In what is probably one of the clearest statements of the white supremacist views of the League of the South, organization president Michael Hill penned an article calling on League members to relish the white supremacist views of their Southern heroes. Anne Arundel County Council candidate and proud League of the South member Michael Peroutka told a news conference audience that he repudiated racists in the League and would pray for them. Well, he does know Michael Hill so he has some repudiating and praying to do. After reading the essay, I think Hill would just laugh at Peroutka’s prayers.
Hill reminds his readers that historically Confederates and their sympathizers saw the South as “white man’s country.”
1n 1928, historian Ulrich B. Phillips called the South “a white man’s country.” [“The Central Theme of Southern History,” American Historical Review 34 (October 1928), p. 31.] From the beginning of their history in the early 17th century, Southerners had taken this statement as an unchallenged fact, and the presence of an alien race in their midst drove it home with added emphasis. Few if any Southerners, or for that matter Northerners, believed in racial equality at the time of the War for Southern Independence nor in the decades to follow. That Phillips made his non-controversial (at the time) statement more than six decades after the end of that war speaks volumes about the stubbornness of what is now vilified as “white supremacy.” Thus, I think it is safe to say that our Confederate ancestors and their descendants for at least two generations would qualify as “racists” and “white supremacists” by today’s definitions of the terms.
That is just fine with Hill, and as it should be.
Hill cites the racist statements of Southern heroes such as Jefferson Davis, Robert Dabney and Alexander Stephens to demonstrate that the Confederate cause was to advance white people as superior to blacks. Dabney is an interesting case. Hill quote Dabney, a Presbyterian minister, as follows:
The offspring of an amalgamation must be a hybrid race incapable of the career of civilization and glory as an independent race. And this apparently is the destiny which our conquerors have in view. If indeed they can mix the blood of the heroes of Manassas with this vile stream from the fens of Africa, then they will never again have occasion to tremble before the righteous resistance of Virginia freemen; but will have a race supple and vile enough to fill that position of political subjugation, which they desire to fix on the South.
Dabney should be familiar to Peroutka supporters. He is a hero on the Institute of the Constitution website. In fact, Peroutka hosts an article on the IOTC website authored by Dabney which justifies unequal treatment based on the supposed inferiority of the African. From the IOTC website, Dabney is quoted as follows:
Hence, the general equality of nature will by no means produce a literal and universal equality of civil condition; for the simple reason that the different classes of citizens have very different specific rights; and this grows out of their differences of sex, virtue, intelligence, civilization, etc., and the demands of the common welfare. Thus, if the low grade of intelligence, virtue and civilization of the African in America, disqualified him for being his own guardian, and if his own true welfare (taking the “general run” of cases) and that of the community, would be plainly marred by this freedom; then the law decided correctly, that the African here has no natural right to his self–control, as to his own labour and locomotion.
Just to be clear, this passage is not from the League’s website, but from Michael Peroutka’s IOTC site. There is also this gem, which justifies discrimination based on race and religion. Peroutka needs to decide what side he is on.
Perhaps, Hill is talking to Peroutka when he closes:
So when they call you a “racist” or a “white supremacist,” remember that they would have called your Southern ancestors that as well. Thus you are in good company with Lee, Davis, Stephens, and a host of other honorable men. Laugh in your accuser’s face and relish that good company!
Thus far, Peroutka has relished the company of the League, and has pledged his family and business resources to their aims. Maybe he saves his laughter for when the cameras are off.