The South Was Right!

Rating:
Summary: Finally we are told what really happened!
Review: "The South Was Right!" is an essential book for all Americans to read, especially Southerners! About half of the book is devoted to telling us what really happened in the War for Southern Independence. Each incident discussed is backed by facts including letters written by soldiers, official United States government reports, and interviews of people involved conducted in the early 20th century. This book dispells the Northern myth that the Union came down to save the slaves from the "evil" Southerners. It also shows that Abraham Lincoln was not so honest; in fact, he was an early Hitler or Huessein. This book is not just for Southerners. It should be read by Northerners too, so that they can realize that the history they have learned is a lie! Please read this book, weigh the evidence, and judge for yourself!

Rating:
Summary: This book documents EVERY claim with NORTHERN SOURCES!
Review: You owe it to yourself to read this book in spite, or perhaps because of the fantasy offered by Mike Gelfand. Unlike the transparent bigot who implies that trailer parks are somehow a Southern phenomenon and lacks the gonads to sign his "review" after admitting that he has never even read the book; Mr. Gelfand does in fact use a name at the end of his divergence from reality. He is to be commended for that.

Buy it used and read it for yourself. You will quickly notice how much of the documentation is from northern newspapers of the time, from offical US governemnt documents, official correspondence of the US Army and the diaries of the Federal soldiers involved. Yes, there are some southern sources used and there are many more that could have been used. But the author's have made the two bold choices of using northern sources to provide the facts so assiduosly ignored by others and in using that tremendously controversial title guaranteed to attract the eye.

Read for yourself; unless you'd rather continue to have your "opinions" dictated to you.

If you think that the war had ANYTHING to do with slavery; answer this: "Why is it that the Gettysburg Address was made after two years of horrific, bloody war; the day after the bloodiest battle until that date; after the Confederates reached Pennsylvania; and only applied to the ceceded States and made NO interferences with Northern slaves; was delivered by the man whose own government's official histories show to be a dictator suspending the most basic human liberties of his own northern constituents with the first-ever secret police on the continent; ad infinitum?

Did you know that Massachucetts was the first colony to give legal protection to slaveholding? Did you know that Virgina, the very heart of the Confederacy, was the colony and later state to REPEATEDLY attempt to outlaw slavery, but was prevented from so doing by the english Governor and later by the New England states? Did you know that had it not been for the Fourteenth Amendment New Jersey would have maintained lifetime slavery as legal for decades AFTER THE WAR? Did you know that racism has its roots in the northern states? Is it any surprise that it continues to be strongest there to this day?

Read this book, check its references, and begin to learn the breadth and depth of the lies you have been taught as truth. If your prejudiced ideas are correct; you have nothing to fear. Who among you is man enough to read it?

Perhaps the strongest indication that everyone should read this book comes from those who denigrate it. All but one do not address the very book they "review" at all, preferring instead to vent vile racist and cultural bigotry to prove their own genetic deficiencies. Only one detractor has made ANY attempt at explaining where this book misses the mark. And while though he misses the mark and makes arguements neither founded in fact nor in any way applicable to this book or anything it contains; even he says that we should all read it.

Rating:
Summary: The Dixie Revolution
Review: The book, the south was right is about the struggle and folly of the southern treatment. It shows in many areas how the Yankee wordsmiths have brainwashed our entire culture to make the north in a morally superior position. The book quells any such false statements and even shows us how the south was both moral and in the right.

The book was extremely good at telling both sides and showing why on both sides of the problem, that eh south was not always wrong in what they believed in. They introduced actual facts to back up these claims and really showed how great the south was. The book is only valid however if the reader uses an open mind and reads with serious thought in hand. The mere topic however will seriously cause you to stand up and read carefully because you will be shocked with the information that it holds.


Rating:
Summary: Revisionist History - Where It's Needed
Review: I have read a couple of revisionist books written to cash in on current events (Melkin's piece on internment and France our Oldest Enemey. This book is excellent, it shares a contravercial title, there any similarity ends.

To claim this book is one sided neglects the outright bias that is present in most teaching of history within the US. I was educated in England and appalled at the superficial coverage US history receives within the US school system. Coverage is more like a liberal apology than coverage of events.

The book adopts the "following the money approach" to analyzing who profited most from slavery - the case that much of the wealth went to the North is well made. It also points out slavery was not new to Africa, and was practiced by Africans on their own people without outside intervention. The case is also well made that the North, and Lincoln held racist views. The lot of blacks in the Northern states was precarious (e.g. draft riots).

The authors do not make any case in favour of slavery - their consistent line is the practice is vile.

The fact that many blacks served, assisted and provided material support to the war is beyond refute. Native Americans thought with both sides during the civil war - this material does less for the authors case (their choice was more governed by which side would do the most damage).

The book has a few flaws, it does repeat itself. Arguing that conditions for US POWs do not amount to war crimes (it does even if the North had similar low standards - two wrongs dont make a right) and probably worse, forgetting glossing over atrocities of the South. The style is a little journalistic.

Great book that dispels some myths, and brings others into question. Makes the reader realize why most confederate soldiers thought so well. Despite the fact that more than 90% held no slaves.

Rating:
Summary: I'm sure the South WAS right!
Review: I'm German, English is my first foreign language, so please excuse writing or grammar errors. Thank You!!

The Kennedy Brothers have written an exciting and thrilling book which shows once more that the winner takes it all and writes the official history. I discovered their book in a bookstore in Tucson, AZ during a summer holiday trip and ordered it via Internet back home in Germany. All my life I've been interested in history, especially American History. Reading this book and also "Why Not Freedom!" by the same authors, I was stunned to see how often the glorious Battle Flag is not only related to racism but even to the worst ideology and time period in my nation's history: Fascism and National Sozialism.
In Germany, the biggest part of regular school history education is set on the time during 1933-1945, to remind everyone of the terrors and the suffering of all europeans during this period. As a matter of fact, displaying the swastika or other fascist symbols is strictly forbidden and you won't be able to find "Mein Kampf" by Adolf Hitler in any German bookstore. Anyway, I think this is right, because these symbols have only negative meanings and are standing for persecution, terror and hate. So I think it's right to prohibit Neo-Nazis from displaying them.
Something I do not understand is, why the Confederate Battle Flag seems to have the same dreadful meaning like swastika in the eyes of liberals and left-wing-extremists. A flag under which an army fought for independece, states rights and freedom of self-determination cannot be reduced to represent racism and white supremacy. The Cause for which the brave men of the Confederacy fought so long is not a Cause of terror, hate and racism, like the Nazis did. Neither is the Flag a symbol of these.
I've been to the South only once, and I love it just like my own nation. I would be glad to come back to a South where Heritage, States Rights and the displaying of one of the worlds most recognized symbol of freedom, the Battle Flag, are not longer under attack from liberals and left-wing-groups.
The South has a great history (actually so much greater than my own nations terrible history) and I just love everything Southern. I'll come back, y'all!!!

Read the Kennedy brother's book, I can highly recommend it! It just opened my eyes and I hope it will open many more eyes in the future. Deo Vindice!


Rating:
Summary: Unreal!
Review: Plain and simple this is not a book for the typical War of the Rebellion history buff. Can you say "one sided". There is not enough space here to take them to task on their version of the "truth".

Read it if you want a good laugh!



Rating:
Summary: The South Was Right? Yeah for the Most Part!
Review: ~The South Was Right!~ is a much-needed defense of the Southern Cause, Southern Culture, Southern History, and the late Confederate States of America. In modern times, history books and public education instruction are rife with a revisionist-mythologized history. This mythology consistently disparages and demonizes the Southern Cause and paints the North as a great moral crusader with twofold motivation: the liberation of slaves in its invasion and the preservation of the Union.

The Kennedy brothers open their book by making light of the widespread mythology surrounding the causes behind the War and secession. They explain an exorbitant and disproportionate federal tax burden that was levied on the agrarian South. The South paid well over 4/5 of all federal revenues at one time! Now where were the bulk of federal expenditures spent? Asked Of Abraham Lincoln... "Why not let the South go in peace?"
Response Of Abraham Lincoln... "I can't let them go. Who would pay for the government?" Likewise, southerners were outraged by an unconstitutional, corrupt allocation of expenditures in the north including unconstitutional subsidies to special interests. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution had no provisos for subsidies for special interests, but it not stop the paper aristocracy from pilfering the treasury with their ponzi schemes. Before the war, Lincoln said pay your tariffs or else! There was so much money in the treasury, there was a massive surplus, but the northerners insisted on maintaining the exorbitant taxes levied to spite and pilfer the south economically. He had no intent of addressing southern greviences and only spited those outside of his party with coarse threats. The authors examine the anti-slavery crusader myth that North enjoys. The Emancipation Proclamation was a pragmatic political device used by Lincoln in 1863 to eschew British and French participation and aid to the Confederacy by giving the Union a perception of moral high ground. Lincoln's great egalitarian emancipator reputation is soundly refuted as Lincoln is shown to be visibly racist in word and deed. He was indifferent to blacks and sympathetic to the abolitionists favoring their deportation. Lincoln stated, "I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of [blacks] as our equals..." I've noticed a controversial book by a black American called _Lincoln's White Dream_ has challenged the Lincoln egalitarian myth since Lincoln expressed a desire for deporting the slaves. The authors further examine the atrocities and brutality of the Yankee invaders. Some chapters though, such as the Yankee Flesh Merchants can get off the beaten path. With this chapter, for example, the authors intended to show the significant culpability and involvement of northerners in the slave trade. While their statement of facts may be on the mark, the reader may perceive the authors' harsh condemnation as rather duplicitous and overbearing, given the preponderance of slavery in the south. The transatlantic traders though based in New England were heavily involved in the slave trade in early American history.

Liberal and Marxist revisionist historians love to demonize the south with their visceral mythologizing polemics against the South (i.e. _Free Soil, Free Labor_ by Eric Foner) and the contrivance of a fictitious free labor ideology that entails a free labor market for working blacks. The key tenet of this mythology is the notion that the impetus for slavery abolition earlier in the North was that it was predominantly a moral revulsion at the institution and they abolished in the interest of the welfare of blacks. There is a plethora of documentation from letters, legislation past into law, and newspapers that clearly shows that free labor was a misnomer, since it only delineated white labor. White labor in northern states simply did not want to have to compete with the labor of blacks. For this reason, more often than not, many northern states outlawed slavery. States like New Jersey, for example, not only abolished slavery but outright forbid blacks from entering the labor market. Other states placed punitive sanctions on blacks restricting their freedom to labor; they seldom extended blacks the protections that white workers enjoyed. Granted, since its beginning the Republican Party machine did have an interest in stopping the spread of slavery though, since the spread of slavery was equated with the Democratic Parties' influence because of its agrarian constituencies.

The Kennedy brothers address the issue of race relations in the Old South. The intolerance of northerners against blacks was perhaps far more prevalent in the north than in the south. Other chapters examine race relations in the south with cheerful letters and pictures of whites interacting with blacks. And while this might be seen as making slavery seem idyllic, it certainly throws a monkey wrench in the widespread mythology of torturous labor and abuse. There were many laws against abuse. The impoverished conditions that southern blacks and whites faced during and after 1865, during Reconstruction, were horrendous and make no comparison to the quality-of-life of the slaves. A mainstream historian, Forrest McDonald, in States' Rights and the Union, even acknowledges that the conditions and privileges of the American slave were far better than that of the European serf. The authors point out other intriguing, little-known facts. Fully three-quarters of southerners owned no slaves, and many whites were yeoman farmers with small land holdings. There were white, black, Hispanic, and Native American Confederates that fought for the South. The last Confederate General still fighting was Stand Watie who led the Cherokee Braves in Oklahoma.

Several chapters specifically deal with constitutional history including: states' rights, the legality and history of secession and the nature of state sovereignty. Interestingly, the first agitators threatening secession were the Federalists in New England, in the early 19th century, and they convened the Hartford Convention because of anger of the Louisiana Purchase. Contrary to the Lincoln-Webster myth of the Union, the Union was the creation of 13 sovereign states that assembled in convention and delegated and reserved powers to a Union that they acceded to join. The so-called compact theory was acknowledged by learned American jurists, Supreme Court Justices, the Founding Fathers whether Jefferson, Madison or even Hamilton. John Taylor of Caroline wrote some masterful constitutional treatises analyzing the compact nature of the Union. The states preceded the Union and acceded to its formation in 1787. Also, the language of "perpetual union" is nowhere found in the Constitution, but rather in the text of the preceding Articles of Confederation. Likewise, the stricture of its "perpetuity" needs to be qualified by the language utilized in the Articles; "The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship...," which conveys an intent to continue the Union in perpetuity, but no where is there a disavowal of the states' sovereignty that acceding to its formation. The fact that the government under the Articles was dissolved and a new one formed says something. I've heard countless ill-reasoned arguments how the Union does not allow for a divorce, as if the states buried their sovereignty in forming a Union. The nature of federalism is dual sovereignty! The affirmation of rule by consent of the governed was enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. This principle coupled with an affirmation of intolerable abuses was the moral justification for America's War for Independence with the British. Rule by consent was thoroughly repudiated by Lincoln. I'll grant, that in preserving the Union with the bayonet, Lincoln transformed the nature of the American polity and branded a stamp on the Republic killing secession in principle. The battle continues today as to what Federalism and the Union really means? The Union of Lincoln and FDR is a top-down unitary state, and the states are just constituent administrative parts of the greater whole. The Confederacy was identical to the compact nature of the Union formed in 1787 with free and sovereign states. Concomitant to state sovereignty is the right to exercise that sovereignty in seceding from the Union that a state originally acceded to join, but never for light and transient causes. James Monroe observed two great calamities threaten the union, consolidation and disunion. The states acceding to the Confederate States did not seek to disavow a Union of states, but rather continual union within the United States as one section sought to exploit and abuse the other.

The Kennedy Brothers do a fairly good job exposing the obfuscation of history that eschews the underlying causes of the war and paints the Union cause as glorious, moral crusade. The book has some weaknesses, but the facts are usually straight, the chief being its condescending tone and disparagement of Yankees. The Kennedy's tenacious neoconfederate spirit longs to see a free and independent south yet still. I see southern secession as a lost cause and nostalgic daydreaming, but preservation and defense of southern culture is noble, and the original Southern Cause finds its vindication in sound history. Other books of interest might be: (1) When in the Course of Human Events by Charles Adams; (2) The Real Lincoln by Marshall DiLorenzo; and (3) The American Caesar by Greg Durand.

Rating:
Summary: The Low Tide of the Confederacy
Review: Because of the right to freedom of speech in this country (something the South denied to it's slave population), we have to endure pseudo-historical tomes like this. My great great grandfather fought honorably in the Confederate army, and I had other relatives on both sides of the line. I reside in Tennessee, but was born in Montana. Hardly a "Yankee". My convictions regarding the war come from reading histories written by men from both regions of the country (remember Shelby Foote?), and it is apparent that the South threw themselves into a conflict based on their own racial and social misconceptions which propped up both their economy and their culture. To write a book like this as a justification for a war that cost thousands of lives, and untold loss of property is an insult to the dead on both sides. To brand Northerners as bigoted, exploitive haters of everything below the Mason Dixon line shows that the authors have some deep seated problems of their own to work out. After they apologise for reinforcing the unjust stereotypes of Southerners with this hare brained, twisted version of history.

Rating:
Summary: A coffee table book......if you live in a trailer park.
Review: "The South was Right" is pure propaganda through and through. Which is fine as there have been numerous books about the Civil War written from VERY slanted northern points of view. However, just because this book happens to take the unique angle of presenting a VERY slanted southern bias, that doesn't make the book relevant history or "the truth" as some reviewers desperately would like to believe. These authors obviously have big chips on their shoulders. They seem to have no problem making blanket statements about "Yankees" while at the same time whining about the terrible stereotypes that southerners are allegedly subjected to.

There is documentation in this book. However using SELECTIVE documentation is little better than using no documentation at all. If your beginning goal is to set out and write a biased and slanted book, anyone can be selective in their "research" and hand pick which sources they will use to suit their narrow ideology and ignore all others. Everyday in the Arab world, Al-Jazeera broadcasts their very slanted and anti-american ideology. They too have documented sources, but like the authors of this book, they make sure they broadcast information from ONLY the sources that will re-affirm their views...making sure they ignore all others. To this day there are Japanese who believe the Pearl Harbor attack was justified, Germans who believe the Nazis were justified, Arabs who believe 9-11 was justified, people who believe Timothy McVeigh was a hero, and people who believe that "The South was Right!". In this book the authors make sure they point out every flaw with the north while giving the south a complete pass and making laughably lame excuses for the Confederacy's greed and arrogance. At one point, they completely downplay the brutality inflicted against slaves (incidentally I admire the authors' chutzpah) and then point out (apparently as justification) that the northern factories employed people at slave wages. Although paying low wages is wrong, anyone with an IQ above ten should clearly be able to see the difference between someone being paid low wages and the BUYING, SELLING and OWNING of human beings and paying them ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for work they DID NOT VOLUNTARILY WANT TO DO.

Feel free to enjoy this book if that's your taste. But to those who embrace it, unless you're unbelievably stupid, deep down I'm sure you're aware that you are simply embracing propaganda that suits your views while at the same time crying out against EVERYONE ELSE'S propaganda. And after all the northern slanted history, you may feel justified to do this (revenge is sweet isn't it). We all have versions of history and the truth. And anyone who doesn't believe OUR VERSION we accuse as being sooo "brainwashed" or "having our opinions dictated to us". I myself prefer to read balanced history. Shelby Foote for example, who is a southerner and is much more rational and less fanatical in his writings. He points out many of the hypocracies of the north, but does not BLIND himself to the southern hypocracies.

Finally, I can easily defend the north by making ridiculous comments about how some southern states rank dead last in adult literacy. That many southern states had to be forced at gunpoint just to simply allow black children to go to school with white children. That an ex-Klan member almost won a Senate seat in Louisiana before being ELECTED to the state legislature. And then I can continue by making blanket statements about southern inbreeding. However all of that would be ignorant. We are all one country now. And anyone who participates in any form of GEOGRAPHIC PREJUDICE....NO MATTER WHAT PART OF THE COUNTRY THEY ARE FROM are themselves the ones who are more than likely victims of inbreeding and more than likely live in trailer parks (hence my title comment). Unfortunately, in my opinion, that's the crowd that "The South was Right!" authors seem to want to reach out to.

Rating:
Summary: Indisputable facts, poorly written
Review: I have enjoyed reading the typical knee-jerk "reviews" written by those who hate the South via this book. I wonder if any of them have read it. Nah, that's not possible, else they wouldn't be so stupid as to make the same tired propagandist's arguments that the book disproves. (Would they? Please tell me that they wouldn't; please lie to me and tell me that they aren't all Jerry Springer alumni.)

Anyway, the facts are well-documented by original sources materials from the North. By contrast, the "history" that we were all taught in school is based upon secondary and even tertiary sources. It is a classic case of being based upon books about books about books . . . about books about something.

This book is invaluable for its sources alone. However, it becomes difficult to read. It does not seem to be able to decide between becoming a dry, dusty tome of the sort that gives academia its stuffy reputation and the outrage of two men whom have suffered prejudice at the hands of their "betters" all of their lives.

I well understand this bottled frustration. I was born and raised in the South, lived in the North, and have returned (Thank God!). Despite popular convictions that continue to be held quite seriously by the vast majorities of those north and west of the Mason-Dixon line; we do indeed have shoes, and wear them; we do in fact enjoy the benefits of running water and indoor plumbing; we do not as a rule engage in sexual activities with relatives (although recently I have met an ALARMING number of Northern young people on Yahoo who claim that incest is widespread in their world); and growing up quite literally in otherwise black community, I did not learn what racism is really like until I moved to a suburb of Chicago, that any person of ANY color or ancestry is truly jeopardizing their life in any large city simply by being in the wrong place wherein one is not one of "theirs"; and The Dukes of Hazzard was neither a documentary nor even adequate television; speaking of which you may be amazed to learn that most of us avoid TNN like the plague - sorry folks that is feel-good-TV for cultural bigots in other parts of the country. And by the way, where is he only place that the Ku Klux Klan survives in any appreciable form? Indiana and Ohio, of course.

Anyway, back to the book. The facts are indisputable (doubtless the reason so few "reviewers" even try), the sources impeccable and the writing acceptable for a first draft. It is needlessly offensive to poor little northern sensibilities (see what I mean, did you like that little bit of condescension). I understand full well that we as a culture and perpetual favorite whipping boy are treated to a daily diet of far worse; however one cannot expect to show masses of people how wrong they are by employing an irritating attitude. If history teaches anything it is that nothing in this world is so universally hated as any form of Truth. Why make matters worse by causing offense needlessly. Unfortunately, the authors treat those who subscribe to Federal "history" only a few orders of magnitude better than they treat us.

Read this book or admit that you are too much a coward to admit that you might have been wrong. Or, did you really know it was wrong all along and deliberately choose to pretend otherwise?