Truth crushed to the earth is truth still . . .: Beware the yankee mindset

NOTE: I've updated and shared this particular blog on more than one occasion in the past. I've updated it once again [12/03/21] and I've also added a video clip from the movie that I make particular reference to.

In 1999, Ang Lee directed a movie entitled Ride with the Devil. In spite of being an excellent movie, with a stellar cast, including Tobey Maguire and country singer, Jewel, the movie got very little publicity. The deliberate neglect it suffered was almost certainly because it depicted a black Partisan Ranger, Daniel Holt, who was based upon the real-life Black Confederate, John Noland, who proudly rode with Quantrill’s Raiders.

The movie includes a scene that is an excellent description of the yankee mind set.

Let me say that when I refer to “yankees”, I don’t include everyone born north of the Mason-Dixon line. As the preeminent historian, Clyde Wilson said:

“By Yankee I do not mean everybody from north of the Potomac and Ohio. Lots of them have always been good folks. . . . I am using the term historically to designate that peculiar ethnic group descended from New Englanders, who can be easily recognized by their arrogance, hypocrisy, greed, lack of congeniality, and penchant for ordering other people around. Puritans long ago abandoned anything that might be good in their religion but have never given up the notion that they are the chosen saints whose mission is to make America, and the world, into the perfection of their own image.”

The yankee mind set is the unrelenting determination to makeover everything and everyone into the image of the “exceptional” northern culture and people. And if it proves impossible to reconstruct them, they will be utterly destroyed. At various times in the past, my Confederate ancestors and my Cherokee ancestors were on the receiving end of that yankee mind set. It is that same yankee mindset that is currently attempting to makeover anyone around the globe who does not happen to be exactly like the yankees.

In any case, there is a scene in Ride with the Devil that perfectly sets forth this yankee mind set.

Several of the Partisan Rangers are invited to dinner at the house of Mr. Evans, a confederate sympathizer. After dinner Mr. Evans engages one of the small unit Partisan leaders, John Bull Chiles, in a conversation.

Mr. Evans: You ever been to Lawrence, Kansas young man?

Jack Bull Chiles: [scoffs] No, I reckon not Mr. Evans. I don't believe I'd be too welcome in Lawrence.

Mr. Evans: I didn't think so. Before this war began, my business took me there often. As I saw those northerners build that town, I witnessed the seeds of our destruction being sown.

Jack Bull Chiles: The foundin' of that town was truly the beginnin' of the Yankee invasion.

Mr. Evans: I'm not speakin' of numbers, nor even abolitionist trouble makin'. It was the schoolhouse. Before they built their church, even, they built that schoolhouse. And they let in every tailor's son... and every farmer's daughter in that country.

Jack Bull Chiles: Spellin' won't help you hold a plow any firmer. Or a gun either.

Mr. Evans: No, it won't Mr. Chiles. But my point is merely that they rounded every pup up into that schoolhouse because they fancied that everyone should think and talk the same free-thinkin' way they do with no regard to station, custom, propriety. And that is why they will win. Because they believe everyone should live and think just like them. And we shall lose because we don't care one way or another how they live. We just worry about ourselves.

Jack Bull Chiles: Are you sayin', sir, that we fight for nothin'?

Mr. Evans: Far from it, Mr. Chiles. You fight for everything that we ever had, as did my son. It's just that... we don't have it anymore.

Well, there’s still no need for us to care how the yankee lives, but we must stand firm and make clear to them that we will not change the way we live. We will not become yankees.

In the words of our beloved President, Jefferson Davis, “all we ask is to be left alone.” And we must make it very clear that we are not just asking, but that we WILL MOST CERTAINLY be left alone -- one way or the other.