The South Will Rise Again
Stone and fire. Plymouth and Jamestown. North and South. Together, once more, as God ordained. The South Will Rise Again.
Stone and fire. Plymouth and Jamestown. North and South. Together, once more, as God ordained. The South Will Rise Again.
We are told America began at Plymouth Rock, but this is a half-truth turned into a whole distortion. It is odd that such a strange thing has gripped the narrative, seeing as the Mayflower arrived on these shores 13 years after we already had a permanent colony of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The first colony that endured and planted its flag and its roots was not Plymouth in Massachusetts. Rather, it was Jamestown in Virginia.
Jamestown was raw, violent, and wild. Despite acknowledging God in the Virigina Charter, its settlers were not so much pilgrims seeking heaven as they were adventurers seeking gold. They found not glory at first, but hunger, death, and blood. Yet even in their plight and with people less pious than the pilgrims, Providence provided. Their hands learned tobacco which became the fire that ignited the further colonization of Virginia. A fire that sustained families, bound neighbors, and birthed a people. It is often remarked that the fragrant smoke of tobacco in conjunction with copious amounts of caffeine was the fuel that created America. After having several fantastic evenings with my brothers in the Nathanael Greene Society discussing religion and politics between puffs of cigar smoke, I’m inclined to agree.
Jamestown is where my people can trace roots through, the Southern half of the United States, as much as Northerners trace from Plymouth. We can think of these as two separate but equally important foundings of America symbolized by their own unique elements. Plymouth, the people named after a rock, a people of stone. Jamestown, a people who found their salvation in smoke and fire. We can take these two elements of fire and stone, and understand them as the dual cores of Americas founding.
Plymouth was stone, representing endurance, stubbornness, and productivity. Jamestown was fire, representing ferocity, unruliness, and creativity. America was never born of stone alone…