Our Southern and Confederate Inheritance

Last Thursday's Prattville Dragoons monthly camp  meeting was exceptional.  After recognizing Junior and Elaine Surles for their donation of the beautiful Dragoons flag and Commander Chris Booth highlighting upcoming SCV events, Alabama 2nd Lt Commander Gary Carlyle led those gathered in two inspirational songs before delivering a truly inspirational message.  Gary called on us to never forget the ghosts of our ancestors and that we are heirs to their Confederacy.  We have the choice to either claim or sell our inheritance of the honor, valor, truth and glory with which they founded and defended the Confederate States of America.  He presented historical facts establishing the importance Southerners have had in the nation's history.  Jefferson and Madison, Southerners, authored the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  The most decorated soldiers in our country's history were Southerners.  The most significant battles and action of the Revolutionary War occurred on Southern soil.  Southerners have always demonstrated a strong Protestant work ethic, ingenuity and dedication which has proven to be the engine for agricultural and industrial productivity and economic prosperity. Southerners have always been a God fearing people, "clinging to their guns and Bibles" as has been interestingly stated by a current politician, contrasting with the secularism of the North.  It was these values which the freed slaves took forth after emancipation to become today the most successful, wealthiest, Christian "people of color" the world has seen.  And while no slaves were ever brought into this country by any member state of the CSA, wealthy Northerners profited from American Indian slavery and the African slave trade for centuries - the Revolutionary War was largely a war centered on slavery commerce and unrepresented British taxation of it.  A most interesting history lesson, on Southern "firsts" and "mostests" that are not taught in school.  Dragoon Tyler Suttle was so inspired by what he heard that at the end of Gary's talk Tyler got up and testified about his own Appalachian heritage.  Here are a couple of photos from the camp meeting.