Our Declaration of Independence proclaims: “... Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the governed ... it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government ...(which)... as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness ...” The Cause of the people in America’s “free and independent States” was self-government and that government so constituted must conduct itself so as to effect its citizens’ safety and happiness or that we have the absolute and stated right to alter or abolish it. The first American confederacy lasted effectively from 1776 through 1789. The second, The Confederate States of America, was freely and democratically established by the people of its States in early 1861. It functioned from 1861 through 1865 after which it succumbed to aggressive invasion by superior arms and manpower. We believe that the men and families who gave their lives, fortunes, and honor for our declared liberties during the second Confederacy deserve our respect and gratitude no less than do those of the first. In Magnolia Cemetery in Mobile Alabama, on the memorial marker to two young brothers killed fighting for their country, the Confederate States of America, their family set these words - “It is a consolation to those of us who mourn their loss and erect this monument to know that they died in defence of liberty and left behind untarnished names.” The soldiers of America’s Confederacies - men who actually believed that they told their government what rights it had and not the other way around -fought not only for themselves but for us - for our rights to self government proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence. President Jefferson Davis himself said that our history was one that we could not rely on historians and books to preserve. He knew that because the Confederate States of America was destroyed and its Cause vilified, that only a history of song and word-of-mouth - a kind of regional or family history - would preserve our legacy. These are his words: “Let the rising generation learn what their fathers did, and let them learn the better still lesson to emulate not only the deeds, but the motives which prompted them. May God grant that sons ever greater than their fathers may rise whenever their country needs them to defend her cause.” It is the considered honor of Raphael Semmes Camp 11 to continue to “defend her cause”.
E-Mail: contact@scvsemmes.org
