Prattville Dragoons July 2012 Camp Meeting

The Dragoons monthly camp meeting was held at the Shoneys on Cobbs Ford Rd in Prattville on Thursday July 12th.  Chaplain Snowden provided a multi-media presentation of the Rebel Yell illustrating the famous Battle Cry which struck fear in the Yankee enemy during the WBTS.  Communications Officer Tyrone Crowley provided a discussion on a few topics including the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America.  The following captures his write-up on the Pledge from the recent Dragoons Dispatch newsletter.

Some SCV Camps, beginning about ten years ago, stopped reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.  The reason is that those with Confederate heritage have strong objections to the word "indivisible" in the Pledge.  As we learned, this word was written into the Pledge by a late 19^th-century New York socialist named Francis Bellamy, specifically to indoctrinate children with the idea that no one should even consider the idea of opposing the central government for any reason and that the very idea of secession was traitorous.  (Bellamy, in the employ of a magazine called Youths' Companion, even wrote out instructions for the school principal to line up the students in military fashion and have them render a salute to the U.S. Flag as if they were in boot camp.)  

As soon as we utter the word "indivisible" when saying the Pledge of Allegiance, we have denied the Cause of the Confederate soldier and branded him a traitor, and have failed to answer the SCV Charge (see Charge at end of this newsletter).  How can we vindicate the Cause of the Confederate soldier and defend his good name if we affirm that this or any country is indivisible?  As Abraham Lincoln stated before the House of Representatives in 1848 (by 1860 he had “forgotten” this principle), “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.  This is a most valuable, a most sacred right—a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world” (speech delivered in Congress on 12 January 1848.  Congressional Globe, Volume XIX, page 94).  As long as this principle exists, no country is indivisible.

As to the phraseology of the Pledge, in 1924 the phrase "my flag" was changed to "flag of the United States of America" to make sure immigrant children knew which flag they were pledging to.  This change was effected through the efforts of the American Legion and Daughters of the American Revolution.  This was during a decade when mass immigration into this country was seen as a threat to Americanism and to our culture.  In 1954, at the urging of the Knights of Columbus and other patriotic groups, "Under God" was put into the Pledge, due to worries about "godless communists" and their unwanted influence in this country.

The kind of thinking that led to the Pledge of Allegiance also led to a centralized government, as predicted by Robert E. Lee to Lord Acton of Britain in an 1866 letter which was quoted at our meeting.  But once a government is centralized, anyone who gets control of that government controls the country.  This led to the downfall of the Northern power structure, who did rule from 1865 to the 1920s, then began to lose ground to the marxist/socialist immigrant influences, mainly Eastern European, brought in by Lincoln's War and consequent need for foreign troops and cheap "free white labor".  One hundred years later the country they held sway over has been lost to the alien ideas imported by those East European marxists with their imposed socialism, and now anyone who accepts "the proposition", as George Will says, can become an American, whether he's been here 400 days or 400 years.