Robert Lewis Dabney and the Forty-Eighters

by Al Benson Jr.

Many in our day, some of them so-called “historians” have sought to paint the Old South as a land of bigotry, ignorance, and treason.  They do this either because of gross ignorance, which was foisted upon them in public schools, or because they have an agenda that is geared toward the total destruction of any and all Southern culture, particularly Christian Southern culture. Everything that existed before the Beatles except slavery and the “civil rights” movement must be expunged, while these must be preserved in order to promote the proper amount of “white guilt.”

Robert Lewis Dabney, one of the most remarkable of the Southern Presbyterian theologians and a man who served on Stonewall Jackson’s staff had the presence of mind to recognize what was going on in this country even before the start of the War of Northern Aggression, and he, unlike some of his contemporaries, understood  what it was really all about. With the discernment he possessed in so many areas you might almost say he was the Patrick Henry of his day.  He had that rare ability Henry had in noting what the results of various actions would be if pursued to their logical conclusions.  He correctly foresaw where both the public education movement and the women’s “rights” movement were going while theological contemporaries like Henry Ward Beecher in the North were indulging in theological  “reality shows.”

Rev. Dabney early recognized what was going on in Europe and its implications for this country, particularly the South. He noted some of this in his masterful biography of the life of Stonewall Jackson, published in 1866, and subsequently republished by Sprinkle Publications of Harrisonburg, Virginia in 1983.

In this volume of over 700 pages he observed, quite correctly, on page 159, that: “History will some day place the position of these Confederate States, in this high argument, in the clearest light of her glory.  The cause they undertook to defend was that of regulated, constitutional liberty,  and of fidelity to laws and covenants,  against the licentious violence of physical power. The assumptions they resisted were preciously those of that radical democracy, which deluged Europe with blood at the close of the eighteenth century, and which shook its thrones again in the convulsions of 1848; the agrarianism which, under the name of equality, would subject all the rights of individuals to the will of the many, and acknowledge no law nor ethics, save the lust of that mob which happens to be the larger. This power, which the old States of Europe expended such rivers of treasure and  blood to curb, at the beginning of the century, had transferred its immediate designs across the Atlantic, was consolidating itself anew in the Northern States of America, with a wealth, an organization, an audacity, an extent, to which it never aspired in the lands of its birth, and was preparing to make the United States,  after crushing all law there under its brute will, the fulcrum under whence  they should extend their lever to upheave  every legitimate throne on the Old World. Hither, by emigration, flowed the radicalism, discontent, crime, and poverty of Europe,  until the people of the Northern States became, like the rabble of imperial Rome…” Reflect on what Dabney has said here. Really, how different is it than what we are currently experiencing in this country” Does anyone see the parallels? They are amazing!

Dabney continued: “The miseries and vices of their early homes had alike taught them to mistake licence for liberty, and they were incapable of comprehending, much more of loving, the enlightened structure of English or Virginian freedom.  The first step in their vast designs was to overwhelm the Conservative States of the South.  This done, they boasted that they would proceed, first, to engross the whole of the American continent, and then to emancipate Ireland, to turn Great Britain into a democracy, to enthrone Red Republicanism in France, and to give the crowns of Germany to the Pantheistic humanitarians of the race, who deify self as the supreme end, and selfish desire, as the authoritative expression  of the Divine Will. This, in truth, was the monster who terrific pathway among the nations, the Confederate States undertook to obstruct, in behalf not only of their own children, but of all the children of men.” This is definitely not a worldview you will get out of your “history” books. What Dabney has done here is to provide you with an outline of the agenda of the One World Government advocates of the 1860s.  And look at who their main opponent was.  Do you begin now to see why anything even remotely Confederate has been and is so much under attack in our day? Stop and think about what Dabney has told you.  This is a struggle that is much more than just North vs. South. In 1861 the Confederate States  stood in the way of the new World Order of their day and said NO! And they have been getting back at us for it ever since! And they will continue to do so unless, in God’s Providence, we prevail, or they do. They will not quit. Neither can we!

And, in this vein, Dabney made another insightful observation when he said: “One half of the prisoners of war, registered by the victorious armies of the South, have been foreign mercenaries. ” So this was much, much more than just a “brothers war” as we have been told. This fact was borne out in research done by Dr. Clyde Wilson, Professor Emeritus of the University of South Carolina, who noted that: “The German revolutionaries brought with them an aggressive drive to realize in America the goals that had been defeated in their homeland.  Their drive toward ‘revolution and national unification’…The most prominent among them, Carl Schurz, expressed disappointment at the non-ideological nature of American politics and vowed to change that.” His spiritual descendants have been working on that ever since. The current occupant of the White House is the most glaring example of the success of their venture.

Donnie Kennedy and I, in our book Lincoln’s Marxists, on page 219, noted that: “In his commentary, Dr. Wilson mentioned the events surrounding a German officer who, after the surrender, buttonholed Confederate General Richard Taylor and proceeded to inform Taylor  that he would soon recognize the gross errors  the South had made in fighting the war.  He informed Taylor, in very broken English, that he would soon rejoice because of the final results of the war. The German seems quite ready to instruct General Taylor on the fine points of Americanism.” This from a European socialist who could barely speak the language,  to a man whose father had been President of the United States! This is socialist arrogance at its finest and it continues to this day. Look at the finger-pointing, condescending attitude we are treated to today from a president that spent a fair part of his life in Indonesia and who we are told has an African father.  Yet his version of “Americanism” sounds like something that hailed from a Middle Eastern caliphate. It’s almost like Fidel Castro giving lessons in American government to Thomas Jefferson!

As previously noted, this struggle is much more than an “unpleasantness” between North and South.  It is, as Presbyterian theologian James Henley Thornwell so truthfully stated: “The parties in this conflict are not merely abolitionists and slave-holders–they are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, Jacobins on the one side and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battleground–Christianity and atheism the combatants, and the progress of humanity is at stake.” I don’t think anyone else could have said it any better. This is where we are at right now, and unless we get on our knees and plead, with repentance, for the Lord to guide us in the ways of legitimate resistance, we will lose it all, at least for our time in history.

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