Before the War for Southern Independence the main theme of American government was republican virtue and honour. The defeat of the Confederacy established a new main theme - making money. That was the most important result of the War. Compare Lee and Grant. Or the real characters of Jeff Davis and the corporate lawyer and tricky politician Lincoln.


That is why Richard Weaver called the South “the last nonmaterialist society.” Lee refused lucrative gifts to be head of a small college to help his people. Grant enjoyed four homes, socializing with the wealthy, and ignored the corruption of his friends and relatives.


Many Southerners accepted their defeat as a working of God’s will in history. That did not mean that they apologized for their heroic efforts for independence but that they believed in a universe where human desires were not the final authority.


The Agrarians of I’ll Take My Stand said that what they called the industrial regime was destroying humane society and living. Almost a century later, how can anyone doubt that they were correct? American culture, both folk and high, barely exists and only in fragments. Americans by and large have lost all sense of Place and history and have no roots, are cultureless beings. Real Christian faith barely survives. An adult American from the 1950s would not even recognize his country today, and would not like what he saw.


The South, changed and atrophied as it is, is the last bastion of the Western soul in a totally materialist society ruled from the top by corrupt elites - the reign of money.


The areas of the North and West that are today the most conservative received large settlements of Southerners. The formerly soulless highly Republican areas are now far left. They are still robbing the people but now the call it globalisation rather than tariffs and banking.


Tearing down our statues and memorials is not the result of an interpretation of history. Even if the South-haters were right about history - and they are not - it would make no difference. They act because they want to erase all real history and because they hate us. Their massive vanity seeks to eliminate us from a country they think is theirs and they bask in their power over us. Although their country is only some future thing that exists only in their imagination. Defending the South and its monuments defends the remnants of Western civilization in North America.


Historians and politicians continue to repeat the lie that the Founding Fathers nobly wanted to end slavery but did not because fear of losing the Southern States. This is ignorant, childish, and superficial almost beyond belief. The Founding Fathers, including the Southern ones, knew slavery was a problem but also knew that had absolutely no power to act on it and no idea of how to end it. Many Northern Founders held slaves and others were engaged profitably in the African slave trade. To say that the Founders agreed not to end slavery only to please the Southern States is to make the stupid assumption that the Union was founded by Northerners and Southerners were only a redheaded stepchild in the process of creating the United State, merely allowed along by the real Northern Founders. 

“Reconstruction,” 1865-1877


Through most of the 20th century, American historians of every stripe (except Communists) agreed that “Reconstruction” was an ugly period in our history - a regime of corruption, tyranny, bad leadership, and dangerous deviation from American principles. Honest historians found a vast treasury of evidence for this interpretation that is available but now ignored.


The most celebrated historians now present Reconstruction as a noble effort to establish equality for African Americans that failed because of violence by the supposed Southern ruling class. The standard Marxist theory of class conflict prevails.


It is worth noting that the term “Reconstruction” does not have any relation to rebuilding the South devastated by war. It refers to “reconstructing” of “the Union” on Republican Party terms.


Southerners white and black were left to rebuild a society as best they could in a land of unprecedented poverty and disruption. It is notable that hostility between black and white Southerners was not caused by the war. In the first period after the war relations were largely friendly. White Southerners accepted emancipation in good faith and often with relief. They were genuinely grateful that there had been no significant slave revolt during the war. Cooperative efforts were under way to restore economic life.


This peaceful period ended when the Republican Congress enacted Presidential Reconstruction in 1868 and dismissed Andrew Johnson’s efforts for a gentler policy. That policy (supposedly favoured by Lincoln) lacked much, resting upon restoring a State to the Union when 10% of voters swore loyalty to the U.S. government, not exactly democracy, but it was a peaceful way forward.


Presidential Reconstruction turned the Southern States into Military Districts where a general’s writ was supreme over any civil authority. Imagine: the great Commonwealth of Virginia was now Military District no. 1! Most Americans remain unaware that a large part of the country was under military occupation for a decade. President Grant was a virtual dictator over the people of the Southern States and regularly sent the army to protect corrupt regimes.


White Southerners were deprived of the vote and citizenship. Republicans appeared and organized and armed the black population with secret meetings and oaths, encouraging them to provocations against real law and order. Racial hostility was deliberately created by outsiders.


Southerners were faced with trying to restore a devastated economy. Local and state government was under control of unsavory outsiders (carpetbaggers) who taxed and looted. Quite often carpetbaggers were people who had left their Northern States under indictment.


Elections were coerced and fraudulent. The defenders of Reconstruction argue that the Reconstruction regimes instituted progressive measures new to the backward South like public schools. Nice, except nearly all the money was robbed by Republican officials, many of whom became rich on looted funds. Republican officials made millions on corrupt “railroad” bonds.


South Carolina did not finish paying off those fraudulent bonds until 1955.

The Southern economy as a whole did not really begin to recover some prosperity until World War I, and today income remains below the rest of the Union. The African Americans in the end got nothing from Reconstruction except a temporary franchise and some minor graft for a selected few.


Though the Southern States were not States but military districts, they were required to ratify the 14th Amendment before they could be readmitted to the Union as States.. It would not have been ratified without the controlled Southern States. The 14th Amendment has been the source of continuing damage to the Constitution and American society and it was never legally ratified, a great and lasting legacy of “Reconstruction.”
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The current interpretation is that a noble egalitarian reform of the South was defeated by white Southern violence. It is never mentioned who initiated violence. This is a fraudulent interpretation because there never was any Northern commitment to equality for the black people of the South. That is imaginary. The Northern stand was to use the blacks to maintain power and keep them out of the North and West. The point of “Reconstruction” was to keep the Republican party in power and provide loot for its well-connected.
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Reconstruction ended when the last occupying troops were withdrawn in 1877. Republicans realised that electoral votes from new Western States made their rule safer and that carpetbaggers had become so corrupt that they were fighting among themselves for the spoils and could no longer be supported by the army.

Bookstores


Barbershops. Now they are all unisex beauty parlors, often staffed by immigrant Africans.


White picket fences


Comic books that were actually intended to be funny


When boys could play football in the street without fear or helmets


When a boy could explore the woods alone with a rifle (probably an old .22)


Old Fashioned service stations with 35 cent per gallon gas and air pumps that were free and actually worked


The Southern Methodist Church


I don’t miss it but it was certainly a better time when all young men went into the service instead of just poor men (and women).


A country too honourable to put women in harm’s way


Smokehouses and tobacco curing barns


Huge pots of Brunswick stew cooked and served outdoors


Old-time windup Southern orators in white suits. (My favourite was Senator Clyde R. Hoey of North Carolina.)


When abortions were done rarely and quietly and only for rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.


When county courthouses and state buildings were not armed fortresses excluding citizens

Note: Next week we will resume the series A Short History of the South with an article about Reconstruction.

​Republican party leadership wants to keep the Deep State. After all, they collaborated with the Democrats in creating it and they find it profitable and comfortable. The Modus Operandi of Republican leadership has been for decades the avoidance of facing any difficult issues and making their positions out of advertising campaigns on short-term issues. They have picked out and groomed young congressmen to mouth the accepted PR material to get support and to avoid any real opinions.


It is hard to find any Republican Congressman does any real thinking rather than spouting the party slogans.


Republican leaders’ support for Trump is completely dishonest pretense. They can’t wait to get rid of him and his maverick populist notions and rhetoric and get back to the empty leadership of Jeb Bush.


The Founding Fathers could not have imagined a society with billionaires. In America, a dozen or so billionaires, many of them foreign, can any time call up a President, a bureaucrat, or a Congressperson and usually get what they want.


One of the many let-downs we have received from Trump is his apparent fondness for immigrants from India. We are told that we need these for IT, when many talented Americans experts are unemployed. The immigrants concerned are doubtless very bright—after all they come from a fraction of the top one percent of a huge population. Some already are holding high positions in American society.


My local phone book, the last time there was one, had an entire page of Patels and there seems to be a swarm of them in my area. They seem to own hotels even in small towns. I don’t think these are brilliant IT people. Sorry, but I don’t think this is a good thing. They are not a very attractive people. They seem to lack the potential for cordiality and sense of humour that are common in the West. They are big in internet crime, and even in legitimate companies one quickly tires of barely comprehensible sing-song English.


Why don’t they stay home and help their own struggling people? They have no loyalty to their homeland. Why expect them to have any loyalty to us? In justice, I admit that I have met two outstanding young men who are better than my general criticisms.


Trump is greatly discouraging his supporters with his preoccupation with foreign matters. This is probably caused by the Republican establishment, which is unable to learn anything, by Zionist influence, and by his own showbiz personality. He has not succeeded in any of his noisy foreign ventures - Ukraine and the phony Gaza ceasefire, and now the proposed attack on Venezuela. All these are failures and contrary to the program upon which he was elected.


And Trump is mostly ignoring the domestic situation which is vital to his voters. He is on the road to wrecking his administration. As a friend recently remarked, alas, he is the best we have and remains our only and last hope. His failure may mean there will never appear another populist President. His failure will doom the survival of the United States of America. One is tempted to think that is perhaps a good thing if some better things can be erected out of the rubble.


(“A Short History of the South” will resume in future weeks.)