"Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the War; will be impressed by all the influences of history and to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision." --Gen. Pat Cleburne, CSA
Charles Dickens- English author 1861 - "The Northern onslaught upon slavery is no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states."
London Times 7 November 1861 - The contest is really for empire on the side of the North and for independence on that of the South.."
Karl Marx-European Socialist-1861 - "The war between the North and the South is a tariff war. The war is further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for sovereignty. "
New Orleans Daily Crescent-1861-- "They (the South) know that it is their import trade that draws from the peoples pockets sixty or seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interest. These are the reasons why these people do not wish the South to secede from the union".
"The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? Literally nothing... it is very clear that the South gains by this process and we lose. No...we must not let the South go".
-- Union Democrat Manchester, New Hampshire. 19 February, 1861
"The cause of the South was the cause of constitutional government, the cause of government regulated by law, and the cause of honesty and fidelity in public servants. No nobler cause did man ever fight for!"
~ Rep. Benjamin Franklin Grady-Duplin Co. NC 1899
"Instead of friends, I see in Washington only mortal enemies. Instead of loving the old flag of the stars and stripes, I see in it only the symbol of murder, plunder, oppression, and shame."
Rose O'Neal Greenhow, Confederate Spy
"To me, the campaign by certain groups to remove all the symbols and memorials to our Southern past amounts to the same thing...a desecration of graves. Every flag or monument that is removed, every plaque taken down, every school or street or bridge that is renamed, is no different from a broken tombstone. It is wanton and hateful violence directed at the dead who can no longer defend themselves.'' -- John Field Pankow
The real issue involved in the relations between the North and the South of the American States, is the great principle of self-government. Shall a dominant party of the North rule the South, or shall the people of the South rule themselves. This is the great matter in controversy.
(Montgomery, Alabama, 1860) -- Robert Barnwell Rhett
" To tar the sacrifices of the Confederate soldier as simple acts of racism, and reduce the battle flag under which he fought to nothing more than the symbol of a racist heritage, is one of the great blasphemies of our modern age".
James Webb-Secretary of Navy And Assistant Secretary of Defense under U.S. President Ronald Regan and current U.S. Senator (D.VA.) (Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, New York: Broadway Books, 2004, p. 225)
“…We must forevermore do honor to our heroic dead. We must forevermore cherish the sacred memories of those four terrible but glorious years of unequal strife. We must forevermore consecrate in our hearts our old battle flag of the Southern Cross – not now as a political symbol, but as the consecrated emblem of an heroic epoch. The people that forgets its heroic dead is already dying at the heart, and we believe we shall be truer and better citizens of the United States if we are true to our past.”
~ Confederate Veteran Rev. Randolph Harrison McKim
Had the cotton gin of Massachusetts inventor Eli Whitney not come on the scene in the late 1700’s, African slavery in this country was most likely doomed. The antislavery and emancipation feeling in the South was ascendant, but thwarted by profitable slave-trading and hungry cotton mills in New England which gave rise to more plantations in the South, and the perpetuation of slavery. And after years of treating the American South as an agricultural colony, New England set out in 1861 to strip it of political power.
Bernhard Thuersam- Director Cape Fear Historical Institute NC.
"The Confederate battle flag is based upon the national flag of Scotland. The national flag of Scotland is the cross of St. Andrew and the cross of St. Andrew is a symbol of the Christian faith and the heritage of the Celtic race... It was adopted consciously, purposefully, and deliberately...in order to display faith in the sovereign God of heaven and earth, faith in the providence of God, and the God of salvation."
Pastor John Weaver-Former SCV National Chaplain
I love the Union and the Constitution, but I would rather leave the Union with the Constitution than remain in the Union without it.
Confederate President Jefferson Davis
"We feel that our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of mankind that we desire peace at any sacrifice save that of honor and independence; we ask no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms."
President Jefferson Davis, CSA, 29 April 1861
"I tried all in my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, for twelve years I worked night and day to prevent it, but I could not. The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came, and now it must go on unless you acknowledge our right to self government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence."
President Jefferson Davis, CSA
"When the South raised its sword against the Union's Flag,
it was in defense of the Union's Constitution."
Confederate General John B. Gordon
Confederate Col. Richard Henry Lee - "We were not rebels; we did not fight to perpetuate human slavery, but for our rights and privileges under a government established over us by our fathers and in defense of our homes".
"Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world".
Abraham Lincoln-U.S. Congress 1847
A little over 10 years later after the South attempted precisely that , Lincoln, when asked, "Why not let the South go in peace"? replied; "I can't let them go. Who would pay for the government"? "And, what then will become of my tariff"?
Abraham Lincoln to Virginia Compromise Delegation March 1861
The states of the South refused to see the law of the land violated and chose as their leader Kentucky born and educated leader, Jefferson Davis, the descendant of Celtic (Welsh) Baptists who had immigrated to South Carolina in 1660 A.D.
Long ago (1281A.D.) Sir William Wallace, leader of the Scot resistance against English oppression said, "Any society which suppresses the heritage of it's conquered minorities, prevents their history, and denies them their symbols, has sewn the seed of it's own destruction".
