April Is Confederate Heritage Month
Monday, April 26th, 2010
The governors of Virginia and Mississippi both proclaimed April to be Confederate Heritage Month and were immediately assailed by the Leftist Media. The new governor (McDonnell) of the Old Dominion renewed a state tradition that had been scrapped for the last 10 yrs. Kudos to his courage.
As a High School History Educator with a Masters in American Civil War Studies, I feel qualified to address the inaccuracies portrayed by the Left when denigrating our southern heritage.
The American South did not start Slavery; the institution is as old as man himself. It spread to America with the growth of cash crop plantations in the 1600s. Slavery had gone on in Africa for centuries as war captives were used by victorious tribes. Coastal Africans brought captives from the interior to the waiting European ships in return for guns, gold, rum, and other trade goods.
Most of the Slave Trade transports were New England operations though the institution ebbed away in that region’s colonies due to climate and soil condition. The institution expanded exponentially in the South with the invention of the cotton gin.
The Deep South seceded from the Union in 1860-61 over Economic concerns. Slavery was one issue and the Tariff was another. The new Lincoln Administration was seen as a threat to Southern traditions of living. The border states did not secede until the president-elect called for volunteer troops to put down the rebellion in the Deep South. Read Lincoln’s 1st inaugural address and you find he was willing to fight, not to end slavery, but to make sure taxes continued to be collected in the South. The War for Southern Independence was a struggle for Northern economic dominance over the South. ”Pay the taxes or face armed invasion and conquest.” The border states refused to coerce sister states and thus seceded and joined the Confederacy as well.
The greatest gentlemen of the war were Robert E Lee and Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson- faithful Christians and veterans of the Mexican War in the US Army. Do not denigrate these men and their Cause.
The American Phrenological Journal condemned Lee for defending slavery but then added, “We are charitable enough to attribute to him no wrong motive, for we remember that George Washington was no less a rebel than is General Lee.” Across the Atlantic, the Illustrated London News compared Lee and Washington in a front-page article.
