Posted on 07/16/2007 1:29:21 PM PDT by Kaput
Is it true what they say about Dixie? by: Mary Kapp, July 12, 2007
Should you notice a disconnect between the southerners that you meet and the American South that you hear about, your personal impressions are probably more accurate than the analysis you may get from media and academic types. “The PC police tell southerners that they have no right to honor their history,” Clint Johnson, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the South (and why it will rise again) says. “Our ancestors were racist, and if we honor them, we are racist too.”
He was a featured speaker at Eagle Forum’s Collegiate conference on June 22. Johnson recalled a New England radio interview in which the talk show host asked, “Why are southerners so uneducated?” Tongue planted firmly in cheek, the author said, “Well, us southerners, you already know, are a bunch of gun-toting, redneck, beer-guzzling, barefoot clansmen who marry their first cousins.”
There may some things you may not know about the South, Johnson points out:
• Famed abolitionist John Brown of Brown University, and a Rhode Island House Representative, was a legendary mogul in the slave trade, and lamented the abolition in print.
• The University of Alabama’s library was burned to the ground by Union soldiers not during, but at the end of the Civil War.
• Southerners comprised a large percentage of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and were a driving force in the creation of the Bill of Rights.
• Patrick Henry, a Virginian, was one of the first to recognize the injustice of taxation without representation. His activism spurred national change.
• Activists in Charlotte, N.C. wrote the Mecklenberg Declaration of Independence on May 20, 1775, which was the first record of a collective desire for American independence.
For Vanderbilt University, the United Daughters of the Confederacy funded the building of the “Vanderbilt Confederate Memorial Hall.” The administration wanted to sandblast the word “Confederate” off of the front of the building, but the $1-million-dollar lawsuit afforded a different outcome. On the Vanderbilt campus map, however, the building is simply referred to as “Memorial Hall.”
Johnson went on to celebrate a characteristically southern culture as portrayed in literature and fine arts, comparably lacking in other regions of America: “There is no New England novel or Midwest musical genre,” said the author.
Virtually every form of distinctive American music originated in the south, said Johnson. Rock and roll, jazz, the blues, and, naturally, country music, all have their foundations from New Orleans to Nashville to southern Florida.
Distinctive literature includes works from William Faulkner, Mark Twain, and Margaret Mitchell.
The primal idea of the strong woman can be seen in the wives of farmers who effectively ran the family plantations. Sally Tompkins started a hospital during the Civil War with the lowest death rates of any American hospital. When Congress observed this, and passed a law that mandated that only army officers can run hospitals, Jefferson Davis made her a captain.
When asked for thoughts on the conclusion of the Civil War, Johnson remarked, “Lincoln’s death was the worst thing for the South. Had he lived, it would have been the best thing.” Johnson went on to describe the effects of integration and the economy in either situation.
When asked to give parting advice to young southern conservatives, Johnson told listeners to “defend your right to learn about and celebrate your history!”
Mary Kapp is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a program run jointly by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, please e-mail mal.kline@academia.org
Amen!
OF which the first in this Country was Black and from,,,,,New York,,Can I get a witness here..
I think a lot of the good honest soldiers of the Confederacy who had no stake in slavery believed they were fighting for states' rights. But it was different for the southern movers and shakers who actually instigated the thing as the words of the Mississippians in post #24 show. They only were obsessed with slavery.
Ah, but the South DID rise again.
Shamed and ignored by the remainder of the country for most of a century after being humbled and subjugated by the “high-minded” Yankees, a couple of generations of people filled with mouldering rage had to grow old and die off before the wounds could begin to heal. In the decade of the 1960’s while much of the rest of the population of this country went a-whoring after hedonism and “personal growth”, the fabric of the South was knitting back together, recalling a simpler time and more measured ways of living.
The South has always prided itself on the preservation of heritage, even when there was pitiful little to preserve. But that only allowed the enrichment of embellishment, as there was little to contradict their interpretation of events. Time and selective memory served to change the searing grief of the outcome of the Civil War into a determination that they would be the best damned Americans in America.
And they have proved their devotion to America over and over again through the past half century, as they shed their former allegiance to the Democrat party, not because they had fundamentally changed, but because the Democrats had.
Democrats are not, and have not been, the party of the “little man” since early in the days of the New Deal. Oh, Franklin promised a LOT of things in those days, and to some degree, he actually delivered on his promises. But all the while power was being taken from the local level, and concentrated at higher and higher levels, as the colossus of Fderal power grew. Sure, isolated rural folks got electric power, but whole valleys of farms and villages were destroyed in the construction of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the means by which people were displaced from their land was sometimes pretty brutal. Southern sheriffs, noted for their local despotism, and certain they would never be challenged, were abruptly faced with a full-scale confrontation with aroused and relentless citizenry.
Out of this white-hot forge, as fearsome and shattering as the Civil War battles of a century earlier, if perhaps not nearly so many physical casualties, was created the New South. When the smoke cleared, there was no returning to the old order. For the first time in a century, Southerners were finally free of the curse that had been laid upon them so long ago, and they could enjoy the fruits of freedom and liberty that had been denied them for so long. This was true as much for the Southern whites as it was for the Southern blacks. The South became a good place to live again.
Alas, not so much so for the rest of America. Shut up in their urban jungles and subject to “intellectuals” directing every aspect of their lives, the “rust belt” and both coastal regions were losing their next generation, through a “turn on, tune in, drop out” philosophy. Not all that generation was so totally lost, as time passed, some actually cleaned up their act and went on to become responsible citizens. But the fringe lived on, against all expectations, and exhorted the rest of the nation into some acceptance of dissolution and nihilism, pretending to be a conscience, but more accurately, they were whispering their message of hopelessness to all who would listen.
And today, they cannot seem to shut up. The New South, almost by default, has become the real conscience of the American heritage.
(1) Did Herman Melville, HP Lovecraft, John Updike, etc. not exist?
(2) Is Detroit in the South? New York City?
When Southerners tear down other sections to build themselves up, they are guilty of the same sectional prejudice they complain of.
Ain't it just the prettiest thang? If you see it in any of my post.......
Cotton farming wasn't successfully mechanized until the 1940s. Is that when slavery would have ended?
“They only were obsessed with slavery.”
Funny, because I sense that to be your sole obsession.
What a beautiful post.
Likewise, as the New York City draft riots illustrate, there was a significant segment of the northern population who walked in the Democratic way of rebellion.
Slavery would have ended because there was pressure from the only poor that existed in the South at that time, the urban working class to end it so they might have a chance to work in some of the occupations that were slave dominated, such as farm labor and millwork.
The sharecropper system would likely have arisen in some form or fashion, but without Northern abuses, it wouldn’t have been as brutal as it is alleged to have become (and I still think alot of that is overblown)
I didn’t realize cotton was the only thing they grew down there. Guess I’m lucky to be a member of a forum with so many geniuses.
Bump That!!
I don’t take much pleasure in these discussions. Slavery was ugly but I have no idea how an American born today can have the gall to get so righteous of the issues from 150 years ago.
Welcome here anytime,,,Roll Tide..!!!
“Our ancestors were racist, and if we honor them, we are racist too.”
Northern ancestors were and are pedophiles. You can look it up!
I love reading intelligent FReepers post. They speak so eloquently.
Is it not GOD , Family , State , Country...?? I could be wrong..
The carding of cotton was mechanized by the cotton gin in the early 1800’s. That was what made slavery economical.
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