I always liked Sir Walter Scott’s books. I think my favorite one is “Quentin Durward” tho it is not one of the most popular ones.
There was nothing chivalrous about the Land of the Whip and Lash nor the RAT Rebellion. Fantasies aside, slavery was based on an inhumane, anti-American kind of thought and the insurrection was justified with outrageous lies.
I would wager money that I can say two things about this author with confidence. Assuming that Cynthia is of the non-male gender, she does not believe in historical context and she believes in a ‘living US Constitution’ rather than as the Founders wrote it.
I say this because the mind that ‘blames’ a civil war, who’s roots were clear at the time of the US Revolution, upon a popular author writing in the 1820-40s in another country, is the same anchor-less mind that believes that the US Constitution requires national health care.
In opposition to her thesis, I could use the same conceptualization she uses to blame Christianity for the US Civil War. There is no doubt that the vast to overwhelming percentage of the war’s activists and participants not only read the Bible but also frequently went to Church in years, months and weeks preceding and during the war.
Sometimes an author is just expressing the feelings of his time and place and becomes popular because he does it better than anyone else AND as Robert Heinlein put it, it can be very profitable. As the truism goes, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!
“Breathes there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
“This is my own, my native land”?
Whose heart hath n’er within him burned
As home his footsteps he hath turned... ?
If such there be, go mark him well...
The wretch, concentrated all in self,
...Doubly dying shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor’d, and unsung. —”The Lay of the Last Minstrel” (1805)”
The author of the opinion piece uses Mark Twain to make her point? Twain sounds as if he was jealous of competition from Scott’s books sales.
Most of the people, North and South, read the Bible too.
Nothing says “I love you” better than a Sir Walter Scott book. Elegant English, elegant stories, he does it all.
Wonderful stuff. Beautiful to the ear.
The manuscript is revealing, not only as a guide to Southern thinking in the era, when relations between the States were going into a decline; but it also shows something of racial attitudes, at least among educated Virginians, which tends to refute the anti-Southern stereotypes that Leftist have promoted for a long time.
I heartily recommend the Tucker offering to my Southern friends, who may not be familiar with it.
As for anti-Southern posters: The Conservative tradition in America has long been better supported in the South than in most of the other States. There is virtually no hope of restoring the principles of the Founding Fathers, without working with our Southern neighbors. Smearing the South helps no one but those trying to destroy our common heritage. Obama, one may be certain, just loves the anti-Southern propaganda.
William Flax
Here’s a link to a great documentary about the Scotts-Irish thru American history ... http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/site/sn/show.do?series=799#video
BORN FIGHTING
In this landmark two-part series, Senator Jim Webb tells the largely forgotten story of the Scots-Irish, a people whose values, culture and fighting spirit profoundly shaped America. Follow Senator Webb as he tracks their heroes and legends from William Wallace to Andrew Jackson, the first of 17 Scots-Irish U.S. Presidents. Their Bible-thumping, battle-scarred march for independence took them from Scotland to Northern Ireland and finally the open expanses of early America, where they would leave an indelible mark on the national character.
Comes on in about an hour for those who might have the smithsonian channel. Schedule at link for repeats.
The author of the Civil War was Roger Taney.