Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Take a Deep Breath About Confederate Nostalgia
In the Washington Post, James L. Loewen makes an interesting point about Civil War monuments:
Take Kentucky, where the legislature voted not to secede. Early in the war, Confederate Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston ventured through the western part of the state and found “no enthusiasm, as we imagined and hoped, but hostility.” Eventually, 90,000 Kentuckians would fight for the United States, while 35,000 fought for the Confederate States. Nevertheless, according to historian Thomas Clark, the state now has 72 Confederate monuments and only two Union ones…
Neo-Confederates also won parts of Maryland. In 1913, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) put a soldier on a pedestal at the Rockville courthouse. Maryland, which did not secede, sent 24,000 men to the Confederate armed forces, but it also sent 63,000 to the U.S. Army and Navy. Still, the UDC’s monument tells visitors to take the other side: “To our heroes of Montgomery Co. Maryland: That we through life may not forget to love the thin gray line.”
Why did this happen? The answer, he posits, is that the Confederacy and its 20th century apologists had a better, more active, and more persistent propaganda machine than did the Union. The effects of those efforts persist to this day, he argues, pointing out not only the glowing monuments and namesakes, but how many textbooks continue to present the Confederate cause as being more about states’ rights than slavery.
Honoring the Confederacy today is probably largely harmless: the case of Dylann Roof is interesting primarily because of how much of an aberration he represented. Ironically, however, it’s probably that way in no small part because of the ahistorical whitewashing its apologists accomplished. David French likely speaks for many when he writes that, during his childhood, he saw the Confederate flag as an essential part of honoring his family’s long (and continuing) martial history.
Figuring out how to navigate all of this is hard in a country as fundamentally decent and liberal as the United States. We know how crippling dealing with the truth of its past turned out to be for Germany (which, on the whole, may not be such a bad thing). In our case, however, we’re dealing with a controversy that is both more historically distant and less likely to have serious implications in the present day. That’s worth remembering every time the media gets a little too breathless about Confederate nostalgia.
Published in General, History
The South is a lovely place today. I’d love to move there, actually, but I wish you had better skiing. ;)
I don’t think those currently living in the South have some collective guilt for what happened before, but I don’t think it’s very logical to be surprised when people look at that flag and realize what it stands for and ask themselves, “Why is that still hanging there?”
It doesn’t represent anything that the South currently represents. Just an ugly period that’s best put behind all of us.
Then you know very little about the way the Civil War is remembered in the US or, indeed, how history is taught in the schools in this country (where the persistent propaganda machine of the left is in charge of setting the curricula, much to the delight of the reflexive Yankees on here).
I’m not going to bother with that–did you read the OP? You can read the piece I posted by Prof. Owens about how reconciliation was bought at the price of new & terrible injustice to blacks. That should at least start you on the way to a good answer for at least half the problem, concerning blacks-
Do you honestly believe that by saying, “We don’t want to erase our history” means that we want to fight for slavery again? Any conservative you find down here will say that slavery was wrong and want no part of it. By deigning all of the South’s past as traitors and fiends you condemn us as their descendants. Acknowledging the the evil found in the past should not mean that I must condemn everything in it and pretend that I was one of those in the South that went to fight for the North. The odds are better than good that I, had I lived at the time, would have fought for the State of Tennessee. Not for slavery. Not for the Confederacy, but for my state. I would like to believe that I would have abhorred slavery had I lived then but I have no way of knowing. My ancestors were poor uneducated farmers, usually share croppers. Do you honestly think they knew much more than their state had seceded and they were being invaded by Virginia? I must hate them for that? Titus, what you are asking, and other conservatives are asking, is that we disown everything to make them feel better. It will not change anything, but it will be one less thing for them to be embarrassed about when they are associated with us. It makes those of us down here want to tell people to butt out and leave us alone.
For those interested…
The bill to remove the flag from the memorial just passed the SC Senate 37-3. The bill now moves to the SC House.
Yes, sadly, all fake snow… :)
One thing that is at issue (at least from my perspective) is that when we try to explain why it’s still there we’re simply told that we’re wrong and they know better. It really is hard to explain it, and I still haven’t found the right words, but I can say that when we’re told we don’t know what we really think and that we should just ditch it, it makes my blood boil (which means there is likely a better way for me to explain it and I just haven’t figured it out yet). I appreciate what you mean though.
Because your comment is a piece of provocative detritus. No one is trying to prevent the remembrance of black slaves and Union soldiers in this country. If you wish to refute me, it’s easy — name a name. Who is trying to prevent such a remembrance?
The poor uneducated farmers around America & everyone in their situation has nothing to do with the treason, with the war, & with the flags under which it was fought. Not their doing.
If you fly that flag & someone whose forefathers fought for the Union or were slaves to that proud ruling class of the South or to the generals that flew that flag–someone like that takes offense, what then?
My brother and I were discussing this just the other day and he mentioned to me today that his pastor actually addressed it really well. I’m going to take a listen and see what he said.
The problem seems to be [redacted for CoC – ad hominem]. I did not say there was now anyone preventing any remembrance. Lotsa talk about the South lately, more than a few people seem to have had their reading skills impaired. For a bygones subject, it sure stirs passions… Only one of those guys admitted he insulted me for a misreading. How about you improve the numbers, so there are at least two-
I don’t fly it actually, but I would have to tell them that I’m sorry they feel that way and try and explain myself as best I could. Liberals in this country get offended by nearly everything, must I remove everything that offends them? My bible, my UT flag, my NRA sticker, my gun rack (don’t actually have one of these), my gas guzzling truck? There’s a lot in the South that people don’t like.
Sure, but remember how it ended: Within a generation of destroying the South’s power, the South installed Jim Crow & blacks had to face hell again. How’s that for a just & lasting peace?–Well, it was at least a lasting peace…
I guess, then, everyone who stands for the Union & finds the flag offensive should resort to legal politics & destroy any public remain of it–& if you don’t like it, they can explain, they’re sorry if you’re offended, but they’ll explain themselves as best they can.
Is that going to satisfy you?
If you think the flag of an army that fought for treason is the same as the Bible & that conservatives have to support the South on the one thing to be trusted or allowed to support it on the other, there may be real trouble ahead–possibly, you’re not alone in feeling this way. The Bible is nothing like that flag.
Conservatives do not need to defend everything the South or some in the South or you like or admire or what have you.
Then please enlighten me. You said they “somehow have [present tense] no similar claim to be remembered.” Who exactly is blocking their claim?
Just to correct the initial post, Kentucky has a lot more than two monuments to Union soldiers. I’ve personally seen more than a half dozen around the state and I would bet there are more than that.
BTW, Kentucky (In Louisville actually) there is the only Confederate monument that faces north, or so they claim.
This sums it up perfectly, except in my case you’d have to substitute a Texas Tech flag for the UT flag. Reading this thread reminds me of why, in my adult life, I have developed a general dislike and distrust of Yankees and foreigners.
Amen.
You baffle me. Read the first sentence in bold. Then read your sentence, also bolded by me. Do you see that this is funny?
So people who don’t live here and are likely to actually never come across one of these things is justified in destroying everything they don’t like? What nonsense. As to this treasonous flag, you again seem to miss the point. It doesn’t seem to matter to anyone else that this isn’t what it means to US. No, we must instead perform the right amount of genuflecting and shame to appease those who are quite honestly only using it as an opportunity to punish those they disagree with ideologically (who happen to be in the South). Before the shooting in Charleston no one, not you, not Tom, not the President of the United states gave two (CoC)’s about it but once it became the right bludgeon with which to beat those “conservative knuckle dragging Southerners” it became the cause de jure on the left and thrust into the national spotlight. We then turned to our side and found that they too, while having not given a crap about it until now, were basically saying that we were racists and nazis and demanding we take it down. Thanks for the help. There’s nothing like having friends that won’t even give you the benefit of the doubt that you really mean what you say if it looks like they’re going to become targets of the left along with you.
LOL.
Yeah, conservatives who cannot find it in their principles to defend that flag are doing it because they’re afraid of becoming targets of the left. That’s a fine show of honor, saying that. Precious.
As for the ‘what it means to us’ argument–I am not sure how that applies to politics & public spaces. I am not even sure what us really means here. Maybe there will be public manifestations where you & people who agree with you can show what they mean, how honorable & full of nothing but good you are. Are there? Have you attended or organized them?
Did you & ‘us’ put that flag up in a public space of some importance–the one that was taken down? Who put it up? What did they say about their intentions?
I’d wager Titus is also a card-carrying member of the Richard III Society…
Let’s not get him started.
Titus, please don’t forget one thing about treason: it’s largely in the eyes of the beholder. (As we just finished celebrating the Treason of the Fourth of July.)
Beautiful Dart! #13.You know I forgot to mention, had it not been for the Women of the South, practically none of the monuments we see today would exist. For the large part, it was not the men who built these memorials it was the widows, sisters, daughters and mothers. The Women built them, memorialized them, and gathered the collections of the Confederate War memorabilia. In fact, without the Daughters of the Confederacy, along with the leading Ladies of Richmond, the White House of the Confederacy and Museum would have been turned into a primary school and the artifacts collected throughout the South not gathered for a Museum. Today the Museum holds 55% of the known Battle Flags because the wife of a Virginia Congressman badgered him into introducing a bill that required the War Department to turn over Flag trophies the the Museum and White House of the Confederacy. In fact this organization had no male members until the 1990s when I was fortunate enough to be one of them.
Approximately 100,000 visitors come to the Museum each year. The number one group of visitors are from Europe, number two California. I met Margaret Thatcher at the Museum many years ago and she signed the guest register right under Winston Churchill’s signature.
Virginia Women have largely been responsible for saving much of our State Heritage. Without their dedication we would not have Mount Vernon, Monticello, Gunston Hall and many more holy spots.
This is exactly the sort of thing I am talking about–& why I am not at all satisfied like everyone to say, nothing to say here, move along. Would you really say, the Revolution has about the same claim to justice as the Confederacy seceding? Is this what you want American kids taught? It’ll be, King George & Lincoln–maybe the same, maybe just indistinguishable?
Is that before or after the book burnings? Seig Heil!
I confess I do not understand modern nostalgia for the confederacy, but I find it ironic and highly amusing that more often than not the most superficially patriotic citizens I meet in the south are also the ones most likely to fly a flag raised in rebellion.
None of this is funny.
If no one is blocking their claim, then how is it that they have no claim to be remembered? Did their claim never form to begin with? Did their claim form, but someone in the past blocked it? Did it form but dissolve over time of its own accord? Or is there some other reason?
My point was you’ve got about as winning an argument trying to convince Southerners to abandon their history by accusing their fore-fathers (correctly) of treason, as James of England (say) would of convincing his neighbors to stop celebrating the Fourth.
And to needle you a bit about getting so worked up about it.
Well, at some level it is funny.
I guess it is a combination of the old racism that Jim Crow revivified & legalized; & the point–if you read the piece–about how remembrance was organized, which does not have to do with laws, although it also involved a kind of suppression of the truth.
Then, later, it seems like it’s something else–for example, do you know that the Civil Rights movements ever made an effort to recall & publish the truth of the Civil War? Then, later black movements–did they trumpet the cause of the Union? Possibly, they shifted the emphasis away from remembering the greatest struggle in its true importance.
& nowadays–who cares to remember the truth about the Civil War? Is Lincoln celebrated in some way? The cause of the Union?