The Christian case for the Confederacy

In light of all the recent events, there is actually some concern over the fate of Confederate monuments and statues that were largely erected in defiance of the Reconstruction efforts of the post-Civil War era. The Confederacy is generally acknowledged to be "the bad guy separatists" who sought to bring in a war and secede from the Union in order to keep their slaves. The reality is actually quite a lot more complicated and there are key factors that are often overlooked. The Union wasn't all perfect. They were headed by a totalitarian, statist monster by the name of Abraham Lincoln. The Union didn't get involve in the Civil War because they were trying to end slavery. They initiated the war because they wanted to keep the Confederacy under their thumb. That this is why the Union attacked the Confederacy is plain to see. That the war didn't concern too much in regards to slavery though, is false. In making a Christian case for the Confederacy, one must obviously overcome this hurdle.

Well, the Union was actually not quite perfect in and of itself as it turns out. If one is arguing on the lines that slavery is immoral because it is racist, then one must come into contact with the Union's own problems with racism. The North, in reality, had about the same amount of problems with race relations as the South did and Alexander Tocqueville had observed that the Northern states were even more racist than the South (DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln, 46). Indeed, "when Congress ended slavery in the District of Colombia in 1862, it simultaneously appropriated $600,000 as an initial authorization to send the freed slaves back to Africa" (18). Lincoln even indicated in a speech in 1860 that he intended the deportation of Africans (18). We're talking about deportation based on ethnicity too. The South may have wanted to keep and hang onto their slaves but the North didn't even want to live with Africans.

Aside from the fact that both the Union and the Confederacy displayed their fair shares of racism, the war didn't even address the question of the emancipation of slaves until midway through the war. If the Union were the good guys on the basis that "they fought to end slavery" (not factual), then shouldn't the South's own efforts to formulate their own Emancipation program for slaves be taken into account? It was early as late 1863 that the Confederacy itself started considering the question of emancipation. It started with a man named Patrick Cleburne and soon Judah Benjamin became enthused by the topic of manumission and eventually even Jefferson Davis himself (Levine, Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves During the Civil War). Of course, their emancipation plans focused only on freeing their own slaves.

When Lincoln drafted his Emancipation Proclamation, it had a severe problem in that it declared free slaves only in Confederate territories! It didn't free slaves in parts of Louisiana, Virginia, or Tennessee, but instead freed only Confederate slaves to which numerous British writers even frowned upon such an idea as grotesquely immoral (DiLorenzo, 36, 42). It would incite violent slave uprisings against women and children on the plantations who had to run the plantations because the men were gone off and fighting in a war already. This proves that the Union had no sensibilities in regards to the carrying out of wars either. General Sherman being an infamous example of Lincoln's pestilency and disregard for the rules of war. DiLorenzo details some of the crimes committed by Sherman as burning civilian plantations, raping slaves, and even pillaging Southern assets to take for himself. Sherman was essentially not much better than a Vandal. "Federal armies did plunder and burn Southern cities as in the cases of Atlanta and Colombia, South Carolina, and the laying waste of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in 1864" (153). Some might say, "well, they were getting rid of slavery". But that shows the complete incompetence of the actual racism of the Union and the actual nature of emancipation in both the Northern States and the Southern States.

Clearly, slavery's a vile and detestable institution but the Confederacy, when they brought up the question of emancipation, they focused on their own states. When the Union brought up the question of emancipation, they freed other people's slaves. This is tantamount to the politician of today patting themselves on the back because they voted to raise taxes knowing full well they won't have to pay a dime, but at least the new money is going toward a charitable organization (read: political organization that supports their positions). The Emancipation Proclamation that Abraham Lincoln drafted was the most cynical statement made in modern U.S. history. If it did anything, it created slave uprisings against vulnerable women and children. That is grotesquely immoral and for a Christian to support that in the name of "ending slavery" is abominable.

There is further reasons though why a Christian should support the Confederacy. For starters, Pope Pius IX, in his diplomatic dealings, wrote to Jefferson Davis addressing him as the President of the Confederate States (Ducayne, "The Catholic Confederacy", Church Militant, 2015 June 24). While Pope Pius IX retained full neutrality and opted not to get involved in governing politics concerning the American Civil War, the fact that one of the most powerful monarchs at the time had addressed Jefferson Davis as President of the Confederacy is grounds for believing that the Pope did, at the very least, acknowledge the independence of the Confederate states. But he was not the first and only monarch to do so. Britain had been supplying the Confederate states with military aid since 1861. Britain was another Christian monarchy at the time. In fact, there seems to be a telling significance that Christian monarchies would be the first to support the independence of the Confederates if not actually cheerleading their defeat of the Union. It seems to suggest that for them, the Union was symbolic of a progressivist society that would lead to the destruction of men further down in the future.

The Confederate battle flag had a cross on it. The Confederate battle flag floats a symbol absent from the Freemasonic iconography of the U.S. (Hertz, Star-Spangled Heresy, 134). The Confederate flag is talked about as a "symbol of hate" as if the words of Tocqueville and his description of the Northern states as more racist meant nothing. It's talked of a "symbol of hate" as if the freedom of slaves was what the North desired, or if it did, that they actually intended to take these slaves in themselves. The stars and stripes of the American flag is actually a typical republican-style flag. Stripes, bars, and stars, are all over the flags of today's republics. But monarchies fly a religious symbol as the bismillahs of the Arab nations or the crosses of the United Kingdom's countries, or the Papal coat of arms of the Vatican. The Confederate flag isn't despised because it is a symbol of hate. The Confederate flag is despised because it is a symbol of Christianity. In all its imperfections, the Confederate flag maintained a strongly Christian stance and example.

The last reason not to support the Union is that Karl Marx was a strong supporter and associate of Lincoln. This is detailed by both Hertz and DiLorenzo. Marx was a strong advocate for the war and saw the Civil War as something that would bring about the final revolution he so desired. "We rejoice that the rebel aristocracy of the South has been crushed, that ... beneath the glorious shadow of our victorious flag men of every clime, lineage and color are recognized as free. ... the workingmen of America will demand in future a more equal share in the wealth their industry creates ... and a more equal participation in the privileges and blessings of those free institutions, defended by their manhood on many a bloody field of battle." (Marx in Hertz, 148-149). The Union, with its gross lavishness of pridefulness, efforts to remain increasingly racist, its hatred toward Africans to the extent it didn't even want to live with them, its Freemasonry, its increasing hostility toward Christianity, its steeped footing in republicanism, its disregard for the rules of just war, and its indebtedness to Marxism, was inherently Satanic. The Confederacy had a severe blemish in slavery. A blemish that many were already considering the need to rid themselves of. The Confederacy, despite its imperfections, and with its Christian flag, was inherently far more Christian and thus something a Christian should support the cause of. Not the slavery, but everything else the Confederacy stood for was quite humane in comparison to the Union. In the end, the Union didn't even abolish slavery. It just changed the terms and ended race-based slavery. The Confederate flag a symbol of hate? Give me a break.