Confederate "Heritage" and the Suppression of Truth

April 07, 2010


by Robert R. Mackey

(cross-posted from Huffington Post)


I opened this morning's Washington Post to find that the governor of Virginia, Robert McDonnell, has determined that the state's tourism demands requires a renewal of "Confederate History Month," which has lain dormant for the past eight years.

Ok, I get it. The state needs money and the Civil War is a big draw--from hotels to gas stations to trinkets bought at the battlefield park gift shops. It should be a big draw for the state. Every American should spend at least a day in their lives standing on the slopes of Little Round Top at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and think about how a handful of loggers and lobstermen from Maine, led by a college professor, saved the Republic on a hot summer's day in 1863. Or in the remains of the trenches at Petersburg, Virginia, imagining the brutality of war, as fifteen and fifty year old men lived, fought and died in muddy holes in the ground.

However, to proclaim a special month for the bloody secession movement that killed 650,000 Americans, that kept African-Americans in bondage, and whose 'beloved memory' prevented any meaningful civil rights changes from taking place for another 100 years, is wrongheaded and just plain historically incorrect. I've defended, on this blog, what has seemed to be pro-Confederate speeches and writings from political leaders and others. In those cases, I defended their right to say what they believe, and to hopefully help others to understand why those men died and to aid in ensuring that such good soldiers should never die in such a bad cause again.

Let's start with what the problems are with Virginia's "Confederate History Month."

First, it ignores the 490,865 African-Americans who were slaves in 1860 Virginia, and whose Confederate heritage was the lash, servitude, and a century of virtual slavery after 1865. Add to this the 58,042 freed slaves who resided in Virginia as well. Were they happy with their lot? Did they take to the streets and cheer when the slave-owning aristocrats, putting the mantle of states' rights and the Revolution over their illegal act, forced the state out of the Union? I do not believe so.

Secondly, it ignores the historical fact that a large portion of Virginia itself was so opposed to slavery and to rebellion that it broke away and formed its own loyal state--West Virginia. Did such overwhelming love for Jefferson Davis fill the hearts of every white man in the Old Dominion? Not in the least; 376,688 white Virginians seceded instead of giving into the demands of the slaveholders for poor white hillbillies to honorably die to protect their 'property.'

Lastly, it ignores the historical fact that thousands of white Virginians fought for the UNION. From Union General George H. Thomas, the "Rock of Chickamauga" and a great hero of the conflict, to loyalists who filled the ranks of West Virginian and Virginian Federal volunteer regiments to those who joined the volunteer regiments of other states; these men have all been systematically ignored and historically forgotten by the Lost Cause myth-makers that have occupied the Virginia state house since the end of Reconstruction. Belittled as traitors or scalawags, they stayed loyal to their nation. While most were not abolitionists, they were Union men and did not believe in fighting "the rich man's war" launched by the slaveocrats in 1861.

If Governor McDonnell wants to promote the Civil War in Virginia, I say more power to him. Let him call it "Civil War Heritage Month" and encourage the study of not just Stonewall Jackson or Robert E. Lee, but George Thomas, the tens of thousands of white and black Union volunteers from Virginia, and let it address the plight of the slaves, the problems of the free black population, and the atrocity of post-Reconstruction civil rights violations in Virginia.

History is not a pretty thing Governor. But perhaps we will learn more by confronting the ghosts of our past than making them gods.

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2010/04/

It illuminates, supports, and celebrates the actual outcome.

It's appalling to think someone could actually think supporting the Confederacy or any of the ideals it supported. I don't think anyone benefits from any sort of celebration of wars of any kind... the outcome to this particular war is key.

That's no surprise considering I'm a native New Englander from MA who now lives in OH. I can understand the marshal nostalgia for those who fought courageously and did much with little. I see that as distinct from the political decisions that sparked the war in the first place. Slavery was brutal, sadistic, unforgivable institution and to some extent all of white America had dirty hands. Nevertheless, whatever forms the arguments took in polite society, the Confederacy was formed to preserve the slave-based agrarian economy of the South.

So if Confederate History Month includes an honest examination of the CSA including slavery and all those white Southerners who fought for the Union, then I have no objection. I just doubt that is the case.

Hey, they're now ceding Abe Lincoln to the Democratic Party! ;-)

let them pretend the glorious slave-owning south was actually on the correct side of that conflict if they want. They are delusional sore losers in the extreme.

I don't claim authorship, but I've re-posted the sentiment a couple of times as a rebuttal to the "it's heritage, not hate" argument: Well, my great-great-great-great grand-daddy was in the 131st Indiana Irregulars, and it's my family's heritage to fire on any rebel sumbitch flying that traitorous rag-flag.

that were the result of that rape.

That's some heritage to be proud of.

Lest the Yankees forget there were slaveholders in the North as well. I disagree with celebrating the Confederacy, but I'm frankly more than tired of the south-bashing. At least this article is somewhat more balanced, and I thank you for posting.

There were some slaves in the North in the 18th century -- though never as many because there was no plantation system and no cotton. But slavery in the North largely ended in the course of the American Revolution, with the last remnants being eradicated in the early 1800's.

http://www.slavenorth.com/

Wherever it marched, the British army gave freedom to any slave who escaped within its lines. This was sound military policy: it disrupted the economic system that was sustaining the Revolution. Since the North saw much longer, and more extensive, incursions by British troops, its slave population drained away at a higher rate than the South's. At the same time, the governments in northern American states began to offer financial incentives to slaveowners who freed their black men, if the emancipated slaves then served in the state regiments fighting the British.

When the Northern states gave up the last remnants of legal slavery, in the generation after the Revolution, their motives were a mix of piety, morality, and ethics; fear of a growing black population; practical economics; and the fact that the Revolutionary War had broken the Northern slaveowners' power and drained off much of the slave population. An exception was New Jersey, where the slave population actually increased during the war. Slavery lingered there until the Civil War, with the state reporting 236 slaves in 1850 and 18 as late as 1860.

There's a reason the Emancipation Proclomation left slavery intact in MD, MO, KY, and DE.

People seem to think a mashed-up version (from the 1930's) of the Naval Jack and the flag of the Army of Northern Virginia is "the confederate flag".

Look, I understand this is just Freeper red-meat stuff, but part of me really cringes at criticizing anything that makes Americans take even a small look at history.

"Lesson One: Basic Historical Flag Indentification 101" (subtitled: If you saw it on a bumpersticker, it's probably not right.)

Since you seem to have some interest in this stuff, here's some trivia for you: in the original design of the Army of N.VA's battle flag, the main feature was going to be a + shaped cross instead of the x shaped one, but the design was vetoed because it was felt the overtly Christian nature of it would alienate Jewish officers and soliders serving in the CSA.

That is, I know the CSA's SecTreas was Jewish; I think he preceded any Jewish US Cabinet Secretary

of the CSA. Secretary Judah Benjamin, who was very prominent in the pre-war Jewish community, which was relatively quite large, successful, and well-respected in many southern states.

It has always been an irony that the Confederacy formed essentially and for all practical purposes over the desire to keep one specific race as property, yet thought nothing of prominent Jews in the highest positions of government, Native Americans as soldiers and officers (even one general), Hispanics as colonels and generals, and so on.

Always seemed a bit odd to me that the most 'equal-opportunity' army in the war was the CSA. Unless you were black of course. I imagine the current crop of pro-CSA, pro-secession, pro-white supremacy types know absolutely nothing about this, and if they did would just ignore it.

Edit for misspellings.

to fight for the side they supported. Many of them died. I believe the Civil War was fought to support the lives of the indolent Southern rich land owners made into minor nobility on the backs of slaves. They had never dreamed of gaining such status, and could not tollerate losing it, at any price. Especially if the heaviest burden was paid by the poor who worked the marginal land around their huge estates.
Some of my ancestors once owned lands that make up most of a present day county as their own personal property, and there were many many more with far greater status. Their political influence shaped the rebelious secessionist position over the decades and led to the war.

It was not about some noble ideal-it was about money and power, period.

mark

I mean, human rights atrocities combined with fighting on the wrong + losing side. Whoopieee!!! Let's have a parade!!