Confederate States of America(CSA)

Monday, 11 February 2013

Consequences of destruction of Southern agrarian elites(Golden-Circle)

Some historians have described the Old South as a ‘seigneurial’ society that was part of a broader civilisation of classically-inspired, agrarian-based cultures. This civilisation was quite distinct in numerous important ways from the sort of society that emerged in New England and the Mid-Atlantic region. One of the ways in which Southern society was unique was the nature of its ruling class. Italian professor Raimondo Luraghi on page 32 of his book The Rise and Fall of the Plantation South describes the Southern ruling class: Wade Hampton (prior to the US conquest of the South he was possibly the wealthiest man in the United States) is an example of the sort of elite produced by the Old South In the South, Renaissance “gentlemen” believed in a strong individuality and defied adverse fortune by personal virtue. Habitual seigneurs of large land-holdings, without any strong religious discipline, they were fond of good reading, leisure, hunting, and horsemanship. The professor describes the society which these Southern gentleman ruled as ‘a hierarchic society founded upon land seigneurie, as in Europe’ prior to the political rise of the bourgeois. In contrast, Luraghi notes that New England was ‘a land of thrifty merchants, shipmasters, and bankers, inspired by the idea of a divine mission.’ It is logical that the sort of elites who emerged to lead each of these societies would have been quite different from one another – and, in fact, they were. The United States’ military conquest of the South in 1860s and the subsequent military occupation (‘Reconstruction’) and lengthy period of crushing poverty inflicted disorder upon the region and created an environment where the class which had long led the South was largely replaced by outsiders and those who emerged from a new bourgeois order. The continuity that was central to Southern civilisation was disrupted and the continued existence of the South as a distinct culture was put in jeopardy. Southern writer and professor Herman Clarence Nixon‘s article ‘Whither Southern Economy?’ (which appeared in the 1930 Southern manifesto I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition) summarises some some of the reasons for the fall of the old aristocracy in the South. He also mentions some of the consequences of the ‘New South’ order, which led to the imposition of a new economic system, media and understanding of work and leisure. Southern resources were grabbed up by Northern industrial and financial elites, who used the power of government to reinforce their economic control. The South was left unprotected without its old, leading class: In disrupting and disorganizing the economic life of the South, the Civil War [sic] jolted from power and status the most articulate agrarian group known to American history, leaving no effective check to an industrial dominance in national [sic] public policy, particularly in tariff matters. It partially terminated and partially modified the distinctive plantation system, making Southern agricultural diversification and industrial recovery difficult for lack of physical goods and capital. It forced a dependence in the South on the one-crop system, temporarily reinforced by unusually high prices for cotton. It terminated slavery without removing negro labor. It brought to the South an appreciation of the common man and the dignity of labor with an accompanying loss in the appreciation of the uses of leisure. It created a Southern vacuum for an economic invasion, with the region becoming a suppliant for outside aid and yielding much control of its economic destiny. It destroyed real estate values, not only with serious damage to pre-war owners, but with the consequential jungle of speculation, promotion, and “booms” as values moved upward again with many ups and downs. It tended to throw the Southern perspective towards a bourgeois materialism, to shift the embodiment of ideals from the country gentleman to the captain of industry or finance. With a mixture of justification, and perhaps, exaggeration, a spokesman of the ancien regime complained in De Bow’s Review, November, 1866, that Southern railroads, factories, and debts were owned by interests in the North and East and that an elegant Southern aristocracy had been displaced by a new “Northeastern moneyed aristocracy.” The worked, he said, had never seen “an aristocracy half so powerful, half so corrupt, so unprincipled, and rapacious, nor one-tenth so vulgar and so ignorant, as the moneyed aristocracy of the Northeast.” In more ways than one was there truth in the provincial epigram, “The bottom rail is on the top now, mister.”

All But Their Honor

Sunday, 10 February 2013

Rhett, Southern independence & the Golden Circle

by The League of the South

The Old South is understood by historians to have been part of a much larger civilisation of plantation societies in the New World that stretched from Brazil north to through the Caribbean through the mainland South up to Delaware. The centre of this agrarian, classically-influenced civilisation was the Caribbean and there the plantation model of society was most intense. Prior to the American Revolution the South had been part of the same empire as the British plantation colonies of the Caribbean. The severing of that union in 1776 ultimately led to the downfall of the British Caribbean and saw the agrarian South join with New England in an ill-advised union of greatly different cultures and economies. Nineteenth century Southerner leaders understood all of this and many Southern nationalists such as South Carolina statesman Robert Barnwell Rhett dreamed of uniting the entire plantation region of the New World in a single confederation which would be powerful enough to stand up to the growing industrial powers of Western Europe and the US North (and thereby prevent disastrous economic (high tariffs), political (democracy) and social (equality) policies from being implemented in the region). ‘The Golden Circle’ was a term that many Southerners (and sympathisers in the North) used to describe the future they envisioned in which the mainland South, the Caribbean and coastal lands around the Caribbean would be joined together, forming a large ‘circle’ of sorts on maps. Professor Eric H Walther describes Rhett’s vision of Southern independence on page 150 of his book The Fire-Eaters. Clearly, this was not simply a reaction to Northern intervention in Southern society; this was a program which many Southerners must have found inspiring as they thought about how to strengthen, expand and further enrich their society. Walther writes:Rhett offered an alternative. An independent South, he claimed, would be invincible. Eight million whites, holding 4 million slaves, “are too mighty in their strength to trust any other people to shape their destiny,” Rhett argued. “They must be independent and free in the high station for which they are designed amongst the great nations of the earth.” Furthermore, southerners had a “high mission” imposed upon them: they had a duty to show the world a slaveholding republic could not only exist but thrive. A thriving future, he said, was inevitable. Freed from the restraints of Yankee domination, he pledged, “Expansion shall be the law of the South.” In his incredible picture of the future, a Southern nation [sic] would consume all potential plantation regions in the Western Hemisphere, reaching thirty degrees north and south of the equator (roughly from Virginia to the southern tip of Brazil). Southern institutions would thus remain safe for centuries, southern economic power would dominate the world, and liberty for white southerners would never again be in jeopardy. If northerners joined southerners to elect a Democrat president in 1860, the South might choose to remain in the Union a while longer. But if a Republican were elected southerners must choose between a dangerous Union and a “glorious Southern Confederacy.”

Maxcy Gregg: Fire-Eater & Confederate general

By the League of the South

One of the leading Southern nationalist advocates in the Palmetto State years before secession and the US war against the South was Maxcy Gregg. The Columbia native was a lawyer, scientist and soldier who ultimately gave his life for Southern independence, killed in 1862 while resisting the US invasion of Virginia. The picture below was taken yesterday and shows a sign in Columbia, SC just a block from the Statehouse where a house once stood in which Gregg was born. Notice that the sign, erected in 1938, refers to the ‘Southern rights movement.’

Memphis, Tennessee turns back on Southern identity

The City of Memphis has decided to eliminate the Southern names for three city parks. WMCTV covers the story: The council decided Nathan Bedford Forrest Park will now be called Health Sciences Park. Confederate Park will no[w] be named Memphis Park and Jefferson Davis Park will now be known as Mississippi River Park. It should be noted that Memphis’s population is now 62% Black and less than 30% White. ‘New South’ democracy and equality mean that Southern heroes are cast aside while people (such as those who staff the local government) with no regard for the historic Southern identity and culture of the city are allowed to push their anti-Southern and anti-White agenda.

Friday, 25 January 2013

Southern flag flies in Quebec

Thanks to ‘Gothik Dixie Crow’ for the picture!

Secession House in Beaufort, South Carolina

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting the historic and beautiful Lowcountry town of Beaufort, South Carolina, which has been named ‘Best Small Southern Town’ by Southern Living magazine. I took photos and video footage for a planned series on the Lowcountry, Robert Barnwell Rhett and the birth of South nationalism. The pictures below are a few that I took of the Secession House that sits just a block from the city’s harbour. This house was built in 1810 and later purchased by Edmund Rhett, Robert’s brother. Rhett remodeled his home in the Greek Revival style popular in the Antebellum South. The Database of Historical Markers provides more information and historic pictures of the home: Edmund Rhett, along with his brother Robert Barnwell Rhett (1800-1876), lawyer, state representative, state attorney general, U.S. congressman and senator, was an outspoken champion of state rights and Southern nationalism from the 1830′s to the Civil War. This house, long known as “Secession House,” was the scene of many informal discussions and formal meetings during the 1850′s by the Rhetts and their allies advocating secession and Southern independence. Notice that the term ‘Southern nationalism’ is here used. It is also present, you will notice, on the South Carolina historical marker which stands in front of the home. Enjoy the photographs!