Essentially, with new obligations that must be met at work, and accompanying changes in my family life that require a greater amount of my attention, I have made the decision to indefinitely depart from writing Virginia Gentry.

If there were any other way, or simply more time in each day, I would not hesitate to continue the publication. Alas, that is not the case.

No tragedy has befallen me, in fact, things have been well, but if I cannot give you my best work, I would rather not give any. It would be a disservice to you as a reader and me as a writer.

Therefore, “let us then oppose constancy to adversity, fortitude to suffering, and courage to danger.”1

There may be a day when I am able to return to the publication, and in the hope that the day will come, I am leaving the site active as an archive for your enjoyment.

God bless you all, and thank you for reading.

Bearing all of this in mind, there is a very important anniversary that we have come upon… that would be Wednesday, February the 25th. For it was exactly one hundred years before on Thursday, February the 25th of 1926 that the publishing company Boni & Liveright (pronounced "BONE-eye" and "LIV-right") would publish William Faulkner’s very first novel, ‘Soldiers’ Pay.’ I recently had the pleasure of handling a first edition ‘Soldiers’ Pay’ at the fabled Elder’s Bookstore in Nashville, Tennessee. It was really something to see the title page, how the type was set, and the beautiful pattern on the Endsheets just as Mr. Faulkner would have seen it when it was first published.

The reason that I would like to draw attention to this day specifically, is because I feel that some of us in the South, especially those of us who have a more historical bend in our interests, often fail to give our poets and authors their due. More so, it is because we don’t have many days of celebration to call our own, to celebrate our own, and to fully take possession of a part of our heritage that is just as important as anything accomplished by the settlers and soldiers that came before.

That being said, I propose that we collectively celebrate Mr. Faulkner on February the 25th, going forward. I have a hope that the celebration of this incredible author can transcend the divisions that have heretofore kept the modern South at odds with itself and become something that all true Southerners can celebrate together.

Now, in celebration of this new holiday, I myself will be starting William Faulkner’s ‘Soldiers’ Pay’ on the 25th. If you don’t have access to this book, don’t despair, you can get the title as a PDF online here, or for a small price on Amazon’s Kindle platform here. But please don’t feel limited to this work, I am reading it because it is the 100th anniversary of the title, but this isn’t a holiday in celebration of ‘Soldiers’ Pay’ alone, but all of Faulkner’s works. You should have no problems finding his books at any library around the country, but if you do, you can search for PDFs of his books and poetry online. There are even great interviews of him such as this one on Youtube if you prefer audio/visual media over reading text.

So, I humbly and happily wish you a happy William Faulkner Day!

— J.R. Dunmore

Take for example the little known story of Capt. Arthur H. Keller.

The Keller family first settled in Maryland after leaving their native Switzerland in the mid-1700s. From there the family made their way to Tennessee, and finally settling in north Alabama in the town of Tuscumbia. It was there that the family built their plantation which they named “Ivy Green,”

When the war broke out, the Keller family supported the Confederacy, with the most notable involvement in the conflict being that of Capt. Arthur H. Keller, and his older brother, Dr. James M. Keller.1 Arthur would go on to join the 27th Alabama Infantry in 1861, while his brother would travel to Memphis to establish a military hospital under the order of their distant relative, Dr. Samuel Preston Moore, Surgeon General, C.S.A.2

Shortly after his enlistment, Arthur would be appointed Quartermaster Sergeant for the 27th Alabama Infantry and find himself deployed in the force that made a series of small fortifications on Stewart’s Hill within cannon range of Fort Henry.

They called their position Fort Heiman, named for Col. Adolphus Heiman, commander of the 1st Brigade, who was present in Fort Henry Proper.3

Shortly after this, most of the regiment was captured at the surrender of Fort Donelson. Those who escaped the surrender were reorganized into two companies and were consolidated with a Mississippi regiment that has eluded me in my limited research.4

However, fate would have it that the young Sargent Arthur H. Keller would inadvertently escape capture as he was posted at a supply depot 188 miles away in Florence, Alabama. Shortly after this, two Yankee gunboats would make their way to Florence, leaving the Confederates no choice but to burn the very supplies that Sargent Keller had once had in his charge.56

While the main body of his regiment was imprisoned, Sargent Keller would serve on General Sterling A. M. Wood’s staff in Florence for a time. After his service on the general’s staff he would find himself joining the 4th Alabama Cavalry Regiment under Colonel Philip D. Roddey as a private. Roddy’s Cavalry was raised from his home town in Tuscumbia, Alabama.7 It is unclear to me if he saw any action with the 4th Alabama Cavalry.

In September of 1862, the imprisoned men of the 27th Alabama were exchanged and taken to Vicksburg, then reunited with the two other companies that were not captured at Port Hudson and assigned to Beall’s and Buford’s Brigade, Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana. 89

Sargent Keller would rejoin the 27th that very month and be promoted to Captain on the 24th. The newly commissioned Captain would go on to serve as the regimental quartermaster officer until August of 1864. From September of 1862 to August of 1864, the 27th Alabama would see hard service at The Battle Of Champion Hill, The Battle Of Black River Bridge, and in the trenches at the Battle Of Jackson during the Vicksburg Campaign. Retreating with the army across the Pearl River in July of 1863. In February of 1864, the record shows Captain Keller procuring corn and other supplies for the 27th in Demopolis, Alabama.1011

By the spring of 1864, the 27th joined with the Army of Tennessee and was attached to General Scott's and Shelley's Brigade. That May, the 27th would be sent to Georgia to fight Sherman as he was working his way to Atlanta, under Colonel James Jackson who was commanding the unit at the time. 1213

The 27th would arrive in Georgia in time to fight in The Battle Of Resaca on the 13th of May, 1864. The unit would continue to be engaged in heavy fighting around Atlanta as Sherman pressed South. Through the months of August and September, Captain Keller’s name appears on reports from the Atlanta area.14

Around this time Captain Arthur’s friend Colonel Philip D. Roddey was promoted to Brig. General. Captain Arthur then received orders to report to Roddey’s Brigade to serve as paymaster for for Roddey in the Tennessee Valley. During this time, Captain Arthur would ride with Roddey’s Cavalry Brigade supporting Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest defending the Valley from Union General James H. Wilson’s invasion of Alabama.1516

The Brigade’s final action would be on April 2nd, of 1865 at The Battle Of Selma where most of General Roddey’s command was captured. Captain Keller would escape capture, but would ultimately surrender with the last of Roddey’s men at Pond Springs (now Wheeler), Alabama, in May 1865.1718

Captain Keller was a Southern warrior, as described in an advertisement in the Moulton Advertiser.

The many friends of Capt. A. H. Keller, of Tuscumbia, will make application to President Cleveland, at the proper time, to have him appointed United States Marshal for the Northern and Middle Districts of Alabama. Capt. Keller is a gentleman of commanding appearance and ability. For many years he has been and is now the bold and fearless Editor of the North Alabamian, and whenever his sharp blade was raised the enemies of good government went down like ripe grain before the reaper. He has labored faithfully for his party---has stubbornly refused positions of honor, preferring to battle in the ranks until the vultures were entirely routed, and now that Victory has been achieved by our grand old party, Capt. Keller comes to the front---thro’ his friends---and will ask for the above position. President Cleveland will not find it an easy matter to ignore his claims.---Moulton Advertiser.19

Captain Keller would also become the long-time editor of The North Alabamian where he would write articles complementing the ex-Confederates of the region, and he even served as the commander of Tuscumbia’s local United Confederate Veterans Chapter. He rightly believed that the South was Martyred by the aggression of the North.20

On August 29, 1896, following an illness of ten days, Captain Keller would pass in his family home “Ivy Green.” He would be buried the next day on the 30th in Tuscumbia’s Oakwood Cemetery.21

In life he also gave birth to a famous daughter. That would be a Miss Helen Keller.

Greetings, everyone. I want to say that you will find I utilized a few Wikipedia articles. I am normally not a fan of using that website, but I was looking for details about the timeline for the regiments that the NPS website could not offer me. I also used it for a few location details to supplement Richard C. Sheridan’s article which I originally found on facebook. I used the NPS website, Wikipedia, FOLD3, and a few more specialized websites to make sure his claims were accurate, and to expand the limited scope of his original article.

FOLD3 helped the most as I was able to find all the records for Captain Keller’s service, and in my research was unable to find any contradiction between the original article, the NPS, Wikipedia, FOLD3 records, and the few other sites that I used, which I am very happy to report. If I had the regimental history books for all of the different units involved, they would have been consulted before Wikipedia, but I unfortunately do not have access to them.

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this one, I know that I had a lot of fun with it. — J.R. Dunmore

Plot

‘A Fatal Mercy,’ is the story of Drayton FitzHenry, the middle son of prominent South Carolina planter and politician, who circumstance forces to participate in a conflict of arms that he himself doesn’t fully believe in. The novel follows him through the years, from 1860 until 1913, and in it’s pages, weaves together the hopes and dreams of youth with the pain and regret of age, and how a life spent in grief and anguish over its role in the war can maybe just find peace after the dust settles. Because as you will see once you read it, his war never ended. My summary here doesn’t do it justice, but I can only say so much without spoiling the book.

Theme & Genre

A Fatal Mercy is a piece of literary fiction disguised as a Civil War novel. In fact, I would argue that while the War Between The States was the central event in the main character’s life, and the event that much of the novel is set in, it is really a novel about Drayton’s interior life and how he responds to things like duty, personal honor, pride, and even love… especially love.

There were times that I felt the work drifted from the realm of prose fiction into historical lecture by the author about the circumstances of the day, and while the inclusion of these passages can be informative to readers who may be unaware of the history, I found it unnecessary and at times cumbersome, what you might call a historical info-dump. While these occasional disruptions to the plot were present, they were hardly unforgivable, and more than once, I even found myself learning something new.

The author did a great job of interjecting historical views of the day into the characters in a very natural way without it coming off as the thinly veiled pontification of a partisan’s pen (something that many novels of the war suffer from). This wasn’t just true for the politics and historical perspectives in specific, but that the entirety of the complex plot and all of the characters were brought to life with equal tact, and I thoroughly enjoyed the cast. I was especially tickled to see William Gilmore Simms come to life on the pages.

Style

The style of the first chapter threw me for a bit of a loop. What I mean by that, is I was caught off guard by the use of third-person present progressive tense, which is something like “John Smith is watching the Indian, as a friend arrives beside him. His friend turns to face him… etc.” Just something that I wasn’t accustomed to seeing in a work of prose fiction. That being said, this didn’t persist, and as far as I can remember, it didn’t continue further in the novel at any other point, and the author promptly returned to a more traditional third-person past tense.

Apart from the somewhat strange tense that chapter one was written in, I found his style approachable and smooth. Very seldom did I think that the dialogue was clunky or unrealistic, and these few instances may very well have been due to the difference the author’s age and my own.

I was very impressed with how Mr. Moore was able to play with time and being by having the chronological order of the chapters and occasionally character perspectives change frequently throughout the book. To do this and keep it all coherent from chapter to chapter is no easy feat for a writer, and I found this quite enjoyable. It was also heart-rending to see the trials and triumphs unfold in this manner, as I often found myself privy to information that the character wasn’t aware of yet.

Final Thoughts

I found this book to be quite enjoyable, and there was a certain point where I went from reading it to really devouring it. The history is well researched, the prose is clean and well written, the plot is complex and well executed. I really don’t have many complaints at all, and those that I do have, I will fully acknowledge are me nitpicking. However, I will say that the fact that I have to nitpick to find flaws should indicate to you dear reader, just how strong the work is.

I think if you enjoy good writing and novels centered around the War Between The States, this is a great book to read. I laughed, and toward the end, even cried. In some ways I found that I could really identify with Drayton FitzHenry and his reluctant acceptance of duty under the circumstances of life or perhaps more likely, the providence of God. All in all, I thought it was a great read and look forward to reading it again down the road.

You can find ‘A Fatal Mercy’ here for purchase.

While they were there, the Gorgas sisters were keen to learn more about the Nobel Prize winner and bonded over their shared trauma of having to flee in the wake of a vicious invading force, the Gorgas sisters fled Richmond in 1865, and Sigrid her home in Lillehammer, Norway in April of 1940.

During their conversation, Strode noted that “She had made a considerable study of the personalities of the War Between The States, partly because her eldest son Anders, whom the Nazis killed, revered Robert E. Lee as his favorite hero in all history.”2

Their conversation would go on to Jefferson Davis, and it was this very meeting that would cause the great Hudson Strode to write his incredible three-volume biography of President Jefferson Davis. That being said, we aren’t here for Strode. We are here for Anders, a Norwegian Second Lieutenant who would die fighting an aggressive expansionist neighbor. How was it that a young officer in Norway would come into contact with the memory of Robert E. Lee?

There are a few men to thank for this: Fremantle, Wolseley, but perhaps none is more to thank than Sir Fredrick Maurice. Specifically, for his military biography of Robert E. Lee titled, ‘Robert E. Lee: The Soldier.’ For it was this work that evangelized the capability and character of our beloved General to Europe and her sons.

About The Author

A short biography of the author is in order, as Sir Fredrick Maurice (1871-1951) was not an ordinary historian with an axe to grind against consensus, like so many court historians in our modern day. Rather, he was a Major-General of the British Army, was knighted by King George V, and made director of military operations during the Great War. However, his career was not to last, as there arose a public controversy between himself and the British Prime Minister Lloyd George over the strength of the British Army in France. At the time, he demanded a Courts-Martial to dig through the records, hoping to be vindicated for his claims, but was denied. Ultimately, he was forced to resign over this in 1918. After the war, he would ultimately be proven correct after later investigations.

Unlike many officers who are forced out of service for one reason or another, Maurice’s reputation remained untarnished, and he found a career writing as a military correspondent and as a historian of note in his era. I find this very encouraging, as his appraisal of Lee isn’t biased, as so many American authors are, but comes from an intense study of the source material and the unfamiliar eyes of a foreign military officer of high achievement.

Sir Fredrick Maurice knows war; he knows history, and he can approach this work with no preexisting attachment to Lee beyond their shared experience as Generals and soldiers. For this reason, I find his book so compelling. I am not alone in this appraisal, as the Bostonian biographer Gamaliel Bradford said of the book,

“The singular value of General Maurice’s book consists in his own large military experience, and above all in his bringing the most intimate observation and knowledge of the great European War to bear on Lee’s career and military achievements. It is really remarkable to see how the Southern leader anticipated the developments of fifty years later, how great were his versatility and originality, in short how thoroughly he was stamped with the mark of a genius in the art of war.” - Gamaliel Bradford, The Atlantic, June, 1925

Not to mention the endorsement of the great Virginian Douglas Southall Freeman (1886-1953), author of the seminal four-volume biography ‘Robert E. Lee.’

“He writes more authoritatively perhaps than any serious student of Lee’s campaign has ever written” - Douglas Southall Freeman, Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer, 1925

Scope

The title of the book is fitting, as the military career of Gen. Robert E. Lee is the primary focus of the work. Although there is a brief introduction to the General’s family and personal history at the beginning of the book, and again at the end, we find a very short overview of his postbellum activities. However, this is first and foremost a military appraisal of General Lee’s conduct in war, and of war. This includes scrutinizing his leadership, style of maneuver, disposition in combat, etc. With the aim of ultimately trying to appraise the quality of General Lee’s conduct and leadership at the head of The Army Of Northern Virginia, or as it is stated in the book, to see whether or not General Lee deserves a place among the great generals of history.

Style

The book, at times, can come off stiff; however, I found certain passages, such as the Seven Days and the Overland Campaign, to be riveting. In addition to this, there was more than one time when the biography deeply moved me, especially in the telling of Lee’s first message to the Armies of the Confederacy after becoming General-In-Chief in February of 1864.

Although I had a hard time getting through some dense passages that seemed to drag on endlessly at times concerning military details highlighted by a seasoned professional officer, I think the moments of brilliance in Maurice’s writing more than make up for the dry passages. Despite its short length, the section on the withdrawal of Gettysburg alone would make the book worth it for me. Especially as the author wasn’t trying to relitigate the battle, but rather, study Lee’s conduct in its wake.

Something else that I greatly appreciated about the book was the author’s reliance on source material. There were many quotations from a variety of sources and placed in such a way as to give the impression that he was truly speaking as an expert on the subject matter. In other words, no quotation was out of place.

Scholarship

One would be forgiven if one thought that this book lacked the nuance from a multiplicity of sources that modern research has made available to today’s military biographers. For that person would be mistaken about the scrutiny that Sir Fredrick Maurice put into his research in writing this book, as he cited over 85 volumes in the study for this book. That would be including the 52-volume ‘Official Records Of The Union And Confederate Armies.’ Reading the bibliography in the rear of the book is enough to convince any doubter that he did more than enough research to produce a thorough military history.

As the Judge and Historian Blanton Fortson (1882-1968) said of the work,

“The standing of the author, his evident fairness, his logical analysis, must insure the work a high place among the histories of the world’s great strategists.” - Blanton Fortson, Georgia Historical Quarterly, June 1926

Sir Fredrick Maurice doesn’t leave anything unsaid; he knows the material and simplifies it for the reader in the way that only an expert can. I would also argue that his proximity to the conflict was a strength rather than a weakness, as he would have been able to converse and study with those who were only a generation removed from The War Between The States.

This Edition

My copy of the book came from ‘Tall Men Books,’ and is a 2024 printing. It is a beautifully done reprint of a book that needed to be in circulation again. However, there are a few complaints that I have regarding the formatting of the included maps and photos, and a fair number of typographical errors. This being said, by no means does it make the book unreadable, and frankly, if you are intelligent enough to digest a book that breaks down campaign strategy and battle tactics, you should be able to read around these issues.

Conclusion

I would highly encourage you to pick up a copy. This book is a classic of military history and should be celebrated as such. If you are interested in reading this book, you can find it online here. You won’t regret it.

I am also aware of a few stores that carry this book, but the only one that comes to mind as I am writing this would be Crossroads Country Store in Harrisonburg, Va., if you prefer to buy things in person.

‘Tall Men Books’ is doing very important work in preserving out-of-print books like ‘Robert E. Lee: The Soldier’ and others, and making them available again. I highly encourage you to check out their website here and pick up a copy or ten.

And as always, If you would like to follow them on X, you can find them here.

Thanks for reading. God bless and Deo Vindice. — J.R. Dunmore

I would like to thank George Bagby, the CEO of ‘Tall Men Books,’ for sending this book to me for review, and even moreso, I would like to apologize to him for the delay in getting this review published. If you are reading this, God bless you, Mr. Bagby. More will follow this!

— J.R. Dunmore, EIC, Virginia Gentry Magazine

“Did you remember the books?”

“No.”

“I told you to remember them. Now we won’t get an autograph.”

I was embarrassed. I looked out the Volvo window at the rock face flitting by yards away. I tried to think only of the striated drill holes, where charges laid bare the mountain. I counted, skipping every other one, to see if the number was even or odd. I hadn’t meant to forget the three thick volumes; I simply had other things on my mind. We were traveling to see an old man, a stranger, and I had something to give him, after all; perhaps I wasn’t thinking about taking something from him. But I was twelve and did not consider this. Embarrassment gave way to disappointment. I should have done better.

But nothing else about the books was said the rest of the trip over the mountains out of North Carolina into Tennessee and then Virginia. Gradually I forgot. I watched the mountains go by and even read a book. Dad switched on the radio. Dean Smith had just announced his retirement from Chapel Hill. The laud continued as Kentucky hills turned gold. Dad and I arrived at his friend’s house in Lexington well after dark.

The next day was hot for October. We drove over to Transylvania University and were herded into an unoccupied classroom, the bright afternoon sun pouring in. There we waited in audience with many others. They were mostly men, carrying notepads or cameras or, my embarrassment reminded, those massive hardback volumes. I was the only youth there.

At last, the entourage entered. There was murmuring and the snap of cameras. And then I saw him. He was smaller and older than I imagined.

“It’s been a long, hot trip, no autographs today,” announced the faculty ringleader. Aha! My adolescent ineptitude vindicated. Innumerable questions were fielded by the audience, none of which I cared about at the time. I had a single mission, wrapped in a tiny paperboard box in my hands: I had to give him this toy soldier.

Starting at eight, I had begun to make my own toy soldiers. In those days, miniatures companies advertised in magazines like Civil War Times Illustrated. One would write off and weeks later, a “catalog” of xeroxed 8.5x11 sheets appeared the mail. I spent hours pouring over the listings. The Napoleonic miniatures were handsome, but it was The War that absorbed all my boyhood attention and with these soldiers it could be no different. My allowance dispatched, a package returned a few weeks later and I began the arcane art of melting ingots of metal on an electric coil stove. The alloy would turn bright and glossy in the precariously balanced ladle; then it grew a skin and was ready. Pour the liquid silver down into a rubber mold caked with talcum powder and wait. Once cool to the touch, pop open the mold and there was a soldier, shining raw.

The work had only begun, though. Cutting, filing, priming, painting: it was slow going and my ambitions of recreating the Stonewall Brigade to the man seemed to recede into adulthood. But I got better and better at it and when Dad told me who we were going to see in Kentucky, I knew what I must do. I chose a soldier biting a cartridge, ready to pour the powder down his rifle barrel. His coat and cap were gray, for as Southern boy to Southern man, I could do no else. But I painted his pants blue, either out of fidelity to regulations or just the fact that he had stolen them from a bluebelly. That soldier was waiting in my hand.

The questions ended and the audience rushed the old man at the front. “Go, get up there,” said Dad. I slipped between the adults and arrived at the table where he sat. He turned to me, tired but calm, inquisitive as to what I was doing there.

“No autographs,” said the handler.

I pressed the box forward. “This is for you.”

He ignored the hangers-on and opened the box. A faint smile crossed his face. “Well, a Union soldier. Thank you.”

Tongue-tied, I did not think to correct him. I do not remember if either of us said anything else. Then the crowd swallowed up around him and I backed away, my deed done.

We returned that night to the fine arts center for his speech. This was a more formal, collegial event than the pell-mell of the afternoon. When he appeared on stage, the old man seemed refreshed, fully the stoic with the twinkling mischief in his eye known to the public. There were the requisite introductions and applause, followed by the keynote address: “The Civil War: Values and Virtues Learned.” I don’t recall a thing about the speech itself. After he spoke, there was an intermission while they prepared for a panel discussion. And he was just standing on that stage alone, hands clasped behind his back, waiting patiently. I blurted out, “I’d like to ask him a question.”

“Go ask him,” said my dad.

I vacillated. I was painfully shy and didn’t want to embarrass myself.

“This is your only chance. If you don’t go ask him, you’ll always regret it.”

So I set off down the aisle. I ascended the stage and approached him. “I have a question.”

He accepted my imposition graciously, as if I were a peer.

“Do you think the Confederacy would have ended slavery?”

He shook his head. “No, no, they were not capable of an act of emancipation.”

I couldn’t even make eye contact with him. The man with the golden voice was answering my deepest questions about the struggle that absorbed all my youthful thought. “Even if it would have ended the war?”

He elaborated further and my young mind struggled to keep up. But he summed it up for me: “As much as they may have wanted to, the domestic situation simply would not permit it.”

“Oh, okay. That was what I wanted to know. Thank you.”

I disappeared from the stage and returned to my seat. The evening continued, but I remember nothing. Only a great relief — joy, even — at having gotten the truth from the unimpeachable authority himself.

A few weeks later, a letter arrived, addressed in gothic ballpoint handwriting. It had a 32 cent Robert E. Lee stamp and a Memphis postmark. On a single sheet of lined paper, the following was written:

If you would like to read more of ’s work, you can find his excellent debut novel here.

His X account here.

His personal website here, and his Substack below:

https://www.booksbytroop.com/p/books

For those who don’t know, Virginia Gentry Magazine is run solely by me, your chief editor. However, it would be a great disservice to our many contributors to say that this is a one-man show. To all our contributors, past, present, and future, thank you for joining with us to further the cause of Southern Culture and preserve her beautiful history.

I also want to thank our many readers for their participation in this project. If not for you, we would be writing into the void. So, thank you for reading.

To another great year! God bless you all. — J.R. Dunmore

Post Script

There are a few things I need to say as we come upon this anniversary. Time is not so plentiful for me as it was when the magazine was founded. I stand in amazement at what has changed in the year since we started this magazine. You have been patient with me when work and home life have become hectic, and still stuck around to see what we would publish, and I am eternally grateful for it. For those who are concerned about these words, I don’t want to alarm you; there is no plan to end the magazine, but I do have to ask for more grace in this regard.

Since the birth of my second child, things have been much busier than anticipated, and my family is still patiently waiting to move into our new home. We should have been in before Christmas of 2024, but we are just now getting to the point where we think we will actually be moving. Dealing with the delays and details of building this house has been consuming. For this, I apologize.

However, there is something more pressing: my current job wants to promote me in the not-so-distant future. By all means, this is welcome, but with it comes even less time to write and manage the magazine.

As of right now, I have a handful of books to review that I am trying to work through as much as time permits. To those who have sent me books to review, I do apologize for the delay. Things have been exceptionally busy here on the home front. The reviews will be written! If I could only find the time to read and write regularly. As soon as life permits, they will be published. One of which has already been started.

Going forward, there may be changes to the regularity of the articles and essays, again, for this I apologize, but my family needs me more than the magazine at present.

I do hope that this message doesn’t scare anyone away. We aren’t going anywhere. For those who took the time to read this, thank you. — J.R.

Landmesser’s story illustrates that dissent is possible, even in the face of peer pressure. Today, we honor his defiance in the face of evil. He shows that not everybody succumbed to Nazi pressure to conform, dissent was possible, even if painful for the dissenter.

In a similar fashion, Virginia showed that political dissent in the face of evil was possible, even if, like Landmesser, it would be painful for the Commonwealth. On April 4, 1861, the Convention of the people of Virginia voted down secession by a two to one majority. Virginia was trying to craft a compromise that would bring the seceded states back into the Union. The same time, Lincoln sent a military expedition that included thousands of soldiers and sailors and hundreds of cannons to Ft. Sumter. Before this force could land, Confederate forces subdued Ft. Sumter, giving Lincoln the war he needed. Lincoln refused to recognize the independence of the Confederate States and called for troops to invade and overthrow by military force the elected state governments of the states from South Carolina to Texas. By the terms of the Constitution, President Lincoln had committed treason. Many northern states gleefully joined Lincoln in his treason. When the telegram arrived in Richmond, however, the moderate Unionists in the convention and indeed the governor could not believe it was real. Governor John Letcher wondered if some “mischievous person” had taken control of the telegraph and sent the message as a spoof. When mail arrived confirming the reality of the telegram, moderate Unionism collapsed. This act was antidemocratic, unconstitutional, and violent.

On April 17, Virginia’s August Landmesser moment had arrived. The Virginia Convention voted again on secession, and this time, secession won by a two to one majority. The proximate cause of Virginia’s secession was the change in the nature of the Union, from a voluntary association of sovereign states to a consolidated empire not controlled by the Constitution. The people of Virginia then voted in a plebiscite on May 23 endorsing secession 125,950 to 20,373.

Virginia, like August Landmesser, when presented with the demand by the majority to take part in evil, declined. Landmesser paid a steep price for his defiance. Virginia did as well.

I am proud to be a Virginian, proud of Virginia’s stand. When Lincoln and the northern majority were screeching that everyone join them in their illegal, unconstitutional, and violent attack on the states they themselves said were still in the Union, the Old Dominion said, “No. We will not support that effort. In fact, we will not even remain in a Union where such an evil policy is possible. Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina joined Virginia in their opposition, setting an example of doing right in the face of evil, cost what it may. Tens of thousands of Virginians died to defend Virginia’s right to be governed as her people wanted. The state was wrecked in the imperialistic war that the Union waged. Virginia, having lost the war for independence, was summarily kicked out of the Union by northern Republicans, and Virginians denied the right to vote. Virginia and the other Confederate States set an example for future generations that defiance was possible, even when painful. We can all be thankful for their example.

I first came across them about a year ago via X.com, but it wasn’t until a few months ago that I began to really pay attention to the work that they were doing. For the uninitiated, Monuments Across Dixie is a historical preservation group dedicated to keeping our Confederate heritage open and accessible to the public by the creation of new monuments. It was through the ongoing project to recreate and erect a one-to-one replica of Henry Shrady and Leo Lentelli’s General Lee statue that once stood proudly in Charlottesville, Va., that I came to pay close attention to them. At the time, they were giving away a numbered replica desk statue of the very same monument for a specific donation. You can find a picture of my desk statue below.

After that, I reached out and asked them if they would be willing to do a short interview (just as much to satisfy my own curiosity as to give them more exposure). You will find that below.

VG: What inspired the formation of Monuments Across Dixie, and how has your mission evolved over time?

MAD: The moment they removed the 1st monument, I realized it had to be countered in some way. In 2017 the idea was created, If they move a monument, let's get one back up that we can control. The mission has always been, control the land, control the monument, control the narrative.

VG: Excellent. How do you define “historical preservation” in the context of creating new monuments? In other words, what does historical preservation mean to your organization as you create new moments?

MAD: It's hard to preserve what you don't own. Its unfortunate that a large majority of the monuments were gifted to local or state governments. However, we can preserve the original intent of placement and the meaning through new monuments, parks, and seeking ownership of original monuments. We also encourage groups to seek out friendly local governments now to gain control of the land and monuments before demographics shift. We also support the creation of private parks that are accessible to the public. Having 100% access to monuments gives us the opportunity to undo what the media has done. We can again celebrate our ancestors without having to ask for government permission to gather or fly a battle flag.

VG: That’s wonderful. Would you walk us through your process for selecting which historical events or figures to commemorate?

MAD: We do that by request.

Interesting. How do you balance historical accuracy with artistic interpretation when conceptualizing a new monument? Or is this left to the commissioned artist?

MAD: We gather photos, do rough sketches, digital mock-ups to send to the sculptor before the clay sculpture begins. They review them. They may ask for different angles or closeups. We make edits to the clay sculpture once it's completed. That process takes weeks.

VG: What funding models do you rely on, and how do you secure the necessary resources for these large-scale projects?

MAD: We've used a variety of models to make projects happen. Groups will reach out wanting to do a project and we help make it happen. With the Charlottesville Lee, Captain Ellsworth’s Telegraph SCV Camp is doing the primary fundraising.

VG: How do you plan for the long-term maintenance and preservation of the monuments once they are erected? Also, what are some of the biggest challenges your society faces in erecting new monuments, both logistically and politically?

MAD: The groups that raise them have plans to take care of them long-term. Raising new monuments just depends on the will of the people. If a group wants to raise a new monument, we help make it happen

VG: In what ways do you measure the impact of your monuments on public understanding of history?

MAD: Owning the monument prevents contextual perversion that many original monuments now have through government signage. Being able to tell our story is crucial in preserving our history and heritage.

VG: What upcoming projects or initiatives are you most excited about, and how do they align with your long-term vision for historical preservation?

MAD: Our goal is to counter every removal. Anytime we can make a removal null and void, that’s exciting. There are plans to rebuild the New Orleans Lee statue after we complete the statue in Charlottesville.

VG: That it is! Last one. What advice would you offer to other communities or organizations looking to engage in similar projects?

MAD: We make the process as simple as possible to assist both individuals and groups. From fundraising ideas all the way to the delivery of the statue.

VG: Thank you so much for taking the time to answer some questions about your organization. Is there anything else you would like to say?

MAD: This idea ironically isn't a new concept. A few years ago I found an old Confederate Veterans magazine with an advertisement that had the same concept. (Image below)

MAD Cont.: We literally used almost identical verbiage We could be raising monuments weekly if people would buy into this idea.

What we want people to remember is that defeat is a mindset. We have to take action and take ownership and not rely on government officials on any level to promote and protect our Southern Heritage. Flip the script, and turn every removal into an opportunity to defeat their will. Change the headline! We can either continue to read that government officials removed a monument to appease the social justice mob or read that Southern citizens placed a new monument that anti-Southern public officials can't remove.

Thanks for reading this interview. Good people are still doing good work for our heritage, and I am here for it!

If you would like to find Monuments Across Dixie on X, you can find them here.

If you are interested in donating to their monument projects, you can find their website here.

In my initial article entitled The Lie About Lee, I aimed to thoroughly address and debunk the factual inaccuracies presented by Mrs. Pryor in her portrayal of Robert E. Lee (stated above). There are numerous distortions throughout her account, including the alleged whipping of Mary Norris, the so-called escape of Wesley Norris, the fabricated existence of a whipping post, and the unfounded accusations that Mrs. Pryor claims Lee never responded to. These elements, when closely examined, reveal a story filled with inconsistencies that do not align with historical records.

In recent correspondence with a fellow compatriot, he commented on my earlier essay, The Lie About Lee, saying,

“That was a real nice demonstration of the flaws in Pryor’s arguments. But you know there are two ways to lie. Tell an outright falsehood or cover up and suppress exonerating evidence, something Pryor also did. So let me call your two cents and raise you three more.”

He proceeded to elucidate the truth of the matter to the further detriment of Pryor’s carefully constructed narrative.

To begin, the first Norris to accuse Lee was not Wesley, but his father Leonard (pictured below).1 In 1863, a Union soldier wrote of a conversation with this Norris, in which Leonard made fiery claims about Robert E. Lee. In Leonard’s version of events, “all the slaves were assembled to see the flogging.” But what they allegedly saw was completely different from the Wesley Norris account. In his version of the story, five were whipped, not three. Also, the reason for the whipping was totally different as well—supposedly, the starving slaves were out fishing at night so that they could feed themselves after “a hard day’s work in the rain,” rather than an attempted escape from the plantation at Arlington. In addition to that, who whipped the woman was in question; Pryor’s account claims the overseer was the one giving the lashes, while Leonard Norris claims it was Lee himself.23 The story was then spread by newspapers throughout the North.4

Additionally, it didn’t help the strength of his testimony that he made other false claims, like that he had seven children (The Raftsman Journal; May 27, 1863 claims he had “a score” or 20 by our modern usage)—which he alleged were taken in the middle of the night and sold South (Arlington records show he factually had four). One can only conclude that Pryor deliberately chose to cover up this eyewitness account because if it ever came under scrutiny, it would reveal her lie about Lee.

So, what motivated Wesley Norris, seven years after the fact, to abruptly make his accusation? Pryor doesn’t want you to know. Other historians have noted that his assertion came “at the very moment when the fate of the Civil Rights bill hung in the balance.”5 Since Lee was not fully on board, he needed to be discredited. They couldn’t use Leonard’s fabrication-filled account, so they enlisted a writer to give a more believable version from Wesley. For the Norris family, this development was most opportune. At the time, they and other Arlington slave families were petitioning Congress for land at Arlington.6 The possible sympathy generated could definitely help their prospects. So, the collaborators moved ahead. (Note, just over a month later, a bill was introduced in Congress to award the Syphax slave family acreage at Arlington. It was passed and signed into law shortly thereafter. The other slave families were not so lucky).7

Since all the slaves were assembled to see the flogging, there were some fifty eyewitnesses to confirm Wesley’s account. Many of these former slaves were living at the Freedmen’s Village not a mile away. Verification should have been simple. Yet no one came forward or was found to substantiate the claims.8 Things may have stayed that way, but decades later, the Arlington House planned a major renovation. As part of this plan, they sought out former slaves to tell of their experiences and remembrances. For our purposes, they could not have chosen better. They were the four nieces of the alleged whipping victim, Mary Norris. Additionally, at this time, a local newspaper interviewed James Parks, the brother of the third “runaway” who was allegedly whipped. So, what did they say of this troubling and possibly haunting event?

Nothing…

Instead, they said the Lees were good to them and especially to their mother, Selina Norris Gray, the sister of the infamous Wesley and Mary Norris of Pryor’s narrative.9 James Parks stated “he had always been well treated and knew nothing to the contrary with respect to the other slaves.”10 True to form, Pryor mentions none of this.

It is also worth mentioning that the National Parks Service directly states, regarding the relationship that the Lees had with Mrs. Gray: “Selina was the personal maid of Mrs. Robert E. Lee. In 1861, under the threat of Union occupation, the Lee family evacuated Arlington, and Mrs. Lee entrusted the household keys, symbolizing that the responsibility of the family’s material possessions was left to Selina Gray.”11 Clearly, the Lee family held Mrs. Gray in high regard. They could have left those keys with any White man who was a loyal friend of the family, yet they chose her. Would Mrs. Gray have been so loyal to the Lee family if two of her siblings had really been brutally beaten as the NPS and Pryor claim? If so, then it would follow that she was a traitor to her family, but a reading of her history implies nothing of the sort, probably because there never was an event like that for competing loyalties in her life.

In fact, when the United States Army seized the Arlington Estate in May of 1861 and Federal officers occupied the house, Mrs. Gray discovered that some of the family’s treasures had been stolen. She confronted the bluecoats and ordered them "not to touch any of Mrs. Lee's things." The NPS article goes on to say, “Gray alerted General Irvin McDowell, commander of the United States troops, to the importance of the Washington heirlooms. The remaining pieces were sent to the Patent Office for safekeeping.”12 This is not the behavior of a vindictive woman who one would assume would use the opportunity of Union occupation to get some kind of revenge on the family that allegedly abused her own.

As far as I am concerned, that about settles it. The more one delves into the factual evidence, the more it becomes painfully obvious that Mrs. Pryor’s narrative contains several significant holes that affect the credibility of her claims. What is particularly troubling is the fact that, despite these clear discrepancies, the National Park Service (NPS) continues to uphold and disseminate these misrepresentations as part of their official stance on Robert E. Lee—our Marble Man. This speaks volumes about the broader institutional commitment to promoting certain narratives, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Rather than prioritize the truth, as they are supposed to do, there seems to be a preference toward information that supports a preconceived agenda.

The sooner these facts come to light, the faster the lie about Lee will die. A special thanks to Andrew Johnson and J.R. Dunmore for providing this historical information.

Before I begin, I think it is helpful for us to acknowledge that while it is a noble tradition among self-conscious Southerners to honor the past, the aim of my work here will not be to light a candle in remembrance of a time and place that once was and will never be again... to pine for a world that has passed. All true Southerners are saddled with a real sense of nostalgia that is soulful, heartfelt, weighty, and ever-present. We are drawn to the past because the past was a time of bravery and courage, nobility and heroism, where men of valor rode out against great odds, to meet their fate and we identify with these heroes, our heroes, and name them among the great men of history. We are also compelled to reminisce about the civilization that was lost.. a people marked by order, beauty, and integrity where truth could be spoken without consequence. A civilization free of the inescapable, soul-sucking liberalism that hangs in the air all around us. It was a true high culture where greatness was pursued, whose older forms and fleeting shadows haunt us to this day. This is all good and beautiful, but not my purpose.

Having spent some personal time in Southern circles, heritage societies, and activist groups, I will most confidently confess that we spend too much time looking in our rearview mirror. It is important to remember the past and honor the deeds and traditions of our forebearers, but the remembrance we carry for our past, this backward-looking gaze, shouldn’t prohibit us from clearly seeing the world around us, nor should it stop us from looking at what lies ahead. We Southerners also waste an enormous amount of time playing historical and political hypothetical games. We often hear “Imagine if Stonewall hadn’t been shot!” or “In a Free Dixie..!” These exercises are fun and provide a momentary respite from the dreariness of reality. However amusing these mental escapes may be, our present reality demands sobriety. We have more pressing matters, matters that pertain to the here and now, matters that pertain to the living and not to the dead. None of us can go back to Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863. We have today to pay the dues owed to our posterity, and perhaps tomorrow.

If the Lord permits, I hope to slowly walk through some of the great works of our Southern fathers that expound upon Southern identity, culture, and tradition with the readers of Virginia Gentry to seine insight, lessons, and application from these works. I also hope to extend our understanding of what the Southern Tradition is in light of the last 75 years, to connect the intellectual to the practical, and in doing so, achieve a synthesis between our past, and our present, and lay out a roadmap for our future.

Until then, Deo Vindice.

If you are interested in getting more familiar with Mr. McCubbin, you can find him on X here.

When moving to Oxford from Alabama became a possibility, I thought “that’s neat” and then went about my day. When it became a certainty - the house bought, the jobs acquired - I became a little more interested in Faulkner the man. Before we moved here, I had never read a word of his since high school, (Light in August) which I don’t remember a bit of, anyhow. I knew that he was perhaps the greatest American writer to ever live, and those I respect said so, so I was happy to take that at face value. After we moved, we finally went to visit his estate, which I enjoyed about as much as I enjoy seeing any old large manor which has been maintained well. I was surprised to find that, even on a cold rainy weekday, the parking lot is full of visitors of all kinds. Folks from out in the county, parents with kids, high schoolers, academics. That is to say, I found that Faulkner was -is- as much a person of particular interest as he is a point of pride, even for those who don’t fully ~understand~ his work in the way many academics will claim is necessary for full appreciation.

I began to collect his work and thousands of pages of reference material concerning southern literature and culture. It became clear to me, as my writing endeavors evolved from a hobby to a craft, that it was necessary to understand those that came before me as a presupposition of contributing to a literary tradition.

My in-laws have been in town for a few days to see our seven month old son. They expressed interest in going to Faulkner’s home, so we made the trek. Upon returning, my father in law, who’s known to almost never read fiction, expresses a desire to read some of Faulkner’s work. Prepared for comments such as those, I retrieved from my bookshelf two books: The Bear and a combined volume of As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury. Both were mass-produced and as such are worth very little, but I am partial to them as I am to all the books I own. The combined volume is from the late 40s, nearly triple my own age. I give them to him and say “happy reading.”

He begins to read The Bear, and I mention that I have begun to amass encyclopedic information about southern fiction. I collect those as well to show him the many thousands of pages they consist of. He looks at them, returns them to the bookshelf, and says “someone probably spent their entire careers writing these, but does anyone even read them?”

The comment makes me want to shout “Yes, me and my friends!”, but I respond with something milder: “You would be surprised.”

Like me, my father in law was born and raised in Florida. Many people don’t understand that Florida has some pretty incredible disparities in both culture and living standards. Between Miami and Tallahassee, there are many counties which rank as some of the poorest and least educated in the country. Hillbilly, Southern, and Redneck in every sense of the words, small islands that still belong to the Deep South despite being surrounded by Hispanics and miserable retirees from New York. I am from the poorest of its parts. Double-wides and dirt yards, rat snakes for friends and longleaf pine forests for adolescent, fantastical worldbuilding. I went off, joined the military, traveled the world, got a STEM degree, and now code for a living, but those are still my people. Perhaps moreso now than they have ever been.

I have read the Florida equivalents of Faulkner: namely Smith and Rawlings. I see marsh tackies, cattle, and endless scrub as much as I see ugly stucco buildings thrown up overnight, and highways that decimate everything unique to make way for GDP-maximizing. The palmetto and rattlesnake and swamp are as much there as they ever were.

Every year, more people move to the South, and every year, there are fewer Southerners. People vaguely understand that it requires a history, a sum of all previous days, in order to arrive at the current one. But the nuance of such facts is frequently lost to such nebulous things as Pragmatism, Need, and Schedules. “Do you really need to know such things”? Well, not need in any sense that you comprehend, Bob. But someone ought to know it. As they do, the old ones die. Things ought not die with them.

To be fair, this can be said of most any region in America. Localism and regional curiosity shrivels on the vine to be subsumed by the corporate kudzu, starved of the light and air required to carry seeds across the days. Even still, some of us are bent on slashing it away, though it may grow faster than we can cut it out.

I don’t expect my son to appreciate history in such ways, or even like reading southern fiction as much as I do, but he will come to understand that history is not a vacuum, that today will at some point be history, too. That “Days gone by” were only yesterday, and have more bearing on the Now than we usually give it credit for.

This article was originally published in The Double Dealer Magazine on Feb 17, 2025. You can find it and lots of other great content here:

The Double Dealer

The Double Dealer literary magazine

Plot

Victory Ruins follows the stolid and dutiful Arlen Breckenridge as he struggles between the duty owed to his family and the duty owed to his country at the outbreak of World War II, and continues to tell the story of these diametric loyalties as he marches across Europe and ultimately ends up at the place he started, even though that place is very different than he remembers it.

Theme & Genre

The book is a genuine piece of Southern Literature. Dealing with the immense pressures of place, identity, and tradition as they could only materialize in the rural South. These themes were presented in a way that only someone who grew up haunted by these same ghosts could do. Like Arlen, I can’t explain in words what ties me to the way and place of my fathers, but if you know anything about that way of being, no explanation is required. Yet, unfolded in the pages is the inner turmoil over such things that I, and so many others who grew up in the rural South are intimately familiar with. It was a beautiful thing to see that sentiment put into words, yet it still lacked a definition, because words alone can’t define such a thing, only feeling, duty, and tradition can.

This book is Agrarian Literature, but it is also equally Historical Military Fiction. Both elements are done equally well, and I was certain that the author was a veteran himself after reading how well he presented the interior life of a combat veteran. To my surprise, when I asked him, he told me that he had never been in military service. This alone was very impressive to me, for it shows that Mr. Brenegar has an intuitive understanding of human nature, grace under pressure, and what extreme duress can do to the human psyche.

Style

Victory Ruins reads like a classic piece of Southern Literature, and I would not have been surprised at all if someone had told me the book was written in the late 1940s. That is not to say that the writing is antiquated, but that I was completely immersed in a world that was presented so well that I swore the author had intimate knowledge of it. That is no small feat. In other words, this wasn’t a tale to be told, but a life lived and written out.

His prose is clean and not a single word was out of place. Frankly, the quality of the writing is better than just about every piece of mainstream fiction I’ve read in a very long time. If I were the head of one of the major publishing houses and the Victory Ruins manuscript made it to my desk, it would be published and distributed immediately.

The book is coherent with a strong plot, and there is a continuity in the interior life of Arlen that keeps our feet firmly planted on the ground when chaos seems to be everywhere else. These interior thoughts and struggles were an integral part of the style, as they often laid bare the truth that Arlen so desperately attempted to conceal in his exterior conduct and language.

Also, all of the characters were living people. Not just well-developed or well-written. I came away with the distinct feeling that each and every one of the characters was alive, or at least had lived once, and were dancing in Arlen's memories.

Final Thoughts

If the review has seemed brief up until this point, you would be correct. All of the usual categories of appraisal are strictly material, and unlike previous reviews in the magazine, there is nothing experimental about the writing that requires an explanation for the uninitiated.

This is where I want to interject with my own opinions and be completely and totally subjective.

Without exaggeration, Victory Ruins is the best book I’ve ever read, and at this point, it is my favorite piece of literary fiction. So much of what Arlen has felt, I have felt. So much of what Arlen has feared, I have feared. So much of what Arlen has struggled with, I have struggled with.

I laughed with Arlen, I cheered for him, I celebrated with him, and I wept with him. You know a character is good when you look back on the time spent with them, not as a time reading a story about an abstract personality, but the accumulation of memories in years of relationship with a dear friend, remembering their story as if you really had a part in it.

If you would like to buy this wonderful novel, you can buy it here.

If you are interested in the author, you can find his X account here, and his Substack here:

Books by Troop

(Mostly) Fiction by Troop Brenegar

By Troop Brenegar

SPOILERS BELOW

For those who don’t know me very well, I grew up on the remains of a farm, no longer active during my childhood. My grandfather bred horses, and my father was into cattle in his youth, trading it for crop in his maturity. In the span of three generations, the family farm was divided and shrank from about 70 acres to just 12. Most of that was done in my grandfather’s time. I don’t blame him, money was tight, and what’s a few acres here and there, right? Either way, like many old men, he didn’t have to deal with the results of those decisions. He sold land and he got money to live. I am certain he wasn’t thinking that his grandchildren wouldn’t see a penny of it or the land he sold to get it.

We still farm, just on ground that isn’t ours now. The old homeplace is still in the family, but I wonder if it will remain in the family by the time my childless aunt and uncle who live there pass.

Although this story isn’t totally sad, we have very recently relocated to 40 good acres not far from our original homeplace after a few years of sojourning in the nearby town. That is to say, I understand what Arlen is afraid of because it happened to us. Nobody who has an inextricable tie to the land wants to be parted from it. Going forward I aim to make a new legacy on this new ground for generations to come.

When Arlen is forced to mortgage the family farm or lose it at the end of the book, he does so to protect it in its entirety. A better prospect than selling it off one section at a time. I really admire him for that, and the author for writing him that way.

This is what I meant by a metaphysical quality and living characters. Arlen and I are the same, if not in reality, then in the way we are.

Maybe it’s my favorite book because it was written for me…

Thank you for reading this review. Now go get a copy of Victory Ruins!

Sprung By @CarolopolisTRE on X

Count your dead. Eyes affixed over threshing floor
Where dove flutter stalk to line: darting figure
Alight and chase, air soon columbine.
Sunflowers desire-dried downcast rattle;
Former selves rapture-age whisper wise
Affection; keen vision over and above
Propelled according to right reason,
With intelligent balancing; tuck into
Sorghum row, make it nice and neat.
Shield me, bring peace beyond understanding.

Robert E. Lee By Stephen Vincent Benét

The man was loved, the man was idolized, 
The man had every just and noble gift. 
He took great burdens and he bore them well, 
Believed in God but did not preach too much, 
Believed and followed duty first and last 
With marvellous consistency and force, 
Was a great victor, in defeat as great, 
No more, no less, always himself in both, 
Could make men die for him but saved his men 
Whenever he could save them was most kind 
But was not disobeyed was a good father, 
A loving husband, a considerate friend.

If you would like to see more of TRE’s work, you can find him on X here, and Substack here:

The Metic

Essays and Reviews from the Holy City

By Thomas Ellen

What defines Dixie Noir isn’t just its Southern setting or its gritty aesthetic—though the brooding heat, slow Southern drawls, and swamp-bound corpses certainly help. It’s a genre that speaks directly to the soul of the Southern ethos, rejecting the clinical detachment of traditional Noir in favor of something far more visceral. In the South, justice has always been personal. The concept of “self-help” that Dunmore describes—the willingness to take justice into one’s own hands—isn’t just a plot device; it’s a way of life.

This is the fundamental break between the stoic detectives of Raymond Chandler’s world and the protagonists of Dixie Noir. The hard-boiled detective is a man trapped within a crumbling system, resigned to play by the rules even when those rules betray him. The Dixie Noir protagonist, by contrast, sees the system for what it is—a façade—and steps outside it without hesitation. To him, loyalty, justice, and family matter more than laws ever could. Both protagonists are acutely aware of the system’s corruption. For the traditional Noir detective, this corruption is a tragic byproduct of poor governance. For the Southern Noir hero, it’s simply the way things are. For the Northerner, Tammany Hall was a tragedy; for the Southerner, it’s just politics as usual.

And here is where Dixie Noir sets itself apart. It rejects the cynicism and fatalism of traditional Noir. Instead, it clings tightly to a sense of hope—not in institutions, but in individuals. Where traditional Noir might leave its heroes broken or dead, Dixie Noir allows them to emerge transformed. Scarred, yes. Haunted, certainly. But alive, and all the better for the fight. If traditional Noir is the story of a man struggling to survive within a broken system, Dixie Noir is the story of a man who decides to break the system himself. It’s a genre for those who refuse to go quietly into the night.

As Dunmore points out Dixie Noir carves has its own aesthetic identity. It trades the dark, seedy underbelly of Northern cities for the suffocating humidity of the Gulf Coast, the rhythmic tap of rain on tin roofs, and the shadowed secrets of small towns tangled in kudzu and Spanish moss. It offers readers an invitation to a world where beauty and violence are forever intertwined, where dirt roads wind through landscapes as haunted as the histories of the characters who traverse them.

But its most important distinction lies in its relationship with the past. Dixie Noir inherits from its Southern Gothic roots a kind of spiritual PTSD that transcends generations, manifesting in the form of magical realism. This separates it from its more grounded, urban-centered Noir counterpart and gives it a sense of mystery and weight that feels uniquely Southern.

The South has always been a place where the line between the natural and the supernatural blurs. It is a land where the veil between the spiritual and temporal is disturbingly thin, where ghosts linger on front porches, family curses twist fate, and the land itself pulses with the memory of what once was. In Dixie Noir, this undercurrent of the uncanny doesn’t just add atmosphere—it actively shapes the narrative. It hangs heavy over its characters, influencing them in ways both subtle and explicit, without an attempt at rationalization.

In the South, the land breathes with a life of its own, whispering the secrets of the past to those willing to listen. Storms don’t merely rage—they become omens, manifestations of wrath or redemption. And the characters, even the most pragmatic among them, move through a world where signs and superstitions carry as much weight as fingerprints and shell casings. This haunting spirituality defines the genre, rooting the fight for justice in a landscape where the spiritual and the corporeal are irrevocably intertwined.

If you would like to read the first two Dixie Noir novels you can find p.c.m. christ’s book Give Up The Ghost here, and Mr. Slaughter’s book Crimson Veil here.

If you would like to follow Mr. Slaughter on X, you can find him here.

If you would like to read more of ’s work you can find it below:

Old South Repository

Welcome to “The Old South Repository" a multifaceted blog that weaves together the rich tapestry of Southern culture, insightful political analysis, and captivating fiction.

By John Slaughter

I want to thank my dear friend for this response. It is beautiful and captures everything that I failed to in my article on the emergent new genre of Southern Literature that is becoming known as Dixie Noir.

I can’t wait to see what you write next, John. — J.R. Dunmore, EIC Virginia Gentry Magazine

This was the creative capacity that Adam had been given in the Garden of Eden—the naming of created things. Yet, this function of Adam—his exercise of creative power—was merely the recognition of the works that God himself wrought in blood and bone and spirit. In other words, Adam’s contribution to creation was to be an observer and give recognition to the transcendent reality of being. Likewise, below you will read my observation and recognition of the organic development of something that is both old and new and beautiful…

Definitions are important

Before we go any further, we need to define our terms, Dixie, and Noir. As a writer, I believe that words and definitions are important, if they weren’t, you wouldn’t be reading this right now. So, Dixie: the colloquial name for the South (Per common usage), and Noir: a genre of crime film or fiction characterized by cynicism, fatalism, and moral ambiguity (Per Google definitions). You would think that the combination of these terms and their definitions would be an accurate appraisal of this new genre, but you would be mistaken.

Observations and Recognitions

I think the fundamental break between traditional Detective-Fiction/Hard-Boiled Noir like that of Raymond Chandler and what authors like and are doing lies in the differences of the Southern worldview… let me explain.

American crime Noir was a genre that was defined by the attitude and aesthetics of the dark underbellies of big cities like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles in the 1920s and 1930s. Noir of this kind usually features a detective struggling to wade through the mire he is surrounded by, attempting to solve crimes in a corrupt police department with intelligent enemies and beautiful women who happen to have a foot in the same underworld that he is fighting against. The detective is usually a cynic, he sees no hope, but the fight against entropy keeps him going, at least until he is killed by his foil, or until his rampant alcoholism and nicotine addiction kill him.

In short, like all Puritans and many Yankees found in these cities throughout history, he is a systems man, and he is willing to fight the darkness as best he can within the parameters set for him by his moral and ethical code. What makes this kind of Noir is the fact that the system is unable to resolve these aberrations, and he is stuck, unable to find redress for the crimes he sees daily, but his ethical code won’t let him resort to self-help (taking justice into his own hands).

The Southern disposition doesn’t struggle with this aversion to deviation from the system. We are relations people, not systems people. What a Yankee would look at as blatant corruption in a small-town cop overlooking his cousin’s moonshine operation, a Southerner would be more likely to call it family loyalty. Likewise, if a teenage girl was raped in the North, the police would be expected to deal with the entirety of the aftermath, whereas, in the South, more than a few families would become judge, jury, and executioner. I believe this is the fundamental difference between Noir and Dixie Noir for no other reason than I believe that it is the difference between the dispositions of Northerners and Southerners. That is to say, Dixie Noir is about men who are not afraid to resort to self-help for the resolution to their challenges, justice system be damned.

However, the differences do not end there. If we look at the adjectives used by Google to describe Noir I think we can recognize that Dixie Noir is a subversion of its traditional counterpart. The words used to describe Noir by Google are cynicism, fatalism, and moral ambiguity. Now, both Give Up The Ghost and Crimson Veil, maintain a harsh grittiness and realism about the depths of human depravity, but I would not accuse either work of being cynical, fatalistic, or morally ambiguous.

Where traditional Noir is hopeless, Dixie Noir is hopeful. Where traditional Noir is resigned to its fate, Dixie Noir is willing to fight to achieve its aims. Where traditional Noir is morally ambiguous, Dixie Noir maintains the dichotomy of good and evil, and it is this dichotomy that makes the operation of the protagonist outside of the system justified. In traditional Noir, there is no greater good than the system or institution. That symbolic structure that the protagonist finds himself in is at war with darkness and itself, a mirror of the hero. In both examples of Dixie Noir that I’ve reviewed, the institution is secondary to justice. Both AR and JD are willing to break the law to do what’s right. Over and over again. That implies that there is an objective good and evil, an objective sense of justice, and an objective best way to fight the antagonists. The more I think about this as a unique genre, the more I think the protagonist could never be a cop or detective, at least not a cop or detective who wasn’t willing to take the law into his own hands. It would seem Dixie Noir is the genre for the righteous outlaws.

There is also the rejection of defeatism, there is no resignation to fate, there is only putting the world into order, one way or another. As Christopher Sandbatch said in a Xeet recently,

In 2025 the sad boys of literature are gonna bring back the happy ending.

Both of these books have “happy endings.” That is to say, they don’t end with hopelessness. I don’t know if either book has an ideal ending, they are still subject to the realistic and gritty consequences that dealing with the underworld comes with. Yet, the protagonists are not helpless, they are fighters who emerge from the underworld transformed not defeated.

Like I said, self-help vs systems.

There is also the matter of Aesthetics

Dixie Noir doesn’t have to take place in a big city, but it must take place in the South, or Southern adjacent regions. It is marked by the hot nights with loose women on balmy summer evenings, brooding reflections by the hero under the sound of rainstorms on old tin roofs, and bloated corpses floating up in the swamps that span across the Gulf coast. It incorporates the beautiful prose that the Southern Literary Tradition is known for, and isn’t afraid to use equally beautiful language to describe a murder in exquisitely visceral detail. It acknowledges the burden of the past on the South and her people as all great Southern works do. Not fearing the confrontation of her scars and their contemporary implications in the narrative.

I’ve been rambling for a while, I think this is just the beginning of a new Southern Literary movement and I very much look forward to seeing where it goes next.

If you want to follow the two pioneers of Dixie Noir that were mentioned above, you can find them here:

Heretical Realism

By p.c.m. christ

Old South Repository

Welcome to “The Old South Repository" a multifaceted blog that weaves together the rich tapestry of Southern culture, insightful political analysis, and captivating fiction.

By John Slaughter

Please feel free to comment, I would be interested to hear your thoughts about Dixie Noir. Let me know if you think I am onto something or missed the mark. I am sure I will write more about Dixie Noir as time passes, but I wanted to address this phenomenon in real time.

The problem with this Abraham Lincoln is that he never existed. At least not in reality. We know for a fact that Lincoln wanted to send the blacks back to Africa—even four days prior to his death.12 We also know he handled lawsuits involving runaway slaves in order to return them to their masters, just as we understand that his emancipation proclamation did not free a single slave in northern occupied territories, or states that still remained within the Union.34 Finally, we know that he signed letters to all of the Slaveholding States where he vowed to support the Northern-proposed 13th amendment, The Corwin Amendment which would make slavery a Constitutional right. Many Lincoln apologists say that this was only an attempt to keep the South in the Union, but historical realists see that there was no reason for the South to secede if by their staying in the Union, slavery would be protected by the Constitution!5

What else could it take to blow the lid off the never-ending Lincoln myth? Or should we say, the myth of the kindly President Lincoln?

Perhaps a recently uncovered document has proven without a doubt that Abraham Lincoln, was more like the men the court-historians, BLM mobs, and blue-haired activists hate. A document that proves he himself owned and had slaves sold on his behalf. The following document is in the Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago, entitled “Lincoln's Order to sell his slaves, answer to RE Edwards, etc.,” Oldham Todd & Co., 1850.

Kevin Orlin Johnson, the author of The Lincolns in the White House found this piece of history in a dusty box at the Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago, unsurprisingly uncatalogued since it was bequeathed to the library in 1930. The affidavit was written in 1850 by the Lincoln family attorneys Kinkead and Breckinridge. It’s Lincoln’s answer to a Bill in Chancery filed in Fayette County about the disposition of property that the couple had inherited from Robert Todd (Abraham Lincoln's father-in-law). It certifies that Lincoln and his wife “are willing that the slaves mentioned in the Bill shall be sold on such terms as the Court may think advisable.”

We knew that when Lincoln married Mary Todd he inherited the slaves from her father’s estate, but up until recently we only assumed he sold them. It's a fact, that Mr. Lincoln inherited slaves and did not free them, as so many would assume a righteous egalitarian such as himself would, but profited by having them sold back into slavery.

Now, to the naysayers and Lincoln-worshippers who currently have a candle lit by his effigy, you might say, this was 1850—Lincoln was a changed man by the time of the Civil War. Was he though? As I previously stated, up until his death he was in favor of repatriating the blacks back to Africa. We also know that after the first states seceded in 1861, Lincoln sent letters to the state governors, telling them he supported the Corwin Amendment, a Northern proposed measure that would have permanently protected slavery within the U.S. Constitution.6

You may be wondering, why is it that I should care about dismantling a leftist idol?

I have a simple answer.

Most of the modern American attitudes toward “diversity,” racial relations, and the current demographic shift that is underway in the United States are defined by the pseudo-sacrosanct so-called Civil Rights Era, and that episode in American history is predicated on the false claim that America of old fought a Civil War for the sake of egalitarianism and racial equality. When we pull down the mask that our enemies placed on the despot Lincoln and the Union of the 1860s as a whole, we see not flawed egalitarians as so many Lincolnites attempt to claim as reality, but rather a hypocritical imperialist who realized they had to shift the focus of a war that they were losing support for to that of a moral crusade against their enemies, the allegedly evil, racist, and demonic South, and his anti-Southern henchmen in blue carrying out the whims of the empire. (However, that is not to say that all Union soldiers were aware of the darkness being conceived in Washington under Lincoln and the Radical Republicans.)

When the 13th Amendment is seen in light of this, you begin to realize it was nothing more than the Northern weaponization of the newly freed black vote to keep the South firmly under the heel of the rapidly centralizing Federal government. As the great American Civil War historian Shelby Foote once said,

In other words, a false Lincoln created by modern propagandists is used to evangelize Heritage America to accept demographic replacement, scorn their history, and ultimately hate themselves in service of an ideal that is as foreign to them as the flood of third-world immigrants drowning their country.

They hide behind the hand he had to play in preserving the Union and use that as their claim to American tradition. When in reality, they use this false image for the promotion of civic-nationalism and deracination which seem to be the only things they desire for all of us.

The Lincolnites, just like Lincoln are nothing but America-hating hypocrites. For, it was the sword of ole’ Abe that destroyed the Federal Union as it was conceived by the founders and replaced it with a despotic regime that continues to damage the soul of America.

Yet, time and time again I was blown away. Honestly, there were a few times when I was taken aback by how effortless the prose felt. Very seldom a clunky sentence would catch me off guard and break my trance, but I think that says something about the quality of the prose overall. The few times something felt dissonant, it was obviously an aberration, and no sooner did I read the sentence the next line would pull me back in even deeper than I was initially.

All in all, Crimson Veil was an absolute pleasure to read.

Plot

Set in Arcadia on the Alabama-Georgia border in the years following World War II, Crimson Veil follows the life and career of JD Hooks, a lawyer’s son, and private eye as he is offered a case to find a missing person. Yet, as he digs deeper into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the disappearance he begins to uncover terrifying realities about the place he calls home.

Theme & Genre

This is a bona fide thriller and another great installment of Dixie Noir. I often found myself rushing to get back to the text after work or doing things around the house, as any good thriller should make you want to do. However, to break it down to a designation so simple would not do the work justice. Although this book is a thriller, and “Dixie Noir,” it is so much more…

More than a few times, the prose began to venture into the fray of consciousness, conflict, and being, ala Cormac McCarthy. One could only assume the musings found within the narrative of Crimson Veil were planted inside of the author at some point during his deployments to the Middle East and the combat experiences he had there as a US Marine. Something about being engaged in “the ultimate trade” stirs a man to a reflection few others are capable of apart from the experience of war.

Yet, it was not all despair for the fallen state of men and the reckoning of the chaos that pours forth from them. Very evident throughout the story is the tangible possibility of redemption. Crimson Veil, like all good myths, is fundamentally about sacrifice and transcendence. In pagan/secular myth, Odin, Horus, and Faust had to give something valuable up to gain a revelation about their being and reality. In the only true myth, Christ had to be crucified for those undeserving to achieve greater glory for all, and JD Hooks has done a little bit of both. Losing himself in the darkness that surrounds him paying the price of his soul for forbidden knowledge, and sacrificing himself in an attempt to save the undeserving and unaware.

*Note: J.R. Dunmore is a devout Christian who believes that the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection are the one place in human history where myth met reality in the divine person of Jesus Christ. Think of it as a hyperreal synchronicity if you will, or where the meta-narrative and historical narrative collide.

This would come as a surprise if it was from a secular author, but as I know and his deep faith in Christ, I realize that these themes whether intentional or not make themselves manifest in the work as a result of what is inside him. The effects were obvious, and frankly, they were a breath of fresh air. To have a gritty protagonist that was impossible to hate is rare. Most of them are insufferable and cliche, but in JD Hooks, I found someone who I could always relate to as a man, even though I couldn’t always relate to all of his experiences. Reading his story was very much like reading the story of King David. Selah.

Style

has a unique way of writing, and I believe from reading the text it is apparent that he is a very visual thinker. This style is most evident when he is transitioning scenes throughout the book. I think his way of doing this would lend itself incredibly well to film, and with minor adaptation, Crimson Veil could easily be a screenplay. Perhaps even the next season of True Detective? Make no mistake though, Crimson Veil is a piece of literary fiction, it is just the author’s style that lends it to the medium of film.

As far as the composition of the story goes, it was executed well, it never felt amateurish, and the foreshadowing was subtle, which made the climax much more enjoyable. I often figure out the plot of a movie while I am still watching the first half in the theatre, but I was unable to divine the direction of the narrative and it was glorious. This is an indictment against the mainstream writers and a compliment to Mr. Slaughter.

In addition to this, Mr. Slaughter like so many great Southern writers who have gone before him, excelled at creating interesting characters who felt real. Other than the protagonist, I was most impressed with his hero’s paramour, John has an uncanny ability to write believable women that come to life on the page before you.

Another pleasant surprise was the technicality of his writing. I’ve only read a few books that have come out of the Twitter/X sphere, but those that I have read thus far have blown me away. What has most impressed me about Mr. Slaughter is his evident lack of experience writing long-form fiction, as pointed out by the great author Tom Edgemon about Crimson Veil,

“Slaughter has delivered a fine piece of Noir with all the trappings of great fiction. Given this is his first novel, if his subsequent ones are any better, he very well may put the rest of us out of business.” — Tom Edgemon

There really isn’t much more I can add to that. Reading Crimson Veil was very much like what I imagine a college football scout feels like when he goes to a no-name school in a rural town and finds the next Tom Brady or Brett Favre.

Final Thoughts

Honestly, if there was anything I could leave you with, it would be to buy the book. So far as I can tell, Crimson Veil is an instant classic of Dixie Noir. Well-written and beautifully composed, I would encourage everyone to read this book.

If you would like to buy Crimson Veil click here. If you would like to follow on X click here. You can also find his Substack below.

Old South Repository

Welcome to “The Old South Repository" a multifaceted blog that weaves together the rich tapestry of Southern culture, insightful political analysis, and captivating fiction.

By John Slaughter

Thank you for taking the time to read this review today. If you enjoyed reading this, please share it with a friend, word of mouth is how we grow. God bless y’all, and Deo Vindice. — J.R. Dunmore, EIC

Merry Christmas, y’all.

— J.R. Dunmore, EIC, Virginia Gentry Magazine