A Connecticut Yankee in the Confederate Army

Written By Meade Randolph

Before any other identity, I am a Virginian. It defines my worldview and is unquestionably the backbone of my political compass. My maternal line, in every direction, has been in the Old Dominion since either the 17th or 18th century, and my hometown is named for my family. My lineage is replete with notable Virginia names, Cavaliers that left England around the time of the English Civil War, as well as yeoman farmers that epitomize the vision of Jefferson. I am firm in my belief that it is this combination - gentle breeding and hardworking farm families - that precipitated the most civilized society in the world. The decline of this society in the modern era has been to the detriment of the nation, and it’s no coincidence that the country is now like a ship without a sail in the absence of real, heritage Virginia statesmen.

I grew up on a farm with my grandparents, and we had a large extended family spread across Southside Virginia. Looking back at this beautiful time in my life, I’ve realized that I was fortunate to witness the last vestige of what Old Virginia was actually like; it’s also why I fight, and why I am an unapologetic conservative and nativist. Spending time with my grandparents and their contemporaries gave me a glimpse into a world of unparalleled kindness, gratitude, morality, respect, and a sense of duty that does not exist in the modern, consumer-driven world. It is difficult to even articulate the zeitgeist and aesthetics of that world that disappeared around the time of the baby boom. My generation, even in the same location, were entirely removed from this spirit; going from school to home was like navigating two worlds. This homogenous, high-trust community that once existed most likely collapsed through its own naivety and has been spiraling ever since into a shell of its former self. In reality, it was indeed their kindness and acceptance of outsiders that dealt the final blow. There are traces of this society left, certainly, but in general the spirit is gone. The power structure in Virginia is now mostly dominated by transplants, and its colleges and universities that once served as finishing schools for the First Families of Virginia are now mostly filled with the children of these itinerant, corporatist transplants. Virginia, to me, has suffered a greater cultural loss than any state in the South, and it has paralleled the decline of the nation overall.

I, like others, have historically fallen into the trap of attempting to explain to challengers the value of the South as a region. I’ve argued with people about the war between the states and defended my heritage as noble and just. I’ve made all of the common legal arguments against Lincoln, but I don’t have to cite books to understand the morality of my ancestors; I have felt it and lived it. That is not something that any of our critics can say, as their roots in the nation are very likely much more shallow. I’ve come to realize that it is a fool’s errand to try and justify my existence to others who will never understand and have taken a step back in favor of preserving my mental health. No amount of reason and argument is going to convince the current cognoscenti to come over to our side. Some of the foremost names in elite academia that specialize in Civil War and Southern history have roots in the country that go back less than a century; it’s clear that their motive is political and monetary, not the elucidation of reality. Peter Onuf at UVA, whom I had the displeasure of having as a professor, is a prime example of someone who has done his best to besmirch Jefferson at every turn; his work is one of the reasons Monticello now gives tours based on clear fabrication. While letting go is a tough pill to swallow, I believe it is necessary for true Virginians and Southerners to finally understand this dynamic so that we can actively work to reclaim our culture from those who have co-opted it; and work to re-build from a position of strength, not from defensive flailing.

While my maternal line was all I knew growing up, it was grappling with my father‘s Yankee, New England origins that brought me to the conclusion mentioned above. My direct paternal line goes back to Plymouth in the 1600s. My southern belle aunt began researching my paternal line and, much to her chagrin, uncovered this barbed fact. At one point, they were New England Yankees of the old order, and my 5th Great-Grandfather was a Yale man who fought as an officer in the Revolution - even spending time with Washington at Valley Forge. Through the generations we ended up in Montgomery, Alabama in around 1848 - obviously an interesting time to arrive in the South. Through a very long genealogy research project, I learned that my 3rd Great-Grandfather moved to the city from Connecticut to work as a merchant with a fellow New England man, George Cowles. They lived together for a short period of time and my 3rd Great-Grandfather was even married in the home of Mr. Cowles to one of his relatives, so they were apparently very close. The book Confederate Home Front: Montgomery During the Civil War says that “there was no shortage of dry goods stores. Tools, nails, brooms, and other household items were available at George Cowles’s Market Street store, which became a clandestine meeting place for local Unionists after the war began” (Rogers 2014, 4). Imagine my surprise reading this - my family cavorting with Unionists! Even living and working with one. Ironically, in addition to serving as the principal gathering place for Unionists in the region, George Cowles’ store was responsible for sewing the first Confederate national flag (Alabama Archives 2006)

This sent me down a rabbit hole of trying to understand Unionists in the South, and it painted a much different picture than the typical story of the North as a moral crusading, slavery-averse region. The census slave schedules show that Mr. Cowles was himself a slave owner, and undoubtedly simply felt a connection to his native state of Connecticut. Others opposed to secession in Montgomery included William Bibb, a cotton planter from the southern elite. He owned between 50 and 75 slaves between the onset and close of the war, and as Rogers explains, “Montgomerians rejecting the Davis government in thought (and sometimes deed) were not abolitionists. They were loyal citizens of the United States” (Rogers 2014, 104-106). Further digging showed other relatives in Connecticut that were also slave owners at one point.

To my relief, my 3rd Great-Grandfather ultimately served as a Sergeant for Alabama in the war, shown in the muster rolls in 1863. He was remarried following the death of his first wife in 1855 to a woman, my 3rd Great-Grandmother, with deep southern roots, and though I’ll never know for sure, I can’t help but think this led him to align with the South. If slavery was the primary issue on which everything hinged, as is purported in modern academia, these constant examples that run contrary to the presentist narrative would likely not crop up. Family connections, and devotion to a state, or the Union itself, held the real sway for citizens at the time. This is usually elaborated on when speaking of Robert E. Lee being true to Virginia, but stories of Northerner’s devotion to their states rarely make headlines in academia.

While I’ve read almost every author that has defended the South, this close-to-home experience has solidified my belief that it’s next to impossible to convince others to see reason when it comes to our history; this is because the loudest voices do not actually care about reality, and most of them have no roots going back to the time of the Civil War. The evidence exists in droves that the Northern War was not a moral crusade. It is, however, positioned as such, and this positioning serves as the rationale for the destruction of the historic American nation and remaking it into something it never was: a proposition nation for the entire world to come to. It is simply a case of come-here’s attempting to define an entity that is not theirs, for their own gain.

Similar to Virginia, the North has actually suffered significant cultural loss and erosion of its own history. In many ways, they have also been deprived of their history through erroneous accounts of the war. They’ve experienced waves of immigrants drastically different than themselves for far longer than the South and attempted to fight back through the Know Nothing Party. It’s not lost on me that I’m looking at this through the lens of a newfound soft spot for my paternal ancestry, and I’m very well aware that this region skews far left. I’m also very aware of the distinct differences that led radical Puritans to flee to Massachusetts, relative to Virginian’s adventures to Jamestowne. I do believe, however, that their founding stock are our cousins - Virginians from the South and West of England, and New Englanders from East Anglia a la Albion’s Seed. The Union Army was filled with much more mercenary-like forces than the South’s kinship-based army, and in many respects, they’ve been occupied with outsiders since this time. A popular novelist of the early 20th century, John P. Marquand, explores the lives of the Boston Brahmin set, the equivalent of our First Families of Virginia, in his books, and addresses the replacement of the old WASP stock with the Irish and other later 20th century Ellis islanders. Wishful thinking says an alliance of old-stock southerners and old-stock northerners, after all these years, could bring about a resurgence of heritage American culture that has been lost, and a rejection of the cultural detritus that has been the undoing of the republic created for these two groups that represent our posterity. Like a new American renaissance, brothers could finally bury the hatchet in a common cause, address the attack on our history from outsiders, and come away with a newfound respect and understanding of each other. Until that happens, I’ll cling to my country ham, my Jefferson Cup of bourbon, my family names, and remain unwavering, as a Virginian.

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You can find Mr. Randolph on X here: @CavalierStockVA

Sources:

“Alabama Civil War Period Flag Collection.” Alabama Department of Archives and History, 2006. https://legacy.archives.alabama.gov/referenc/flags/100.html. 

Rogers, William Warren. Confederate Home Front: Montgomery during the Civil War. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2014.