End White Folk Guilt / Marion, Alabama / Speech Delivered by HK Edgerton/April 28, 2013

Under the mellowing influence of time and occasional demonstrations at the North of a desire for the restoration of peace and good will, the
Southern people have forgotten much--- have forgiven much of the
wrongs they and their ancestors bore. If it be less so ( and it is )
among their invader and their siblings , it is but another example of
the rule that the wrong doer is less able to forgive than he who has
suffered causeless wrong.

There was no surrender at Appomattox, and no withdrawal from the
theater of war which committed our people and their children to a
heritage of shame and dishonor. No cowardice on any battlefield could
be as base and shameful as the silent acquiescence in the scheme which
continues relentlessly teaching our children in homes and schools that
the economic institution of slavery was the cause for the War for
Southern Independence, that the prisoners of war held in the South
were starved and treated with a barbarous inhumanity, that the
Honorable President Jefferson Davis and the Honorable General Robert
E. Lee were traitors to their country and false to their oaths , that
the young men who left everything to resist the illegal invasion of
their homeland, and climbed the slopes at Gettysburg and died
willingly on a hundred fields were rebels against a righteous
government.

Monstrous violations by the Union army were not attempted to be
palliated by them, or even covered by pretext. These were open, avowed
and notorious; the general sacking of private houses- the pillaging of
money, plate, jewels and other light articles of value, with the
destruction of books, works of art, paintings, pictures, private
manuscripts and family relics, the hostile acts directly against
property of all kinds, as well as outrages upon non- combatants (Black
 & White) to the laying waste of whole sections of country; the
attempted annihilation of all necessaries of life; to the wanton
killing of farm stock and domestic animals; the burning of mills,
factories, and barns, with their contents of grain and forage, not
sparing orchards or growing crops, or the implements of husbandry; the
mutilation of county and municipal records of great value, the
extraordinary efforts made to stir up servile insurrections, involving
the wide spread slaughter old men, women and children, the impious
profanation of temples of worship, and even the brutish desecration of
the sanctuaries of the dead.

All these enormities of a savage character against the very existence
of civilized society, and so revolting to the natural sentiments of
mankind, in open violation of modern usages of mankind in putting
down the so called rebellion ( Texas v. White ) , The War Between the
States.

The ancestors of those Northern invaders here in the 21st century just
as their kin, come South seeking injury to the peoples of the South
and their own profit, with a motivation to convince all man,
especially our Southern babies that the South was made up of tactless
people given to acting without deliberation or caution, and deluded by
bad men, who attempted in an illegal and wicked manner to overthrow
the Union. And that the Southern soldier however brave, was aroused
by no higher motive than the desire to retain the economic institution
of slavery. And truly believed that once the world was convinced of
this, they would hold the South degraded rather than worthy of honor,
and that our children instead of revering their ancestors, would be
openly ashamed.

They now seek to carry out this facade not by the aid of armed
soldiers, but through the active employ poverty pimps, public schools,
the judiciary, politicians, Southern scalawags and their
organizations. The whole force of journalists, poets, orators, and
writers of all sorts are employed in their unholy cause, especially
Northern history makers whose books are now in the hands of Southern
children.

The history of the human race furnishes no like example of men who by
their own action have so exposed their children; to men who
unconstrained have dishonored the graves and memories of their dead.
Our own people have aided and are still aiding with all the insistence
of damned and daily school-room iteration in the work of teaching
these malignant falsehoods to Southern children, in the work of so
representing a brave people to the world of today and the ages to
come.

The details of horror heaped upon the region of the South and its
civilian non-combatants by Sherman and Grant, and sanctioned by
Lincoln are so depraved and no less in weight than those of the day
that Jesus drug the Cross through the streets of Jerusalem to
Golgotha, and generally one is so apprehensive in accounting them for
fear of inciting sectional hostilities, the likes of not seen in
nearly 150 years.

A Northern soldier writing for the Detroit Frees Press gives the
following graphic account describing the burning of Marietta, Georgia:
"Soldiers rode from house to house, entered without ceremony, and
kindled fires in garrets and closets and stood by to see that they
were not extinguished. Had one been able to climb to such a height at
Atlanta as to enable him to see forty miles around the day Sherman
marched out, he would have appalled at the destruction. Hundreds of
houses had been burned, every rod of fence destroyed , with orders
from Sherman giving them to become vandals. No house escaped fire. And
on to Atlanta where he gave orders to burn it to the ground, driving
out from the city its whole population of all ages, sexes, and
conditions in the fields of a desolated country to starve and die.

On Page 108 Volume I, Colonel G.F.R. Hendersen of the British Staff
College, Camberley, England posted this letter written by the
Honorable General Robert E. Lee: " There are few, I believe, but will
acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political
evil. It is useless to talk at length on its disadvantages. I think its
a greater evil to the White man than to the Colored race, and while my
feelings are strongly interested in the latter, my sympathies are
deeply engaged for the former. The Blacks are immeasurably better off
here that in Africa-- morally, socially, and physically. The painful
discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their instruction as a
race, and I hope will prepare them for better things.

How long their subjection may be necessary is known and ordered by a
merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the
mild and melting influence of Christianity than from the storms and
contest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow is sure. The
doctrines and miracles of our Savior have required nearly two thousand
years to convert but a small part of the human race, and even among
Christians nations what gross errors still exist.

While we see the course of the final abolition of slavery still is
onward, and we give it the aid of our prayers and all justifiable
means in our power, we must leave the progress as well as the results
in his hands who sees the end and who chooses to work by slow things ,
and with whom a thousand years are but a single day.

The Abolitionist must know this, and must see that he has neither the
right nor the power of operating except by moral means an suasion; if
he means well to the slaves, he must not approve of the mode by which
it pleases Providence to accomplish its purposes, the results will
nevertheless be the same; and the reasons he gives for interference in
what he has no concern holds good for every kind of interference with
our neighbors when we disapprove of their conduct.

We of the South are today all that may be honorably meant by the
expression " loyal American citizens, But, we are also loyal to the
memory of our glorious dead, and we should defend them in our way from
false and foul aspersions of Northern historians and Southern
scalawags as long as brain can think or tongue and pen can do their
office. Mutual respect is needful for the common interest , is
essential to a friendly Union, and when slander is promulgated from
high places, the public welfare demands that truth should strip
falsehood of its power for evil. ( The Honorable President Jefferson
Davis )
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