“Shall a dominant party of the North rule the South, or shall the people
of the South rule themselves?” According to Rhett, after “long
forbearance and patience,” stemming from a “heroic love for the Union”
over “mere interest,” the South was driven to secede from the Union in
order to escape the “ruthless mastery” of the North,” which was now
threatening “to subject them by the sword.”
If slavery had never existed in America, continued McCrady, the North
and the South would still have gone to war, for the “seeds” of the
conflict were planted in the Constitution itself, growing from the
opposing interpretations of Jefferson’s “Federal Party” and Hamilton’s
“National Party.” As McCrady put it, “The Convention which framed the
Constitution was itself divided into the two parties which, after
seventy years of discussion…adjourned the debate to the battlefields of
our late war.”
Believing
That they fought, for Principle against Power,
For Religion against Fanaticism,
For Man’s Right against Man’s Might,
These Men were Martyrs of their Creed;
And their Justification
Is in the holy keeping of the God of History.
But, for as much
As alike in the heat of Battle,
In the weariness of the Hospital,
And in the gloom of hostile Prisons,
They were faithful unto death,
Theirs is the Crown
Of a loving, a glorious, and an immortal Tradition,
In the Hearts, and in the Holiest Memories
Of the Daughters of their People;
Of the Sons of their State;
Of the Heirs Unborn of their Example
And all of for whom
They dared to die.
*****************************************
“The one great principle, which produced our secession from the
United States – was constitutional liberty – liberty protected by law.
For this, we have fought; for this, our people have died. To preserve
and cherish this sacred principle, constituting as it did, the very soul
of independence itself, was the clear dictate of all honest – all wise
statesmanship.”
– Robert B. Rhett
It is fashionable nowadays to regard States’ rights as yet
another debunked “Neo-Confederate” myth.One Bancroft-winning historian
takes the incredible liberty of inserting imaginary thoughts into
prominent Fire-Eater Robert B. Rhett’s head, having him curse “St.
Thomas” Jefferson, along with “inalienable rights,” “rights of
revolution,” and “the principles of 1776,” claiming “the South had
revolted to escape those idiocies.” Never mind the fact that Rhett
proclaimed these very ideals throughout his life and personally
identified as a “Jeffersonian Republican.” Elsewhere, a winner of the
Alan Nevins History Prize writes off the sincerity of States’ rights
with a few words. “As for the ‘dry prattle’ about the Constitution, the
rights of minorities, and the like, there was never any confusion in the
minds of most contemporaries that such arguments were masks for more
fundamental emotional issues,” he casually asserts. “State sovereignty
was an issue only because the retreat to the inviolability of states’
rights had always been a refuge for those fearful of a challenge to
their property.”
Indeed, it is the modis operandi of historians
nowadays to discount whatever Southerners said about political,
economic, and cultural differences with the North as a false front for
the ulterior motive of slavery: Southerners could not possibly have
meant what they said!
