Americans love winners. No-one remembers Mr. Gray, who submitted his patent for the telephone 1 hour after Bell. No-one reinacts the War of 1812 so they can dress up as the British. There aren’t thousands of people displaying the flag of 1914 Germany on their cars. With the exception of Tuckerfan and the three people who saw the movie, no-one knows or cares about the Tucker automobile. So why in the blue blazes is the Confederacy so popular in the U.S.?
They can’t all be bigots, can they?
I know there are grudges in the Balkans that go back hundreds of years, and Irishfolk who still gripe about Cromwell, but that can’t be it, can it? Reconstruction was over 3 generations before any of us were born. The South lost, and lost badly. No amount of post-war blather about “states-rights” and “This is our land, and you’re on it” nonsense can alter the fact that the war was over the right of one group of humans to keep another group of humans enslaved. The South started the war, fired the first shots, and reaped the whirlwind as a result. So why do so many people still identify with the losers? At reinactments, you have to search to find Union soldiers. Why the fascination with the ones who failed?
Given America’s general attachment to winners, can anyone explain this aberration?
I’ve mentioned it here a few times, but my Great great. . . . . uncle was Robert E. Lee. I’m kind of proud of that. There’s a picture of him and Stonewall Jackson in my house, but that’s it. I don’t own anything with the battleflag or naval jack or even one of the national flags on it or those flags themselves.
I would guess that 2% of the people that display any Confederate flag are actuall racist/bigots.
Although I’m not one of those people who displays the Confederate flag everywhere (but I don’t do so with the Union one, either), I still can kind of understand where the Confederacy may have been in the right when they seceded. They felt they didn’t have enough rights for themselves and that the North had too much control over them (sounds a bit like the thoughts of the colonies when they left England, doesn’t it?) so they decided to leave. It was the Union that started the actual fighting over it, while the South would have been content to secede peacefully.
Slight hijack about Robert E. Lee: I have great respect for the man. He was offered command of the Union troops, but even though he identified more with the politics of the North, he still chose to fight for the side he had grown up on.
Another thing is that you don’t speak ill of the dead.
The south was devastated by the war. Something like one in ten men were killed. Some towns had almost all of their men killed and of course some towns were kind of burnt down. (You won’t find many kids in the south named Sherman)
And you know how after someone close to you dies, you kind of forget how the bad things about them and remember the good things?
Well…
The south has become this mythical place. People really think that the pre-war south was like Gone with the Wind. The view the pre-war south as something of an Atlantis that was destroyed by the war of northern aggression. In short, the south is in denial on a cultural level.
The thing about the American Civil War is that it was a war fought between Americans, if you will. We’re still a relatively young nation and this has been our only civil war. I think that’s a big reason why so much is said about it, taught in schools about it, etc.
I grew up in the south but my family didn’t show up in America til after all was said and done, so I don’t have ancestors who fought. Still, it’s a war Americans fought against each other so that makes it big.
First, the disclaimer: I was born in Indiana, a Yankee state, and both sides of my family were on the Union side of the map. I’m not here to debate the Secession, or to badmouth the South for the way the war turned out. That stuff happened long before I was born.
The US was founded by rebels, so we feel a kinship to rebellion.
Americans whose grandparents fought on the Confederate side rightfully feel proud of that. Yes, they lost, but the men in gray fought bravely. Some of them feel that hiding away the Confederate flag would dishonor those brave soldiers.
In the early 1960’s, we marked the 100-year mark of Civil War (or, War of the Northern Aggression,) and kids seeing all the documentaries identified with one side or another as they watched all the docudramas. Millions of mock soldier hats in blue and gray were sold. Now, it’s natural for teenagers to lock into rebellion, so they bought Confederate flags, even if Grandpa wore the blue. “Damn right I’m a rebel!,” they said. They didn’t think of it as endorsing slavery or racism. This was before the big part of the civil rights movement came along.
It’s an exploration of the continuing hold the CSA has on the former confederate states inspired by the author waking up in his new home one Sunday (10 miles from where I lived in Virginia) to have re-enactors running across his land.
It’s the best book of its kind I know. Thoroughly exploring many different types of CSA diehards through interviews and travel.
monica’s post greatly highlights the problem. Southerners, starting after 1920, tremendously re-invented the Civil War Myth. So they have convinced themselves all sorts of ridiculous things are true, despite overwhelming evidence. So monica is in complete denial about slavery, Fort Sumpter, etc.
The actual Civil War Veterans had entirely different attitudes towards it, in general. (Some were die-hard bigots like the founders of the KKK though). They went to re-unions and funerals with the GAR vets, didn’t get caught up in who was buried where stuff, etc.
But like I said, the later generations, realizing what a complete waste of life and resources it was for a repugnant cause, have replaced fact with fiction. It then got much worse during the 1950s due to integration. Bigotry has a lot to do with it. The recent growth in the GOP in the South is almost entirely due to race issues. Sonny Perdue won in Georgia in 2002 purely over this whole CSA/flag/color issue. And Georgia’s not nearly as backwards as most other former CSA states.
Look folks, I had a gg-gf that was captured at Vicksburg. I also had a gg…g-gf that was a Hessian captured during the Revolutionary War and decided to stay here.
Why on Earth would I “honor” one ancestor differently than the other? I don’t go around trying to raise money trying to get carvings of George III, Cornwallis and Burgoyne put on a mountain. I don’t try to have the Union Jack added to the state flag. I don’t ask newcomers a lot of details about what percentage of their parentage were “traitors to the crown”. Etc.
The south was a legend in its own mind even before the war. Read Life on the Mississippi. Twain really goes after the rich southerners and their fixation on chivalry a la Sir Walter Scott.
The confederacy isn’t so popular in the north, only in the south. I was born in Ohio, and had great-great-grandparents who fought for the Union. We were neither fond of nor unfond of the south. They fought, they lost, end of story.
Southerners, on the other hand, remained fixated on keeping the whole thing alive. I assume that the main reason was that most of the battles were fought on southern soil, and the south underwent more privation, so that the war has more reality to them than it does to northerners. Certainly visiting a Civil War battlefield is an emotional experience. Then there’s the debacle of reconstruction, which helped ensure lasting bitterness.
Feelings about the war vary throughout the south. South Carolinians and Georgians remain fixated on the war to this day. Virginians not so much, in my experience, which is interesting considering the amount of blood shed there. Texans (of which I am now one) seem to just pay a little lip-service. After all, no major battles were fought in Texas, and their main involvement was supplying beef to the Confederate army.
I’m also a Buckeye who was planted in the Lone Star State. Your summary of the two states views on the war are pretty close to my own observations, though I would add a couple things.
Before anything else, Unionist, Secessionist or anything else, native Texans are Texans first. Period. Yeah they were part of the CSA and by default were on the losing team, but Texans will always point out that their state flag was once their national flag and it really wasn’t their fight. Being part of Mexico, CSA, USA, etc. is all just background noise. “The South Will Rise Again” doesn’t seem to resonate with Texans as much. Neo-confederates are out there, but most pickup trucks have “Don’t Mess With Texas” rather than the “Stars and Bars.”
That being said, there is the “Republic of Texas” movement that pops up from time to time, but they’re pretty fringe. A new confederacy might have wider support in the other CSA states, but from what I’ve seen if the South were to rise again, Texas would likely side with the Union. This ain’t the South. It’s the West.
I’m proud of my Ohio upbringing even though Ohio isn’t what’d you call an exciting place. It is because Ohio has a lot of anti-slavery history to it? I’m glad I come from a state that fought on the “right” side of that war, but I have no direct ties to the war. It’s mainly because it’s home. If I were from the south, I’d still be proud of my home and its history. I think the problem is there are people who can’t tolerate anything tarnishing their home and try to make the facts fit their perception… nor can they tolerate anyone challenging those perceptions. What makes people who champion the Southern cause is the same thing that makes people sing “God Bless America” no matter what’s done in America’s name.
What was interesting after 9/11 was seeing a pickup truck with the Confederate battle flag in one corner and the US flag in another…
Don’t know if it means anything, but I’ve met a few southerners who argue that the North hasn’t won yet. The score is North 1, South 0 - and it is only halftime. Then they inevitably yell “The South Shall Rise Again”.
Wouldn’t you like to pretend that you were descended from landed Cavalier gentry who wore gorgeous clothes, threw cotillions and came this close to winning the whole shooting match? Especially if your family had to eat a lot of shit for the next 80 years? It’s a very comforting image. Phony, but comforting.
I doubt that, during Badger games in Madison, when the band plays “On Wisconsin,” that one person there in a thousand knows that the title comes from Arthur MacArthur rayyling cry to his troops at Lookout Mountain. Or that Wisconsin’s Iron Brigade (actually 2 Wisconsin regiments and one Indianan) took more casualties than any US army outfit until the Japanese-Americans of WWII.
Nope, and nobody knew that the old guys in my hometown in Wisconsin had fought like tigers in the South Pacific, if they didn’t happen to hang out at the VFW.
I can’t speak for the “Yankee” yankees from the Northeast, but IMHO, it’s not an issue of loser vs winners; it’s due to regional cultural differences: Midwesterners tend to be a hard-headed lot with a disdain for bragging. Every bit as racist as Southerners, during the Civil-rights era of the 1960’s the message I got growing up in Wisconsin was “this is all because those damn Southerners are too lazy to do their own work.”
The valididty of that view aside, I’ve read that it’s not a matter of nostalgia for a “lost cause,” but rather due to the results of the English Civil War: the Cavaliers initially settled the South, with a strong sense of social hierarchy and high regard for military culture, followed by waves of ornery Scots-Irish who made up the small farmers with their own strong sense of anti-federal independence. The North was founded by Puritains: not much on military pomp, but, more inclined to build factories than found plantations, were the favored side at the birth of industrialized warfare.
Even if the South had won, they would make a bigger deal of the war than the North. It’s just in their system of values.
The C.S.A. (ignoring the racist aspect) repersents the ideal Gov’t form that the founding fathers wanted. Yes the articals of confederation failed but the Federated States of America have shown a steady, and to many un-Constitutional growth at the direct expense of states, local and personal rights. the CSA banner stands for these rights, and the sentiment of the people (or at least the people who feel the F.S.A. have over stepped it’s bounds).
What exactly is so honorable about being a traitor? Or let me rephrase your statement as:
“Slight hijack about Benedict Arnold: I have great respect for the man. He was offered command of the Continental troops, but even though he identified more with the politics of the Colonies, he still chose to fight for the side he had grown up on.”
The sainthood of Robert E. Lee is part of the cultural self-denial that seems to have swallowed up the memory of the South’s role in the Civil War. I mean, we have people actually using the modern term “War of Northern Aggression,” for God’s sake. Or look at the enthusiasm with which people will pick up the “the Civil War wasn’t about slavery” argument, despite the fact that it quite obviously WAS about slavery, at least to a very great degree.
Don’t you get it? He didn’t see it as a country, rather a confederation of states. How can you commit treason against a country you decide doesn’t exist?
B.A. switched horses in midstream, probably feeling indignant over many of the slights he recieved in his career. Apples and oranges.
Of course the war was about slavery. Read the articles of succession, especially SC’s :rolleyes: That part is embarassing, to be perfectly honest.
The honorable part about Lee is that he was willing to defy the federal government in loyalty to his state, something I identify with greatly.
And before anybody gets all high and mighty about how the South was all about slavery and the north was the defenders of all that was good and honorable, don’t kid yourself into thinking there were no slaves north of NC. In fact, most people don’t know that the E.P. wasn’t issued until Sept of 1682 and wasn’t in effect until 1683, well after the war had begun. An afterthought, if you will.
Most people tend to remember the knights and dukes as opposed to the horse theives, now don’t they?
