By and large, on this blog, I have made an effort to strike a more or less reasonable tone when I disagree with something. An exception has been with respect to matters related to the Confederacy. I allow myself some intemperance on that subject. So, it’s somewhat gratifying to see the late storm of disapproval where the Confederate Battle Flag is concerned – a storm triggered by a white supremacist who murdered nine black people at church in Charleston.
It seems that a moderate tone on the subject has allowed people to remain in denial about what the Confederate heritage is about. It’s a heritage of treason, citizens of the United States taking up arms against the U.S. and killing its soldiers. They took up arms because they claimed a right to secede so that they could preserve their states’ rights to enslave other people. It’s heritage, but it’s not a proud heritage.
Tony Horwitz, who wrote a great book on the subject of present day Southern attachment to the “Lost Cause” mythology, Confederates in the Attic, has a piece at TPM on the latest controversy entitled “How the South Lost the War but Won the Narrative.”
He concludes:
I’m not very optimistic that the debate over South Carolina’s flag will bring a deeper reckoning. Furling the statehouse flag may bring temporary relief to South Carolinians, but what we truly need to bury is the gauzy fiction that the antebellum South was in any way benign, or that slavery and white supremacy weren’t the cornerstone of the Confederacy. Only then, perhaps, will we be able to say that the murdered in Charleston didn’t die in vain, and that the Lost Cause, at last, is well and truly lost.
From time to time, I read a discussion, conjecturing what would have happened if the north would have allowed the south to secede. While the north became more industrialized and focused on public education, the south would have remained a slave-dependent, stratified, rural agricultural system. We would have seen the real consequences of such a system. Even now, many states would totally exist as third world countries if the “gov’mnt” wasn’t supporting them. If anyone knows about learned helplessness and dependence, it’s the south.
Betty Bowers (“America’s Best Christian”) says that the Confederate flag should stay, because it’s a quick, reliable indication that you are in the presence of a racist.
I couldn’t agree more. Alexander Stephens, a once and future US Congressman from Georgia who was the Vice President of the Confederacy summed it up nicely in his “Cornerstone Speech” in March, 1861. A key excerpt reads:
“Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”
The secession statements of the various states contain similar language or worse, all can be found online, or Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote an excellent summary the other day in the Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/
When people argue that the southern states seceded over State’s Rights, I do concede one point. They seceded in order to protect their “right” to own slaves. That was the issue that caused the war. Period.
Jay, excellent post. The only state right the confederacy wished to keep was the right to own slaves.
Man, talk about sowing the seeds of your own destruction!
From a letter to Gov. Letcher from Robert E. Lee…. “All should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of the war and to restore the blessings of peace. They should remain, if possible, in the country; promote harmony and good feeling, qualify themselves to vote and elect to the state and general legislatures wise and patriotic men, who will devote their abilities to the interests of the country and the healing of all dissensions.”
(Recollections and letters of General Robert E Lee, 1904. By Captain Robert E Lee)
The healing of ALL dissensions…
I’ve been harsh about the CSA battle flag as well, but I thought a bit more about it when I heard the “General Lee” car toys would no longer be sold with it on there. There are non-racist reasons why some people would fly this flag, as I proposed in my Facebook post today:
“I posted about the CSA flag yesterday, and the point of my post is to say that I think the CSA battle flag was started as a racist symbol and continues to be one. Therefore, it should not fly on government ground, and its only use on government property is in a museum.
That does not mean that I think everyone who flies one is a racist. My generation grew up after the civil rights movement, which was when the battle flag became popular again, for racist reasons at first.
However, for many of us, we didn’t see the racist reasons, as that was 10 years or so before we were born. We saw people we love flying them, or childhood heroes on TV putting them on top of an awesome car. Some of my friends learned to love this symbol because they saw people they loved using it. For them, it was started out of pride and love, not hate.
I’m sure those that could be described this way are feeling very misunderstood right now, and I’m sorry for that. I’m sure this is very hard.
All of that said, I don’t ever support something being banned by the government for private use. Calling for Confederate symbols to be removed from places of honor on government ground isn’t the same as banning those symbols.
I also don’t agree with the recent decision to remove the Tennessee Civil War battle flag to be removed from the “General Lee”, just as I don’t agree with editing books written in a far more racist time.
Those things are the reality of our past, and we can learn from them. Getting rid of them completely causes us not to learn and to make the same bad decisions in new ways.”
I agree that the Confederate flag shouldn’t be banned by the government for private use. Is anyone of interest proposing that?
I would support a ban on the American Swastika, the Confederate Battle Flag or the Stars and Bars, which was the official flag of the confederacy. It is the pathetic emblem of racism, hate and treason.
If 150 years after the war of treason and to support slavery is not enough to learn the lesson, then a thousand years will not be enough.
Doug, I’ve seen a few people on my Facebook feed point to Germany’s ban of Nazi symbols as a good blueprint for doing the same here.
And, apparently Carlito is all in. :)
I mainly said that to combat the feeling from some of my friends that still like the battle flag that they are being attacked.
THEIR RIGHT to wave that flag is not under attack, only the use of that flag by the government.
I should leave the legal opinion to Mr. Masson, but I’ll go out on a limb here. I think that while the Confederate Battle Flag is a symbol of treason and racism, I believe that in private hands their display would, and should, come under 1st Amendment protection. If the horrible signs displayed by the Westboro Baptist Church are protected speech, I don’t know why the Confederate Battle Flag wouldn’t be, or (at the risk of violating Godwin’s Law) the Hakenkreuz for that matter.
What I do object to is the use, and explicit or implicit promotion of, symbols like that by any government that purports to represent all Americans. It does not belong on state property.
Jay, I am also an attorney. Absent anything short of a constitutional amendment to ban the confederate flag, its display is protected speech. Perhaps a potent reconsturctionist congress could have pushed thorough constitutional bans on the confederate symbols. Perhaps if Lincoln’s successor would have been a strong leader instead of the southern apologist and racist Andrew Johnson. such symbols could have been outlawed.
I should probably learn more about the Andrew Johnson presidency. My vague recollection has him being less than competent but mostly a victim of an overzealous and overreaching Congress. Perhaps that Congress was more correct than my teachers gave them credit for.
I would recommend two books which show–with the words, actions, laws and Constitution of the CSA–that the Confederacy was about slavery and slavery alone:
Look Away! by William C. Davis
The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History, edited by Gary Gallagher and Alan Nolan
Like many of you, I have no problem (just a slight distaste) with private individuals displaying the confederate flag. Only with the entitlement many of those doing the displaying seem to feel. As an example, we had a family living across the street from us in Indy that always had the confederate flag flying (above the American flag). No problem. But it seemed to embolden them to act like jackasses toward everyone that passed their porch at night–they were often drunk in the evenings. These inconsiderate fellows felt it their duty to harass every woman that passed by with sexual comments, and often to challenge men walking on the sidewalk, even going so far as to threaten to shoot various individuals. They finally moved.
In any case, although I don’t feel that the confederate flag actually caused their behavior, I do believe that people like this are more likely to display one. I know it’s a tenuous connection, but still, whenever I heard these folks threatening people on the street in a loud and belligerent way, I would look out the window and be confronted by a symbol of what individuals such as these would refer to as “freedom.”
I guess these days the only real freedom we have is the freedom to hate.
As much as most reject the Confederate battle flag and the swastika, any effort to actually ban them could present huge problems with a bunch of people pushing the limits of the law, especially with the swastika, which is already an ancient symbol with benign meanings. Check out the French Lick hotel grounds, in which the guy tried to make the place look like it was in the old days. There is an iron fence with swastikas embedded in the design, where the folks have taken great pains to point out that the swastikas were not there as NAZI symbols. A Constitutional amendment banning the swastika or battle flag could lead to an unimaginable number of law suits requiring the wisdom of Solomon. As much of a pain the battle flag displays are, I think it’s better to avoid the prohibition rabbit hole.