“I have read repeatedly that the American Civil War was essentially the final round in the battle between the roundheads or Puritans, and the cavaliers, the rising mercantile protestant class versus the hereditary landed nobility. Since you are one of the few people to write about this period in America in your Dark Art of an Arуan Mystic posts, I was wondering what your take is. How important do you think this was? In my opinion, I feel much better about being led by men like Lee, Jackson and Forest with honor, than the Union Leadership.”
-Mescaline Franklin
Let’s be clear that I think the world would be a better place if the very last cavalier had run through the very last round head in 1801 at the same time the roundhead blew his cavalier brains out. The fact that new right and libertarian thinkers point to cavalier versus roundhead as the foundational battle of the early American experience, points up how hopelessly in love with our monarchial British heritage we are. There are various ideas about how the ruling classes of England and later the British Empire laid a foundation for our society. And, to the extent that it is true, I regard it as largely tragic.
In terms of Howard's Solomon Kane character, the thing that is so compelling about him is that he is against type in terms of the American version of the Puritan, which became the Yankee, and in general believed that lesser folks fought wars and greater folks fanned the flames and financed them. There was one Indian-killing Puritan named Church, but for the most part, New England protestants did not produce hands-on killers.
Here are a few facts about the big picture, of the masses of poor people we are descended from, that have been submerged by the narrative of roundhead and cavalier.
During the English Civil War screwed-over segments of the British population were used and targeted by both sides. Under King Charles, under the Protectorate, and under later British administrations, Cornish, Welsh, Scottish and Irish were sold into slavery by the thousands annually, as were the English poor who had been kicked off their land in “enclosure” schemes that are essentially the same as the recent housing bubble [a way to transfer wealth upward], only crude by comparison.
The people who ran this slave trade were cavaliers, roundheads and Dutch and English Jews. So, you see, when the ruling class in America—consisting of Yankee [roundhead-puritan-Amish-Quaker] Federalists, and state’s rights southern aristocrats [cavaliers] went at it in the 1670s, 1770s, and 1860s [with the support of Jewish slave traders and bankers in both camps] what you have is the same old thing, poor bastards being bought, sold, used, crushed and killed on the plantation, in the factory, and on the battlefield, escaping to the frontier, where even there they serve the commercial interests of the fat cat politicians they were escaping by clearing away the natives and the wilderness.
The meat that was fed into these political economic engines was all the same, poor people, mostly white, some black, some Native, all ruled by the elite Yankees and Cavaliers.
In Bacon’s Rebellion [one of three] in the 1670s, we only hear of cavalier versus cavalier, when Bacon’s losing side consisted of nearly all poor white slaves and rebels, and the Governor’s side consisted of cavaliers, soldiers, sailors, blacks, and Indians.
A hundred years later George Washington murdered as many of his own man as the governor of Virginia had after Bacon died, all poor whites, neither Yankee or cavalier. The additional poor that Washington murdered after the Whiskey Rebellion where not New England Yankees, Quakers or Amish, but poor whites who had escaped slavery at the hands of these three northern slave owning classes.
In the final round, in the America Civil War, billed by some of our better thinkers as the last clash between English aristocrats and Yankee merchant culture, virtually every soldier that died was neither. Did the Irish Catholics impressed into service by their Yankee masters to win the freedom of their labor force replacements, do so for abolitionist ideals, or because a gun was pressed to their head?
Most of the Southern soldiers that died in this war never owned a slave, but went to war to fight off invading armies that their rich slave-owning rulers had challenged when they took on the industrial might of the North. Those slave plantations kept ordinary whites poor as they could not compete with the massive free labor force of the slave owners.
We know who the Yankees became: FDR, JFK, the media, bankers and multinational corporations, and the mass of the white population who believe that it is someone else’s duty to defend and protect them domestically and internationally. Just like many Union anti-slavery activists stayed home and wrote, prayed and legislated while poor Irish and white trash fought and died, most modern liberals are eager to make the rules and have them enforced by government goon squads. The Yankee culture is alive and well in the form of our liberals and conservatives who I see as two sides of the same tarnished coin
So, in my crackpot opinion, what happened with cavalier culture?
Not only are they still alive in spirit, but their very blood line continues to thrill their worshippers in the media and their Yankee slave masters in Washington.
They keystones of cavalier culture, along with all noble aristocracies was:
1. A life of leisure rather than toil
2. Entitlement to the produce of the toil of others
3. A keen sense of respect, committing the cavalier to an often suicidal resolve to defend his honor no matter what the odds.
4. An ethos that supports a recourse to violence in support of any of the above
What segment of postmodern America’s society exemplifies these cultural characteristics?
The biggest myth in America is that we have a black population, which is patently false. Most African Americans, are genetically almost half European. Also, unlike in majority black West Indian nations, there is no discernable African cultural trace in America’s black community other than elements imported by intellectuals in the 20th Century, with African American culture tending towards a violent, gaudy parody of white culture. In fact, most “blacks” are practicing or nominal Christians, not animists.
According to black sociology professor, Elijah Anderson of Yale, “Inner-city Black America is often stereotyped as a place of random violence, but in fact, violence in the inner-city is regulated through an informal but well-known code of the street. This unwritten set of rules—based largely on an individual’s ability to command respect—is a powerful and pervasive form of etiquette, governing the way in which people learn to negotiate public spaces.”
When one considers, that most young “black” men in America today, are 7th to 10th generation descendents of white slave owners of the “cavalier” class, who would duel at the drop of a hat over respect, and who believed that working for a living was the hallmark of the fool, I’d say they are keeping their ancestor’s ethos alive when fighting the cops and living off the state, down to the strongly held and presidentially endorsed African American belief in whipping children with a belt or strap.
The problem I have with these cavaliers is that they are owned by Yankee masters and lack the moral defiance of their ancestors.
Okay this is going to be your Harvard Thesis ala Stoddard/1914.
The End times that came true with the indians and the stone age/slave owning aristocracy superiority in warrior skills are the other two.
What the ....? I thought all of us inbred white trash heathen southerners were descendants of rich land owners with thousands of slaves to do their bidding!
Seriously thanks for putting it out there that not all southerners had slaves or wanted one, and had to struggle just to survive like everyone else.
In fact that's why a lot of us like to hunt and fish. That's the way we survived back in the day and will survive if the stink hits the fan.
Some early liberals, around 1700, thinking slavery evil, but not able to abolish it, pushed the colonial administrations to encourage the importation of black slaves to replace the white slaves. Their reasoning was, that since black slaves were much more expensive than white orphans snatched off the streets of London, that the slave owners would treat them better, and become better human beings, putting away the whip once and for all!
You have to love libs.
American blacks average around 20% European ancestry. European Y chromosomes come in a bit higher at 30%. Reference genomebiology.com/2009/10/12/r141
The following comes from Henry Louis Gates sales pitch for over priced African focused DNA testing ("There are several tests available, and each is surprisingly inexpensive, often less than a pair of designer sneakers.")
Regarding the Africanness of black American culture:
"almost as soon as an African-American steps off a plane in Africa, he can't help but realize how "African" our people still are. Despite the horrors of the slave trade, African slaves brought their culture with them: their music, dances, religious beliefs, the way they cooked food, the way they walked, the way they lived—and loved—even the way they buried their dead. And many of these customs and traditions have been preserved, or subtly transformed, by our African- American ancestors. Indeed, if you go to a dance club in Africa, attend church, or eat a meal with an African family, you will be surprised at how much you can feel right at home, as if you have just met long lost relatives. The feeling is uncanny-and intensely pleasurable."
africandna.com/history.aspx
I agree that blacks are America's aristocrats but I think very little of what they do or don't do today has to do with slavery and certainly not with European ancestry.
Thanks for the information, Hdob.
Frederick Douglas would be disappointed in the genetic showing.
I wonder though, are there any American blacks that can trace their origin to pre Civil War America who have no European ancestry? And, if so, how many?
I will keep your references without correcting my entry above when I convert this into a print book.
Thanks.