Southernist Pride

09/01/2026

In 1937 the U.S. Post Office issued a 4-cent Army stamp showing Robert E. Lee on the left, Stonewall Jackson on the right, and Stratford Hall—Lee’s birthplace—between them. More than 35 million were printed.

Franklin Roosevelt, a stamp collector, supported it. It was a time when America honored true greatness, particularly these two Virginians who had lived exemplary lives and done extraordinary things against long odds.

That stamp was not unique. Lee appears on about half a dozen U.S. postage stamps, including the 1948–49 Washington and Lee University issue, the 1955 Liberty series, the 1970 Stone Mountain stamp with Jefferson Davis and Jackson, and the 1995 Civil War pane.

Robert E Lee is the namesake of an Army Base in Virginia. The Navy commissioned the nuclear submarine USS Robert E. Lee (SSBN-601). In World War II the M3 medium tank was named after Lee.

In 1925 the Mint struck the Stone Mountain half-dollar with Lee and Jackson riding together.

Stratford Hall was more than a backdrop. Two Lees who lived there signed the Declaration of Independence. Robert E. Lee was born into that lineage, graduated West Point, served with distinction in Mexico, and later followed Virginia when it left the Union.

With Jackson as his most trusted lieutenant, he repeatedly outmaneuvered larger, better-supplied Union armies—First Manassas, the Valley Campaign, Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville. Jackson’s flanking march at Chancellorsville remains one of the great tactical strokes in American history.

Both men lived exemplary, disciplined, devout, modest lives. Lee accepted defeat without rancor and spent his last years educating young men at Washington College.

Jackson, an orphan who fought his way through West Point, held himself to a strict personal code. Reading their letters and the accounts of those who served under them tends to raise a person’s own standard.

The 1937 stamp belongs to a time when Americans could still recognize greatness on its merits. Lee and Jackson were world-famous soldiers who performed extraordinary feats against overwhelming odds and lived exemplary lives. You can become a better person by studying them. I have. -RJ

09/01/2026

09/01/2026

The extraordinary Stonewall Jackson! Valley Campaign, 1862

In the spring of 1862, Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson took a force that never rose above about 17,000 men and tied down three Union commands totaling some 50,000–60,000. He marched his “foot cavalry” roughly 646 miles in 48 days, used the mountains and the railroad as weapons, and struck divided enemies one piece at a time.

Kernstown (March 23) was a tactical check—he attacked a larger force on bad intelligence and had to fall back—but it froze Union reinforcements that McClellan needed for Richmond. Then the blows fell in order: McDowell (May 8), Front Royal (May 23), Wi******er (May 25), Cross Keys (June 8), and Port Republic (June 9).

Union General Banks was driven across the Potomac. Frémont and Shields failed to close the trap. The Valley stayed Confederate, and tens of thousands of Federals never reached the Peninsula.

Outnumbered, outsupplied, and fighting an industrial power, Jackson still inflicted heavier losses than he took and changed the campaign against Richmond. That combination of speed, deception, and interior lines is why staff colleges still study the Valley Campaign and why Jackson’s name is known far beyond Virginia. It remains one of the most brilliant operational performances ever by a field commander. -RJ

08/31/2026

“Atlanta is Ours, and Fairly Won.”
(Week 192: August 28 to September 03, 1864)

From the Editor: When President Lincoln began planning his strategy to get re-elected, he knew the odds were stacked against him as no sitting president had won a second term since Andrew Jackson in 1832. To widen his appeal to pro-war Democrats, Lincoln dropped the Republican party name and ran under the National Union Party banner. Lincoln also dropped his Vice-President Hanibal Hamlin (a staunch, lifelong abolitionist) for Andrew Johnson, a pro-Union Democrat from Tennessee. However, despite Lincoln’s efforts to rebrand the party his re-election prospects were always directly tied to the success of the Union military. Lincoln was riding high in 1863 after the victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, but by the late summer of 1864, staggering casualty figures and yet another call for troops has led to a sharp increase in war weariness. At their national convention at the end of August, the Democratic Party came together to nominate former Union General George B. McClellan. McClellan’s popularity among the soldiers added to Lincoln’s belief that his chances of winning re-election were growing steadily weaker, and on August 23rd he wrote a note for each member of his cabinet to sign sight unseen, vowing that if the election was lost it would be their duty to “save the Union between the election and the inauguration.” Ten days after Lincoln’s Blind Memorandum, he finally received good news from the front that “Atlanta is ours, and fairly won.”

The victory in Atlanta transformed Northern public opinion by giving them a tangible victory and shattered the core argument of the Peace Democrats that the war was a failure. President Lincoln said it best when he was speaking to a delegation from the National Union League, "I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams."1

08/29/2026

Leftist trolls keep proving their shallow, narrow-minded ignorance by calling Lee and the Confederates “losers”. If that’s how they define “losers”, then sign me up, that’s a compliment. Only a small man needs the final tally to tell him who mattered. We roll our eyes because the line is sooooo childish and simply stupid.

Obvious facts: You can lose the field and still be the better man. Only a loser needs the scoreboard to tell him who was right. Men who live by win-loss columns have already confessed they have no purpose and are losers themselves.

A just cause can fall and remain just. An empty man can win and remain empty. That is why small men keep such careful score.

Only losers are obsessed with who won. The rest already know the fight was never about the number—it was about whether you stood for anything worth standing for. -RJ