Why Study The History And Culture Of The South?

From The Southern Partisan Reader:

Why Study the History and Culture of the South?


Posted on June 20, 2010 by tim

Welcome to The Southerner Partisan Reader on-line. Come, thoughtfully read, then ponder, argue, agree and disagree and then help TheSouthernPartisan.com writers and supporters celebrate and restore our countries (States) sovereignty, our cultures and our heritage of political freedom and liberty. Our hope is that you will find the published essays and books available on this site refreshing and informative while learning about the past and present Southern Culture which will guide us as we plan for the future.



There are important reasons for studying, rehearsing, celebrating and sometimes mourning the history, heritage, and culture of the “Southern States” of North America. No other American States have played a more important role in our national drama or have been on the political stage as long as have the Southern States.



The area we call St. Augustine, Florida was first explored in 1513 by Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon while he was the governor of nearby Puerto Rico. Ponce de Leon claimed the region for the Spanish crown. Before this various other Viking, Celtic and European explorers set foot on North American soil often trading with the already established Native American peoples.



Prior to the founding of St. Augustine in 1565, several earlier failed attempts at European colonization in what is now Florida were made by both Spain and France. In 1565 Spanish explorer and admiral Pedro Menendez de Aviles settled the area known as St. Augustine, Florida which is the oldest continuously occupied European-established City in the United States. Among the Spanish earlier attempts to establish a permanent settlement was one made by Tristan de Luna y Arellane in 1559 in the Pensacola area.



The French attempt at settlement of the area began in 1562 under the Protestant Norman navigator Jean Ribault and under the colonial organizer Protestant French Admiral Gaspard de Coligny. The expedition departed from France in February of 1562 with 150 colonists. After exploring the river San Juan (St. Johns River) in May of 1562, de Coligny named it May River which this was the month when he first landed in the area and claimed it for France. The expedition sailed north along the coast and established other settlements in what is now South Carolina. They built their primary fortresses at Port Royal Sound and Parris Island (South Carolina), where they started to build a large citadel. By July 1562 Jean Ribault returned to France. Rene Goulaine de Laudonniere, who had been Ribault’s second-in-command on the 1562 expedition, organized a new colonial contingent for Florida consisting of 300 new settlers, including women, children and soldiers.



In 1607 Virginia became the birthplace of what eventually would become the republic of the united (the lower case “u” is not a print error) States of America. Virginia was the largest and most influential of the thirteen British colonies. Her sons would led the struggle for independence and for several decades remained chief among the States. Thirty-eight of the North American United States would be carved, in whole or in part, out of the land Virginia claimed in 1609. Seven of these States (besides Virginia) would be developed within her 1776 boundaries, and six of those seven include more than 180 million acres of land that Virginia voluntarily gave to the united States to promote unity and peace.



Through four centuries, Virginians and other Southerners helped define and formulate our political ideals and practices, and shaped our country’s institutions that for a period guaranteed what came to be called “The American View” of freedom and liberty. Two of its most crucial military conflicts ended on Virginia soil, first the American Revolutionary War and then Lincoln’s War to Prevent Southern Independence. One in every seven men who have served as President of the United States was born in the Commonwealth of the Old Dominion State.



Today Southerners inherit respected and honourable historic traditions with a melding (not melting as in “melting pot”) of distinctive cultures drawn largely from the Spanish, French, German, Native American, Scottish, Irish and English peoples. In the Southern States it was not necessary for people to live together in a manner that denied their rich heritages as inevitably was to occur in the States of the Deep North (New England) whose people saw their culture as a “melting pot.” Their Puritan ancestors readily gave up the Christianity for rationalism and its illegitimate fadish political children, and would demand that the rest of the American united republics do likewise.



To be worthy of our heritage’s which jointly established a common understanding of freedom, independence and liberty, we must understand, appreciate, and share the high regard Southerners have always had for the inestimable value of 1) independence, 2) liberty, 3) freedom, 4) government by the consent of the governed, 5) the role of a limited republican government as a delegated servant of society, 6) lawful, honourable dealings in every kind of human affair, and 7) for the virtue of moderate political reforms as opposed to change through violent revolution.



The writers, sponsors and staff of TheSouthernPartisan.com recognise that the distinctive American values of honour, chivalry, and noblesse oblige (obligation of honourable, generous, and responsible social behaviour) had for decades come under attack by the radical anti-Christian rationalists of the Deep North, and finally obscured in 1865 by the loss of independence and State sovereignty in every American State.



It can be rightly stated that the United States of America lost what the centralising new government called the “Civil War.” As a result the distinctive American constitutional principles of freedom and liberty have been finally destroyed through the continuing and constant assaults by materialistic opportunists, self-seeking propositional democracy, and the all-consuming control-manics, maniac’s and freaks of democratic egalitarianism (socialism).



Our children need to be taught to love, understand and appreciate their beloved States (the American term for “country”) to understand the greatness and sacrifice of their ancestors, to uphold their original principles and morals, and to be proud of their State’s heritage’s. They need genuine images of grandeur and heroism. At the heart of the great tasks of true education is moral and character development. Our people need to know the Washington’s, the Lee’s, the Tucker’s, the Randolph’s, the Pendleton’s, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Stonewall Jackson, John C. Calhoun, J.E.B. Stuart, John Singleton Mosby and all the other great worthies noted on the Roll of Honour of those States.



Since 1865 the majority of voters in the North American member States have turned their backs on the great constitutional principles upon which the united States of America were founded, and have changed the laws of our national and State governments to match their political apostasy and immoral revolutions. We must not turn our backs on such a great heritage in order to embrace the poverty of the bland and dangerous morass of momentary American cultural pottage and its Marxist egalitarianism.



Culture matters! But, the culture of freedom and liberty defined and implemented by a God-fearing and God-honouring people did not survive in American leadership under the constant overbearing force of social engineering and moral deconstructionism that is the sacramental pablum crammed down people’s throats by federal central planning committee’s. Yes! Ideas do have consequences!



American views of polity have been readily and easily surrendered by the puppet politicians of the American Stupid Political Party (Republicans), destroyed and completely redefined by the American Evil Political Party (Democrats). Southern and USA history and their consequences, and their accurate teaching are critical to whether we have a future civil society worthy to bestow upon our descendants. Right now we offer them an inheritance of extreme debt and a morally depraved, corrupt and violent society.



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Thank you for reading and thinking with us. May God bless you as your read.



Deo Vindice,



Timothy D. Manning, M. Div.