First of ahhl, no self respecting Yankee would be seen with a Confederate flag.
Secondly, if one were so inclined to believe the various stories written about this sad and trahgic chapta’ in our glorious nations history, one would think that the South was populated by gentlemen poets. By day, fighting bravely for their homeland. By night, writing articulate letters home to their sweethaarts. Why the very notion of slavery is usually mentioned as an afterthought:
Dear Sweet Martha,
The 51st marched into Richmond today. My deer friend Jebidiah was mortally wounded today fighting against those cursed Yankees. Oh if only I had the words to discribe the sorrow of blah blah blah blah blah.
Funny that this letter never made it into the Civil War minisieries:
Dere Betty May,
I done gots my foot blown off. It powerfull hurts something fierce. Weez was dragging a negro around by his hair and Cletuses up and gots his rifle caught on a branch and it done gone off.
Funny; he apparently thought it existed when he swore allegiance to it upon becoming a commissioned officer in its army. Was he lying when he took that oath?
I guess you might say he switched horses in midstream.
He swore an oath to that country that he decided “didn’t exist” when he accepted his commission, and he took the government’s money, then he, who didn’t even believe in slavery or secession, betrayed the country he swore to protect because self serving economic interests in his own state manipulated its “secession” from the US. In any other country, he would have been hanged after the war ended.
What a legacy Arnold could have enjoyed, too. He blunted what would have been a crushing British invasion at the Battle of Valcour Island (where he did happen to get his ass kicked, but he accomplished the overarching objective of scaring the British into delaying their plans), and he was also brilliant at Saratoga, the battle that convinced the French that the Americans were worth helping out.
It seems, in regards to Lee, that it appears some posters feel that one day he was commissioned an officer in the US Army, and the next day, he resigned the commission. Furthermore, it appears that the same posters feel that he resigned on a whim.
This is not the case. cite
another cite
He was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Army upon graduation from West Point in 1829. He did not resign this commission for 32 years. Nearly half of his life was spent in the service of the United States.
As many of us know, ideals change over the course of a few years, not to mention a few decades. It is not out of the realm of possibility that Lee’s politics and belief system changed slightly over the course of 30+ years.
Speaking as someone who has no known relatives who took part in the American Civil War (my great grandparents on both sides came over on boats from Ireland, Italy, and Germany in the very early 20th century), I absolutely see the honor of a man who puts loyalty to family above all else. Perhaps the ideal presented by his “new” country was misguided, perhaps not. It’s easy to judge that 150 years later, the outcome known. But the fact that he put the defense of his family first is noble in and of itself.
I think that this description comes closest to accurately describing what has set Southern culture, in general, apart from the North. Most people that I grew up with would certainly identify with the “strong sense of social hierarchy.” My family was not military but three of the six boys in my Sunday School class graduated from U.S. military academies. The maternal side of my family fits the Scots-Irish description to a T.
What so many people forget is that we are not talking about people made with cookie cutters. People have different reasons for being interested in the Civil War and in the CSA. The insecure and shallow use it as an excuse to express their bigotry and racism. Historians have access to a wealth of information and historic battlegrounds. For some of us, it is family history. My grandfather and his brothers were Confederate soldiers. He told my father of the horrors he saw and endured and my father told me. That brings it close.
But unlike some of you might assume, my grandfather wasn’t proud of having fought and he realized that the South should never have won. It wasn’t a point of honor. My father, although a true son of the Confederacy, refused to join the Sons of the Confederacy. He refused to allow me to accept a room in a dorm at Vanderbilt that was for descendants of Confederate soldiers – and therefore subsidized. On my grandfather’s gravestone, there is mention that he was a soldier in the Civil War, but not that he was a Confederate.
My father worked for liberal causes all of his life, including before and during the Civil Right Movement despite the risk to his business in a small Southern town. I spent all of my teaching career in inner city schools. We have paid our dues.
One reason that Southerners in general can have a little bit of a chip on our shoulders is that we aren’t as ignorant of the North as many Northerners are of the South. We see that you are a mixed bag and don’t generalize as much. We also see the irony of your talking about the bigotry in the South and then being such bigots, in some cases, about Southerners.
To hear some of you talk, there was never a slave in the North. Black men weren’t roasted alive in the streets of New York. There was no problem integrating the schools in Detroit or Boston.
The term “the War of Northern Aggression” is often used to tease Yanks.
I’m curious about why so many non-Southerners seem so concerned about our love of our own culture and traditions. The war was about slavery. Southern culture is not!
My friend Pete, who lives in Gainesville, Florida, showed me a photo he took of a man who lives there:
A black man, about 70 years old, wearing a cap with a Confederate battle flag and the motto, “American by birth, Southern by the grace of God.”
I guess you could see it that way, nobody is going to start handing out medals for trying to secede. The difference is that Lee did it in defence of his state, BA did it just because he was pissy. A big difference in my opinion.
Excellent post, Casey1505.
I don’t know that the Confederacy is “popular,” in so much as the remembering of the whole bloddy time is poignant - and people respond to poignant feelings. When you think about the incredible waste of lives and resources, regardless of your feelings on whether the war was about states’ rights or slavery, you can’t help but be moved. In the end, it doesn’t make any difference at all as to what the cause of war was…it was a horrible episode regardless.
I’m proud of the bravery my great grandfather and his brothers exhibited and astonished at their ability to endure such privations; I’m not proud of the South’s reliance on slave labor.
Actually some of the stuff that lead to the Civil War can be seen in the case of Arnold.
Arnold was from New York. It was one of the more Tory states and the British occupied NYC for most of the war. Arnold was by no means Tory. But it was the Continental Congress who got to decide who would be the generals and they made those decisions not always based on who would be the best general but what state they came from. NY state wasn’t sending as many troops or cash as other states. Some in the Congress felt that men from say Georgia, would more likely follow a general from Georgia. Arnold performed some great feats for the colonies but after being denied promotion and command several times. And after finding out that some generals were writing a smear letters against him,(and Washington) he bowed to pressure from his wife and tried to defect. It was really kind of sad.
But the strong state identity that people had back then. Is much different than that of today. That played a big role in Arnold being screwed by the Continental Congress and in Lee going with his state.
The Civil War was the first time certain states had been notable on the national stage. Notice how certain Southern States – Virginia and Texas for example – are a little less intense about Civil War devotions… they have romantic histories to refer to that precede the Civil War era (Virginia has its colonial-era history, Texas has its period of independence.)
Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi…? They were not exactly at the center of national events before the Civil War. It’s like their American history starts there.
Which is my point. A pathetic, henpecked (haven’t read about the wife before, just trusting you), bitter man decided that since “they don’t like me”, I’ll go join the other side. Compare with a long, deliberate, painful soul-search of where your true loyalties lie; to country or family, friends and state.
Zebra, if I may, I’m afraid I’m going to nitpick your first post so I can show off a fact I learned last night. The town of Chambersburg, about 15 miles up Route 30 from Gettysburg was burned to the ground by Confederate soldiers right before or after (I forget which) the battle of Gettysburg, long before Sherman’s march on Atlanta. Atrocities, as it seems is always the case with war, occurred on both sides.
Oh I didn’t mean to imply that the south didn’t do anything bad or that the people of the north did not suffer privation or had many many losses. They certainly did.
The thing is that you can fly a Union flag and not be questioned.
The Civil War was partly about slavery, yes, but it was mostly about money. The South didn’t want the possible economic ruin of freeing the slaves, and the North didn’t want the economic issues of having to pay tarriffs on cotton and other agricultural goods. That’s the bulk of why the South wanted to secede, and why the North didn’t just tell them not to let the door hit 'em on the way out.
The average Southerner didn’t have any particular interest in keeping slavery legal, because something like 90% of them didn’t own any slaves to start with. Of course, these folks didn’t own anything else, either and thus had no power of any sort. They fought partly because their government told them this was a good and just war (God, where all have we heard that in the last century?), necessary to protect their homeland against the Northern invaders. Partly, they fought because their perception of the issues boiled down to “Them damyankees wanna come down here and tell us how to live.” Southerners don’t take well to other folks telling them how to live, and they come by that honestly. This nation was founded by people who didn’t want other folks telling them how to live, fercryinoutloud. You know, Pilgrims, freedom of speech and religion, taxation without representation, all that jazz?
And that, I think, is the root of a lot of the sentimentality a lot of people feel about the Confederacy. Like the Minute Man, the Confederate soldier is a tangible symbol of the sentiment this country was founded upon: You ain’t telling me what to do, buddy.
When was the last time you saw someone flying a 34-star flag?
Crazycatlady: Of course I am sure you see the irony in someone adopting the position of “don’t tell me what to do” and then turning around and whipping their slaves for not doing what they were told.
Again, as she said, something like at least 90% of Southerners did not own slaves.
Well done, Bruce_daddy, zoe and crazycatlady.
It’s a complex issue. I agree that most of the interest is probably due to a historian’s curiosity as well as family history; not bigotry.
FWIW-I live in Charleston, and we went with a group of friends to the Hunley crew funeral earlier this year. A guy we knew just started dating a black girl from New York, and she went with us. No, she wasn’t the only black person there if that’s what you’re thinking.
Far from it.
What I was going to say, though, is that she expressed that she never felt personally uncomfortable or got any racist vibes from anyone there.
She said-
“I didn’t notice any racist crazy white people. But I saw regular crazy white people everywhere.”
I think that sums it up pretty well. A lot of re-enactors are an unusual bunch, if for no other reason that they’re willing to wear yards and yards of period gear, including black veiled widow clothing, in 90 degree heat.
