The White Stories

"Heroes Maligned"

    First  Amish, Quakers and the like are treated as "extremists"  and "abolitionists"  for the simple espousal of  basic human and Christian principle.  Then, men willing to act on those same principles, such as John Brown, Abe Lincoln and Martin Luther King, are executed to the cheers of  "so-called" Christians.  White Stories Not Told  will reveal a pattern of behaviors in American letters and politics that have effectively  delayed, muted , or even reversed,  the progress of social justice.

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 The African-American Brooks Family of Western North Carolina

Descending From European Immigrants, Free-born Mulattoes, African Slaves and Blackfoot Indians

and Thriving in American Communities Coast-to-Coast

- A Website by Thomas R. Dudley

In North Carolina sometime before November 26. 1808, white landowner James Martin falsely claimed that a twenty-one year old mulatto, Sarah Brooks, was his runaway slave. This one discovery during genealogical research of my ancestry directly led to new insights into the demographics of the southern culture that I was raised in, and confused by, during my entire life.  I became aware of the absurdity of America's claim of freedom-loving principles as it brazenly encouraged and enforced complete sovereignty of one race over another both inside and outside the law. The stories that I uncovered always fell into one or more of three class. The first class I call White Stories centered  on maligned white Christians who were determined to extend God's embrace to all humans, not just whites.  The second class is Red Stories...tales of vigilante-ism  and judicial abuse  perpetrated by dominant whites on blacks. The third and last class is Blue Stories...websites, my own and others, and publications that document true African-American heroes who exploits did not conform with the  popular, negative myths needed to maintain repression of their people..

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Men of Honor - The Real Heroes of The Civil War.

Recommended Reading by Thomas R. Dudley

Through the years, as I observed popular media portrayals cof American Civil War icons, I sensed that a southern "filter" was more often applied than not. It seemed that Southern  generals' were consistently viewed in a more favorable light and by a different standard than their Northern counterparts  The tone of those portrayals was straightforward...Southern generals were not only the better leaders and fighters; they displayed higher moral character.  The fact that I was living in a southern culture explained only a part divergence between the personalities. Over time, I sensed the issue was the result of a blend of equal parts of three main ingredients - southern exaggeration, northern indifference and western detachment effectively ceding the presentation to southern "chefs".  After all, no northern or western  counterparts to the popular fictions of a romanticized and victimized south, such as "Gone With The Wind"  and "Birth Of A Nation" , survived if they had ever been written and produced. 

       My discomfort with the prevailing Civil War dialogue came down to three claims. The first was the supposed superiority of Southern generals in the field. The second was the assertion that the south was unnecessarily abused and victimized. The third was the promotion of southern generals as honorable men while and the stigmatizing of their adversaries as dishonorable.  My encounter with the facts, though, suggest far different conclusions. 

      Were generals in grey better than their counterparts in blue?  Though history seems to tell us so, I always considered the point moot, if not blatantly untrue.  Should Grant be considered the brute despite the fact that Lee sacrificed larger percentages of his armies than Grant?  Why  is Lee called the superior leader when Grant captured two entire armies in the field whereas Lee captured none. Which generals are studied for their military genius by neutral, foreign military students.  Not Lee and Jackson, but Grant and Sherman. The notion that Southern generalship can be favorably handicapped because of shortages of troop replacements and resources in the war's waning days begs the obvious.  That is the whole point of warfare - to create shortages of men and war-making materials in one's enemies.  Did not these same generals willfully embrace the "hysteria of testosterone" sweeping the south at the war's inception, arrogantly convinced the advantages were theirs?  Northern resources  of men, materials, manufacturing, navies and wealth were plainly visible even then. Instead of seeing the dangers of awakening a sleeping giant,  they saw themselves as a biblical David in handsome uniform with a sling-shot and a rock. Arrogance was their undoing as their talented "sling-shot", their generals, launched their "rock" of southern manhood. They, like their Japanese counterpart eighty years later,   missed Goliath!   The rest, they say, is history. But, unlike their Japanese counterparts, southern bigots, lessons unlearned,  still insist that their arrogant generals would have won if only...

     Was the South victimized unnecessarily by Northern tactics and, in particular, by General Sherman's implementation of what some call "total war"? Again, the point is moot. I see no moral imperative forbidding destruction of the enemy's supply lines and production centers, particularly when that tactic shortens the war and saves lives on both sides? That it promotes the discomfort of civilians behind the lines  is very acceptable, benign, collateral damage, particularly if targets are war materials and not humans. If the south was victim, it was by its own acts of  impetuousness, arrogance and immorality.  Their absurd claim of a benign and mutually beneficial relationship between slave-owner and slave is belied by the tens of thousands of ex-slaves who joined the northern cause while "massa" could not risk arming any slaves to protect their beloved plantations and bountiful pastures.Yes, the south was victimized - though only by their own ineptness.  As Rhett Butler aptly stated in the opening scenes to Gone With The Wind, "...the South has plenty of cotton,slaves and ...arrogance".
 

     Were southern generals honorable men?  Here are the facts.The facts are... They were determined.  They were inspirational.  They were fighters.  They were brave.  But they were not honorable. Honor defends the principle of man's endowment "...by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."; dishonor denies any such endowment while defending one man's prerogative to render alienable those Rights of another.  Honor speaks the same truth of man's equality when addressing the West, the North, the South and the East; dishonor speaks that truth when facing the West, but claims its opposite meaning when facing to the North, the South and the East. Honor preserves the family unit and sanctity of marriage; dishonor exploits and destroys both. Honor blesses man with his God of Conscience; dishonor blasphemes that man's God of Conscience by subordinating Him to a self-appointed man masquerading as a "god born of law".   It is

    The Northern generals were the honorable men.  In being honorable men, they deserve the nation's highest admiration and respect.  Their marginalization, as a whole,  ensued almost immediately after the War's cessation.  Their magnanimous concessions to a thoroughly defeated enemy did little to assuage resentment and animosity for their victories. It's as if a cabal of Southern historians and writers agreed to collectively re-write the history of the war, and its aftermath with that revisionist version dominating the landscape to this day.  The northern generals, as a group, deserve better from our historians and our story-tellers.  With all their individual foibles and, sometimes, missteps,  they grabbed the moral high-ground, they stayed the flag and they refused to subvert the meanings of words symbolizing a nation's core values such as equality, patriotism and......honor.