The South Was Right! | James Ronald Kennedy, Walter Donald Kennedy

The South Was Right! | James Ronald Kennedy, Walter Donald Kennedy | This review was written by a Yankee!!!....

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The South Was Right!

	The South Was Right! James Ronald Kennedy, Walter Donald Kennedy Pelican Publishing Company, 1994 - 431 pages average customer review:based on 206 reviews view larger image
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America Was Right!

The South Was Right is the rare kind of writing that comes along every now and then, greatly influencing the global course of human events for generations to come.

Thomas Jefferson pointed to the phenomenon of the Yankee just before his election as president when he wrote: "It is true that we are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and that they ride us very hard, insulting our feelings, as well as exhausting our strength and substance." At about the same time he remarked of New England, the original breeding ground of Yankees, that they were "marked with such a perversity of character" that the natural political division of the United States would always be between Americans (non-New Englanders) and New Englanders.

When Washington Irving, whose family were among the early Anglo-Dutch settlers of New York, wrote the story about the "Headless Horseman," he was ridiculing Yankees. The prig Ichabod Crane had come over from Connecticut and made himself a nuisance. So a young man (New York young men were then normal young men rather than Yankees) played a trick on him and sent him fleeing back to Yankeeland where he belonged. James Fenimore Cooper, of another early New York family, felt the same way about New Englanders who appear unfavorably in his writings. Yet another New York writer, James Kirke Paulding (among many others) wrote a book defending the South and attacking abolitionists. It is not unreasonable to conclude that in Moby Dick, the New York Democrat Herman Melville modeled the fanatical Captain Ahab on the Yankee abolitionist. In fact, the term "Yankee" appears to originate in some mingling of Dutch and Indian words, to designate New Englanders. Obviously, both the Dutch New Yorkers and the Native Americans recognized them as "different."

For anyone familiar with American history before the War, it is clear that "Southern" was American and New Englanders were the problem. America was Washington and Jefferson, the Louisiana Purchase and the Battle of New Orleans, John Randolph and Henry Clay, Daniel Morgan, Daniel Boone, and Francis Marion. Southerners had made the Constitution, saved it under Jefferson from the New Englanders, fought the wars, acquired the territory, and settled the West, including the Northwest. To most Americans, in Pennsylvania and Indiana as well as Virginia and Georgia, this was a basic view up until about 1850. New England had been a threat, a nuisance, and a negative force in the progress of America. Northerners, including a few patriotic New Englanders, believed this as much as Southerners.

New Englanders have no civilization - only money and ideology. Without us to abuse and claim to feel superior to, they would not exist. If the United States was a normal country, the idea of breaking down a federal government that has grown much too big would be a normal part of political discourse. But, alas, the United States is not a normal country; it is the cannon fodder for a ruling class driven so mad by wealth and power that it seeks to dominate the Earth.

There have been grave mistakes in the course of American history, apart from the original one of going naïvely into a Union with bad people. There was Bragg commanding the Army of Tennessee and Longstreet fumbling at Gettysburg. In the same class is the decision of American leaders, when they were kicked out of the Democratic Party, to join the Republicans rather than form an American Independence party. It was probably inevitable. Today there are no Neo-Confederates or Union Leaguers in Congress or in governors' chairs - only Republicans and Democrats.

Right into the war, Northerners opposed to the conquest of the South blamed the conflict on fanatical New Englanders out for power and plunder, not on the good Americans in the South who had been provoked beyond bearing. Many people, and not only in the South, thought that Southerners, according to their nature, had been loyal to the Union, had served it, fought and sacrificed for it as long as they could. New Englanders, according to their nature, had always been grasping for themselves while proclaiming their righteousness and superiority.

The New Englanders succeeded so well, by the long cultural war described in The South Was Right, and by the North's military victory, that there was no longer a New England problem. Now the Yankee was America and the Southerner was the problem. America, the Yankee version, was all that was normal and right and good.

But we still have something the New Englanders don't have and have never had. There are still people writing books and poems and songs about Jeffersonian America. There is, despite all, a real American/Southern culture left. If you want to put secession on the table, let's consider the only part of the United States that really could be its own country. A true culture is the best basis for a viable country. Compared to that, all the New England whining amounts to nothing but an adolescent tantrum at not having everything exactly their own way.

There is nothing new about New Englanders whining either. Twice during the administrations of Jefferson and Madison, and several times later, they threatened to break up the Union in fits of pique when they failed to get their way. The current Blue State commentators are using extreme language to characterize the non-Kerry states. To hear them tell it, the red states are dominated by religious maniacs and militarists - i.e., people who actually believe the Bible and love their country. There is nothing new about this invective either. This kind of hateful demonization of those who resist domination by New Englanders has been commonplace for about three hundred years or more.

In short, American freedom was not a legacy of the "Puritan Fathers," but of Virginians who proclaimed and spread constitutional rights. New England gets some credit for beginning the War of Independence. After the first few years, however, Yankees played little part. The war was fought and won in the South. Besides, New Englanders had good reasons for independence - they did not fit into the British Empire economically, since one of their main industries was smuggling, and the influential Puritan clergy hated the Church of England. Southerners, in fighting for independence, were actually going against their economic interests for the sake of principle. Once Southerners had gone into the Union (which a number of wise statesmen like Patrick Henry and George Mason warned them against), the Yankees began to show how they regarded the new federal government: as an instrument to be used for their own purposes. Southerners long continued to view the Union as a vehicle for mutual cooperation, as they often naively still do.

The South was morally right.
The South was legally right.

Read this book and decide for yourself. Every black American should read this book.

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This review was written by a Yankee!!!....

...Born and bred in upstate NY. I am also civil war buff. This book is extremely important, for the fact of the matter is that MOST of the history that is taught today is WRONG. Not wrong in the general outcomes/ what happened sort of way, but wrong in explaining the TRUE motivations of the involved parties, as well as glossing over less-than savory events and dirty little secrets. The American Civil War is one of the most misunderstood events in our nation's history, and most of the misunderstanding is from Americans themselves! What we are taught about the Civil War here in the U.S. does not accurately explain what really happened (and don't even get me started on how we turn normal men into unstained 'heroes'). This book gets 5 stars for its fresh approach (how many more volumes of standard Civil War history can we stomach? There are already tens of thousands!) and because it raises questions on what you thought you "knew" about the Civil War.
Let me make it clear that this book does not defend or make a case for slavery. The authors concede right off the bat that slavery was disgusting. What the authors DO defend is the motivations of the vast majority of Southerners (and it isn't to uphold slavery), and what the authors attack is the North's (and more specifically, Lincoln's) motivations (and it isn't to free their fellow man). While I don't agree with about half of their observations, I ABSOLUTELY concur with their conclusions about Lincoln. Yes, he was a great man, but he was NOT the man we have been taught to believe he was. If nothing else, reading this book will give you a fresh take on an event that we still feel the repercussions from almost 150 years later. This book is a must read for anyone interested in The American Civil War. Read it for yourself and then decide whose version of history sounds correct.

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Excellent book but the writers have problems

Any conflict that happened over 100 years ago is just not worthy of heated debate or hard feelings of any kind. And the American "Civil War" is no exception. Yet the writers get awfully ticked off at the memory of Jefferson Davis for not being more honored today in the deep south. Fellas when something or someone was an eternity ago like this you shouldn't get disgusted over it's or his lack of attention (or at least favorable attention). The authors also mistakenly show slightly negative feelings to, and superior self-images over, the northern United States of America.

On other points about the book they mention Dr. Lewis Steiner who directly pointed out that there were thousands of african- americans were fighting rifles and all with the Confederate Army in Maryland in the 1860's. Despite Nat Turner most of the african-american slaves really were rather content with their old lot of life. Why shouldn't they have been as so few oppurtunities were open to them as freed people anyway. And to most it was the only kind of life they'd ever known anyway. The book further points out that an 1830 census showed many people of color actually owned slaves themselves. And that Lincoln only freed slaves who were in confederate controlled areas not Union controlled-areas that had slaves, like Louisiana. The slaves in louisiana were emancipated only after the Civil War ended. Good bit in the book about how General Grant owned slaves but Gen. Lee didn't. If you have any doubts about any or all this go to google and see like what "Dr. Lewis Steiner" in fact said about confederates of the african kind.

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The South Was Right!

Very good book, everyone need to read this book to learn the true about the Civil War.

To The Victor Goes The Spoils, But Some Truths Are Self-Evident

As the son of a Master Chief, I have lived in many places, including Georgia, Virginia, the Carolinas, New Hampshire, and Maryland (to name a few). So, I was always attracted to the "Civil War". This book is something every American should read, regardless of their stance on the issue. While presented in a very Southern-biased way, it brings to light many of the facts and truths that the Yankees have conveniently forgotten to put in the history books.
The book's title may suggest things such as slavery. This is because you have probably been educated in the United States and have been exposed to the liberal and "politically correct" views in our schools. The authors in fact make every stance that slavery was an evil practice, but that in fact it was very different than what we are taught it was. In our schools, we are taught that all slave masters were cruel and oppressive, such as it is in Uncle Tom's Cabin. That book is as inaccurate as Satan is bad. An official US report interviewing remaining former slaves some years back, "The Slave Narratives", which shows a minimum of 70% positive comments from the ex-slaves towards their masters, proves this. While I could go into a lot more details, the slave trade was not as it is perceived today.
Also, notice above that I said "Civil War". This is because it was not a civil war. A civil war is a war fought between two factions of the same government. The southern states had legally seceded from the Union and were therefore a separate and sovereign nation. Read the book and see all of the primary source quotations and references that support this as well as with the slavery and genocide issues.
The North committed a large number of what would today be called war crimes. And do you know what else? Lincoln and his homies knew about it. All of it. In fact they encouraged it. Once again, read the documentations from the official reports and you will see that the South was fighting a monster with no conscience. The last chapter of the book includes pages and pages of these references that will change even the most pro-Yankee's views of "Honest Abe".
I will not, and furthermore cannot, change your mind on these issues. So, I strongly encourage you to read the Kennedy brothers' work and decide for yourself if the South really was right. The answer may surprise you. But, even if you choose to believe that they weren't, read the book and get all the facts straight before you make your decision.

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