By Eugene Gant
01/20/2024
On June 13, 1943, a B-17 bomber exploded over Germany during a raid on the U-Boat bunker at Kiel. Aboard the plane was the first American general to be killed in action during World War II: Nathan Bedford Forrest III, great grandson of the brilliant, now vilified Confederate cavalry hero. Nathan Bedford Forrest III was a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross and is buried in Arlington. Remembering such Confederate descendants is worth some time now, given the scandalous removal of the Reconciliation Memorial in the Confederate section of Arlington National Cemetery. It’s bad enough that we permit communist goons to attack Confederate statues and memorials. It’s even worse for the federal government to do so because it breaks the tacit agreement after the War Between the States, which all presidents honored until the Biden Regime. Reconciliation invited the South to honor and celebrate its heroes and keep them alive in the public memory. But maybe some of the famous Southerners who fought and/or died in this nation’s 20th-century wars would haven’t have done so if they knew what was coming. It’s not surprising that young Southern boys, who join the military in numbers disproportionate to their share of the population, reconsider enlisting [U.S. Military Recruiting Slump: White Enlistment Drops Sharply, Raising Concerns, by Joseph Ellis, MSN.com, January 16, 2024].
U.S. Military Recruiting Slump: White Enlistment Drops Sharply, Raising Concerns https://t.co/ldYNUVg7D5 Why on earth would you join up with an organization that says it is going to put you at the bottom of the list and probably not promote you? Or make sure you don’t count?
— Neil Dixon (@NeilDix22561579) January 17, 2024
The public war against all things Confederate began some time ago on Capitol Hill, when an uncelebrated, angry black Senator, Carol Moseley-Braun, opened fire on the United Daughters of the Confederacy. She mau-maued the Senate into taking away the UDC’s congressional patent. She even had Democrat Senator and Confederate descendant Howell Heflin blubbering about racism.
But even then, few if any Americans had a problem with Confederate memorials. The Historic American Nation really had reconciled. Southern boys not only became “Galvanized Yankees” in the U.S. Army and fought against the Plains Indians, but also served alongside them in the Spanish-American War. The children and grandchildren of Confederates fought in both world wars. Their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren fought in Korea, Vietnam, and in America’s more recent wars.
Let’s look at a few:
As for the rank-and-file, enlisted Marine Eugene Sledge, author of With The Old Breed At Peleliu and Okinawa, was the great-grandson of two Confederate officers [Eugene B. Sledge and Mobile: 75 Years After “The War,” by Aaron Trehub, Mobile Bay, August 21, 2020].
Sledge’s book and the miniseries made partly from it, The Pacific, show what reconciliation meant. In With The Old Breed, Sledge remembers what happened at Shuri Castle on Okinawa:
When we learned that the flag of the Confederacy had been hoisted over the very heart and soul of Japanese resistance, all of us Southerners cheered. The Yankees among us grumbled, and the Westerners didn’t know what to do.
The victorious Marines flew that flag because they didn’t have the Stars and Stripes to hand [Okinawa Confederate Flag, by Philip Leigh, Abbeville Institute, April 6, 2016]. But the Battle Flag flew in more than one place in the Pacific and Europe, and after that in Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan [Erroneously Equating Swastika and Confederate Flag, by Phil Leigh, Civil War Chat, May 23, 2017].
Not anymore, of course. Southerners in the military must no longer publicly express pride in their Confederate ancestors.
In the book, Sledge’s beloved commander Captain Andrew Haldane, KIA on Pelieu, asked Sledge whether he was Southerner, a question the movie answers. Haldane, a Yankee who attended Bowdoin, asked Sledge whether he is a “Southern man.” When Sledge replied that he came from Mobile, Alabama, Haldane told him what a lot of soldiers must have told each other. “Do you realize that our ancestors probably shot at each other, at Gettysburg or Bull Run?” Sledge explained that his great-grandfather fought with Confederate General Braxton Bragg.
That reconciliation had begun not long after the war ended, and is beautifully rendered in She Wore A Yellow Ribbon’s funeral for Trooper John Smith. Smith was a Galvanized Yankee whose real name was Rome Clay, and whose previous rank was general… in the Confederate Army.
Then there is former defense secretary and Senator James Webb, who also has Confederate ancestors. In the Wall Street Journal, he argued for keeping keep the memorial at Arlington, and highlighted its inscription:
Not for fame or reward, not for place or for rank; not lured by ambition or goaded by necessity; but in simple obedience to duty as they understood it; these men suffered all, sacrificed all, dared all, and died.
Noting that President William McKinley, a Union veteran who fought at Antietam, said that the America must reverently bury the dead of the Confederacy, Webb explained something that all Union veterans understood but “that eludes today’s monument smashers and ad hominem destroyers of historical reputations?”
McKinley’s fellow soldiers understood that during the Civil War, four slave states remained in the Union — Maryland, Delaware, Missouri and Kentucky — and none of them were required to give up slavery during the entire war. And that in every major battle of the Civil War, slave owners in the Union Army fought against non-slave-owners in the Confederate Army. They understood that President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves in those states or in the areas of the South that had already been conquered. The proclamation freed only slaves in the areas taken after it was issued. And in the eyes of a Confederate soldier, if Lincoln had not freed slaves in the union, why should the soldier be vilified for supposedly fighting on behalf of slavery?
Many soldiers in the North, and many more in the South, would have understood what John Hope Franklin (1915-2009), America’s most esteemed black historian, pointed out: In 1860 only 5% of whites in the South owned slaves, and less than 25% of whites benefited economically from slavery. An estimated 258,000 Confederate soldiers died in the war, about a third of all those who fought for the South. Few owned slaves. So why did they fight?
The soldier who wrote the inscription on the Confederate Memorial knew [The inscription is “Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa, Catoni.”, a quotation from Lucan, meaning “the victorious cause pleased the gods, but the conquered cause pleased Cato.”]. And so did President McKinley and most veterans who have fought in America’s wars.
Save the Confederate Memorial at Arlington [Archived version], August 16, 2023
Yet here we are. A full-scale assault on the ancestors of a significant portion of Americans who served in the military for the last 100 years, and who still serve today.
Some data:
“According to fiscal year 2017 data, the most recent available, the South’s share of the U.S. young adult population was 33 percent, but it provided 41 percent of new military enlistees nationwide,” a report in Facing South explained. “As a result, the region’s representation ratio is 1.2, which means it provided 20 percent more military recruits than might be expected given its young adult population.”
Understanding the South’s unequal contribution of military recruits, by Rolando Zenteno, January 31, 2020
Here is the Council on Foreign Relations:
In absolute terms, the top five [states] for recruitment in 2018 were California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and New York, which is reflective of their relatively large populations.
[Demographics of the U.S. Military, July 13, 2020
“Large populations” might explain New York and California, but perhaps the South’s martial tradition explains why so many Southerners enlist.
Maybe it hadn’t occurred to the Commissars in charge of the politically correct military, which is renaming bases, ships, and anything else even remotely connected to the Confederacy, but trashing the ancestors of a significant number of recruits isn’t such a smart idea. Worse than that, it’s hateful.
Imagine telling Chesty Puller — recipient of five Navy Crosses and a Distinguished Service Cross — that his ancestors were evil men or “fascists,” and worse still, imagine an American president, defense secretary, Congress, and military establishment that accepts such a preposterous narrative.
You don’t have to imagine, of course.
Here the type of idiocy our military is validating:
Want to know the first successful American fascist political movement? Look no further than the Fire-Eaters — the radical Confederates who ultimately took over the Southern political discourse and advocated secession.
Want to know who the first American fascist leaders were? They were Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
It is crucial that we consider Southern fascism, American fascism — that we join the history of the victors in the North with that of the defeated in the South. As disgusting as it is, our homegrown fascism has reemerged from the shadows of history to the forefront of our discourse, and worse yet it seems the White House doesn’t understand or even care.
It’s time to stop coddling the Confederacy, by Linette Lopez, Business Insider, August 13, 2017
It won’t surprise anyone to learn that the author of this unalloyed hate, Linette Lopez, is the daughter of Dominican immigrants. She has a journalism degree. In other words, she knows nothing about this America’s history, and even less about slavery or the War Between the States. We needn’t say she has no connection to the Historic American Nation — you know, like Sledge of Puller — and likely doesn’t give a hoot about Memorial Day.
Yet tempting as it is to tell white Southerners to abandon the military, it mightn’t be the right thing to do. Yes, the Biden Regime imposed deranged sex perversions upon the armed forces. Indeed, he has forced sex perverts into them. Yet the military — particularly units such as the Green Berets and Marine Raiders — remains one of the nation’s last bastions of masculinity. We might think twice about surrendering our armed forces to women, perverts, and communists.
The U.S. Army intends to remove a Confederate memorial from Arlington National Cemetery as part of its ongoing work to rid Defense Department property of divisive rebel imagery, defying dozens of congressional Republicans who have protested the move. https://t.co/WhrCT70PLh
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 16, 2023
As for the Confederate Memorial at Arlington, it was the focal point of the Confederate graves in Section 16. The communist Biden Regime removed it pursuant to a law that says the secretary of defense must “remove all names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honor or commemorate the Confederate States of America … or any person who served voluntarily with the Confederate States of America from all assets of the Department of Defense” [Removal of the Confederate Memorial, ArlingtonCemetery.mil].
Some Republicans tried to stop the desecration with a letter to Affirmative Action Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Removing the memorial was not the intent of the law, they wrote, and Congress “took action to prevent the removal of the Reconciliation Monument in the Fiscal Year 2024 Department of Defense Appropriations Act.” As well, the letter warned that removing the memorial would trespass the separation of powers.
As if Biden and his fellow travelers on Capitol Hill would care! As of December 22, only the base remained [Confederate Memorial Removal Update and Advisory, ArlingtonCemetery.mil].
And note this: Frighteningly, the wording of the law, and the military’s willingness to obey it, suggest that Confederate graves in the cemetery must be removed, too. The defense secretary must “remove all names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia” honoring any volunteer Confederate.
And that ritual desecration has already begun elsewhere. It includes Nathan Beford Forrest [Remains of Nathan Bedford Forrest, wife have been removed from Health Sciences Park in Memphis, by Lucas Finton, Micaela A. Watts, and Laura Testino, Memphis Commercial Appeal, June 11, 2021] and, more recently, A.P. Hill.
Maybe the historical illiterates running this communist coup won’t get confused and disinter his great-grandson.
Or maybe they will. Maybe, ultimately, all whites are their targets.
Eugene Gant no longer lives in Baltimore.
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