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| Remember the speeches we bravely shared At the meadhall tables – we boasted from the benches That we would be heroes, hard-fighting in battle. Now we'll see who's worthy of his vow, Who'll back up his boast in the rush of battle. I will make known my lineage to all of you: I come from a mighty family of Mercians; My grandfather was Ealhelm, a wise nobleman, A lord and landowner. My people at home Will have no reason to reproach me for flight From the battlefield, for seeking safety and skulking home, now that Byrhtnoth Lies broken in battle. This is my greatest grief – For he was both my kinsman and lord." Then he went forth, his mind on vengeance, Reaching a seafarer's heart with his spear, Piercing that pirate's loathsome life. He urged the troops on, his friends and comrades. |
AND SO CAME THE DAY I LONG EXPECTED: THE AMERICANS, LIKE THE RAMPAGING PIRATES OF THE OLD ENGLISH POEM, MADE TO BREAK OUR KINSMAN AND LORD. Workmen – anonymous, imported from abroad as Lincoln did so much of that mercenary hordes who secured their citizenship in this "the last, best hope of earth" by their murder of our people and the plunder of our lands – took up their torches and cutting tools and set to work.
First the Americans beheaded him. Then they ripped away his limbs, tore his arms from his shoulders and his legs from his torso. They piled his parts like so much garbage. A special desecration was reserved for his head.
The American newspaper serving the imperial capital and its legions of bootlickers, lackeys, thugs, murderers, cowards, thieves, fanatics and liars, all of the Americans who flooded the administrative district once known as Northern Virginia. (I do note that the state is no longer "blue"; it's now administered by a Republican private equity bro, which is almost as bad.) The story profiled the two "activists" and their long struggle through the iron dark of racist oppression to achieve this, to witness and celebrate this . . . what is this? Revenge? Payback for a lifetime of microaggressions? The photographer posed the activists, gazing somberly into the middle distance. One, as I recall, was leaning against a tree.
They were Southerners, like me, from the African branch of our people. Both are near my age, with faces worn and mournful. Familiar faces, then, born of the same earth as me, an earth soaked with our sorrow and blood and mourning. Yes, there was darkness and horror but there was kindness, decency and millions of small graces unremarked by all but God. I felt no anger, no rage, only sorrow: Forgive them, Lord. They know not what they do.
There are others, though, who knew what they were doing. The spite, the hatred, the petty malice. The South's purpose in the ugly arcana of American power is to be mocked, humiliated, scourged. Rapid-reaction historians, expert at reducing the complexity of history to a simple Manicheanism that supports American power; "thought leaders" assigned to re-write "narrative" to align with America's inhuman aspirations; lies larded with hatred and amplified able to summon shrieking covens of college-educated hags who gibber and prance around our monuments, frothing and spitting with rage. A college professor instructs how best to topple an obelisk commemorating our dead. A speaker of the Virginia house of Burgesses – not a Virginia native – orders a statue of our chief evicted from the old statehouse in Richmond. A congresswoman from another district inserts language into a bill requiring the removal of our monuments from the fields where our people died defending our land from those people – the Americans. The "new people" of the "new nation" summoned into being by Abraham Lincoln's incantation of a few stupid Enlightenment abstractions.
Americans. Here's an American: the former administrator of Virginia who selfied himself and his wife smirking like the shit-tier goblins while behind them, great cranes ripped the statues from Monument Circle in Richmond. Or Louisiana native Rod Dreher, a deeply sensitive man who cares profoundly for the feelings of others. He soberly concluded that our monuments must come down because former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu said in this speech that feelings were hurt, and there's nothing more precious to America than feels. Or Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee and the founder of Instapundit, a blog popular among the Fox News/Christian Zionist boomer demographic. He came to prominence as a rapid supporter of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and any exercise of American power; he was an early cheerleader for Ukraine and promulgator of the "Russia is a gas station with an army" notion. His specialty, by the way, is "space law" and "constitutional law." Reynolds is a conduit for the agitprop created by Dennis Prager, whose PragerU is a reliable dispenser of brain-hammering stupidity: Dems r the real racists; Republicans are the party of Lincoln; our monuments are "participation trophies" for losers; Sherman showed how to win wars, he showed you traitors and all you enemies of the USA watch our, or you're gonna get Shermaned. USA! USA! USA!
So the Americans threw the head of our chief into the furnace. The photographer captured the moment. You may have seen the picture. The molten bronze coursed from the hollow eyes, over his cheeks, and mingled with his beard. Weeping for a fallen America, some said. I was struck by the sheer petty viciousness and spite of it all. Something surreal and Old Testament about it, Amalek eradicated: all of our works bulldozed away, the earth plowed with salt. To make it as though he – and we – had never existed.
The Americans failed. They failed because we do not forget. His face and his name and his deeds are burned into the memory of every Southerner, hard-coded into our DNA. Perhaps it is ill-remembered or buried beneath the garbage and stupidity of Americanism. I would know him anywhere; I would know him if I were blind.
I would follow that old man into hell. That's what our folks said then, and I say it now.
On May 17, 1861, my great-great-grandfather signed his name on the muster roll of a regiment organizing in his state's capitol. He was twenty-four, married with a son who became my great-grandfather one day. His brother, 18, enlisted the same day. Their term: for the duration of the war.
The regiment traveled by train to Richmond and was mustered into the service of the Southern states in June. It was posted at Yorktown and in May 1862, "won its first laurels" at Williamsburg, blocking the Americans under McClellan from advancing on Richmond. Another tough fight came in early June at Seven Pines. Joseph Johnstone, the commanding general, was wounded. Jefferson Davis appointed General Robert E. Lee to replace him. General Lee named his new command the Army of Northern Virginia.
For four my great-great grandfather followed Marse Robert. He was one of Lee's men, a soldier of the Army of Northern Virginia: one of those hard and wolfish Southerners who at Gaines Mill unleashed – perhaps for the first time, and maybe because they were fighting for General Lee – the fearsome, terrible Rebel Yell, that battle-cry unique to the Southern soldiers, derived from some ancestral memory of Saxon and British and Irish war-bands.
General Lee and his army cleared the Peninsula of McClellan, then turned west to "suppress," as General Lee put it, the "miscreant" Pope. Pope's "Army of Virginia" was flicked aside almost contemptuously. My great-great grandfather's regiment came under heavy fire but stood in reserve for the battle.
During the Maryland campaign, my great-great-grandfather saw General Lee. The army was on the march toward a town called Sharpsburg. They passed General Lee, who stood on a stone beside the turnpike watching them pass. The regimental commander remembers:
First the Americans beheaded him. Then they ripped away his limbs, tore his arms from his shoulders and his legs from his torso. They piled his parts like so much garbage. A special desecration was reserved for his head.
The American newspaper serving the imperial capital and its legions of bootlickers, lackeys, thugs, murderers, cowards, thieves, fanatics and liars, all of the Americans who flooded the administrative district once known as Northern Virginia. (I do note that the state is no longer "blue"; it's now administered by a Republican private equity bro, which is almost as bad.) The story profiled the two "activists" and their long struggle through the iron dark of racist oppression to achieve this, to witness and celebrate this . . . what is this? Revenge? Payback for a lifetime of microaggressions? The photographer posed the activists, gazing somberly into the middle distance. One, as I recall, was leaning against a tree.
They were Southerners, like me, from the African branch of our people. Both are near my age, with faces worn and mournful. Familiar faces, then, born of the same earth as me, an earth soaked with our sorrow and blood and mourning. Yes, there was darkness and horror but there was kindness, decency and millions of small graces unremarked by all but God. I felt no anger, no rage, only sorrow: Forgive them, Lord. They know not what they do.
There are others, though, who knew what they were doing. The spite, the hatred, the petty malice. The South's purpose in the ugly arcana of American power is to be mocked, humiliated, scourged. Rapid-reaction historians, expert at reducing the complexity of history to a simple Manicheanism that supports American power; "thought leaders" assigned to re-write "narrative" to align with America's inhuman aspirations; lies larded with hatred and amplified able to summon shrieking covens of college-educated hags who gibber and prance around our monuments, frothing and spitting with rage. A college professor instructs how best to topple an obelisk commemorating our dead. A speaker of the Virginia house of Burgesses – not a Virginia native – orders a statue of our chief evicted from the old statehouse in Richmond. A congresswoman from another district inserts language into a bill requiring the removal of our monuments from the fields where our people died defending our land from those people – the Americans. The "new people" of the "new nation" summoned into being by Abraham Lincoln's incantation of a few stupid Enlightenment abstractions.
Americans. Here's an American: the former administrator of Virginia who selfied himself and his wife smirking like the shit-tier goblins while behind them, great cranes ripped the statues from Monument Circle in Richmond. Or Louisiana native Rod Dreher, a deeply sensitive man who cares profoundly for the feelings of others. He soberly concluded that our monuments must come down because former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu said in this speech that feelings were hurt, and there's nothing more precious to America than feels. Or Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee and the founder of Instapundit, a blog popular among the Fox News/Christian Zionist boomer demographic. He came to prominence as a rapid supporter of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and any exercise of American power; he was an early cheerleader for Ukraine and promulgator of the "Russia is a gas station with an army" notion. His specialty, by the way, is "space law" and "constitutional law." Reynolds is a conduit for the agitprop created by Dennis Prager, whose PragerU is a reliable dispenser of brain-hammering stupidity: Dems r the real racists; Republicans are the party of Lincoln; our monuments are "participation trophies" for losers; Sherman showed how to win wars, he showed you traitors and all you enemies of the USA watch our, or you're gonna get Shermaned. USA! USA! USA!
So the Americans threw the head of our chief into the furnace. The photographer captured the moment. You may have seen the picture. The molten bronze coursed from the hollow eyes, over his cheeks, and mingled with his beard. Weeping for a fallen America, some said. I was struck by the sheer petty viciousness and spite of it all. Something surreal and Old Testament about it, Amalek eradicated: all of our works bulldozed away, the earth plowed with salt. To make it as though he – and we – had never existed.
The Americans failed. They failed because we do not forget. His face and his name and his deeds are burned into the memory of every Southerner, hard-coded into our DNA. Perhaps it is ill-remembered or buried beneath the garbage and stupidity of Americanism. I would know him anywhere; I would know him if I were blind.
I would follow that old man into hell. That's what our folks said then, and I say it now.
On May 17, 1861, my great-great-grandfather signed his name on the muster roll of a regiment organizing in his state's capitol. He was twenty-four, married with a son who became my great-grandfather one day. His brother, 18, enlisted the same day. Their term: for the duration of the war.
The regiment traveled by train to Richmond and was mustered into the service of the Southern states in June. It was posted at Yorktown and in May 1862, "won its first laurels" at Williamsburg, blocking the Americans under McClellan from advancing on Richmond. Another tough fight came in early June at Seven Pines. Joseph Johnstone, the commanding general, was wounded. Jefferson Davis appointed General Robert E. Lee to replace him. General Lee named his new command the Army of Northern Virginia.
For four my great-great grandfather followed Marse Robert. He was one of Lee's men, a soldier of the Army of Northern Virginia: one of those hard and wolfish Southerners who at Gaines Mill unleashed – perhaps for the first time, and maybe because they were fighting for General Lee – the fearsome, terrible Rebel Yell, that battle-cry unique to the Southern soldiers, derived from some ancestral memory of Saxon and British and Irish war-bands.
General Lee and his army cleared the Peninsula of McClellan, then turned west to "suppress," as General Lee put it, the "miscreant" Pope. Pope's "Army of Virginia" was flicked aside almost contemptuously. My great-great grandfather's regiment came under heavy fire but stood in reserve for the battle.
During the Maryland campaign, my great-great-grandfather saw General Lee. The army was on the march toward a town called Sharpsburg. They passed General Lee, who stood on a stone beside the turnpike watching them pass. The regimental commander remembers:
| We cheered [General Lee] as we passed. He stood with his hat off, the light of battle in his eyes, his grey hair glittering in the sunlight, and I have always remembered him as he stood then, as the noblest figure that is imprinted on my memory. |
The regiment took part in the capture of Harper's Ferry, then quick-marched to Sharpsburg. Their arrival with the corps of A.P. Hill was fortuitous – the Southern line was bending. The regiment was deployed to the Bloody Lane and beat back the American attacks. He was granted sick leave after Sharpsburg. The complaint was "phthisis." His daughter was conceived on that visit. He never met her. She did not survive the war. Nor did he see his son or his wife or his home again. He returned to Virginia in April 1863 as the Army of Northern Virginia maneuvered against an Army of the Potomac, this time commanded by "Mr. F.J. Hooker."
At Chancellorsville, General Lee split his outnumbered army not once but twice in defiance of every maxim of military science; no American has ever matched the audacity of Jackson's march around the American flank and that attack on the evening of May 2, 1862. It is easy to conjure the picture. The evening sun winds down. The soldiers of the American 11th Corps – primarily German immigrants, as it happens, are frying up their bacon and hardtack. Then, mysteriously, woodland creatures streak from the thickets: chipmunks, bobwhites, rabbits. Fritz and Hans trade puzzled looks. Was ist das?
Then, all at once – bugles, bugles, bugles; the Rebel Yell erupts as Jackson's men burst from the woods. The attack shattered the American 11th Corps, though at terrible cost, and scattered Hooker's army. Charles Marshall, an aide to General Lee, describes the following day:
At Chancellorsville, General Lee split his outnumbered army not once but twice in defiance of every maxim of military science; no American has ever matched the audacity of Jackson's march around the American flank and that attack on the evening of May 2, 1862. It is easy to conjure the picture. The evening sun winds down. The soldiers of the American 11th Corps – primarily German immigrants, as it happens, are frying up their bacon and hardtack. Then, mysteriously, woodland creatures streak from the thickets: chipmunks, bobwhites, rabbits. Fritz and Hans trade puzzled looks. Was ist das?
Then, all at once – bugles, bugles, bugles; the Rebel Yell erupts as Jackson's men burst from the woods. The attack shattered the American 11th Corps, though at terrible cost, and scattered Hooker's army. Charles Marshall, an aide to General Lee, describes the following day:
| On the morning of May 3, 1863, as many of you will remember, the final assault was made upon the Federal lines at Chancellorsville. General Lee accompanied the troops in person, and as they emerged from the fierce combat they had waged in the depths of that tangled wilderness, driving the superior forces of the enemy before them across the open ground, he rode into their midst. The scene is one that can never be effaced from the minds of those who witnessed it. The troops were pressing forward with all the ardour and enthusiasm of combat. The white smoke of musketry fringed the front of the line of battle, while the artillery on the hills in the rear of the infantry shook the earth with its thunder, and filled the air with the wild shrieks of the shells that plunged into the masses of the retreating foe. To add greater horror and sublimity to the scene, Chancellor House and the woods surrounding it were wrapped in flames. In the midst of this awful scene, General Lee, mounted upon that horse which we all remember so well, rode to the front of his advancing battalions. His presence was the signal for one of those outbursts of enthusiasm which none can appreciate who have not witnessed them. "The fierce soldiers with their faces blackened with the smoke of battle, the wounded crawling with feeble limbs from the fury of the devouring flames, all seemed possessed with a common impulse. One long, unbroken cheer, in which the feeble cry of those who lay helpless on the earth blended with the strong voices of those who still fought, rose high above the roar of battle, and hailed the presence of the victorious chief. He sat in the full realization of all that soldiers dream of—triumph; and as I looked upon him in the complete fruition of the success which his genius, courage, and confidence in his army had won, I thought that it must have been from such a scene that men in ancient days rose to the dignity of gods. |
Then came the march to Gettysburg.
My great-great grandfather's regiment, part of Longstreet's corps, took part in the July 2 attack on Cemetery Ridge. The Southerners broke the American line but could not exploit it without reserves. Half of the regiment fell. An American cannonball carried away his brother's foot. My great-great-grandfather was captured. Perhaps he was trying to carry his brother to safety.
But that was the last time they saw each other: the carnage of Longstreet's attack. My great-great-grandfather escaped and rejoined the army in Virginia. His brother endured three amputations: the first at the ankle, the second at the knee and finally the upper hip. A shot of whiskey, a bullet between the teeth and three men to hold him down; they cauterized the wound with a torch. He survived and raised my great-grandfather.
My great-great grandfather's regiment, part of Longstreet's corps, took part in the July 2 attack on Cemetery Ridge. The Southerners broke the American line but could not exploit it without reserves. Half of the regiment fell. An American cannonball carried away his brother's foot. My great-great-grandfather was captured. Perhaps he was trying to carry his brother to safety.
But that was the last time they saw each other: the carnage of Longstreet's attack. My great-great-grandfather escaped and rejoined the army in Virginia. His brother endured three amputations: the first at the ankle, the second at the knee and finally the upper hip. A shot of whiskey, a bullet between the teeth and three men to hold him down; they cauterized the wound with a torch. He survived and raised my great-grandfather.
In May 1864 a fresh Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan. The ostensible commander was George Meade, but the new overall commander of the American armies came along. This was, of course, U.S. Grant, the "quiet man from Galena." In Mexico, Grant served with the quartermasters in a "rear with the gear" sort of role. So he understood logistics and the importance of accumulating mountains of supply and moving them most efficiently from point A to point B. He would have made a first-rate regional VP for UPS. But he was an innovator in his way: he pioneered germ warfare by pitching dead horses into the Vicksburg water supply during the siege. More importantly, he grasped the iron logic of attrition, as Lincoln did. Neither cared how much blood was shed, provided their "union" was "preserved."
Plenty of new Americans in the ranks, too. The eager volunteers of Lincoln's first call-ups were dead or at the end of their three-year enlistments. There were a good number of fanatical, New England abolitionist types among them, the sorts that would be pussy-hat wearing male feminists or whatever the current thing may be. Plenty of draftees, despite the carnage of the New York City draft riots the prior year; more than a few were the sweepings of the New York and Boston gutters. One-third were foreign-born; Lincoln sent agents to Germany and Ireland or recruited sergeants to greet the immigrant ships. It's remarkable how many of the American generals were habitually drunk; a few even experimented with opioids, the new miracle drug.
This was the "Grand Army of the Republic" that Grant led across the Rapidan to commence the brutal Overland Campaign. First, the Wilderness, a tangled wasteland where the skulls of the Chancellorsville dead protruded from shallow graves. My great-great grandfather's regiment was "hotly engaged" there; it "suffered greatly" at Spotsylvania, where it spent a night in the "Bloody Angle." The regimental history records that it was under fire daily as Grant tried to flank the Army of Northern Virginia. The North Anna, Cold Harbor, where Grant threw musicians into the slaughter. He finally managed to get across the James, at the cost of 50,000 men, the size of General Lee's army. But Grand failed to take Petersburg. So he fell back on the one thing that had worked. A siege. That was the beginning of the end.
My great-great-grandfather died on January 20, 1865, in Howards Grove Hospital in Richmond. The cause of death was phthisis, the complaint that got him the sick leave in 1863. The contemporary name is tuberculosis. He must have had it when he enlisted.
And he enlisted for the duration. Did he, at some point, kick himself for making a terrible mistake? Did he consider trying to wrangle a medical discharge? Did he try? Did he consider, when on that sick leave, just staying? Did he consider just going home when he escaped the Americans after Gettysburg? Collecting his wife, son, and daughter he had never seen and fleeing somewhere new? California? Mexico? Canada?
Whatever he may have thought: he did not abandon his comrades nor his oath of service to General Lee.
Perhaps he had some premonition of the fruits of American victory. Maybe he saw the demons Lincoln had summoned with his abstractions and how Lincoln fed them with the blood of those murdered in his war of conquest. Perhaps he saw that the Americans would realize the fantastic, incredible profits that could be accrued by war and conquest, that an all-powerful central government most efficiently manages wars. And that this "new nation" of Lincoln's would, in short order, become aggressive abroad and despotic at home; and that the Americans had discovered the secret of tarting up the most wicked of crimes with high-minding abstractions: freedom, justice, "all men created equal." That America would become an exporter of degenerate perversion – OnlyFans, pornography – and an importer of low-wage serfs to keep the profit machines humming.
Perhaps he saw the desecration of the monument to General Lee. And maybe he saw all of this in the last days of his illness, shivering in the trenches of Petersburg, barefoot and wrapped in a thin blanket, maybe a chunk of fatty bacon and a handful of parched corn in his belly.
Better death than submit to these people, he may have thought. Better to die than to be an American.
He was buried in Oakwood Cemetery, the location recorded in a book. Once the state budgeted a minuscule amount for its upkeep. That was cut by the Democratic governor and legislature cut that: another display of the nasty, petty, mean-spirited viciousness that characterizes the American national character.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans now maintain the cemetery and keeps the record book. They helped locate his grave and plant a headstone.
Plenty of new Americans in the ranks, too. The eager volunteers of Lincoln's first call-ups were dead or at the end of their three-year enlistments. There were a good number of fanatical, New England abolitionist types among them, the sorts that would be pussy-hat wearing male feminists or whatever the current thing may be. Plenty of draftees, despite the carnage of the New York City draft riots the prior year; more than a few were the sweepings of the New York and Boston gutters. One-third were foreign-born; Lincoln sent agents to Germany and Ireland or recruited sergeants to greet the immigrant ships. It's remarkable how many of the American generals were habitually drunk; a few even experimented with opioids, the new miracle drug.
This was the "Grand Army of the Republic" that Grant led across the Rapidan to commence the brutal Overland Campaign. First, the Wilderness, a tangled wasteland where the skulls of the Chancellorsville dead protruded from shallow graves. My great-great grandfather's regiment was "hotly engaged" there; it "suffered greatly" at Spotsylvania, where it spent a night in the "Bloody Angle." The regimental history records that it was under fire daily as Grant tried to flank the Army of Northern Virginia. The North Anna, Cold Harbor, where Grant threw musicians into the slaughter. He finally managed to get across the James, at the cost of 50,000 men, the size of General Lee's army. But Grand failed to take Petersburg. So he fell back on the one thing that had worked. A siege. That was the beginning of the end.
My great-great-grandfather died on January 20, 1865, in Howards Grove Hospital in Richmond. The cause of death was phthisis, the complaint that got him the sick leave in 1863. The contemporary name is tuberculosis. He must have had it when he enlisted.
And he enlisted for the duration. Did he, at some point, kick himself for making a terrible mistake? Did he consider trying to wrangle a medical discharge? Did he try? Did he consider, when on that sick leave, just staying? Did he consider just going home when he escaped the Americans after Gettysburg? Collecting his wife, son, and daughter he had never seen and fleeing somewhere new? California? Mexico? Canada?
Whatever he may have thought: he did not abandon his comrades nor his oath of service to General Lee.
Perhaps he had some premonition of the fruits of American victory. Maybe he saw the demons Lincoln had summoned with his abstractions and how Lincoln fed them with the blood of those murdered in his war of conquest. Perhaps he saw that the Americans would realize the fantastic, incredible profits that could be accrued by war and conquest, that an all-powerful central government most efficiently manages wars. And that this "new nation" of Lincoln's would, in short order, become aggressive abroad and despotic at home; and that the Americans had discovered the secret of tarting up the most wicked of crimes with high-minding abstractions: freedom, justice, "all men created equal." That America would become an exporter of degenerate perversion – OnlyFans, pornography – and an importer of low-wage serfs to keep the profit machines humming.
Perhaps he saw the desecration of the monument to General Lee. And maybe he saw all of this in the last days of his illness, shivering in the trenches of Petersburg, barefoot and wrapped in a thin blanket, maybe a chunk of fatty bacon and a handful of parched corn in his belly.
Better death than submit to these people, he may have thought. Better to die than to be an American.
He was buried in Oakwood Cemetery, the location recorded in a book. Once the state budgeted a minuscule amount for its upkeep. That was cut by the Democratic governor and legislature cut that: another display of the nasty, petty, mean-spirited viciousness that characterizes the American national character.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans now maintain the cemetery and keeps the record book. They helped locate his grave and plant a headstone.
To be continued...
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