https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/09/lew-rockwell/the-war-against-the-south/

The War Against the South

By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

In the past few decades, the federal government has been engaged in a concerted effort to destroy the heritage of the South, and this effort has intensified under so-called “President” Joe Biden and his gang of neo-con controllers. We can be sure that if Kamala Harris takes office as his successor, these efforts will continue.

After Reconstruction officially ended with the withdrawal of federal troops from the South in 1877 following the disputed election of Rutherford B. Hayes, the dominant theme in official propaganda was national unity. We were all “one nation indivisible,” and soldiers from the South played a major part in America’s wars. Robert E. Lee was recognized by both North and South as an American hero. As Pat Buchanan notes, “When the Spanish-American War broke out, President McKinley, who as a teenage soldier had fought against ‘Stonewall’ Jackson in the Shenandoah and been at Antietam, bloodiest single-day battle of the Civil War, removed his hat and stood for the singing of ‘Dixie,’ as Southern volunteers and former Confederate soldiers paraded through Atlanta to fight for their united country. My grandfather was in that army.”

But now things are different. The major figures of the Confederacy are regarded as rebels and traitors. The worst excesses of the notorious Radical Republican leader Thaddeus Stephens are being revived. Stephens argued that by rebelling against the Union, the Confederate States had committed “state suicide” and could be treated as conquered territory. He adopted the Roman policy of “vae victis” (woe to the losers). As an example, Stephens and his cohorts refused to recognize Southern state governments that would not ratify the 14th Amendment, holding that the state legislatures must do what was demanded of them.

Of course, Stephens was wrong. When the Constitution was ratified by the states, several of them included provisions in their acceptance reserving the right to withdraw from the Union, if their rights were violated by the federal government. ......