The Cause, Confederacy

It's not that long ago, the American Civil War, and a bloody business it was too. Some people think that the Confederacy is synonymous with with slavery and oppression, whereas the Union was was a beautiful civil rights movement. Others think that the war was about States' rights and freedom from big government Washington tyranny.

They opted for the latter where I live, and lost. There's a memorial in the Courthouse Square to remember the fallen.

William Henry Parsons raised a regiment of cavalry from the surrounding counties, the 12th Texas, comprised of the Hill County Volunteers, the Freestone Boys, the Johnson County Slashers, the Bastrop Cavalry Company, the Ellis Grays, the Ellis Rangers, the Kaufman Guards, the Ellis Blues, the Williamson Bowies, and the Eutaw Blues.

The 12th Texas went on to become part of Parson's Brigade and it may, or may not be the case that the National Flag of the Confederacy is on display in the courthouse.

For the record, I think our courthouse, which was restored by Willie Nelson, would make for a decent club. "What would you call this club?" asked a church lady, "I would call it Parson's, Ma'am," I replied.

Share your Swag Bags as you will,

LSP

States' Rights

I stumbled across an article by Kirkpatrick Sale, writing for Chronicles. He's against "excessive federal power", which "is so overreaching that it is incompetent and inefficient, and it is so corrupt that it is clandestine and uncontrollable."

This federal power, for Sale, constitutes an "assualt on our liberty" and leads to the following:


"The system we confront is, for all its ineptness and misguided flailing, a powerful one and practiced in the ways of advancing its interests. But resistance is the only sane, intelligent, moral, and practical course. And the only agency, the only locus, for that struggle is to be found in the individual American states. It is not to be found in the family, the neighborhood (where such a unit still exists), or even in the so-called transition towns... all too limited, too powerless."


He quotes John Randolph, "And it is the power of the states to extinguish this government at a blow. They have only to refuse to choose members for the [Senate] or refuse to send electors for the President and Vice President, and the thing is done!"


I'd say there was sympathy for that point of view in Texas.


LSP