By Charles E. McMichael
Delivered at the Lee-Jackson Banquet of Captain James W. Bryan Camp 1390 Sons of Confederate Veterans
15 January 2000

Confederate Heroes! Not a term you hear publicly a lot these days. I will talk later about what I feel a Confederate should be. A hero is someone who we aspire to emulate, their life and deeds serve as an example to us.

And what better example to have — men like Jeff Davis. Now there is a lot of debate on what kind of President Davis was. I will take the words of Lee "few could have done as well, none good have done better." And my new favorite D.H. HILL, who knew who he was, and knew who they were, he had received a correspondence from a yankee general about the burning of Plymouth N.C., to which he responded.. " In regard to your first communication touching the burning of Plymouth you seem to have forgotten two things. You forget, sir, that you are a Yankee and that Plymouth is a Southern town. It is no business of yours if we choose to burn one of our own towns. A meddling Yankee troubles himself with everybody’s matters but his own and repents of everybody’s sins except his own. We are a different people. Should the Yankees burn a Union village in Connecticut or a codfish town in Massachusetts we would not meddle with them, but rather bid them God speed in their work of purifying the atmosphere. Your second act of forgetfulness consists in your not remembering that you are the most atrocious house-burner as yet unhung in the wide universe." Now that man is heroic.

But this time of year we gather in particular to honor Lee and Jackson, but by doing so we do not honor them alone. We honor also the men who they led. For in order to be a great leader, the people in the column must also possess greatness. Lee and Jackson are not revered because of their differences with the Southern people, but because of what we have in common with them. They were after all only men with human shortcomings. Jackson’s are legendary!, Lee’s are admittedly harder to find and I shall not be the one who tries. But, they are the benchmark of the kind of people we all strive to be. They excelled in their commitment to God and Country, as did our Confederate forebears. When I think of Lee and Jackson’s greatest triumph on the field of battle, at Chancellorsville, that thought is indelibly imprinted on me with the thought of William Robinett, my ancestor who was there with them as a part of the 28th Ga., and whose blood was shed on the same ground as Stonewall’s. They all did their duty and deserve our respect.

But as great as these men were, some still ask the question, why have events such as this? What relevance is the past to us?

On the one year anniversary of the tragedy in Oklahoma City, I saw a special on Nightline. It was one of those "Where are they now?" shows. One of the most memorable images of that day was of a firefighter cradling a young girl in his arms, when they returned to interview him one year later...there he stood...in his fireman’s armor with a Battleflag bandana tied about his neck. I thought, My God, how wonderful that this modern day hero is proud of and proclaims his heroic past. I then knew the answer to that question-it is- if we expect to have heroes in our future, we must teach by the example of their heroic legacy. And teach I mean! We must be in the schools, at the county fairs, and in the media... anywhere where we can gain an audience, but especially to the children, remember, what students learn today is what the average person will think twenty years from now. They are going to learn something from someone, we best make sure it is from those who know the truth. The future must know the past. In order to bring out the best in us, we must honor the best of us.

And I do mean US! Too often we think of Confederates as them. But think of your own Confederate ancestors... everyone of his ancestors is also yours, we have the same genetic imprint, the same blood, we spring from, and shall return to, the same soil. We are still the Southern People! We had our battles to fight then, and we fought them with honor and courage. We also have our battles to fight now!

The front is still waiting, the struggle for the Cause lies before us, we must fight these Battles with the same honor and courage, and we will not be found Lacking.

So let us make this pledge here and now, to all who stand with us, and to all who oppose us We shall never relinquish the past, for to give up the past, you compromise the present and forfeit the future.

We shall never rescabber the sword of righteous truth, it’s edge shall stay razor sharp, honed by the courage of conviction

And we shall never, ever, surrender the thrill and the honor of setting forth in a warm Southern Breeze our Sacred Banner!!!

For those of us who where in Columbia, we sent this message loud and clear — No retreat, no surrender, no compromise... and that IS our final answer!

I would now like to shift slightly to focus of this talk and continue. This can be dangerous, both to the existing society and your attention spans. Recent events have moved me to speak to you all today in dead seriousness. Or as my father used to say, as the spirit moves me.

I have already talked some of Lee and Jackson, but of course there are many more. The gallant Pelham, literally sticking to his guns while staring death in the face; Mouton at Mansfield, leading the boys of Louisiana straight into the yankee leviathan. And others as well, like Col. Beard and Lt. Col. Walker, who were literally fighting in their own back yards against federal oppression. Isaac Newton Brown barreling down to the Mississippi defiantly against all odds. The men of the Hunley, sailing off into dark waters to meet both doom and fame. Gen. Tom Green who led maybe the only cavalry attack in history against a naval force. I believe they invented the word "bodacious" just for him. And whose heart does not swell with pride and awe when recounting Armistead at Gettysburg, with his hat on his sword proclaiming "who will follow me?!"

This is the question that endures, who will follow him today and all the other brave men of the South. I speak not only of their wartime exploits, but what came after. After the end of hostilities is when the men needed most their courage and fortitude. They came home to a broken land of broken dreams and still gave their last full measure to make it right. Because what they fought for, was still what they wanted for their children and all their descendants, who are us. They did what they did for us, here in this room, and our children.

We spend much time in the modern days defending this heritage, making sure that the flag flies, the monuments stand and their cause remembered. But that was not their goal. Their goal was to build a particular kind of society for us all to live in Gen. Armistead’s challenge remains "who will follow me?" We have flowing in our veins the blood of these men, and it cries out to us from the ages, follow us! Do not let the dreams and goals we fought for be cast aside.

Keeping these things in mind, let us turn to the world in which we now live. We are all cognizant of recent events in Colorado, Jonesboro and all the rest. And the big question is why? Why have our prodigy taken up arms against their peers and parents. The day after the events in Littleton, my students wanted to talk about what had happened. They asked why? I had nothing prepared to tell them, I just spoke to them honestly, from my gut and from my heart, which is the best way to communicate always, especially to teenagers. And this is what I told them.

In the 1960’s there was a revolution in this country. All the old values where thrown out and replaced with new ones, if you can call them values. Right and wrong became relative. Truth became a matter of perspective. Actions could never again be judged as good or bad, only accepted. We now have generations of people who are amoral ignoramuses with high self esteem, with no regard for themselves much less anyone else.

Obviously many were stunned, but many also nodded their heads in agreement. Fortunately we still live in a state where some children are raised right. I started to think more down this line. Who were these people who did this to us. To get a good clue, you can look at the Presidential election of 1968. Here they were out in full force, and open about there revolutionary goals. They protested everyone and everybody. I have video of several encounters they made with Gov. Wallace. Anti-war protesters had a tactic of laying down in front of people’s car in order to protest, Wallace told them " if you lay down in front of my car.. you won’t lay down in front of no more". At another point the protesters started to shout obscenities to which he replied "you all seem to know a lot of four-letter words, but there seems to be two four letter words you do not know the meaning of w.o.r.k. and s.o.a.p." I think this gives you a good picture of who I am talking about. Now it is not unusual to hear George Wallace quoted in a speech about Confederate heritage. I think what I am about to do is a first though, and that is to quote Hubert Humphrey. To those of us who were cognizant during the 60’s he is thought of as the epitome of liberalism, of course he did do his graduate work at LSU and this seems to have had some effect on him. He probably made the best identification of who these valueless revolutionaries where. While giving a speech after the debacle in Chicago, he was being heckled mercilessly. He spoke directly to the hecklers saying, "any problem we have we can talk about." One in the crowd with a bullhorn replied "We have not come to talk with you, but arrest you." Humphrey gave them the look and began a tirade against them, concluding with "I have strove all my life to do what was right, and now a bunch of anarchist and nihilist, who believe in nothing, have determined they are going to take down a man, a party and a country." Listen to that again- "anarchist and nihilist who believe in nothing, who have decided to destroy a man, a party and a country." And THAT is who is running the country today, and THAT is who is RUINING the country today.

While all these thoughts have been running through my head these last weeks, I saw a few things in a different light. Last Tuesday I saw Politically Incorrect and on the show was the head of PETA. The idea they espoused was, that animals are equal to humans. In tow she had that mental giant Pamela Anderson. One the things we have learned from the experimentation in education is, when some of this crowd talks of making things equal, they do not mean raising all to the highest existing standard. They mean lowering all to the lowest standard. And that is what these people of done, they have not raised animals to the highest level of human achievement, they have lowered humans to the state of wild and savage animals. Is it any wonder that some children feel that it is okay to shoot down their classmates as if they were rabid dogs. After my explanation of why this tragedy in Colorado had happened, one student said, "Oh, I thought you where going to blame it all on Lincoln." And I replied, "Now that you mention it, Lincoln was a manifestation of this concept of a higher law, higher than the Constitution, higher than God" — higher law being defined as the goals of anarchist and nihilist who believe in nothing. And that my friends is what our ancestors fought against, those same people then, who we find in control the country now. We must not give up the fight of our ancestors.