[Defending Southern Heritage: A Series of Letters and Essays in Response to Enemy Attacks by Jeff Paulk (Southern Vindicator Press, 2026; vii + 530pp.)]
I have reviewed in these pages several books that address the War Between the States—its onset, and its aftermath—and Jeff Paulk’s new book may be the most impressive of these. Mr. Paulk is Oklahoma Division Commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and his book consists of no less than 387 letters, written over the course of 17 years, along with 7 essays. It is Paulk’s unflagging persistence that makes his book so impressive. He is a fighter for truth and justice who never gives up, no matter how unfavorable the chances of success seem to be. Eager in the letters to praise those who defend the Southern cause, he is—as his subtitle suggests—quick to answer those who denigrate that cause. In what follows, I shall endeavor to present a few of the book’s key points.
The prevailing view of this turbulent period, both in the North and, to an increasing extent, in the South as well, blames the South for the war, which was, it is alleged, fought by one side to end slavery and by the other to perpetuate and extend it.
Not so, Paulk tells us. Slavery was a Northern as well as a Southern phenomenon; the slave trade was conducted by the Yankees of the North, not by Southerners; and at the War’s end, 429,000 slaves remained in the North. In a representative passage, Paulk says:
Our “educational system” teaches that the North fought to “free the slaves” and the “bad ole South” fought to keep them. This is a trainload of bovine fertilizer. Lincoln illegally invaded to keep sucking the excessive tariffs from it which contributed to over ¾ of the federal revenues, and benefited the Northern railroads, bankers, and industry. . . Had Lincoln not invaded, there would have been no war. If the North went to war to end slavery, it would have passed a constitutional amendment ending slavery, not one that guaranteed black people would be in slavery forever (the Corwin Amendment). The New England Yankees worked the slave trade sailing their ships, flying Old Glory (no slave ship ever flew that “symbol of racism” Confederate flag), and selling their slaves to both Northerners and Southerners. There were more than 429,000 slaves in the Union AFTER the South seceded. General Ulysses S. Grant had slaves during the war, and West Virginia was admitted into the Union as a slave state during the war. If the North was fighting to end slavery, it would never have allowed slave states to fight for the Union.
Paulk makes clear that he does not write to “defend slavery.” Quite to the contrary, he recognizes that it was wrong, and by no means did slaves live under idyllic circumstances, though, contrary to Uncle Tom’s Cabin and other inflammatory propaganda, slaves were usually well treated and often viewed as members of the owner’s family:
Let me say that in no way do we condone slavery or say that it was right. It was not. . . Hollywood and liberal myth writers have painted a very inaccurate picture over the decades of the Old South and the relations between the races of that time period. For the most part, blacks and whites had a mutual affection for each other. They worked side by side, and worshipped side by side. The stories of whips and chains are much more the exception than the rule. Slaves were very valuable and expensive property, and there were laws against the mistreatment of slaves. Only a small percentage of people in the South owned slaves, and well over 90% of Confederate soldiers did not own slaves. Why would they fight for something they had no interest in?
Unfortunately, many Southern politicians cater to the prevailing view. They call for the removal of Confederate flags and monuments, which were not, as they claim, racist symbols of hate but rather efforts to honor past heroes and to promote reconciliation and good feeling. Paulk’s letters to politicians of this sort display his fierce rhetoric. In a letter to Mayor Curry of Jacksonville, Florida, about an incident in late 2022, when a plane commissioned by the group Save Southern Heritage flew a Confederate flag and banners over Jacksonville, including near TIAA Bank Field, with messages targeting the mayor and protesting the removal of Confederate monuments, Paulk wrote:
Concerning the Confederate flag that was flown over TIAA Bank field, you stated the following, “As I’ve said before, there is no place for hate of any kind in our City. My position on monuments is clear. I have allocated money for removal and empowered city council to take action.” [Palk responds:] What a disingenuous statement when it is clearly you who are promoting hate by the wasteful funding of monument removal. There aren’t more pressing issues in Jacksonville that would keep you from wasting money on the destruction of Southern heritage? How sad and pathetic it is when elected officials in Southern cities take up the banner of cultural Marxism and communism under the guise of eliminating “racism” and “hate” by practicing that very thing they claim to oppose. If you had your nose in some REAL history books instead of up the backside of some whining crybaby organization based on the erasure of our history, you might learn the truth instead of the rewritten propaganda regurgitated in our schools and Marxist Universities. These Confederate memorials were not erected to honor “slavery” or “White supremacy,” but to honor Confederate soldiers, black, white, Indian, and others, who fought an illegal invasion of murderers, looters, arsonists, and rapists in defense of their homes and families and for the right to self-govern and be free from a tyrannical and oppressive government.
Paulk’s vigor and persistence bring to mind the familiar words of Arthur Hugh Clough:
Say not the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.
