The South Will Rise Again

From A Son of Old Glory, member of the Nathanael Greene Society

We are told America began at Plymouth Rock, but this is a half-truth turned into a whole distortion. It is odd that such a strange thing has gripped the narrative, seeing as the Mayflower arrived on these shores 13 years after we already had a permanent colony of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The first colony that endured and planted its flag and its roots was not Plymouth in Massachusetts. Rather, it was Jamestown in Virginia.

Jamestown was raw, violent, and wild. Despite acknowledging God in the Virigina Charter, its settlers were not so much pilgrims seeking heaven as they were adventurers seeking gold. They found not glory at first, but hunger, death, and blood. Yet even in their plight and with people less pious than the pilgrims, Providence provided. Their hands learned tobacco which became the fire that ignited the further colonization of Virginia. A fire that sustained families, bound neighbors, and birthed a people. It is often remarked that the fragrant smoke of tobacco in conjunction with copious amounts of caffeine was the fuel that created America. After having several fantastic evenings with my brothers in the Nathanael Greene Society discussing religion and politics between puffs of cigar smoke, I’m inclined to agree.

Jamestown is where my people can trace roots through, the Southern half of the United States, as much as Northerners trace from Plymouth. We can think of these as two separate but equally important foundings of America symbolized by their own unique elements. Plymouth, the people named after a rock, a people of stone. Jamestown, a people who found their salvation in smoke and fire. We can take these two elements of fire and stone, and understand them as the dual cores of Americas founding.

Plymouth was stone, representing endurance, stubbornness, and productivity. Jamestown was fire, representing ferocity, unruliness, and creativity. America was never born of stone alone, nor fire alone, but of the union of both. And America will only be whole again when fire and stone are reconciled, when Southern Spirit and Northern Spirit work together towards one unified American Spirit.

The Civil War shattered that unity, and even as it was pieced together after this, desegregation further smashed everything that had been restored. As equally a son of the South as I am A Son of Old Glory, I have often wrestled with this notion of Gods will in these matters. Why did my people lose both of these fights when we have been so vindicated in the obvious consequences after our loss? Why have we been laid so low when we are the firstborn of America, and the North the second son? Why now are we having all our heritage stripped away?

I come to interesting parallels in these two events, of civil war and desegregation. One a war by arms and one a war by politics each separated by nearly exactly a century. Lincoln a vicious tyrant, seen so often instead as humble liberator. Martin Luther King Jr., a racial communist, seen so often instead as a peaceful activist. Both met ends that made them into martyrs. Both caused grievous harm to the fabric of the United States. Both times we were right about so much. Both times, we lost.

We face yet another war in our day. However, the conflict we face now is not one of arms or of politics. It is one for the very existence of the American people, a war of ideas, people and culture. It is likely the last brother war we shall fight, and we must not lose this time.

I believe firmly that when one loses, they must take accountability for what they did wrong. They must acknowledge truthfully where they failed and what they could have done otherwise themselves, not attributing that loss to others. When one claims they did nothing wrong and lost anyways, it is to equally claim there is no possibility of victory and no change can be made to succeed in the future. It is a mentality that spirals into inaction, squalor, and makes losing a self fulfilling prophecy. Further, should God have willed the outcome, then nothing could stand against Him. Thus, I come to the conclusion that God was not with us entirely in either fight. But why? If God allowed us to lose the fight for southern rights and the fight to keep like people with like, shall we say then that all the South was wicked?

No. For within the Southern spirit exist many truths that are not evil, that America is in desperate need of. The truth that hierarchy is equally as good as it is natural, that aristocratic virtues live on even with no formal titles to accompany them. The truth that duty is owed to your family, kin, nation and God. The truth that equality is not found in dictating by law the sameness of station or of ethnicity or of sex but sameness before Almighty God as each are unique creations designed exactly as they were meant to be by Him. These things are at the essence of Southern fire. I believe the nation still needs them if it is to live, as we are missing these things dearly and only we have maintained even their vestiges in our homeland.

So then, why did the South lose both of these? The hard truth is that we must have done something wrong, and the flaw I find responsible for this is largely in our Southern Pride. Now, let me elaborate more in hard truths. It was prideful, arrogant even, to think that we could exist entirely on our own without our Yankee brothers. It simply was not feasible to have us be two nations. It was prideful, arrogant even, to think we could resist the pressures of the wider nation to maintain segregation. It was simply not feasible in the face of overwhelming pressure. More than anything else, our Pride has been our downfall. We must be humble, sober minded, and look now to what we can feasibly do.

It was pride that kept us unable to part with our systems of slavery removing any potential to repatriate them to their homeland in a gradual and amicable end to the practice. It was pride that led us to think that we could maintain segregation now, tomorrow and forever even as it was crumbling. It was pride that led us to both rebellion and resistance when each time what we truly needed was reform.

I call upon all of us sons of the South to swallow our pride, for we need to now more than ever. I do this even as our place as the firstborn son of America is actively erased in the minds of the public. This is no easy ask as our younger brother in the pilgrims is said to be the only true son. I still call upon us to swallow our pride, for our pride came before our fall. I do this even as the statues of our heroes fall and even as the graves our fallen, even of loyal beasts like Traveller, are desecrated in ghoulish fashion. This is no easy ask as the visage of Robert E Lee being melted into slag remains seared into my mind and shall never depart from me. I still call upon us to swallow our pride, as our Southern spirit is needed now more than ever to save our nation as a whole.

The north has been in a near unilateral domination of our nation since the 1960s. Is it no wonder then that the second son, the North, in ruling alone has led us to such failure? Has led us to think America is nothing more than an idea, nothing more than a place for economic opportunities, our identity found in nothing more than pieces of paper? There is some truth in these things, but they are as hollow and dead as Plymouth Rock on their own. They are half-truths which require Southern fire to restore the whole, otherwise we shall remain secular, cold, and dead as rocks.

Our fire has been reduced to embers, but it is not yet extinguished. The fire has not gone out. Against all odds the South remains unreconstructed even today. We are told our memory is dead, our names erased from bases, our character evil, but look at what is occurring today. Even now, statues rise again. Even now, bases are having names restored. Even now, men rise who will not yield, who declare that our fire is not yet extinguished. What they called the “Lost Cause” is not lost even if we did not understand the full meaning of that phrase. For our lost cause was never meant to be a rebellion reborn, but of reconciliation restored.

It is clearly the hand of God upon all of this. Look to our current President. He is a quintessential Northerner, a man of New York industry and mercantile ingenuity and he is the one who has been first healing this divide. He has recognized that Robert E. Lee and other Southern heroes are great men worthy of honor. He has restored their names to bases as we so deserve for we are the heart of American soldiery. He has said that God spared him on that day in Butler Pennsylvania because God had more work for him to do. If I may be so bold, this reconciliation may be the very great work required. Still, there is yet more restoration necessary than statues and names.

Our aristocratic virtue must be restored in America. Our passionate love of God and country must be restored in America. Our ferocity and unrelenting will to fight must be restored in America. We must reclaim our place as the firstborn son, those of fire, and we cannot do it alone. Even as we humble ourselves and admit our wrong doing, our Northern brothers must do the same themselves, and acknowledge that their solo stewardship of these United States has been an utter disaster, and that what we have is of vital necessity.

In a spirit of reconciliation, I would like us to consider the great heroes of our brother war on both sides with their counter parts. Consider Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the pious professor turned soldier, holding Little Round Top by faith and fury. Consider James Longstreet, the loyal right hand, steady and enduring. Consider Ulysses S. Grant, flawed but relentless, offering mercy at Appomattox. Consider Robert E. Lee, dignified, dutiful, laying down his sword. Consider William Tecumseh Sherman, the scourge, rod of fire, chastising the South with flame. Consider Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, the man of prayer, whose “foot cavalry” marched as though borne on wings.

There is heroism and dignity in all of them and we need all that they had to save our great nation. Each was different, each opposed, yet together they show what America was meant to be. Not enemies, but one house under God. We must even consider Lincoln, the tyrant though he was, suspending liberties, flooding the land with immigrants, and unleashing devastation. Even in the midst of that he spoke truth: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

And finally, we must consider Jefferson Davis. A man who refused pardons, who refused to relent, who even in defeat fostered the lost cause. Who wrote our most distinct apologia in “The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government.” Despite defeat, imprisonment, and threat of execution, he did not yield. He kept our fire alive. We must honor him and do what is necessary in our own time, not just for the South, but for all the Sons of Old Glory, Yankee and Rebel alike.

The South will rise again. Not as a broken and fractured nation of its own as it once tried to do, but as a reconciled heart of one great nation under God. Not as fire against stone, but fire joined together with stone as God intended. Not with bitterness or pride, but as equals. The North must humble itself, admit its failures. The South must lay down its pride, confess its sins. Only then, when we are fully joined in a repentent spirit to secure the general welfare, to provide for the common defense, and to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our prosperity can America be whole again.

Stone and fire. Plymouth and Jamestown. North and South. Together, once more, as God ordained. The South Will Rise Again.

“He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.” (Ephesians 2:14)