This piece was originally published at Reckonin.com
Rather than continuing my detailed history of the Southern people I wish to comment on our situation at the moment, 2026, and prospects for the future.
We have never been in greater danger of losing our identity as of the South. The population has changed. There are rust belt refugees. Some of these are good people who have joined us for the right reasons, others not. Vast numbers of Mexicans, Asians of various sorts, and others populate our cities. It was on our former territory, Charlotte, that a depraved criminal immigrant murdered a legitimate immigrant. Such a thing would have been beyond imagining or comprehension 60 years ago when I was covering the Charlotte police beat for the local daily.
Our symbols have been subjected to malicious destruction, although that ridiculous campaign, an attempt to obliterate American as well as Southern history, has brought forth a good deal of opposition. A statue of Ceasar Rodney, a heroic signer of the Declaration of Independence, was removed because he, like almost all of the Founders, Northern and Southern, was the master of imported and native-born Africans.
A lot has been said about the South’s increasing prosperity in recent times. That is good, but I am of the impression that the rewards go disproportionately to bankers, developers, carpetbaggers, politicians, and bureaucrats. Working and middle class men and women are still enlisting in the imperial armed forces, real jobs being scarce in our looted economy.
Yet the South has a soul, unlike materialist mainstream America. We have always been able to absorb newcomers. A fourth of Confederate generals were Northern or foreign born. Many aspects of our culture and our history remain honoured by and attractive to civilised and intelligent people beyond our borders.
There were Southerners before there were “Americans.” Or to put it another way, Southerners were the first Americans. What we have known as the South existed more than two centuries before the U.S. government—now a bloated criminal empire unrecognisable to our Founders.
Even after our just and noble war for independence failed, we kept our identity. We were never quite acceptable as “Americans” and that did not bother us at all.
There are still millions of us. Beleaguered as our homeland has been, we have the truest connection to American origins of any of the motley groups now to be found in the United States.
It has been almost a century since Twelve Southerners issued I’ll Take My Stand. They hoped to provide a humane alternative to the standard American materialism, whether capitalist or collectivist. Their ideas are still true. Without Southern literature, music, humour, chivalric instincts, and manners “American” culture would be an impoverished thing of money and ideology.
We need to preserve the South in these difficult times because it is ours. But also, a Southerner is a good thing to be, a valuable contribution to waning Western civilisation.
I have been encouraged for some years now by the bright young people who have been reconnecting with their Southern roots in a society where no other real identity is to be found.
We need to remember who we are and promote and preserve our identity as a people in every way possible. Our people are sound in their hearts and some leaders have provided good direction in recent times. But we need a lot more leadership. History is not fixed and the future is to some extent ours to bring about.
James Warley Miles, South Carolina’s internationally recognised theologian, in 1863 said something we all should remember: “No people has ever wholly existed without a meaning.”
The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.
I appreciate the thoughts and sentiments in this article, but again, it seems reminders are needed:
Mark 8:36 “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
What If it were put this way: “For What shall it.profit Southerner’s if they regain the South but lose their soul?”
I understand. I like and appreciate the South, and Southerners are trying to look out for their children and their grandchildren. However, if the South is regained and the children and grandchildren don’t get saved, what good is the glory of the South going to be for them? I suppose it might be said by some, “We are saved Bible believer’s and we’re taking care of those matters. This forum is about the life here.in this country.” Ok.
I assume, to some extent, that most around here are professing Christian’s. Do you Christian’s understand that it is the Church the body of Christ which is holding back the revelation of “the man of sin,” and not the South? II Thessalonians 2.
Just last night, streaming a Wednesday night Bible study, I heard a preacher (from Alabama) say that the culture is what the spirit behind it is. So, the chances for the South to be good and better, or of old perhaps, would be for men and women to get saved and study their Bible’s and understand what God is doing and why.
And I’m going to repeat again what the ex Confederate soldier, C.I. Scofield, said. And it need not be said that Scofield was this and that and not a true Southerner, traitor and all that. He nailed an extremely important truth, and it would behoove professing Southern Christian’s to zero in on what he said and come to grips on how very important it is:
Speaking of Paul’s epistles, Scofield said: “In his writings ALONE, we have the position, walk, and destiny of the Church.”
In an article posted today on a certain website, the writer said: “I would never force anyone to be a Christian; Jesus didn’t, and I won’t.”
Yes, good. No one should be forced. But my focus is on his assertion that Jesus didn’t force anyone to be a “Christian.” That’s the point of Scofield’s statement. Jesus wasn’t trying to make Christian’s. He was trying to make JEWS to think correctly about who they’re supposed to be, and to believe in their Jewish Messiah. “Christianity” began with Paul, but it’s not based on Replacement Theology either.
I believe we have not from Paul‘… the destiny of the Church.” We have his explanation of the church. Christ gave us the destiny: “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
And Christ would not “force” someone to accept Him. Otherwise, what would be the point. Did He force Judas?
And most Southerners whom I know, believe that they are not good because they are Christians, but are Christians because they are not good. That is the point.
Furthermore, in my opinion, it was a Northern puritanical society that believed they, in fact, were good and could save the South from itself with their sanctimonious “shining city on a hill” bilge.
But I did appreciate your comments. DEO VINDICE.
I appreciate both of these comments. They are both loaded with points on which other comments could expatiate, or deal with at length.
However, as a former language arts teacher in Texas and professor of English in France, I ask the author of the first comment to research the standard use
the apostrophe: an example, “…Bible believer’s”. Thank you,