Sherman’s March, Other Depredations and YOU!

Bill Vallante

Bill Vallante, wildbill4dixie@yahoo.com, is an associate member of the Jeb Stuart Camp 1506, and Camp 3000, a reenactor in the 9th Va. Inf., Co. C, and is living "behind enemy lines" in Commack, N.Y.
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Sherman’s March, Other Depredations and YOU! -- Commentary by Bill Vallante

As an outsider, I have noticed that Southerners attach a great deal of importance to personal, family, and ancestral history. Knowing who you are and where you come from is of great importance to you. As an outsider, I can’t say that I completely understand it, though I suppose that if you know who and what you are and where you came from, then as long as you remember those things, no one can ever convince you to believe a lie.

Though I can’t say I totally understand it, I can say that my heart and my gut tell me that this is a good thing. And it’s what sets y’all apart from the rest of America - it always has, and as long as you hold fast to it, it always will. I don’t mind telling you that I’m a bit envious as well. As someone who grew up in New England and who has lived most of his adult life in New York, I can tell you that you won’t find a New Englander or any American other than a Southerner writing something like “Carmack’s Pledge”

The South is a land that has known sorrows;
it is a land that has broken the ashen crust and moistened it with tears;
a land scarred and riven by the plowshare of war and billowed with the graves of her dead;
but a land of legend, a land of song, a land of hallowed and heroic memories.

To that land every drop of my blood, every fiber of my being, every pulsation of my heart, is consecrated forever.
I was born of her womb;
I was nurtured at her breast;
and when my last hour shall come,
I pray God that I may be pillowed upon her bosom and rocked to sleep with her tender and encircling arms.

Again, as an outsider, the only words I can come up when I read these sentiments are:

“TRULY AMAZING”!

Most history books today are written by academic hacks who are more intent on “fitting in” to modern day politically correct theories than to telling the truth. They are given to demonizing the people of the past, and to morality lectures which, reduced to their base, trumpet the alleged superiority of the present to the inferiority of the past. Funny thing, when I went to school, this kind of thing would have been laughed out of any college level history class. Today, this sort of thing is taught in those same classes. The truth seems to have become unimportant. Most contemporary books ignore truth, or at least the whole truth. Indeed, in order to see the whole truth you have to scrounge up old books and publications that in many cases are no longer in print. The field of history has become a wasteland.

But you do have one arrow in your quiver that “those people” don’t. You are Southerners. You know your family histories. They have been handed down to you through the generations. And I have no doubt that if you go though those histories, you’ll find stories of family members whose words will show that Sherman’s march, to use one example, was not simply a happy bunch of guys in blue suits marching off to the beach. It’s time to look through your own family histories and put your stories together, whether it’s a story about Sherman’s march or about something similar.

The History Channel’s program on Sherman is coming up soon (April 22), right on the heels of “Civil War Terror”, a program which achieved new lows, even for the Hysterical Channel. As in the latter program, I have no doubt that the swath of death and destruction which Sherman cut through three states will be minimized. It’s hard to compete against a major cable channel that has the microphone and has this kind of clout. Your greatest weapon is in your own personal family histories. Those personal histories are truths that no one can suppress. One family’s history is simply a story; two is still a story. A whole mess of them...well now, that becomes HISTORY!

Bill Vallante, wildbill4dixie@yahoo.com, is an associate member of the Jeb Stuart Camp 1506, and Camp 3000, a reenactor in the 9th Va. Inf., Co. C, and is living "behind enemy lines" in Commack, N.Y.

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