For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he
wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on
that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the
rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled
flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his
long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in
the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word
and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even
begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it
not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made
more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave –
yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too
much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy
to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all
this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome
of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory
the desperate gamble….[from Intruder in the Dust, 1948]
[Back in late 2018 Scuppernong Press published a volume of my essays on the South and Southern history titled The Land We Love: The South and Its Heritage
(available via Amazon and most other booksellers). I have been
gratified by the reception given to this volume and by the many positive
reviews. Below I share my Introduction to the book which I believe can
stand on its own as a statement of my principles and of my commitment to
my history, my region, and, as the poet Robert Lee Frost once said, “To
the truths we keep coming back to.”]
Over the past several years I have been writing essays for several
publications and media outlets regarding Southern and Confederate
history and heritage, and, in particular, about the growing assault on
the symbols of that history and heritage. None of what I wrote—nothing I
put into print—should have seemed that unusual or radical. My thoughts
and observations could have been put down on paper fifty years ago—even
thirty years ago—and I don’t think they would have caused much of a stir
or raised an eyebrow for most readers. Of course, much has changed in
fifty years, and what was admired, revered, and considered normal then, is, in large part, considered controversial, even hateful, or subject to censorship and banning, now.
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