There are many things that anger and frustrate us that the Federal Leviathan government does. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 has been one that has really angered and frustrated me the most in recent times. This behemoth act passed by the U.S. Congress over President Trump’s veto created the nasty Naming Commission that is attempting to erase our history by renaming military bases and other resources. Why do they have to be renamed? Because they are named after and honor Confederates. This evil and vindictive act is even going after the beautiful Confederate grave monument in Arlington Cemetery. All of this of course is driven by the nation’s obsession with race and the overreaction to the death of a criminal in Minneapolis during 2020.

One of the changes brought about by the Naming Commission is the switching of the name of a naval missile cruiser. The cruiser had been named the USS Chancellorsville and is now named the USS Robert Smalls by the commission. This cruiser was built and launched at the end of President Ronald Reagan’s time in office. It is amazing how things have devolved in just 35 years. Our government went from honoring both sides in the War Between the States to treating one side as if they are the greatest evil. This comes from our racially obsessed culture, and our increasingly ignorant and apathetic society. The new name of the vessel, Robert Smalls, illustrates how ignorant our modern society is. It shows how they think that the war was a war about slavery. For them, Smalls represents the escaped slave fighting against the evil slave empire of the South.

In the spirit of nullification, I personally will always refer to these bases, vessels, etc. by their original Confederate names, as I suggest we all should do. I got to thinking about the original name of this vessel Chancellorsville. Chancellorsville would be something the Federal government would want to attempt to erase from history. This battle confirms the truth that the South had better generals, better fighting men, and should have won the War Between the States.

Chancellorsville is the greatest American battle achievement, in my opinion. In the spring of 1863 General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was at half strength, as General Longstreet’s wing was in southeastern Virginia gathering supplies and distracting a Northern army. General Lee, and his greatest corps commander General Stonewall Jackson, faced General Joseph Hooker’s immense Army of the Potomac. Hooker had drastically increased the size of the Northern army, improved morale, and created a new intelligence force that actually knew what it was doing. All things seemed to point to some trouble for General Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia.

Armed with a great battle plan and over two times the numbers as Lee, Hooker crossed most of his force over the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers landing on Lee’s flank or side. What did Lee and Stonewall Jackson do? They divided their force twice. They left two small portions of the army to hold Hooker’s forces in place while Jackson took the largest portion on an incredible flanking march around Hooker’s right wing. The rest is history. Stonewall Jackson’s force surprised, crushed, and rolled up the entire right side of Hooker’s army. It was a rout.

However, Chancellorsville was certainly bittersweet. The Confederates took incredible casualties in the victory and Stonewall Jackson was killed during the night of the first day of the battle, shot accidentally by his own men. I believe his death and the Northern blockade were the two real reasons for Southern defeat in the War Between the States. Jackson always carried out his and General Lee’s battle plans effectively. If you truly study the war up until and including the Battle of Chancellorsville, especially the Eastern Theater of fighting, you see that the South was going to drive the North to sue for peace in 1863 or 1864. If General Jackson had survived Chancellorsville, the summer of 1863 certainly would have had a different outcome.

This is perhaps why the Federal government wants to erase Chancellorsville. If you read about and study the battle you can truly see what the Confederates were capable of. You can see that it was a Lost Cause, as the better generals and armies did eventually lose to overwhelming resources and bad luck. Conversely, the Battle of Chancellorsville also showed how ineptly lead and poor the Northern forces fought. To have over double the size in an army and still get routed is embarrassing to say the least.
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What we must do is educate our current and future generations as best we can about the truth. We can carry on the victory at Chancellorsville with future victories over the Federal Leviathan in this education and more. We do not have to honor or follow their name changes.

​The South has survived and will continue to survive. History shows us this. The beauty of the land of Dixie, and its history of fighting for independence and self governance makes it the true heart of America that began with our nation’s founding and continues today. However, there is no guarantees of survival. The fight and preservation must continue with strength.

If I may indulge by selfishly, and briefly, describing my personal history and experiences to help explain how I came upon my appreciation for the South. I was born and raised in a rural area deep in Yankee land. More specifically, I am another conservative and traditionalist from the same county in Michigan where the great cultural philosopher Russell Kirk lived. Dr. Clyde Wilson called Kirk a great defender “of the moral imagination” who was “no better example of resourceful defense of unchanging principle, through bad times and worse”. My appreciation and love for the South began with my interest in the War Between the States. Digging up a belt buckle from a Northern cavalry trooper on my grandparents’ land started my journey. I have progressed from an obsessor of Abraham Lincoln and the “Union” to now questioning the constitutionality and morality of much of what he and his administration did to the South.

This journey was mainly through my own development in self education, and essentially nothing to do with public education or what others told me. In studying American history, during my personal progression, I have come to obsess now over the larger than life greats of the South like George Washington, John Randolph of Roanoke, George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, John C. Calhoun, Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Josiah W. Bailey, John W. Davis, and many more. Many of these greats are being tainted or maligned by the modern hyper-racial hollow “historians” and intellectuals who mostly dwell on America’s portion in the long international history of slavery. The great Southerners who I listed and many others of their kind all should be respected for their honorable lives and strong defense of conservatism, freedom, and independence.

I have lived a quarter of my life in the South. When in the land of the Yankees I crave and miss its beauties and ways of life. My thoughts go to the gentle rolling mountains and valleys of Appalachia, the full rivers that cut through Tennessee and beyond, the hard plains of western Texas, and the breath taking coast lines from the Gulf of Mexico to Florida and further on to Virginia. The great original music that comes from the South, from “country” to jazz. I also think of the food from grits to the spice of Louisiana, and the barbecue pork in Arkansas, fried catfish and chicken in Alabama, and even the cliched peaches of Georgia. The climate is mostly pleasant, but the heat and mighty storms can give you pause. Mostly, it is the people and their own way of life that is the most alluring. The South’s history is the most colorful and interesting of our nation. It certainly contains many dark chapters. The War Between the States was the largest chapter of the horrors and destruction the South has had to survive in our nation’s history. This is a part of our history that no other region of the nation can truly understand or feel. From the start of our history, the Revolutionary War also brought the evils of war to Dixieland during the nation’s first struggle for independence. Increasingly, in present times, countless administrations and bureaucracies of what Donald Davidson called the “Leviathan” have saturated their cultural and economic destruction upon the South even more so. The tearing down of statues, changing of vocabulary through the twisted modern political correctness of intellectuals and barbarians, and too much more are encroaching on the South’s great cultural history.

Despite all of the intrusions and invasions, the South must remain positive and strong. The South will survive far beyond our lifetime if it continues to keep its original culture and honest history alive. These modern times are challenging that culture and history to be sure. There are a few key reasons that Russell Kirk mentioned, and I personally agree with, in his classic study The Conservative Mind that will, if adhered to, keep the South in perpetuity. He said the South had “impulses” in a “distaste for alteration”, a “determination to preserve…society”, and “a love of local rights.” This is what America and the South was truly founded on. The principal of self government with the most attention and power at the local level and then weaker governance at the levels further out.

From our forefathers who fought the American Revolution and formed our Constitution, to the Texans who won independence from Mexico, to the Southerners who fought a second war for independence against Yankee invasion in the War Between the States, and now to those who fight for limited government and protect the true Southern culture and history from the “Leviathan”. These are the people to salute, understand, and emulate in the continued fight to preserve the South. These are the modest thoughts from an unreconstructed Yankee, anyways.