“What is life without honor?”

Every January, I recoil as both a Christian and an American at the tedious and noxious deification of Martin Luther King, Jr. As my friend Boyd Cathey explains so thoroughly in his bold synopsis of the Cult of King and the corrupt cottage industries built upon the malevolent mythos, MLK is “that deeply and irredeemably flawed and fraudulent figure imposed upon us and our consciousness.”

The socially engineered imprint is that Saint King cannot ever be critiqued because he is the “fulfillment” of the Declaration of Independence. See, Lincoln started us on the path out of American apostasy, say the egalitarians, and MLK was our salvation. And although King’s the symbolic watershed for collective repentance, some people (you know who you are, neo-Confederates) still got work to do.

So, in order to really heal our sinful “nation,” insist the progressives, we must purge the idols and identity of our bygone and bigoted days. Gone is Lee-Jackson Day in my native state of Virginia, and Confederate Heroes Day in Texas where my husband was born and raised. Down with their monuments, their names, their symbols, and any vestige of their memories.

“Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual person, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up?” asked Plato in The Republic.

“Anything received into the mind at that [young] age is likely to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts.”

This is why we’ve homeschooled our children from the beginning – because my husband and I understand the power of education and the dangers of miseducation. But the battle for the hearts and minds of the American youth is raging like never before. First with cultural Marxism and all its perversions and propaganda, and now with the anti-child impositions of covid craziness, the elites want to paint children into a dark corner of total conformity.

But like Stonewall Jackson opined, “The future of our ancestors belongs only to them. It is up to us to make our own future.” So, that’s what we aim to do in rearing our sons: to contradict the zeitgeist by teaching them truth and light, and about real heroes and the content of their character.

“What is life without honor? Degradation is worse than death.”
— Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson

Like Jackson, we too are patriots for the cause of independence. We are traitors to the empire and its godlessness. We are rebels to rootlessness, materialism, and centralization. As poet Allen Tate wrote, “So face with calm that heritage and earn contempt before the age.” So be it.

Ronald Reagan said that what we needed is “an informed patriotism,” and asked the question: “Are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?” Hell, yeah, I am, and always in defiance of the globohomo narrative which aims to enslave us all.

So today, I shall honor the enigmatic Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, whose 197th birthday is today. I’ve talked about our beloved “Hill Jack” before through an essay written by my eldest son, but this time it’s more about action.

“We cannot indulge a sentimental admiration of the hero if we are to keep our children banal and safe,” notes Anthony Esolen in 10 Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child. “A hero … is like a pack of dynamite, ready to blow any mountain of heaped-up conformity and dullness sky high.”

So, my sons, my mother, and I headed north up I-95 from Richmond. It was one of our many covid-lockdowns-can-shove-it travels that we enjoyed this past summer. Not only did I want to give my kids a sense of normality in the midst of wu-flu hysteria, but I want us to visit as many Southern historical sites as possible before the regime scrubs them all from existence.

First destination on this step back in time? The Stonewall Jackson Death Site in Guinea Station, Virginia.

On May 4, 1863, two days after being shot in Chancellorsville, Stonewall Jackson was brought to this house, an outbulding for the Fairfield Plantation in Guinea Station, a busy Confederate supply base. His wife, Mary Anna, and baby daughter, Julia, arrived on May 7. Mary Anna wrote, “his fearful wounds, his mutilated arm, the scratches upon his face, and above all, the desperate pneumonia … wrung my soul.”

On May 10, he told Mary Anna that he was willing to die if it was God’s will and then whispered, “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of trees.” The date was Sunday, May 10, and Jackson was only 39 years old. The closest window on the left was the room in which the “Confederate Joshua” passed.

Jackson told Alexander Swift Pendleton, an officer on his staff who was one of the few present with him at Guinea Station, “It is the Lord’s Day. My wish is fulfilled. I have always desired to die on Sunday.” Jackson’s loyal black servant Jim Lewis also stayed at Jackson’s side and was one of a select few given permission to enter Jackson’s sick room at any time. Upon Jackson’s death, Lewis led Jackson’s horse, Superior, in the Confederate general’s funeral processions in both Richmond and Lexington.

From there, we headed 27 miles northwest to Ellwood Manor to see the burial place of Jackson’s “mutilated arm.” The manor dates back to the 1790s and served as headquarters for Union Gens. Gouverneur Warren and Ambrose Burnside during the Battle of the Wilderness, an area spanning around the house, connecting its rolling landscapes, dense forests, marshy tributaries, and few taverns, churches, and sparse residences by poorly traveled paths and backwoods roads.

The manor is the only original building still standing that was a witness to the horrors of invasion and war, and the tens of thousands dead and even more maimed physically, mentally, and spiritually. The fierce fights of the Wilderness took place in May 1864, and even though considered a “tactical draw,” this campaign solidified the beginning of the end for the CSA – such stark contrast to the stunning Confederate victory at Chancellorsville just one year prior and a testament to Jackson’s irreplaceable value as a leader.

“The past is like a secret room in an old house, filled with dust and cobwebs, but also rays of light cast upon ancient armor, and odd tools whose use we have forgotten, and books recalling the words and deeds of men and women who once walked the earth, and whose bones now rest in their graves. It is a chamber that strikes one with the sense of holiness, because we come into the presence of those who once were as we are, and who now are as we will be.”
— Tony Esolen

When Jackson was mistakenly shot at Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863, he was taken to a nearby field hospital north of Wilderness Tavern, where his left arm was cut off on the kitchen table of locals William and Rebecca Simms. Jackson’s chaplain, Rev. Beverly Tucker Lacy, then took the general’s limb to bury it in his brother’s family cemetery at Ellwood, as he didn’t think mighty Stonewall’s arm should be cast into the bloody pile of amputated body parts of other Confederates.

From there, we trekked a few miles east of Ellwood to Chancellorsville, which “was not a village but a house” owned by widow Frances Chancellor and her six children.” It was at a “strategic crossroads,” and on May 3, flames finally “consumed the home and drove the family away. It was a six-day battle that raged from May 1-6, 1863, and launched Jackson to worldwide fame.

“Lee won an unlikely victory, but lost Stonewall Jackson,” noted a placard. “The Union army under Gen. Joseph Hooker retreated in a gloomy rain, but would soon be ready to fight again – at Gettysburg.”

“A greater sense of loss and deeper grief never followed the death of a mortal man.”
— One of Jackson’s men

“I rejoice at Stonewall Jackson’s death as a gin to our cause, yet in my soldier’s heart I cannot but see him the best soldier of all this war, and grieve his untimely end.”
— U.S. Gen. Gouverneur Warren Lee

“Never take counsel of your fears.”
— Stonewall Jackson

That day before Jackson’s fateful nighttime recon, he ordered, “You can go forward then,” leading 30,0000 Confederates of his 2nd Corps on a 12-mile march around the Union army and destroyed Hooker’s right wing in one of the most well-known and successful surprise attacks of the War, which occurred across the field my kids are looking toward.

Receiving the brunt of Jackson’s bayonet was the the 11th Corps, a relatively new group of soldiers in the Army of the Potomac. “It’s 11,000 men included a large percentage of European immigrants, men with names like Peissner and Buschbeck, Schurz and Schimmelfennig.” Many fled, giving the 11th Corps the nickname “The Flying Dutchman.”

When Lincoln found out about the 130,000 Feds and their army of foreigners being beaten so badly (even though they dwarfed the Confederate numbers 2 to 1), he cried out, “My God! What will the country say?” Forever the politician is Dishonest Abe. Honorable he is not.

Chancellorsville was a place “bombarded, bloodied, and looted … farms large and small ruined … refugees by the thousands forced into the countryside” with more than 30,000 combined casualties, “most now in graves unknown.” Yet, it was a “virtuous tragedy that freed 4 million Americans and reunited a nation.” Now, that’s what you call sticking to the narrative. Don’t ya just feel all that liberty and solidarity, folks?

Our last stop of the day was about 50 miles due north: Manassas, or as the Yankees call it, Bull Run. The First Battle of Manassas took place on July 21, 1861. It was the event that catapulted Jackson onto the world stage and gave him his legendary nickname, forever immortalizing him as “Stonewall.”

As one of the most revered generals in history, Jackson led his men from the front, taking them into battle himself. His courage and selflessness inspired his troops to be the fiercest and most loyal warriors of the Late Unpleasantness.

In a letter to his wife after First Manassas, Jackson wrote, “Yesterday, we fought a great battle and gained a great victory, for which all the glory is due to God alone.”

Civilians from nearby Washington, D.C. picnicked on a hill to watch this first major battle of what they assumed would be a quick War, hoping that the Union would handily defeat the Rebs. But instead, the US lost nearly 1,000 more men than did the South, so the Federals retreated and onlookers fled in horror, proving to everyone that the Confederates were a formidable foe not to be underestimated. You invade a man’s homeland, and that’s a serious affront.

Honor and duty, and defending their homes and their rights is what Jackson and his soldiers fought for. Not conquest, not Total War, but simply the desire to be left alone. It’s all we good Southerners want today.

The Second Battle of Manassas raged from August 29-30, 1862. Lee, accompanied by Jackson and a few other of the CSA’s ablest commanders, won an astounding victory. Despite the fact that the Rebs were greatly outnumbered by 20,000 troops, the Union suffered double the casualties, losing more than 14,000 men to the South’s 7,000.

“We are in the process of losing history and, therefore, any meaning for our life that is more than a rapidly passing moment,” remarks Clyde Wilson. And he is right, which is why we’re teaching our boys to know the past, to slow down, to take note, to ask questions, to challenge the status quo, to seek truth, to be brave, and to trust God – to “feel as safe in bed as in battle,” as Jackson would say.

Here’s an example of some of the fruits of those virtuous lessons we’re trying to impart to our progeny, all while maneuvering our way around this soul-crushing dystopia the elites have created only for their own benefit.

Unfortunately, a first cousin of mine (who just recently relocated back to Richmond after living for decades up North) doesn’t share our zeal for time and place, and kith and kin. Here’s her triggered retort to my post, followed by my smack-down. Scalawags are just the worst, but they do make for good statist foot soldiers.

“We must endeavor to follow the unselfish, devoted, intrepid course he pursued,” advised Lee to his fellow Confederates after Jackson’s death. So even though our culture may be utterly degraded, that doesn’t mean we have to participate in the degradation and in our collective suicide.

Let’s break free from the gulag of the mind, and forget the frauds with their casual tales and corrupt schemes. Instead, let’s remember, celebrate, and emulate men of true character, and build up our sons to lives of honor. Every, single day and at all costs. This is how we can make our own future.