They say, it is true the Constitution dictates this, the Bible inculcates that, but there is a higher law than those; and they call upon you to obey that higher law of which they are the inspired givers. Men who are traitors to the compact of their fathers--men who have perjured the oaths they have themselves taken--they who wish to steep their hands in the blood of their brothers; these are the moral law-givers who proclaim a higher law than the Bible or the Constitution, and the laws of the land ... What security have you for your own safety if every man of vile temper, of low instincts, of base purpose, can find in his own heart a law higher than that which is the rule of society, the Constitution and the Bible?"
- Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis

In the 1999 movie “Ride With the Devil” the Evans family, Missouri homesteaders living on the Kansas border entertain a Confederate guerilla fighter who has sought refuge with them for the evening.
After dinner the Missouri guerilla discusses a wide range of topics with the Evans family, but ultimately everyone’s mind turns to the then raging War Between the States. Mr. Evans, hearing the Missouri guerilla say he’ll “always want to fight them”(Yankees) asks if he has ever seen Lawrence, Kansas. (the frontier headquarters of Abolitionism). When the guerilla answers no, Mr. Evans tells of his days in the Kansas Territory watching New Englanders build Lawrence:

“As I watched those Northerners building that town, I witnessed the seeds of our own destruction being sown. I’m not speaking of abolitionist trouble-making, or even the number of Northerners. It was the school. Before they built the church, they built that schoolhouse. Then they brought in every farmer’s son and every farmer’s daughter and made sure they would think and live the same free-thinking way they do, without regard to station, or stature, or custom, or propriety. That’s when I realized that the Yankees will surely win, because they believe everyone must live and think just like them. We don’t want to make everyone be like us. We shall surely lose because we don’t care how other people live-we just take care of ourselves.”

And so it was. Through the New England created public school systems, millions of American children are indoctrinated every year to think the “correct” Northern way on all matters. This includes such figures as the Abolitionists of the 1840s and 50s. Yes, the Abolitionists- those noble, righteous reasonable men who loved the black man and “peacefully protested” slavery until violent slavocrats forced them to fight. To this end, the modern day left, fighting for drag queen story hour, freeing criminals or reparations from you, often refer to themselves as “modern day Abolitionists”. A prominent Antifa Militia with Chapters across the U.S. even proudly refers to itself as the “John Brown Gun Club”-named for the Abolitionist whose deadly terrorist attacks on Southern families in Kansas culminated in his failed attempted genocide of white Southerners at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia in 1859.(Ironically this man Northern troops idolized in the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” while putting down the “rebellion” was hanged for treason).

As a Southerner, you probably wonder what issue your ancestors could possibly have taken with such a heroic band of missionaries of truth, justice and the American way. Since social media has taught us that operating the cut-and-paste functions on quotes online is the same thing as having a Doctorate in History, I compiled just a handful of quotes from our lovable band of Freedom Fighters on a range of topics.

The Abolitionists on Genocide of your Ancestors:
“you would be instrumental in bringing upon your wives, and your children, a fate too horrible to contemplate, one that would surpass the massacre of St. Bartholemew." -Hinton R. Helper , The Impending Crisis

(John Brown) is the JOHN THE BAPTIST of the New Dispensation of Freedom”-Edward D. Holton of Milwaukee

“if it were necessary, we could clear off thousand million square miles so that not a city or cultivated filed would remain; WE COULD EXTERMINATE NINE MILLIONS OF WHITE PEOPLE(SOUTHERNERS) and re-settle-re-people the lands.” -Newburyport, Massachusetts Daily Herald, May 24th , 1861

“I look for the day when I shall see a negro insurrection in the South, when the negroes will be supplied with British bayonets and commanded by British officers, and shall wage a WAR OF EXTERMINATION AGAINST THE WHITES, WHEN EVERY WHITE MAN SHALL SEE HIS DWELLING IN FLAMES and his hearth polluted”-Congressman Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio

“Resolved, that it is the right and duty of Northern men to incite and aid negroes in the South to rise in insurrection”-Resolution of Senator Henry Wilson at Natick, Massachusetts, 1859

“When I am on the trail of the enemy against whom I have a deadly hate, I will follow him with cat-like tread will not strike until I can strike him dead. I do not wish to give the South notice of our intentions. When the time comes to strike I want the South to have the first notice of the blow in the blow itself”-Governor Andrew Reeder of Kansas

“The logic of bayonets and rifles and pikes will be henceforth used against the South.”-John Andrews, War Governor of Massachusetts, December, 1859

“The Saint whose fate yet hangs in suspense, but whose martyrdom, if it shall be perfected, shall make the gallows glorious, like the Cross.”-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Old Brown is supposed to have been strangled today, for obeying the Golden Rule.”-Wood County, Wisconsin Reporter December 2nd, 1859

“John Brown, dead, will live in millions of hearts….let none doubt that history will accord an honorable niche to John Brown”-Horace Greeley

“(John Brown) was the impersonation of God’s order and God’s law.”-Wendell Phillips

“You who pretend to care for Christ crucified, consider what you are about to do Him who offered Himself to be the Savior of Four Millions of men” -Henry David Thoreau
On the second day of December he(Brown) is to be strangled in a Southern prison, for obeying the Sermon on the Mount. But to be hanged in Virginia, is like being crucified in Jerusalem — it is the last tribute which he pays to Virtue!” -E.D. Wheelock, Vermont

“and when the time arrives for the streets and cities of this ‘land of the free and home of the brave’ to run with blood to the horses’ bridles, if the writer of this be living, there will be one heart to rejoice at the retributive justice of heaven”- William O. Duvall, New York

“To-day John Brown was hanged by a semibarbarous Commonwealth, as a traitor, murderer, and robber, and fifteen despotic States are rejoicing at his death; while, in the free North, every noble heart is sighing at his fate, or admiring his devotion... or cursing the executioners of their warrior-saint.”-James Redpath

“Brown was the sword in the hand of a high power, the finger of God writing upon the walls of Belshazzar’s palace the doom of tyrants” -Rev. J.M. Manning, Boston

“I would like to live long enough to see every white man in South Carolina in Hell, and the negroes inheriting their territory” -Senator James Lane of Kansas

“Not to be an abolitionist is to be a willful and diabolical instrument of the devil.”- The Impending Crisis by Hinton R. Helper

“It may be that the slaves thus armed will commit some atrocities. We shall regret it. But we repeat, this war has been forced upon us.... We hesitate not to say, that it will be better, immeasurably better, that the rebellion should be crushed, even with the incidental consequences attendant on a servile insurrection, than that the hopes of the world in the capacity of mankind to maintain free institutions should expire with American liberty. - American Review of Boston, Massachusetts

“the negroes(should) be let loose on the whites, men, women and children indiscriminately....”- The New York Courier and Enquirer

“I say, better a boundless waste of territory, filled with owls and bats, than that the Southern States should be occupied with such men”-Richard Busted, Carpetbag Alabama Judge

If I had the power, I would arm…every Negro of the South….and EXTERMINATE every man woman and CHILD south of Mason’s and Dixon’s line” – William” Parson” Brownlow, Reconstruction Scallywag Governor of Tennessee

“Illinois raised 250,000 troops to fight the South, and now we are ready to raise 500,000 more to FINISH THE GOOD WORK” – Illinois Governor Yates

(Republicans) will win the election “even if we have to kill every last white man, woman and child in the entire State!”-1875 aide to Mississippi Reconstruction Governor Adlebert Ames.

To illustrate the conditions that Abolitionists like Hinton Helper, John Brown and Wendell Phillips wished to bring on Southern Whites, a sketch of the Haitian Slave Revolt is helpful:

In an instant twelve hundred coffee and two hundred sugar plantations were in flames: the buildings, the machinery, the farm offices, reduced to ashes; the unfortunate proprietors hunted down, murdered or thrown into the flames by infuriated negroes. The horrors of a servile war universally appeared. The unchained African signalized his ingenuity by the discovering of new and unheard-of modes of torture. An unhappy planter was sawed asunder between two boards; the horrors inflicted on the women exceeded anything known even in the annals of Christian ferocity. Upon the indulgent master young and old, rich and poor, the wrongs of an oppressed race were indiscriminately wreaked. Crowds of slaves traversed the country with the heads of white children affixed on their pikes; they served as the standards of these furious assemblages. In a few instances only, the humanity of the negro character resisted the savage contagion of the time; and some faithful slaves, at the hazard of their own lives, fed in caves their masters or their children, whom they had rescued from destruction.

And do our modern-day Abolitionists realize that had their forefathers succeeded in their mission that you, Southerner, and everyone you love would not exist today? Well of course they do, silly. That’s the point-always has been.

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"Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth."
-Psalms 71:9

If you've lived in town all your life, you probably know 'ol Joe. He was born, raised and lived his whole life here. He ran a bicycle shop for 30 years down on Main Street, just across the railroad tracks from what used to be the Jackson County Jail. Maybe he sold you your first bicycle, was your Scoutmaster and coached you in Dixie Youth baseball. Joe was probably on the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Club, and every Church committee Mt. Sinai Baptist Church had to offer. Maybe he even ran (but didn't win) for mayor or town council. You played with his kids at his house, where he was always made sure to treat you just as well as his own. (Ok, let's face it, parents always treat neighbor kids a little NICER than their own kids)

He's still a friendly face around the sleepy little town nestled in the gentle rolling hills of the Southern Piedmont. You can find him talking over a cup of coffee at the Waffle House, attending Fall Festivals and still involved in civic affairs. He's proud as a peacock of his service in the Army and raises the slightly larger than regulation U.S. flag at his house every morning with pride. You can still find him every here and there at the VFW, in charge of the 4th of July fundraising cookout, swapping stories with veterans of every war from Vietnam to Afghanistan, though the membership seems fewer and older than when you were a child.

But over the last few years, you’ve noticed little changes in Joe. He’s still the friendly, generous old boy he’s always been, but he’s a bit more quick-tempered, a bit shorter with people he disagrees with than usual. His mood turns to downright sour when subjects like politics or the state of the country come into play. As a child you remember Joe’s booming drawl drowning out everyone’s voice with the confidence of a King as he came up with the solutions for the country’s woes. Now Joe more often than not just shakes his head in frustration and disbelief that this country-his country- could even force him to think of solutions to such mad problems.
Joe and his wife, Evelyn, worked and saved and squeezed every penny out of the business they could so they could send the children to college-give them the chances they never had. Many late nights, if you were walking the Main Street square, you could see a lone light in the window of the shop, and know Joe was working on something big. It was a proud day in Joe and Evelyn's lives the day their son, Taylor went off to college, the first in the family to do it! Again, they beamed with pride two years later when their daughter, Kayla headed off to join her big brother.

It stunned Joe and Evelyn when the kids came home from State college one Thanksgiving and informed Joe that the only reason he was able to build a successful business and pay off the house they grew up in was his "white privilege", and asked an astonished Evelyn how she could have betrayed other women by submitting to Joe's "toxic masculinity" all these years? The meeting ended with both children storming out and swearing they’d never speak to Joe again for supporting “That orange fascist.” Only two tearful phone calls from Evelyn saved the next couple of Holidays.

Joe was on cloud nine the day he became a grandpa for the first time. After the loss of his precious Evelyn the year before, Joe had found a new purpose in life again. He looked forward to taking his new grandson fishing, hunting, camping-all the things he did with his kids and you, but now with more time! Now he's devastated Kayla no longer brings the grandkids around because they don't want Papa's "hate" and "fascism" rubbing off them.

Last Christmas, Joe tried to make peace by inviting them over on Christmas Day. For the first time since Evelyn died, Joe decorated, with multicolored lights in the windows. He even dragged the plastic Santa and reindeer out of the basement and put it in the yard, hoping they would come by, and his Grandkids would love it the way Kayla once had. By 9 that night, Joe was at the Waffle House, drinking a cup of coffee and shaking his head in silence. Maybe next year.

That isn't to say Joe hasn't tried to change with the times. He's been accepting of the recent wave of immigrants to the little town because both his Pastor and the Chamber of Commerce told him it was the right thing to do-even if he had to ignore the fact that he can't leave his door unlocked in the daytime like he used to. Joe resigned his membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans because a man in his position in the community couldn't be part of a "hate group". Besides, his new Pastor from Poughkeepsie, New York assured him, no one can display the Confederate flag and call themselves a Christian. Even the gentle Piedmont Southern drawl you remember him having as a child has sunk into a low, strained voice which, but for Joe’s pronunciation of certain words, could make you believe he’s a native of the Midwest rather than Dixie.

This morning Joe bristled when Fox News blared out Joe's "conservative" Republican Congressman saying that the January 6 insurrection "wasn't like the Confederacy, who tried to overthrow the U.S. government to preserve slavery" while calling for the acceptance of transgender officers into the Army-his Army- where he enjoyed some of the proudest moments of his life. Though still silent, he deeply resents such betrayals from pretended friends. "Oh well," Joe mumbles into his coffee cup, "at least he's not a Democrat."

You saw Joe a couple of months ago at the town's yearly Apple Festival. He was in good spirits, talking about needing some rain for his garden, the evenings getting cooler, the high school football game the night before-"we might go to State this year!", he beamed with pride. But his mood turned sour when the subject of politics came up. Suddenly gone was the Midwestern business voice and out came the Piedmont Cracker. "They're letting the country go down the toilet!" he exclaimed, his face becoming flush with anger. They've got trannies running the military, they've left the borders wide open, their teaching the kids that they're bad for being white! Pretty soon the money won’t even be worth anything! How can we keep going on?"

It was at this moment you saw your opportunity. Not wanting to overplay your hand, you half-jokingly suggested "maybe it's time we seceded and let them go on by themselves".
Joe's face changes as quick as you can flip a switch. He gives you a quick, astonished look, as though you just suggested going to Mars- then a brief glance around to make sure no one else is looking. Finally, a stern glare at you, as a father scolding a child just caught stealing. In a low, serious voice he instructs "Get a grip, son. What you're talking about was tried a long time ago and the War settled it. We are one Nation under God and proud of it. Me and the boys over at the VFW, we’ve fought all over the world under the Stars and Stripes to keep America safe and free. The fact that you can even stand here and talk this foolishness without getting locked up is because we live in a nation that lets you!”

Again, being cautious, you simply state the obvious to you "well, clearly the system's broken beyond repair, we can't vote our way out, and the Government the Founding Fathers left us more closely resembles Sodom of the Bible than Philadelphia 1776. If a married couple got along the way Americans do, they'd get a divorce citing irreconcilable differences. Maybe we should consider doing the same".

The low voice is giving way to a louder and more indignant tone. “Son, you used to lead the Pledge of Allegiance when I was your Scoutmaster. We learned God, Duty and Country, just like I learned in the service. The day after 9/11 you and me stood next to each other singing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, both of us fixin’ to cry. I was disappointed when you didn’t go off to serve your country like me and your Daddy did, but I wrote it off as you needin’ an education. Now I see some time in the service was about what you needed. You’da learned more important things- being willing to die for your country, loving it no matter what, and knowin’ better than to go for some half-baked notion from a hundred years ago!”

Then, catching himself, Joe returns to the fatherly tone and says "You're just overreacting to these things. Keep a cool head like we learned in the Scouts. We’re a nation under God, and a nation that blesses Israel. God will save us; all we gotta do is turn out harder for the Republicans next year and He’ll set it right”.

It's now that you feel obligated to point out the blatant South-bashing by the GOP-at the national and State level. The failure to defend flags, monuments and the Confederate monument at Arlington all the while proudly proclaiming themselves the "Party of Lincoln and Grant."
Joe again bristles, and says sternly, "We're all Americans now son. That's all in the past."

A thousand thoughts, facts and figures race through your head in a matter of seconds. You want badly to convince your mentor of the rightness of your position, and the deep sincerity it came from. You know Joe’s arguments are mostly slogans, symbols and government fluff. But you can also see that these are things Joe holds just as deeply as you hold your secessionist beliefs-and now in the twilight of his life, he can’t imagine questioning them.

Just then, a cold gust of wind sweeps through the valley and hit the tiny Apple Festival, triggering a memory. Suddenly you’re looking at Joe through different eyes- the same eyes you did on that chilly April night years ago, when your Dixie Youth team was down 14-0 in the 3rd inning. In spite of the 40-degree temperature and the mercy rule about to be in effect, Coach Joe was still standing on the steps of the dugout, the gentle Southern drawl still cheering you on to finish and do your best. Neither of you wants to end such a deep friendship of four decades like this, so you casually say you hope his tomatoes fare better next year.

Already knowing the answer, you invited Joe to eat Christmas dinner with you and the family.
“I appreciate it bud, but I reckon I’ll stay close to the house in case the young’uns come by.”
He thanks you and tells you to your kids hello and Merry Christmas “maybe I can tell it to mine soon” Joe says wistfully as he ambles toward his old ’92 Silverado.
Joe went home that evening and watched FoxNews till dusk, lowered the Stars and Stripes another time, and one by one the windows with the multicolored lights gave way to a dark, cold December night.
Alone with your own thoughts, your mind wanders back to Joe. You're disappointed at his response, but never in him. You hate what's been done to him, not just being trained to abandon the South, but for the fact that the world he abandoned it for to be a "Good American" could treat him like this. A footnote, just an old white man barely worth mentioning in "our Democracy".

Alone in the darkness, all you could do was raise your glass of bourbon and drink a toast to him. “Merry Christmas, Joe. Hope this one treats you right.”

Joe may never see eye to eye with you on Southern culture and independence. He may eventually quit talking to you, almost like an alcoholic avoiding a family intervention. But you're fighting for Joe and generations of Southerners like him. Somewhere Joe's ancestors are smiling down on you-and someday so will he. After all, men like him made you who you are today.


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"Let us rise to the call of the Freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South."
-Governor George C. Wallace, Inaugural Address, January 14, 1963


Few names in Southern political history evoke such powerful emotions as that of Alabama Governor and four-time Presidential candidate, George Corley Wallace, Jr. For decades Wallace's fiery speeches, confrontational style and popularity across his native South-and sectors of the North and Midwest-befuddled and infuriated both establishment politicians and intelligentsia from coast to coast.(A favorite video search of mine is to pull up Governor Wallace stumping the ever-pompous neocon godfather, William F. Buckley, on his show The Firing Line in 1968)

Wallace never achieved his goal of reaching the White House, though performing astonishingly well as an independent in 1968 and in the 1972 Democratic Primaries, when an assassin's bullet ended both his mobility and his Presidential aspirations.

So why does Wallace, dead for nearly 25 years now, still haunt the dark corners of the feeble minds of the the modern day political elites and intelligensia? When President Joe Biden invokes the Alabama Governor's name in order to denounce Republicans as racists(whatever that means nowadays), why does it have such power in the modern day left, many of whom were born after George Wallace left the Governor's Mansion for good in 1987?

There are many reasons why Wallace is still a boogeyman to the political left. But I believe on some level, the left still fears Wallace for a very basic reason. They believed then and now that they are the intellectual superiors of the rest of the nation, Dixie above all. They can never forget that when the campaign to portray every white man south of the Mason-Dixon line as a bestial, uneducated and out of touch relic began in earnest, they kept tripping over a little country judge from Barbour County, Alabama named Wallace.

Wallace grew up in the "Black Belt" of Alabama, near the little town of Clio(kly-oh) Unlike many of his later antagonists, Wallace likely had frequent contact, even played with black children in the little farming community. Later, in the Alabama Legislature he was the protege of notoriously liberal-and corrupt- Governor James E. "Big Jim" Folsom, Sr. In 1948, when the Southern "Dixiecrats" walked out of the Democratic National Convention, Delegate Wallace declined.

Do not misunderstand, his refusal to join the walkout cannot be interpreted as sympathy with desegregation, nor even loyalty to Folsom. This is easily proven by the fact that Wallace, in that same convention, nominated conservative segregationist Georgia Senator Richard B. Russell for Vice-President. Wallace simply believed it unwise for Southerners to abandon their ancestral home in the Democratic Party to the hands of the Marxist wing of the Party. Time would prove him right, as the failure of the State's Rights Party left Southerners with nothing left but to go to the ancestral enemy-the bland, unprincipled and equally corrupt Republican Party.

In 1952, Wallace was elected Circuit Judge of the Third Judicial Circuit in Alabama. Judge Wallace originally was considered something of a liberal-perhaps still with Folsom's residue on him. However, on May 17, 1954 the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education was issued, and Judge Wallace, a Southerner and State's Rights man at heart, could not fathom such an invasion of State powers by the central government.

Judge Wallace began to respond by ordering injunctions against removal of segregation signs in railroad stations, and denied that the Federal goverment had the authority to march into Barbour County demanding sensitive voting information. This won him the title locally of the "Fightin' Lil' Judge", in part a reference to Wallace's younger days as an Alabama Golden Gloves boxing champion. It also brought him to statewide attention, such that he made his first-and only unsuccessful run for Alabama Governor in 1958.

With Governor John Patterson term limited in 1962, Wallace once more threw his hat in the ring for the top spot in Alabama. However, things had changed in the four years since Wallace made his first bid for Governor. The decision in Brown v. Board of Education had been translated into Federal Court orders to desegregate schools. Moreover, these orders took the form of a United States military infestation of Dixie not seen since Reconstruction. On September 4, 1957, President Eisenhower snatched the Arkansas National Guard out of the hands of Governor Orval Faubus and sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock Central High to enforce desegregation- at the point of a gun to the backs of high school students in Arkansas.

The inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, in 1961 offered little chance for relief. For by now, as George Wallace had feared, the South no longer had the influence in the Democratic Party it held just twelve years earlier. For all the Southern support he received in 1960, the New Englander Kennedy was all too willing to follow in Eisenhower's footsteps.

The reaction of Southern Governors and their constitutents varied.

In Georgia, Governor Ernest Vandiver, whose 1958 Campaign had run with the slogan "No, not one"(school would be integrated in Georgia), meekly accepted desegregation and believed that no presence on his or the State of Georgia's part was necessary at the University of Georgia. Events proved him wrong as a riot nearly occurred between integration supporters and segregationists in January of 1961.

To the east, South Carolina, once the firebrand State of Dixie offered no better. Democratic Governor Ernest "Fritz" Hollings' meek statement could have been uttered by any neoconservative Southern Republican Governor today:
"As we meet, South Carolina is running out of courts...this General Assembly must make clear South Carolina's choice, a government of laws rather than a government of men. This should be done with dignity."

Harvey Gantt was ultimately admitted to Clemson University without incident, but the failure of Hollings and incoming Governor Russell to provide leadership ultimately created a nightmare for their sucessor, Governor Robert McNair who was forced to call out the South Carolina National Guard to deal with violent integrationists in Orangeburg.

The meek acceptance of the Governors of Georgia and South Carolina should have been lessons to other Governors in Dixie-ambivalence toward desegregation-especially after Federal humiliation of the citizens with threats of troops a la Reconstruction- left one with a very angry and confused constituency, seeking leadership but finding none.

In Mississippi there was no doubt where the Governor stood-and what the Feds were willing to do. After Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett responded to the court orders with an address on the importance of State's Rights, the Kennedy White House made threats of force against Ole Miss public knowledge, infuriating an already tense populace in the Magnolia State. Nick Bryant, The Black Man Who Was Crazy Enough to Apply at Ole Miss The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Autumn 2006

On September 30, 1962, the quiet little college town of Oxford, Mississippi was suddenly overwhelmed by 538 Federal Agents, made of few Federal Marshals, but chiefly of prison guards and border patrol. Quickly they seized Baxter Hall at Ole Miss, then seized the Lyceum as command center. For the already agitated crowd of Governor Barnett's supporters, this sight was too much; to the natives of Oxford, it must have seemed like Sherman had returned to finish off the town. Before it was all over, tear gas had been deployed on the crowd at Ole Miss, with cannisters striking a teenage girl and rendering one of the few Mississippi State patrolmen brave enough to stay unconscious. This triggered a riot which has been referred to as "the greatest conflict between federal and State authority since the Civil War" William Doyle, An American Insurrection, 2001

It was into this atmosphere that George Wallace entered the 1962 Alabama Governor's race. While Wallace made the promises he had made throughout his career-better schools, roads and the opening of trade schools in the State-his promise to "Stand Up for Alabama" caught national attention, when he promised to "stand in every schoolhouse door in Alabama" to prevent desegregation. He would soon be put to the test, as the Kennedy administration had determined that Wallace's alma mater, the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, was its next target.

President Kennedy, perhaps having learned a little something from the Ole Miss disaster sent his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy to Montgomery to negotiate with Governor Wallace. The meeting was cordial, but it did contain allusions to "all the force of the Federal Government" being used to desegregate, and agreement that "another Mississippi" was undesirable. In a low point for the Administration, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach(one of the architects of the Ole Miss debacle) tried to blackmail Governor Wallace by threatening to reveal that he was receiving a 10% mental health disability benefit due to meningitis and combat fatigue suffered during World War II-ironically fighting for the government now breathing down his neck. According to Newsday Civil Rights reporter Michael Dorman, Attorney General Robert Kennedy even considered arresting and imprisoning Wallace in the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta-removing him as Alabama Governor- and perhaps hoping that the unusually large Black Muslim population in the prison might take care of the Wallace problem for them.

However, Wallace remained determined to fulfill his promise to "stand in the door way", and on June 11, 1963 did just that. Just prior to leaving for the University of Alabama, Governor Wallace received a telegram from Deputy Attorney General Katzenbach, urging him not to show up at the auditorium where the black students were to be registered as it would only lead to certain violence. The Governor calmly and confidently replied "My presence on campus guarantees peace". When he arrived at the campus that morning, George C. Wallace gave an address that is worthy of any Constitutional law class study. But often overlooked is a restatement of his telegram to Katzenbach:

"I stand before you here today in place of thousands of other Alabamians whose presence would have confronted you had I been derelict and neglected to fulfill the responsibilities of my office. It is the right of every citizen, however humble he may be, through his chosen officials of representative government to stand courageously against whatever he believes to be the exercise of power beyond the Constitutional rights conferred upon our Federal Government. It is this right which I assert for the people of Alabama by my presence here today."

The rest is well known history. Just as Eisenhower snatched the Arkansas National Guard away from Faubus, Kennedy snatched a very unhappy Alabama National Guard away from Wallace and used it against him to integrate the University. But integration at Alabama's flagship University took place with a notable exception: an absence of violence, disorder, confusion and embitterment. No one was hurt. Moreover, none of Wallace's supporters went away feeling as though they had been played, that their Governor had been AWOL or hidden during the final crisis. Alabama's Governor had talked the talk, and he had walked the walk. The Heart of Dixie took notice; so did her sister Southern States. By the late 1960s Wallace was a favorite son candidate for the Presidency of the United States.

George Wallace, by standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama, had made the best of a terrible situation and allowed a change he detested to come to his beloved Alabama peacefully-but maintaining as far as he could the dignity of his State in the face of the Federal Government itself. In the process he became a regional hero on his way to a national sensation who made the establishment shake in their boots and-at least pretend-to moderate their views.

It is for this reason that the late Governor is so reviled and by the political left today. For a brief period, at least until his paralysis from the assassination attempt, it looked like a country boy from Southeast Alabama had outsmarted them, and made the connections with the people they only bragged about. For one other reason the great man from Barbour County is so reviled and denounced-the fear on their part that Dixie might once again be capable of producing such a man. We can only hope.

Postscript: unbeknownst to the author, this blog was begun on June 11, 2023-the 60th anniversary of the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door"