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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
I’ll take the needling–I am blowing out the stops–but I am not out for persuading people of the basic facts who do not wish to be persuaded or who interpret their implications otherwise. This is not my fight–I just find it hard to shut up about the matter. It’s not alright. I hope someone comes along who does a much better job of standing up for the cause of the union-
No, I’m pointing out they they don’t seem to give a damn to find out what we really mean before calling us racists and traitors. But thanks for the condescension.
Actually, I didn’t have to. It had come to mean something else before I was even born. It was put on top of the Dukes of Hazard General Lee car because people would look at it say “Hey look, the South!” not “Hey look, Jim Crow! or “Hey Look, Racists!”.
So we must forever be marred by their intentions. I think we should start doing the same for the Europeans.
If you truly are puzzled by it try thinking of it as a flag raised while fighting to defend your home from an invader.
You can find many instances in Union soldier correspondence home during the war where they tell of asking Confederate soldiers why they are fighting so ____ hard. The answer is always some variation on, “We’re fighting you because you’re down here!”
So far as I’ve read the Declaration, it says all men are equal by nature & politics somehow has to do with that–I find it funny that anyone defending slavers would bring this up–at least Petit did the consistent thing & declared the Declaration a lie! Then there was Stephens’ Cornerstone speech. They sure did not want to stand on the ground of human equality…
I am sick to death of the Left changing history, the language and our very ideas. I’m inclined to oppose any [CoC] “they shovelin'” (to paraphrase Al, from Die Hard).
All the war flags are gone. For precisely this reason, but taken to a far different level.
How about a kind of alliance of Southern independence-from-the-past with Japanese politicians visiting the shrines of the war dead-that was a scandal recently. They were defending their homes, too. Everyone who started a war & could not win it does.
You want that? Ok. The cause of the Union, in so much as they wanted to remove slavery, was just. What they did to the South to secure it cannot be painted nearly as just, and it can only be praised in a fashion where the ends justify the means. The destruction of Federalism is still being felt today and for that we are worse off. Am I glad the South lost? Without the space for greater context, yes, but it would have been better to resolve slavery another way. I am not, however, ashamed to be Southern. The Angelic north has become dominated by hellish cities where blacks kill each other in droves, where religion is largely mocked, where conservatives practically hide in closets at dinner parties. Nine black people were killed by an actual racist in Charleston. There were no riots, there was no looting. I believe we have proven our hearts Titus, but apparently it’s not enough.
You’re in trouble. I’m not calling you a racist, but that makes no difference to you. You want it to be such that because you’re not a racist & you like that flag, & there are others like you, then it should be ok. Well, it’s not–that’s a public decision in every state, or at least in every state in the states that once rebelled. People who want it can do their best to make the public case. But if the public does not want it or is not calling for it or will not believe you–then who are you to decide for the state?
Your private opinion of that flag is not authoritative, is the problem. You have against you radical lefties, all sorts of other people, & the GOP. Is the governor who just removed that flag an enemy to you in a similar sense as the lefties? Do people who have voted for her agree with her, support what she did? If not, let them replace her. If so, how is there anything more to say as a public matter. Your private life or property is not in question here–no more than your patriotism or good intentions, &c.
That’s an artful use of the passive — “it also involved a kind of suppression of the truth.” Since no one is the culprit, you slyly slander everyone.
——–
12 Years a Slave
Belle
Amazing Grace
Amistad
Roots
Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson
The Civil War, Shelby Foote
Booker T. Washington’s autobiography
The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC
The five dollar bill
The penny
The Juneteenth Celebration
Memorial Day
P.S., you also are free to create a remembrance. Make a movie. Write a book. Fund a monument. Start a celebration. No one is stopping you.
I slander no one. That’s a despicable thing to say. Read the damned piece–see if you think it is true to what happened & whether my summation of it is adequate. If you disagree, explain. If you do not care, keep these accusations to yourself.
I can do at least one thing to recall to people the ugly past as it was. I am doing it. Maybe I’ll be able to do more, but telling people what I know of the truth matters to me even without movies &c.
This is slandering the whole country.
I would like for you to review my statements and show where I said you were calling me a racist. In the United States over the past few weeks it has been practically a mantra in media. Don’t recoil in horror at the sight of the battle flag? Racist. So excuse me if I’m a little touchy about it.
My liking the flag has little to do with it, I don’t fly one at my house, I think I may have one in a box of stuff that I got at at a civil war battlefield. What I don’t like is a lot of people on the right who really don’t care about it, and aren’t affected by it, demanding that we acquiesce to every lefty cry of “take it down!” that is so obviously a fake outrage.
As to the Governor, I honestly would have preferred she table it until the dust settled and then brought it up a year from now. Why? Because it would not be an immediate fold to the left, who will jump at the chance to remove everything they don’t like beyond that flag because it suits them. Who, in the end, are aided by those on the right who in their piousness took the opportunity to look down their noses and tell us what we really think.
I am always intrigued by the mental gymnastics people have to go through to support the American Revolution throwing off a perceived oppressive government while opposing the Confederacy doing the same thing 100 years later.
It really is impressive.
I am not sure if you are incapable of the most basic reasoning then: The Declaration says, natural equality is the ground of political association. The South had therefore no claim to self-gov’t, because it was grounded in slavery & feared the Union would do the job of getting rid of slavery.
I guess you could say–Jefferson & Washington also had slaves. That’s certainly true. Maybe it makes their claim as weak as that of the Confederacy–would you like to argue that?
I appreciate your knowledge Titus, and I appreciate your perspective. While it may not be personal to you, it’s personal to us. Do you ever watch American TV or Movies (I had you pegged as a movie buff?). To this day we are portrayed as buck toothed, uneducated, bare footed idiots, and if not those then we’re the super religious serial killer. The left uses every opportunity, and I do mean every one, to reduce us to that in the mind of people who don’t live here. It is not helpful when someone on our own side doesn’t take a moment to give us the benefit of the doubt about what we are saying. But Slavery! But Jim Crow! But Democrats! History is important, and we know that a good bit of it has been bad, but for some reason it doesn’t matter what we do to prove ourselves as conservatives we apparently are still looked down on by those who don’t live here, right or left. Give us the benefit of the doubt Titus, we want to save the Constitution as much as anyone, but it would help if we weren’t shot by our own side when something like this comes up.
I didn’t say you said I said &c. That was not at all the point I was trying to make–rather that there is a low-level agreement, but it might not go high enough to matter. I hope this clears up that misunderstanding. We’ve had too many already…
As for the other matter, I am somewhat sympathetic. I don’t like all the lefty shrieks. I don’t know if this is going to achieve the good things it is supposed to achieve. I’m not sure this makes any difference. The price to pay for my sympathy would probably be too high, not worth paying. You & I have very different views of what the past means in the present…
All that said–I of course do not speak for all the conservatives who disappointed you here. Just one, a foreigner at that…
I’m sure I am incapable in your mind.
I think it’s fair to say your tortured logic in favor of bigger government does not win me over. But then again, I’m incapable of the most basic reasoning, so how else could a dullard like me respond to a brilliant thinkers like you.
I find it interesting that according to Wikipedia, slavery was not abolished in Romania until the 1850s.
Don’t take the foreigner thing too much to heart, here in the South anyone north of Kentucky and West of Texas is too.
I know what you mean about the caricature. If it makes any difference, I do what I can to disapprove of that or tell people, it’s a lefty hysteria, not history. I’ve no influence, to tell people to appreciate the good things in the South. But if I did, I would. Anyway, thanks for the kind words there. I wish I could
I have not said & do not believe that people in the South are any the worse than anywhere else. I think your preference for the South & your understanding of the South may be losing politically. I can only partially regret that. I’d like that partial sympathy to suggest a possible coalition, & not just because conservatives badly need it. But I am unsure that’s so.
Just look around at the people who say, 1776 more or less equals 1860, & the cause of the Declaration is the cause of Jeff Davis, apparently. Awful. If it makes any difference–that’s my problem. I apologize for everything that might spill over from that to where it does not belong–put it down to my inability.
I’ll tell you this, too–some in the gallery of rogues I keep bringing up, the rulers of the South, I do believe they could get a kind of tragic hero status if their awful fault were admitted. It really was a great crisis. I fear many will not accept that, though. Again–I’m not accusing you of anything.
I do not know that I’ve said anything about bigger government.
I’m not brilliant. I just get basics: If self-gov’t is grounded in human equality, then slavers seceding does not pass the test. What the brilliant stuff there might be or what the sophisticated stuff I do not know. I do see a basic reasoning there.
Tell me, what do you find interesting? Tell me at whatever great length you like.
I guess what we may not understand is how we’re supposed to admit their awful fault beyond what we do now. If you ask anyone on here that’s disagreeing with you if they were wrong to want to keep Slavery, they’ll agree with you (myself included), but when we say anything about their desire to retain their right as a state to do what they want we’re told that’s not what it was about and that they were simply traitors (even though that’s exactly the problem we’re having now in the U.S.) In your estimation, how would a Southerner go about doing this?
I appreciate the understanding here too by the way.
I have some thoughts on this matter–but I don’t know they’re good thoughts–& I believe the half-dozen or so people who’ve spoken up here & the others in the other related threads are in no mood to hear any of that. It seems to me, they would have a point.
Maybe if black people keep moving into the South–I assume this is a kind of middle-class migration, but I have not studied the socio-economic status of the migrants–this will take care of itself.
Certainly, what I’ve read of public & private events after the awful murders showed a city united in faith & sorrow. Surely, that suggests a kind of willingness to get along in friendship even aside from the awful circumstances.
What you yourself are supposed to think about this I can say, but only as a kind of way to make it up for wasting your time, to say nothing of having had our angry moments… & if you want to make fun of me in perpetuity in the PIT–you’ve every right. Southern pride is not an individual thing–& it is not invented or created or even chosen. & there is no copyright on it–nor no political movements. I think these basic facts even a foreigner can see: They all point away from the individual to the group. They bring up the past. Honor then requires of innocent individuals living with terrible things almost as though they were guilty.
Hey Titus,
According to Wikipedia, Romania “was an ally of Nazi Germany and it participated in the Holocaust.” Sounds to me like the citizens there have a lot to answer for. Perhaps the truth is being suppressed.
I, too, question the stat. I know of 4 Union memorials. The hospital and the landing in Paducah, and the war cemetery and courthouse here in Richmond. And I’m sure there’s a mess of memorials in Perryville in addition to the Confederate and Union memorials at the visitor center. Wikipedia tells me that the majority of the memorials on the NPS Historic Preservation list is overwhelmingly Confederate, but I don’t know that alone tells us much.
Also, glancing at the state historical archives, I retract my previous agreement with the removal of the Jefferson Davis memorials. I hadn’t realized he was from Kentucky and his honors predate the Civil War.
Feel free to PM me on this one. I really am interested in what you think on the matter.
Where do you believe this truth to be suppressed? Surely, not on wiki. The page in Romanian has some references to the matter. As for the citizens’ responsibility–please tell me, how do you see it?
Ohhhhh, I intend to… :)
This is something to think on…
I will. But it will take me some time–I would like to be sure I can say something meaningful briefly. This I find difficult! I would also like to talk with my American friends–the matter has come up lately, but I had not taken the time to formulate my thoughts. I guess, in these last few days–the anger has rather moved me to speak where I would have preferred to keep thinking about this…
I know exactly what you mean.