"A Defense of Virginia and the South" by R.L. Dabney is a book that every Southern Christian should read carefully, and then re-read it again! I am very much aware that many of my fellow Southerners may be a little embarrassed that I now take up the cause to defend the Christian nature of the Old South, but I like Dabney do so without hesitation and without apology.
Dabney explains his motivation for writing his ‘A Defense of Virginia and the South’ by saying:
To the conquerors of my native State, and perhaps to some of her sons, a large part of the following defense will appear wholly unseasonable… But my purpose in the following pages is, first and chiefly, to lay this pious and final defense upon the tomb of my murdered mother, Virginia… The last and only office that remains to her sons is to leave their testimony for her righteous fame – feeble it may be now, amidst the din of passion and material power, yet inextinguishable as Truth’s own torch.
The most fearful consequence of the despotic government to which the South is now subjected, is not the plundering of our goods, nor the abridgment of privileges, nor the death of innocent men, but the degrading and debauching of the moral sensibilities and principles of the helpless victims… The wisest, kindest, most patriotic thing which any man can do for his country, amidst such calamities, is to aid in preserving and reinstating the tottering principles of his countrymen; to teach them, while they give place to inexorable force, to abate nothing of righteous convictions and of self –respect.
--- R.L. Dabney
Irrespective of one’s personal convictions concerning the institution of slavery in all the States (Northern and Southern) of the former United States of America no honest student of American history can point to an age in which it’s people were more deeply pious than we find in the southern states of the Old South prior to the war of northern aggression that brought an end to one form of slavery only to give birth to another in which all its citizens would eventually become indentured servants (slaves) to the government through an ever increasing and unconstitutional system of federal taxation upon the person income (labor) of its once free citizens. If the contest between the states truly ever freed any of the citizens of this nation, that freedom was to endure less than a hundred years.
I say “former United States of America” for the union of coequal commonwealth states that existed prior to the war of northern aggression is long dead, and long replaced by an Imperial and Unconstitutional Federal Government that is an anathema to the principals of a union between free, coequal, and self-governing states envisioned by the Founding Fathers of this nation. The opening words to the movie ‘Lord of the Rings’ rings hauntingly true when viewed toward the history of this nation; “Much that once was has now been lost, for there are none now alive who remember.”
Get the book "A Defense of Virginia and the South" by R.L. Dabney and read it carefully for it was written by one who lived through the great disaster of that time, and it’s truths are so well documented that no historian has ever attempted to refute what Dabney writes. It will change your understanding of life in the former Free States of the Old South, and it will challenge your former opinions of the character of her people.
Deo Vindice ........."God Will Vindicate"
2 comments:
You can purchase a copy of "A Defense of Virginia and the South" from Amazon.com at the following link.
http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Virginia-South-R-Dabney/dp/0873779290
Greg: I had one relative on the side of the North (which I have not thus far been able to confirm from the records) and more than I care to count on the side of the South. In fact, my paternal great, great grandfather was captured outside of Vicksburg in April of '63 and exchanged back to the Confederacy on Dec.24,1863. And I suspect him and his oldest son probably surrendered with Johnston just a few miles from where I now set in April of '65. And I have always admired the gallantry, effort, and spunk of the Southern soldiers, including the 70,000 blacks who also served in the army (usually building fortifications, etc) and drew southern pensions for that service (and some of them even fought). However, it is a painful matter to admit that we were duped into that war, the real aim of which was to kill people due to a factor that I will not name at this time. If we had manumitted the slaves early on, we would have pulled the fangs of the real monster who wanted that war. Sadly, the Southerners who were in the know had some idea that it would lead to such a tragic war. Jefferson surely did, and his remarks are couched in terms that come from a member of the Constitutional Convention, George Mason (cf. Madison's Notes on the Constitutional Convention). The price that both the South and the North paid for that war was even greater than the 650,000+ casualties lost on the battlefields. We were being prepared to lose our freedoms which began in 1871 especially with the organization of the U.S. Federal Government Corporation and is now beginning to bear the fruit of a totally anticonstitutional organization and law (commercial which is exercised not in superior federal courts but in district courts where the law of contracts reigns supreme). It is under the commercial code that our rights are slowly being eroded away. If you want to know why observe the make up of the present Suprme Court where not a single person of the religious view of the founders of this nation now sets. Soon, very soon, under one pretext or another they will come for you and me, my friend. Our hope is for a Third Great Awakening which C.S. Lewis, unbeknowingly, described as to one of the factors required, namely,"they pull down Deep Heaven upon thir heads." Three factors are noted in Awakenings, and they are the right theology rightly understood and preached, the Presence, and humility.
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