, 6).”
http://www.bibleways.com/blog621.htm
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Nothing illiterate about “The United States is...” because it is a phrase describing a single country ("The country in the middle of North America is the Unites States"). See also: the Netherlands.
Oh and LOL @ Southern apologism. Losing that war was the best thing to ever happen to the South. Walk it off, Cletus.
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I’m Czech, and interested in the history of Czech
Protestanism. So it was interesting to learn that
there were “Hussites” or “Moravians” in early
American history. The Moravians were followers of
Jan Huss, from the historical kingdom of Moravia, and
exiles forced out after they were forced out by the
Hapsburgs, the “Holy Roman Empire”....
I’d love to know more about the “Hussites"…
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Isamu,
Prior to Lincoln’s war each state was sovereign and United States was just what it implies in the plural. Whether it is a good thing that the South lost that war and these states became mere provinces to an oppressive central government ruling far outside its constitutional limits is a question of great dispute.
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David, cf the en.wikepedia.org article q.v. “Moravians” for the best short presentation, along with links. Though founded by Hus, they pretty much came close to being wiped out in the Thirty Years’ War. In 1722 what was left of their underground movement migrated to the estate of the Count von Zinzendorf in Herrnhut, Germany. There they underwent a major theological change and become part of the German Pietist movement. Indeed, the movement today is more German than Czech, yet my Moravian friends say that their is still a heritage connected the Czech world. Almost immediately they began missionary efforts and immigration to the New World. In 1740 they established themselves in Bethlehem, PA, and by 1753 they had come down the Great Wagon Road to Forsyth Co., NC. And in 1766 they founded Salem, NC. Today, the area around Herrnhut, Bethlehem, and Winston-Salem are the largest gathering of European Moravians.
q.v. also for the early history “Hussite”. q.v. “pietism” for the theology.
If you know German, try the de.wikipedia articles q.v. “Böhmische Brüder”, “Brüder-Unität”, and especially “Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine” and “Pietismus”
“Zinzendorf” in both Wikis will give you information on the de facto modern founder.
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@ Monte Poitevint:
Good point you made. It’s arguable whether it was good for America - or for Western Civlisation - for the North to have won the American Civil War. Winston Churchill wrote a provocative essay suggesting that if the South had won the Civil War, then the world would have been better off, because then the Northern states probably would have made a closer alliance with Britain, thus enabling the “Pax Brittania” of the 1800s to last for many more centuries, and thus averting the two world wars which were caused by the delicate balance of power between Britain and Germany. If the South had won the Civil War, then the Pax Britannia might still rule the world today! ;-) :-)
Meanwhile, a loving remembrance of Lincoln: Even though in retrospect I think Lincoln was mistaken to launch his war, I still have a lot of respect for him. Mistaken he might have been, but he was a real patriot. And these days, when callow, shallow publicity hounds with putatively pretty faces like Barak Obama (who does NOT look pretty to me, but then I’m a heterosexual who is NOT fascinated by dark skin as so many Americans are today in their lurid suicidal ways)…
...today, when callow untested youths like Barak Obama the publicity hound, are bucking for the White House, I find it very refreshing to remember Abraham Lincoln, who was considered to be “ugly” in his time (and he spoke in a high-pitched squeaky voice) - for all his mistakes and faults, it refreshes my American soul to remember Lincoln, whose beautiful spirit showed in his so-called “ugly” face, and even more in his words.
I am John D Ball III, a great-great-grandson of Sergeant George Yost (born in Darmstadt, in the state of Hessen, in what is now Germany, in 1837);
my great-great-grandfather George Yost (a tailor in the old country) left Germany and sailed to Philadelphia in the spring of 1861, because he (as my Grandmother, who knew him, told me), he wanted to fight for the one and only “real republic” in the world at that time…
...many, MANY Germans immigrated to America during the Civil War, for similar idealistic reasons. It wasn’t all about economics; my ancestor George Yost was doing just fine and dandy as a tailor in Germany, but he emigrated to America because he WANTED TO FIGHT for what he believed was the one and only real republic/democracy in the world.
For any of you Civil War buffs out there (I know we have some sons of the Old South as commenters here on Taki’s hangout), please, I would like to ask you, were any of your ancestors Georgians or Alabamans who fought at Gettysburg?
If so, please reply to me. Because, I can tell you, my great-great-grandfather, Sergeant George Yost of the 98th Pennsylvania Infantry (Sixth Corps) fought and was wounded (in his thigh) at approximately 6 PM on July 2 1863, near Plum Run Creek at Gettysburg, and the man who shot him was either from Georgia or Alabama.
I have a dream, of finding a descendant of the Georgian or Alabaman soldier who shot my great-great-grandfather in the leg at Gettysburg during the early evening of July 2 1863 - when my ancestor and his regiment made an almost unknown final stand, repelling the last Confederate assault on the high ground (Little Round Top) on that day, which set the scene for
Pickett’s charge the next day…
...if any of you (our friends here in Taki’s internet “Gentleman’s club") are descendants of Georgians or Alabamans who fought at Gettysburg - one of whom shot my great-great-grandfather in the leg, in honourable combat - then please let me know. Because I owe you a long awaited reconciliation, as our ancestors would want us to do.
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Many of the German settlers in the Piedmont were “Palatine Germans,” i.e., from the Rheinpfalz, whose elector Frederick V and his wife, Elizabeth Stuart (daughter of James I) started the Thirty Years’ War by accepting the elective crown of Bohemia. The Palatinate was politically and economically unsettled for decades afterwards as a consequence, and many of its people eventually found their way to the American South, among them some of my ancestors. I believe they were of a Reformed persuasion of some sort, but here they quickly lost their German-ness and became either Episcopalians or Methodists.
The “Moravians” of N.C. were probably not of Czech origin but ethnically German, followers of Zinzendorf, who had adhered to the old Utraquist sect of Czechoslovakia as an alliance of convenience, similarly to the way Döllinger’s followers in the 1870s adhered to the schismatic Jansenists of Utrecht who had left the Roman fold in the 1730s to form the present Old Catholic Church.
Some of Zinzendorf’s sectaries settled in Great Britain and a small Moravian congregation persisted for many years in London, attracting English converts (among them the family of the poet William Blake). The Moravian Brethren were great hymnodists and many of the melodies in the Episcopal Hymnal of 1940, with which I grew up, are credited to them.
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Thanks for this article. You pretty much covered everything in a concise positive truthful way. For the past 15 years I have collected genealogy and turned my data base into a Social Science Project. Along the way I had to re-educate myself on Lincoln’s War and after much gut wrenching painful study I can only conclude that Lincoln’s War was an evil act of destructive invasion and takeover of a people who should have been allowed to settle their differences themselves.
One vital chain of events up to the war and up to the present you did not mention in your article and that is the history of the privately owned “Federal Reserve Bank”. I suggest you collect all you can find starting with:
“Blood Money The Civil War and the Federal Reserve by John Remington Graham c2006;
The writings of Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. of Minnesota in Banking and Currency, and the Money Trust c1913.
The writings of J. B. Jones of Maryland 1861-1865 - A Clerk’s Diary pub. 1866, Jone’s entries shortly before and after Fort Sumter relates his conversations with prominent Southern leaders, including Henry Wise who had been Governor of Virginia. quote: “Drawing from his observations in the North, Jones warned Governor Wise that the 70,000 militia called up by Lincoln in the spring of 1861 were only vedettes of a planned army of 700,000 which would invade on the false pretext of saving the Union and freeing the slaves, but for the real purpose of confiscating Southern wealth”.
The South Under Siege 1830-2000 by Frank Conner - A History of the Relations Between the North and the South.
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Duh,(Confs & Caths)unite to do what?
Protect a decimated heritage decimated because it was supposed a racial one?
Confs and Caths ought unite with their racial brethren first then. Or else no chance of reviving their civilisation.
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On the other, the race issue must somehow be laid to rest.
As distasteful it might sound, segregation was a good thing and its demise in the Civil Rights Act is now bearing bad fruit throughout our country. Race can not be laid to rest; it is part of the temporal order that can’t be overlooked or denied.
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Excellent story, very few people know about the crown of thorns for Jefferson Davis. As a member of the James-Younger Gang and Quantrill Society historical groups, I applaud Mr. Coulombe’s accurate insights. Like laws, history books are always written by the winners. Too bad he didn’t include a reference to Gen. Order Number 11, one of the worst atrocities of the war directed at Confederate civilians and resulting in 10,000 or more deaths. Or, that the war didn’t end in Texas until the early 1870s, evidenced by the Lee-Peacock feud that killed hundreds.
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The ONLY solution to racism, or any other social problem of mankind, is to be found in the application of TRUTH. Now, the fulness of this truth can be found only in the Catholic Church, where as St. Paul teaches, “For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free: and in one Spirit we have all been made to drink” (I Cor. 12:13). Living this truth is charity: love for God and love for our neighbor. In I Cor 13, St. Paul defines charity. Everyone, go there. Read it. After reading it, do you find that you are NOT a paragon of charity? This is what we all must work at, or else all this talk is in vain. In themselves, there are absolutely no political or economic solutions to racism.
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The historian of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, and my pastor, a priest of the Pastoral Provision, no less, tells me that when the Yankees had invaded and occupied Galveston Island, intelligence about their dispositions and plans was regularly gathered by the clergy and religious still on the island, often passing the word in the confessional! Catholics in Texas continued to pray officially for the President of the CSA for some time after the state was mostly occupied by the Yankees, as well.
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“Isamu” shows his cards as to how truly conservative he really is, in his comment, “Oh and LOL @ Southern apologism. Losing that war was the best thing to ever happen to the South. Walk it off, Cletus.”
That kind of derision toward the true America and the South is a telltale sign of someone who’s real interest is in one of the many latest things to come down the pike from our beloved Republican Party leaders. To “isamu”, I ask, what is that makes you conservative? Are you a paleo? What are your defining principles by which all else is judged? It sounds to me like they do not run very deep, historically. My apologies if the existence of a few remnants of Southern civilization upset the routine of your day.
The same goes for Mr. John Ball. Why would you suppose that a descendant of a Confederate veteran would welcome “reconciliation”. We played this game for 50 or so years, but you all broke the truce irreparably in the 1960s.
I call into play the allegedly idealistic intentions of your German ancestor who participated in the gruesome invasion of my state. Consider the following event…
Richard Taylor, a Confederate general---one, in fact, who should be remembered for the same ferocity that animated Bedford Forrest and General Lee---recorded in his memoirs (aptly titled Destruction and Reconstruction) a striking incident that occurred at the end of the War. It was his painful duty to surrender the last Confederate forces in the Gulf area. Having made contact with the Union commander nearby, he crossed the lines at dawn under a white flag to complete the formalities and surrender his sword. This accomplished, Taylor gratefully accepted the invitation of federal officers to join them for breakfast. Most of the officers, in consideration for Taylor’s feelings, steered the conversation away from war and politics. But---and the rest of the story is in his own words:
“There was, as ever, a skeleton at the feast, in the person of a general officer who had recently left Germany to become a citizen and soldier of the United States. This person, with the strong accent and idioms of the Fatherland, comforted me by assurances that we of the South would speedily recognize our ignorance and errors, especially about slavery and the rights of the States, and rejoice in the results of the war.... I apologized meekly for my ignorance, on the ground that my ancestors had come from England to Virginia in 1608, and in the short intervening period of two hundred and fifty-odd years, had found no time to transmit to me correct ideas of the duties of American citizenship. Moreover, my grandfather, commanding the 9th Virginia regiment in our Revolutionary army, had assisted in the defeat and capture of the Hessian mercenaries at Trenton, and I lamented that he had not, by association with these worthies, enlightened his understanding. My friend smiled blandly, and assured me of his willingness to instruct me.”
He didn’t bother to mention that he was also the son of the U.S. President Zachory Taylor, who, as it happens, was also the father-in-law of the Confederate President Davis.
As it happens, my ancestors came from to Virginia from England in 1608, also. One in particular: William Spencer, the planter. They participated in Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, and another was the famed John Paul Jones of the Revolution.
When their states were invaded in the 1860s, many of their homes and farms were burned and left for destruction, children murdered in cold blood, and we’re still unsure if and which women may have been violated. And that’s just the beginning.
The invasion of the 1860s is America’s Great Enormity. Government was transformed from genuine to corrupt, and Lincoln was the disgusting trial lawyer who made the whole sham possible.
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Professor Fisher’s Albion’s Seed is indeed marvelous. But it depiction of the Upper South created by the Cavalier society’s immigrants is more than a little off-kilter in its limited focus. Witness its rather extreme use of the William Byrd writings as its dominant template. Byrd was hardly the expemplar of his class and its views. He certainly represented a piece of it, but he was a rare bird inhis own day. Not the best introduction to that part of the South.
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J. Greenlee is right. Fischer is too hard on the VA cavaliers, and too easy on the New England Puritans. Greenlee is also right that it’s still a marvelous book.
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“Any posts containing personal attacks or ethnic slurs will be deleted as soon as they are detected, by our small but alert staff. “
I’ve never seen this policy enforced here and hardly expect the ‘small but alert staff’ to enforce it by deleting the ethnic slur posted by the neocon calling himself “isamu”.
Southerners aren’t considered a distinct ethicity here, apparently.
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Since a number of my friends have posted on this
thread, and made some very fine comments, let me jump
in as well. I’m one of those descendants
of both Confederate soldiers (on both sides of the
family) and Southern Catholics. For some time I’ve
been fascinated by the historic position of Catholics
in the South, and in particular, during the years
that the Southern Confederacy fought for its
independence. As an archivist and historian by
profession I’ve had the opportunity over the past 25
years to investigate that history, and what emerges
from that research is a complex picture, one that
strongly suggests that Catholics in the Old South--
and not just in Louisiana and Maryland--enjoyed a more
secure and respected position in most areas of the
South during the antebellum and War period than,
comparatively, they did in the North. Just here in
North Carolina---the state with the lowest percentage
of Catholics in the Federal union---small communities
of Catholics settled in old Halifax, in New Bern, in
Wilmington, and later in Fayetteville, and shortly
after the war in the Sampson County area. In examining
local records, newspapers, and correspondence, I find
that by and large the kind of anti-Catholicism that
one observes in some of the larger cities in the North
does not exist. Indeed, the state of North Carolina,
which had a religious test clause for holding public
office (Protestants only) until 1835, modified that
Constitution in 1835 specifically to include a growing
Catholic population and its state Chief Justice
William Gaston. Not only that, but in 1850 the Episcopal
bishop of the state Levi S. Ives converted and took
several congregations with him. Catholics were elected
sheriffs in several counties and equally served as
Justices of the Peace...and all of this in a state
where Catholics numbered (in 1860)only around a
thousand souls.
Across the Confederacy such tendancies (an “American”
Tractarian Movement?) can be multipied, and I need
not mention the roles of prominent Catholic laymen and
generals (not to mention religious leaders like
Frs. Ryan and Bannon and Bishops Lynch and Verrot).
The South was quite hospitable to Catholicim. And,
as it well known, the Blessed Pope Pius IX was quite
favorable to the Confederacy.
Of course, counterfactual history is always fun, and
it is interesting to speculate on what might have
been. But the fact remains that historically the
South and the Catholic faith share many points of
interest and convergence. After the vacuous emotionalism
of dispensationalist heresy wears off, is it too much
to hope that thinking Southerners will once again
turn to what Herman Melville called (in his epic
narrative poem Clarel), “the last hope of mankind”?
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A few years ago I heard Prof. Eugene Genovese, my favorite Marxist historian, matter-of-factly state that in the pre Civil War period it was a well established fact that both Catholics and Jes were better treated in the South than in the North! That statement floored me when I first heard it, but I’ve come to realize that it is true.
By the way, Genovese is the pre-eminent authority on this topic.
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Mea culpa. Because Taki does not supply a spell checker I wrote “Jes” instead of Jews.
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Mr. Cathey,
“Thinking Southerners” are already fleeing the tawdry emotionalism of non-denominational hysteria and finding, in increasing numbers, the old Truth in the place where it has always been sheltered, in God’s one, holy, Catholic Church.
As a convert from evangelical Methodism, I can assure you that my South Carolina parish (c. 7,000 members and growing almost daily), is merely representative of a larger trend (we are not even the largest parish in our small city in the SC “backcountry.")
Much of our near exponential growth is the result of converts, fleeing either the gross apostasy and sexual libertinism of mainstream Protestantism or the vapid dispensationalism that you referenced.
The Church Militant will the instrument of our delivery from Moloch, if indeed we are to be delivered.
Praise the Lord and pass the Breviary!
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Has anyone considered that had the South won the war,
it would be now a collection of banana republics, just
like south of the border? That it might be Mexico, but
speaking English?
It was because it continued attached to the economic
engine of the North that it can share into its world
position and wealth.
As for the tariffs, does anyone realize that the
Northern States had to pay those same tariffs too? The
difference is that instead of bitching they built up
their industry and became much more rich and populous
than the Southern states, while at the REvolution it
had been the other way around. Nothing kept the
southerners from becoming rich as the northerners had
done, nothing but their reliance on a single crop.
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Mr Manning wrote:
“The same goes for Mr. John Ball. Why would you suppose that a descendant of a Confederate veteran would welcome “reconciliation”.”
My answer is: for the same reason that all true warriors desire reconciliation with their former enemies.
Well, that is, unless you idealise the Confederacy in ways beyond reason. I am willing to admit that the war which Lincoln launched against the Southern states was misguided and stupid. But on the other hand, so was the Southern war of resistance - that was also bloody stupid in its own way. I’m willing to shake hands with the heirs of the Confederate States of America - but I am NOT willing to idealise them as being heirs of any heritage which was morally superior to that of Lincoln’s armed forces.
You can say that the Southern Cause was morally equal to the cause of Lincoln and his armies and navies. But if you dare to suggest that the Confederate States of America were in any way MORALLY SUPERIOR to Lincoln and his armed forces, then I will say, f--- you up the ass with
a South Carolina palmetto.
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It is curious how self-described heirs of the
Confederacy keep harping on their grievances, and
what a beautiful civilization was destroyed.
While, when it comes to their black compatriots,
their message is “Get over it!”
I wish to know why some hurt feelings are worthier
of respect than others.
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The other day I posted a lengthy comment about A. Lincoln in response to a stimulating article by Charles Coulombe, but, to date, I have not seen it posted. Please comment & advise.
Sincerely,
Ed Lucidi
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“thanks to a bloody civil war before the Civil War;”
That is “thanks to a bloody civil war before the War of Northern Aggression;” but otherwise, excellent article Charles, and I’ll be sure to have you join the Benjamin F. Ward Camp, Paris, of the Sons of Confederate Veterans when you are here. We drink White Lightning by torchlight.
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As a Southerner, a traditional Catholic and a monarchist, I find the above article by Mr. Coulombe to be quite accurate and refreshing.
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