4 reasons why a catholic must support the Confederacy, and i am not talking about state rights.

By Chevalier

Most of the people today have an unbiased hatred aganist the confederacy, mostly because of the post-war propaganda of the union of the north, but, we catholics should not have those hatred and bad links with the confederate cause, and i will show why:

4 - The Southern States fought for a ruralist traditional lifestyle.

The rural South had a lot of advantages over the Industrial North if we think about lifestyle. The slow, calm, aristocratic, rural-based lifestyle of the southern people was a lifestyle that reflect the ideas of life that the Church always defended. I know, some will talk 'but slavery is bad" yes it is, it is not a good thing (not a bad one though) and the Pope said it cant come back, but the main reason of the southern lifestyle was a nice catholic one was not the slavery, but the ruralism of it, the contact with the land, with the production, the owning of the production means.
This mindset was too deeply rooted in Christian values, even thought protestant, and those values where frontally aganist the northern liberal values, who was a Liberal mindset.
And, even if we look at the southern slaves, we see that their treatment was in general better than the northern industrialist gave to their "free" proletariate, who received a starvation wage for a worker harder than the black slaves had in the south.
And they fought aganist this liberal northern industrial culture, industry by itself is not bad, but the northern industry came with banking, exploration, and the liberal "profit is our god" mindset, who was aganist the southern views of life.
Another point was that the southern people valued the chivalry, customs, to be caring and hospitable.

Minorities in the confederate army

Many people today are taught that the War Between The States was about slavery and that Southern whites were attempting to establish a white-only, or a white-supremacist society, andthat the north was fighting only to free the slaves. The truth about the diversity in theConfederate army is nothing like this work of fiction most of our children are taught.Not all of the Confederate soldiers came from the South, but from the North as well. Many wereof foreign-birth, or from minorities within the Confederate States of America. Mexicans andMexican-Americans enlisted, as well as African-Americans and even Native-Americans. Manyunusual nationalities, such as Egypt and Syria, were represented on the Confederate enlistmentrolls, and all of these groups made the Southern military a more interesting and diverse fightingforce. The Confederate soldiers were indeed more varied than what is commonly portrayedtoday.This pamphlet is only intended to provide the reader with an overview of those who filled theranks of the Confederate Army. I encourage all those seeking the truth concerning the minoritieswho wore the gray to explore the bibliography provided at the end of this pamphlet.***********

Catholicism and the Old South

My Children, Father, Thy forgiveness need;
Alas! their hearts have only place for tears! Forgive them, Father, ev’ry wrongful deed,

And every sin of those four bloody years;
And give them strength to bear their boundless loss,
And from their hearts take every thought of hate;
And while they climb their Calvary with their Cross,
Oh! help them, Father, to endure its weight.
— from The Prayer of the South

Following the War Between the States (1861-65), Jefferson Davis, President of the defeated Confederate States of America, was imprisoned with a view to his being tried for treason on account of his leadership role in the South’s effort to make of itself an independent nation. Two years later, however, he was released and went into exile in Montreal (in Catholic Quebec) and then wandered in Europe before returning to these shores to spend his final days in his home state of Mississippi. His release came after a finding by the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Salmon P. Chase, that there was nothing in the U.S. Constitution that prohibited the secession of states. If secession was not illegal, neither Davis nor any other Confederate leaders could be guilty of treason.

The treatment endured in prison by Davis — a gentleman, a hero of the Mexican War, one-time son-in-law of a U.S. President (Zachary Taylor), a U.S. Secretary of War and U.S. Senator from Mississippi prior to becoming President of the C.S.A. — ill bespoke those who imprisoned him. It was clearly calculated to break him as a man. For instance, guards were posted around the clock inside his cell in order to deprive him of all privacy, including even at the times every day when nature required that he take care of the most private needs of all.

As unchivalrous and plain indecent as was the treatment meted out to him by his vindictive jailers, President Davis was not without solace during confinement. A rosary sent by some sisters in Savannah reached him. More notably, comfort was extended by the Vicar of Christ himself, Ven. Pope Pius IX. It took the form of a crown of thorns woven by the pope with his own hands and a portrait of the pontiff autographed with the words from Scripture, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”

These items, the crown and the portrait, were sent to the Confederate President when he was still in prison and they may be viewed today at a museum in New Orleans. The portrait is an etching. The crown, with thorns about two inches long, is such that it is hard to see how the pope could have fashioned it without hurting himself.

Why did this pope who is a Venerable of the Church — the very one who promulgated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, published to the world the famous Syllabus of Errors, and presided over the Vatican Council that solemnly defined the dogma of papal infallibility — seek to comfort Davis, who was not a Catholic?