“Before he died, the great Southern historian, Shelby Foote, in the mid 1990s, gave an interview with PBS about the Civil War. The interview was replete with Proustian moments; Foote was Proust with a bourbon mellowed Southern drawl.
He took note that after the Civil War ended in Union victory; the white Southerner was bitter. But eventually, a compromise, a GREAT COMPROMISE, was worked out with the victorious North; the South would accept that it was best for all that the Union won; however, the North had to acknowledge that the South had fought valiantly; which is why so many military bases were named after defeated Southern generals.
He gave insight into his bewilderment as to why Black Americans were bitter about slavery; he noted that Hebrews acknowledged their slavery and had risen above it. He never addressed that perhaps Hebrews were still bitter about their bondage, in the time frame of less than two hundred years from the end of their bondage.
He had a Proustian moment, and stated that the defeat of the Confederacy changed social mores; before the defeat a man’s word was his bond.
At the end of the interview, the PBS anchor asked him, if the Civil War was to be fought again, which side would he, Foote, be on? Foote answered: “The South; they are my people.”
In 2024, with a pro-illegal alien Administration in power, there is not only a renewed memory of the Confederacy in American thought, but a yearning for a Confederate victory.
During the 1-06-2021 DAY OF RAGE at the U.S. Capitol, against the Ruling Elite, the STARS AND BARS, the battle flag of the Southern armies, was carried through the halls of the Capitol( see the picture below); something Confederate arms never achieved.
It is not difficult to understand and appreciate American intoxication, perhaps even infatuation with the Confederacy; that springs from the Homeric courage of the Confederate soldier; who, after saying goodbye to his wife, child and aged mother, went off to do things never accomplished before in arms.
At Gettysburg, one can see the HIGH-WATER MARK MONUMENT, the high point of Confederate arms; one can also see the field, over which the Confederates charged, Pickett’s Charge, into the massed musket, rifles and artillery of vengeful Union soldiers. The Southern soldiers did what the French could not do at Waterloo, or the British at New Orleans; they breached the Union lines.
No American male can stand at Gettysburg and not wonder if he would have measured up to the courage of the Rebs at Gettysburg.
The Spartans showed unworldly courage at Thermopylae; so too the Confederates during Pickett’s Charge. If they had broken before breaching, there would be no Lost Cause yearning, no Dixie Avalon.
But they did not break; which causes one to think, should not that cause, of so much courage, have won?
Let us speculate on a scenario in which the Confederacy had won.
Twice, during Gettysburg, the Confederacy could have won the battle, and perhaps the war, once at Cemetery Ridge, and then at Little Round Top. But Stonewall Jackson was dead, and his replacements were not aggressive in their killer instincts.
But let us look at another scenario, a plausible one, in which the Confederacy could have won. In July, 1864, General Grant began his assault on Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. Grant intended to win the war by attrition; so, he had stripped Washington, D.C. of most of its garrison, to fight his campaign, and replenish his losses.
To counter that, Lee sent Jubal Early and a small force to attack Washington. At Fort Stevens, the remaining Union soldiers and Confederates clashed. Coming to look at the action, first hand, was President Abraham Lincoln; and with his customary death wish, he wore his top hat. He stood straight tall, in his top hat, looking at the Confederate army.
They in turn fired upon Lincoln, hoping to kill him.
Cowering next to the tall Lincoln, was future Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior. Holmes said, politely and sublimely to Lincoln: ‘ GET DOWN YOU DAMN FOOL.”
Lincoln smiled, and got down. Holmes’ advice was too wise not to follow.
ALTERNATIVE HISTORY-
In this alternative History, Lincoln does not get down in time, and a Confederate sniper kills him.
The Union is thrown into disarray; Hannibal Hamlin becomes president. A good man, he is not Lincoln. Peace advocates in the North overwhelm him; Hamlin ends the military campaigns against the South and negotiates the secession of the South.
The North signs a peace treaty; brokered by Great Britain; it demobilizes its army, and ends conscription.
Jefferson Davis is triumphant; he does not demobilize the army, nor end conscription. He needs the Army to quell incipient Black slave rebellions and crush pro-Union forces in West Virginia, Tennessee and Texas.
The French Emperor Napoleon III, seeing the Confederacy victorious, suspends the French evacuation from Mexico and doubles down on support for Emperor Maximilian; the Confederacy sends in troops to support the two Emperors.
Exhausted, Davis retires to Mississippi after his six-year term is up, in 1868. General Robert E. Lee wins election as the second president of the Confederacy;, on a platform of reconciliation with the Union, and an organized emancipation of Black Slaves, using the money from Mexican gold mines to pay full value to slaveowners.
Alas, Lee dies of a heart attack.
Lee’s Vice President, James Longstreet, assumes the Presidency; but he is killed in a coup, led by General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Also killed in the coup are Robert E. Lee’s three sons.
The South is run by a military junta.
Bedford Forrest declares a state of emergency, suspends all civil liberties and elections indefinitely; he declares martial law.
In 1875, fed up with Forrest, Texans under William Preston Johnston, the son of Confederate war hero Albert Sidney Johnston, leads a successful rebellion. Texas becomes an independent nation once again, and seizes New Mexico and Arizona.
The Confederacy stays neutral during World War I, forcing the Union to do the same.
The Confederacy has significant health issues; cut off from Northern medicine, Yellow Jack, anthrax, and diphtheria run rampant.
The Confederacy evolves into a militarized state, an English-speaking Sparta. One third of the white male population is under arms at all times, to keep the Yankees and Mexicans at bay, and to discourage Black rebellions.
In 1929, the Great Depression radically informs the Confederacy; no longer able to afford Slavery, Black slaves are emancipated in 1932, and offered passage North, to the United States.
In 1975, a freedom movement, led by entertainer Johnny Cash overthrows the military junta.
The saddest ramification of the Confederate victory is that it robbed the South of Southern Literature.
Southern Literature exists because of the Union victory; with a Confederate victory the world never has: William Faulkner, Shelby Foote, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Ellen Glasgow, Carson McCullers, Katherine Anne Porter, Shirley Ann Grau, Reynolds Price, James Dickey, William Price Fox, Davis Grubb, Walker Percy, William Styron, and John Kennedy Toole.
There was no great Southern Literature before the Confederate defeat, no Southern Melville, Irving, Hawthorne, Cooper, Longfellow, Thoreau, or Whitman.
It was the great Confederate defeat which gave the South, great Southern Literature.
Finally, we know on a local level, what a Confederate South would look like, Phenix City, Alabama, vicious corruption hiding in the shadows of Confederate courage.
In 2021, Alabama's former Governor John Patterson died at the age of 99.
John Patterson’s story is all you need to know to cease yearning for a Confederate victory.
Phenix City was known as the all-American city of Sin, SIN CITY; it serviced the service men stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia; which is nine miles away.
John’s father, Albert Patterson was drafted by his church group to clean up the city, by running for Attorney General of Alabama. Albert was assassinated.
“…as (Albert) walked to his car, which was parked in an alley off Fifth Avenue next to the Elite Cafe. An unidentified assailant walked up to him, pushed a gun in his mouth, and shot him three times. One cartridge was found wedged in an opening, where two or three front teeth had been knocked out. Patterson was well aware that his life was in danger, commenting just one night earlier to a church group, "I have only a 100-to-1 chance of ever being sworn in as attorney general."….
Patterson's son, John Malcolm Patterson, assumed the Democratic nomination for Attorney General; he won and took office in 1955. In 1958, John was elected as Alabama governor, running on a platform of fighting organized crime and public corruption.”
The Confederacy would be a series of corrupt satrapies, a vast array of Phenix Cities.
Comments
Post a Comment