By H. V. Traywick, Jr.Tail-spinning from the shelves ofsky

See how it dips and tacks and tossesTo cast a beam in the mind's eye:

Who will count thegains and the lossesOn the Day oflubi/o?

- Allen Tate, "[ubilo" 1

Ever since the Spring of 1864, the South has beenon the defensive . She has spent barrels of inkexplaining the righteousness of the cause shefought and died for. In ever greate r learned

detail she delves into the or igins of the United States,the Constitution which is its charter, the sovereignty ofthe States, and the right of secession. She argues withunassailable logic the facts and figures over the extor­tionate tariff imposed upon her, tu rn ing the Sou thernStates into the economic colonies of the industrialized,mercan tile No rth . She explains with the facts of historyhow slavery was imposed upon her during the Colo­nial period, how England wouldn' t let her prohibit theimportation of slaves, and how the issue was fra ughtwith peril for the founding of the Union, its preserva­tion, its growth, and the safety of all concerned . Overthe years her defense has filled volumes, to the pointof diminishing retu rns. She thum ps down th ick anddusty volumes upon the table before her detractors andsays to them, "There! \tVhat do you have to say abo utit now?!!" They look at the pile of books and the ir eyesglaze over. Then they calmly look at her and say "Slav­ery" or "racism" or "White supremacy" or wh ateverthe latest politically incorrect crime the South is beingcharged with by the self-righteous Social Justice War­riors.

The charges against the South rest upon The Mythof American History, which proclaims "The Civ il Warwas all about slave ry, the righteous Nor th waged it tofree the slaves, and the evil South fought to keep them.End of story. Any questions?" Well, yes. Somethingdoesn't compute, here. If the North we re waging a waron slavery, why didn' t she wage war on New Englandcotton mills and the ir profits from slave-picked cotton?Or on Ne w York an d Boston, the largest African slave­trading por ts in the world according to the January1862 Continen tal M onthly? Or on Northern shipyards

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wh ich outfit ted the slave ships? Or on New Englanddistilleries who made rum from slave-harvested sug­ar can e to use for bar ter on the African coast? Or onthe Afr ican slavers themselves, such as the Kingdo mof Dahomey, who cap tured their fellow Africans andsold them into slavery in the first place? And why didAbraham Lincoln - a documented White Suprema­cist - choose to inaugurate the bloodiest war in thehistory of the Western Hemisphere to, in effect, d riveSout hern slavery back into the Union? And why didhis Emancipation Proclamation - a desperate measureof total war waged not for the slave, bu t against hismaster - say slavery was al l right as long as one wasloyal to his government? And why did he work untilthe day he died to deport those freed by it back to Af­rica? And why was slavery Con stitu tional in the Norththro ughout the entire war?

There we re many causes of secession, not least ofwhich was Southerne rs no longer w ished to be in asso­ciation with people who slandered and despised themso. But tha t begs the question of wh y those peoplewaged the bloodies t war in the history of the WesternHemisphere to pre ven t thei r departu re. To hear theirvitriol, one would think they would have been happyto be rid of such Apostates polluting their "Ci ty upona hill." But they weren 't, for running like a torrent be­neath their bigoted p iet ies was their avariciousness.With the South's "Cotton Kingdom " out of the Unionand set up as a free trade confede racy on the North'sdoorstep, the Nor th's "Mercan tile Kingdom" wouldcollapse! So Lincoln rebuffed every Southern overturefor peace and launched an armada against Charles­ton Harbor to provoke South Carolina into firing thefirst shot and get the war he wanted. Sout h Carolinaresponded to Lincoln's provocation at Charleston justas Massachusetts had responded to George 11I's provo­cation at Lexington and Concord. But when Lincoln

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called for troops to subjugate the "Cotton Kingdom,"Virginia, "The Mothe r of States and of Statesmen," re­fused to prov ide them, indicted Lincoln for "choosingto inaugurate civil war," seceded from the Union, andjoined the Confederacy. Four other states followed herout. But after four years of arduous service, the Southwas compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers andresources, and Lincoln drove the Southern States backinto the Union at the point of the bayonet. AlthoughJohn Wilkes Booth made a martyr ou t of America'sCaesar, Reconstruction cemented his conquest. Withan army of occupation and the pretense of law, a cor­rupt Northern political party transformed the volun­tary Union of sovereign sta tes into a coerced Unionpinned together by bayonets.

Results? For the North? "The Gilded Age." For theSouth? Grinding poverty in a land laid was te un til theSecond World War. For the Blacks? A recent study ofmilitary and Freedman's Burea u records has revealedthat between 1862 and 1870 perhaps as many as a mil­lion ex-slaves, or twenty-jive percent of the population,died of starvation, disease, and neglect under theirNorthern "libera tors" ! Freed from their master's care,"Father Abraha m, The Great Emancipator," had toldthem to "root hog, or die." Black enfra nchisement in

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the South (but not in the North), and the disfranchise­ment of Southern Whites, were merely cynical North­ern political tools to cemen t the Nor th's conquest, andonce she had achieved it with her so-called Recon­struction, the Nor th abandoned her Black puppets tothe upheaval she had wrought in Southern society andturned her atten tion (with Sherman, Sheridan, Custer,and those people) to the Plains Ind ians, who were inthe way of her transcontinen tal railroads. But that'sanother story - let the Indians tell you that one. Free­dom? Union at the point of the bayonet is slavery toa despotic government. Equality? Chronic Black riotsin segregated Northern ghettos speak for themselves,but they keep despera te White Liberals busy design­ing crusades upon which to pos t their own speciousvirtues and to divert credu lous Black attent ion ontoSouthern scapegoats.

The latest are hateful attac ks on Confederate mon­uments honoring men who defen ded their homelandagainst invasion, conquest, and a coerced political al­legiance - just as their fathers had done in 1776. Butthis vitriol has not always been. In spite of the hatredstirred up by the carpetbaggers, the Freedmen' s Bu-

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reau, the Union Leagues, an d the rad ical Yankee politi­cians during Reconstruction, the scars of the North'sWar agains t the South's Secession began to heal amongthe soldiers with Grant's generous terms to Lee at Ap­pomattox; with his soldiers treating the ragged rem­nants of the Army of Northern Virginia with the respectdu e to a gallant adversary; with in later years the oldveterans of the Blue and the Gray shaki ng hands overthe stone wall at Gettysburg and joining each other inold soldiers' reuni ons; with the erection of monuments

orth and South to comm emorate their respective sac­rifices in that bloodiest of wars; and with the unity ofthe sta tes in the face of global wars in the TwentiethCentury. But this began to end with the revolution ofthe 1960s, and the vitriol has only increased. Why?What happened? And what is going on?

Politics and the evolution of technology is wha thappened, and what has been happening all along.At the time of the Revolutionary War, technology wassuch that George Washington could not get to Phila­delphia or New York or Boston any quicker or moreefficiently than Jul ius Caesar could get to Gaul twothousand years ago. Then some body invented thesteam engine, steam power replaced muscle poweras the prime mover of civilization, social structuresevolved to orchestrate it and the Industrial Revolutionroared across the world . Steamboa ts began to ply therivers, and railroads began to connect the ports withthe inland towns and cities. Somebody invented thespinn ing jenny, Eli Whitney inven ted the cotton gin,the textile ind ustry was put in to full swing, and cottonwas crowned king.

The mercan tile North in the early days of indepen ­dence readily ada pted to this rapidly evolving newtechnology, but the sleepy-time, agra rian South, basedupon staple-crop agriculture and shackled to its fourmillion African slaves, could not so easily do so. Withthe North's indus trialization, with its more intelligen tand profitable free White labor, and with its growingsectional majorities steadily augmented by a flow ofEuropean immigrants, came the newly evolving Rad i­cal Republican Party. Its agenda was to gain control ofthe Federal Government, centralize its po litical power,and use it for the political and economic exploi tationof the agrarian South and West. However, the power­ful Jeffersonian Democratic Party stood in the way ofits ambi tions. To gain pol itical controt then, the Radi -

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cal Republicans used the time-honored method of "di­vide and rule," and they had the perfect issue read­ily at hand. They woul d divide the Democratic Westfrom the Democratic South by agitating the issue ofslavery in the Territor ies. This was achieved in 1860with the election of their candidate, Abraham Lincoln,to the preside ncy. Secession, war, and Recons tructionfollowed, and the rest is history. But th is history hasbeen twisted out of shape to conform to the politicalideology of the United States which has evolved to­day - the ideology of a multi-cultural Empi re basedon Radical Egalitarianism, un iversa l suffrage, CriticalRace Theory, and Progressive Iden tity Politics. Histo ryso twisted is called Preseniism, and it has nothing to dowith the truth and everything to do, in this case, withmak ing the South the Apostate, the foil and scapegoatfor all the racial ills of this country. Let us look at thisevolu tion - or perhaps we should say devolution!

The gradual peace and reconciliation after Recon­struction came in part from the South's "accep tance ofthe situation," and in ' par t from the North's recogni­tion of the South's di fficulty in suddenly assimilatingmillions of Africans into a European population whichhad been steeped in Western civilization for thousandsof years. As such, since the Nor th had gotten what shewan ted out of the war and Reconstruction - whichwas control of the Federal Government and the econ­omy - she was conten t to let the South dea l with herown domestic problems. But with the evolu tion oftechnology came the evolution of mass comm unica­tion . Southern segrega tion could not survive the com­bina tion of po litics and television.

Many Blacks at the turn of the twen tieth centuryhad moved North in the so-called Great Migration,filling the Northern cities to work in the industriesduring the First World War. When they arrived, theyfound themselves relegated by a cold Northern racisminto segrega ted ghettoes, and discovered the North­ern rhetoric about social equa lity was a political sham.Television gave Northern politicians a way out of thisembarrassing situa tion by giving them the means todivert Black attention from defacto Northe rn segrega­tion onto the codified segregation in the South .

Lt. General Richard Taylor, CSA son of PresidentZachary Taylor, once observed most accura tely andsuccinctly "Greed of office, curse of democracies, willimpel demagogues to grovel deeper and deeper in

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establishing their collectivist, Free-Love communes,and setting themselves up as the standa rd by which alltrue Americans should be measured. ln this they havebeen remarkably success ful, to the point where todaythey have the inmates running the Equality Asylum.But as the Preacher says in the Book of Ecclesiastes(7:13), "Consider the work of God : for who can makethat straight, which He hath made crooked?"

Southerners know the Eterna l Truths. Sou thern­ers know, as the Preacher says, tha t there is no newthing under the sun. Southerners know history is no ta linear march which will end in a rosy Utop ia, buta cyclic March of Folly where rosy Utopian d reamsend in totalitarian nightmares. Thus Southerners areand always have been Apos tates in this "City upona hill" - this Brave New World where "all men arepaid for existing and no man must pay for his sins.' ?And thus Southerners have power to make the Hea­then rage, wh ile Southerners themselves, oppressedby Babylonian sufferings, disdain to complain. As Dr.Robert Lewis Dabney - once Chief-of-Staff to "Stone­wall" Jackson - wrote, Southerners well know, that indue time "they .. . will be avenged through the samediso rganizing heresies under which they now suffer,and through the ana rchy and woes which (these her­esies) will bring upon the North." 4 Are we not seeingit now, wi th the godless ana rchy radical egalitarianismhas wrought, and with the god less radical democracywhich deems the highest civic virtue to be that whichis dete rmined by the mob with the largest numbers?"Mea ntime," as Dr. Dabney continues, "let the arro­gant and successful wrongdoers flout our (Confeder­ate) defense with disdain: we will meet them with itagain, when it will be heard; in the day of their calam­ity, in the pages of impartial history, and in the Day ofJudgement." 5

NOTES1. Tate, Allen: "[ubilo," Collected Poems 1919-1976.

(New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2007) paperbacked., pg.101.

2. Taylor, Lt. Gen. Richard, CSA: Destruction and Re­construction. (New York: D. Appleton and Co .,1879)Time-Life rep rint 1983, pg. 269.

3. Kipling, Rudyard: "The Gods of the CopybookHea dings," Kipling: A Selection ofHis Stories and Po­ems, vol. II. Ed. John Beecroft (Garden City, NewYork: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1956) pg . 503-4.Dabney, Prof. Robert L., D. D: A Defense of Virginia,and Through Her, of the South. (1867; Harrisonburg,Virginia: Sprinkle Publications, 1977) pg. 356.

5. Ibid. pg. 356.

the mire in pursuit of ignorant votes." 2 Just as dur­ing Radical Reconstruction, in the Radical 60s dema­gogues saw their poli tical fortunes in Identi ty Politics,bu t the ir demagoguery provoked racial agitation tha tbroke into urban race rio ts up North. Desperate, gui lt­ridden Nor thern White Liberals were driven to devi secrusades upon which to diver t the at tent ion of theirunwan ted Blackpopulation onto Southern scapegoa ts.First came the "Freedom Riders" protesting South­ern segregation, and pos ting their Progressive vir tuesbefore the TV cameras for all to see. But while theywere down Sout h delivering tu torials on proper racerela tions to the benighted Southerners, the Blacks upNorth were burning their cities dow n. With this unfor­tunate result, and with their Progressive Identity Poli­tics continually stirring the racial pot, Desperate WhiteLiberals have been pressed ever since into devisingnew crusades upon which to pos t their vir tues . Theirlatest is the crusade agains t Confederate Monuments.Expect more to come before it is all over with. ThomasJefferson is already under assa ult at his Unive-rsity, andone might guess what will happen to George Washing­ton, "The Father of His Country," when the word getsout he was among eight of the first ten presidents whowere Southern, fox-hu nting, slave-holding plantationowners .

As the man ia of Iden tity Politics and Radical Egali­tarianism reaches the point of absurdity in the Vic­timhood Olympics, we are being carried away intoBabylon, wi th women being sent into combat whilemen push baby buggies around town; with girls be­coming Boy Scouts and men"choosing" to be women;with children "deciding" their gen der and being givenaccess to the bathroom of their choice in school; withteachers being fired for not using the proper pronounin addressing transgendered students; with anarchyruling the classrooms and teachers being assa ulted bytheir students; with history being taught as Marxist in­doctri nation and Critical Race Theory; with conserva­tive speakers at colleges being run off by Antifa andBlack Lives Matter mobs; with prison inmates beingreleased to create racial parity in prisons; and on, andon. .. .

Progressives consider the march of history to bea linear march towards a secular Utopian perfec tion,where the oppressive Laws of God have been repealed .It began with the New England Puritans. While South­erners we re following Daniel Boone through the Cum­berla nd Gap, these Yankee Utopians were burni ng 4.witches in John Winthrop's "City upon a hill," andwhile Southerners were five hundred miles west ofthe Mississippi defending the Alamo, these YankeeUtopians were a hundred miles west of the Hudson,

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