The War to Prevent Southern Independence and Other New Tomes

Thanks for the “Amateurs”

“Amateur” has come to mean “inferior” to most people today. But the term originally meant someone who was as good as a professional but did not take money for performance. Fortunately, Dixie has always had and still does have many able “amateur” historians. This is a good thing since most of the paid “professional” historians these days are far gone in the distortions of Cultural Marxism. Two recent examples of good “amateur” work : ““This Constitution…Shall Be the Supreme Law of the Land”: The Constitution of the United States as handed down by the Founding Fathers as a legacy is in decline. by David Loy Mauch of Arkansas; and Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States: The Irrefutable Argument. by Gene KIzer, Jr., of South Carolina. Both these works marshal powerful cases, based on evidence rather than propaganda. The cases have been made before, but our enemies are the kind of people that have to be told more than once. Both works are available in paperback and electronically. Gene Kizer is also the author of The Elements of Academic Success: How to Graduate Magna Cum Laude from College. The author knows whereof he speaks.

Christian Witness

I do not usually review religious books or advice books. However, David and Jason Benham, twin brothers from Charlotte, North Carolina, have published a book worth noting in the catalog of Southern writing: Whatever the Cost: Facing Your Fears, Dying to Your Dreams, and Living Powerfully The brothers, former professional baseball players and very successful entrepreneurs, have written a good-humoured and inspiring spiritual autobiography. They relate a story of how Christian faith has guided them through setbacks and difficulties. The Benhams are in the news these days as conspicuous resisters of the current atmosphere of libertinism that dominates so much of the clergy and laity. Unlike most “professional” Christians, they have paid the price of refusing to go along with fashion. They gave up a major cable television success rather than compromise their faith. The book tells us that genuine old-time Protestant faith still flourishes in the Southern grassroots. Alas, like so many naïve Southerners, they do not understand that their virtues are “Southern,” and could not have been produced by any other culture.

The War to Prevent Southern Independence

Dr. Charles T. Pace of Greenville, North Carolina, originated the precisely accurate term for the great disturbance of 1861—1865: The War to Prevent Southern Independence. Many of us have adopted this nomenclature and all of us should. It exactly describes the war better than any other of the numerous terms that are used. The war was waged by the party in control of the U.S. government to destroy the self-government of the Southern States and their people. Dr. Pace’s new book, just published, Southern Independence: Why War? explains chapter and verse how that came about. He traces how what he calls the Northern Money Party preferred war to allowing the South to get free of its economic domination. He presents unseemly facts about the career of Honest Abe Lincoln that even Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo missed. Along the way, reflecting on his long service as a family physician in eastern North Carolina, reminds of us what was good in a Southern way of life shared by black and white over many generations. Dr. Pace’s book is the inaugural publication of a new Southern venture, Shotwell Publishing, and is available in print and electronically. Shotwell will specialize in short, hard-hitting Southern books.

Clyde Wilson

Clyde Wilson is a distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina where he was the editor of the multivolume The Papers of John C. Calhoun. He is the M.E. Bradford Distinguished Chair at the Abbeville Institute. He is the author or editor of over thirty books and published over 600 articles, essays and reviews and is co-publisher of www.shotwellpublishing.com, a source for unreconstructed Southern books.