My Allegiance: To the Union, Free and Undivided with Liberty for All

Friends of Padre Steve’s World

I have been too busy to post the last week or so I am kind of catching up. Things are going well but I have been incredibly busy working in the house, working with authors and those reading my book manuscript. Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: Religion and the Politics of Race in the Civil War Era and Beyond, with the intent of writing blurbs for it.

Many have responded and are in the process of doing this, four have already submitted their blurbs, and I am honored. Here are the ones that have already gone to the publisher. Another dozen or so are in process and they include some big names.

Pulitzer Prize winning historian James McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom wrote “ A richly documented history of the ideology of racism that manifested itself in slavery, the Confederacy, the overthrow of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the myth of the Lost Cause that glorified the Old South and the Confederacy.”  

Dr. Charles Dew, Ephraim Williams Professor of History at Williams College and author of Apostles of Disunion: The Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War wrote:  “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory is a book for our time. Steven L. Dundas has skillfully woven slavery, race, racism, politics, and religion into a single entity in telling this country’s complex story. Every American would profit from what he is telling us.” 

Dr. Lloyd “Vic” Hackley, military civil rights pioneer and Vietnam War hero before becoming President of the North Carolina Community College System, Vice President of the University of North Carolina System, and Chancellor of North Carolina A & T University wrote, “Steve Dundas has written the definitive account of America’s onerous history with African Americans. A must read to fully understand, teach or discuss the institution of slavery, racism, religion and their current impacts. Every school library should have a copy.”

Joe Levin, Co-Founder of the Southern Poverty Law Commission wrote, “Commander Dundas not only brings us a powerful history of slavery but, more importantly, the consequence of untruths and how twisted religious beliefs shaped America. All educators should read it and ensure that its message is delivered to their students.”

I cannot wait to get the others. I hope that it becomes a best seller and in the process help persuade people sitting on the fence.

We have been working hard in the house and have never taken more satisfaction with the work of my hands in transforming this house as a place of rest, study and peace. But it is also a place of where I will plant my flag in opposition to the White Nationalists, Neo-Confederates, Neo-Nazis, Christian Nationalists, and every potential secessionist or insurrectionist know where I stand. So I have posted my flags on our forever home in the historic, heavily African American neighborhood in Norfolk.

I posted this on Facebook this evening.

“To any secessionists or insurgents out there, know that I am a Union man dedicated to the words of the Declaration that “All men are equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Likewise the words of the Constitution echoed by Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, that we commit ourselves to “building a more perfect Union.” This applies to all Americans and those who want to be, who come here many times giving up all. It is an ever expanding liberty and cannot be allowed to be denied or rolled back like it was during Jim Crow and other unfortunate times in our history.

My ancestors on both sides of my family fought for the Confederacy,even though their neighbors in Cabell County Virginia voted not to secede and instead with the rest of Wets Virginia seceded from Virginia and joined the Union. Of course they owned slaves and much land, so they turned their backs on their neighbors. Had I been alive back then I would have probably already have joined the Army because I never could just sit back and stay in one place all my life, and my choices would have been more centered around my oath,my life in the Army and loyalty to the Union like George Thomas and John Buford, more than to family members bent on destroying the country for the sake of slavery and profit.

The flags displayed are the 34 star Circle Union flag, the regimental guidon of the 6th Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry, with the Circle Union circling it’s 1st Cavalry Division of the Army of the Potomac with Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg on its stripes. The flag of the gallant 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry most famous for its stand at Little Round Top, and finally the flag of the 69th New York Volunteer Infantry of the legendary Irish Brigade, many of whose soldiers were recent immigrants fighting for a country where many people treated them like dirt.

Joshua Chamberlain, commander of the 20th Maine remarked, “But the cause for which we fought was higher; our thought wider… That thought was our power.” It still is.

We fight today with our voices, ballots, and even peaceful protests for that freedom that those men fought and died fir their descendants and all to have. Here stand I, I can do no other, so help me God.”

I will speak the truth, write the truth, and lay my life down for the truth. I fight for the truth that these people try to co-opt as being patriotic turn to myth and use to support flagrant policies of authoritarianism and race hatred that go so deep that I have a hard even fathoming as to how they can get there if they were honest in the myths that they claim to be historical facts were true.

With the resurgence of these heavily armed and violent nationalists and Nazis I expect that when Mine Eyes Have Seen They Glory is published, and if it becomes the best seller that I expect that it will become, that I will be a potential target of violence. Hell, I started receiving death threat over a decade ago, and I am in too deep to back down now.

So until tomorry.

Peace

Padre Steve+