Will 2011 be a banner year for neo-confederate revisionist history?

Great Debates
1

With the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War fast approaching, we can probably expect an avalanche of neo-confederate historical revisionism, not only as regards the Civil War itself but also the civil rights struggle of the 60s, which after all will be celebrating a number of 50th anniversaries in the coming decade.

Regardng the latter, we already have Missippi Governor Haley Barbour, the outgoing Chairman of the Republican Governors Association, rewiting the history books concerning the role played in the 1960s by White Citizens’ Councils (now simply known as Citizens Councils for some reason). You can read the Governor’s comments http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/20/haley-barbour-civil-rights_n_799365.html

These councils, which were bulwarks of segregation and were fundamentally a polite form of the KKK, are now recast as friends of African-Americans protecting them from racism.

But of course the most obvious form of revisionism will probably be the growing “Slavery was only a minor detail that practically nobody in the Confederacy even thought about when they seceded.” At the very least, we will be told that it was “not the major issue behind the war.”

First of all, how would you define the “major issue” in a war? Can you see into the hearts of all 4 million combatants (including conscripts) and quantify and priorize all the factors that led them to the battlefield?

Of course, the confederate soldiers will all be recast in the role of martyrs to the cause of states’ rights and victims of the “big government” that right-wingers are fighting against even today.

And yes, only 38% of southerners owned slaves (since when is almost 4 in 10 “only”?. . . . but I digress).

We can suppose, however, that 100% of confederate soldiers knew (or should have known) that they were fighting for the establishment of a new country whose constitution clearly and enunciated and enshrined not only the principles of states’ rights but also “negro slavery”. The fact that southerners, slave owners or not, clearly chose to vote for, support and fight for the establishment of such a nation speaks volumes. Whether the preservation of slavery was the number 1 or number 2 or 3 issue in the minds of every confederate is not relevant.

In fact, the states’ rights argument is in itself disingenuous, because everyone in 1861 understood after decades of debate that one of the main states’ rights being defended under this rallying cry was the right to permit and regulate trade in human beings with larger amounts of dermal melanin.

After the war was lost, it made more sense to portray the south as fighting for states’ rights. But let’s look at some of the comments of the time, shall we?

At the Democratic Convention in 1860 William Preston of South Carolina declared “Slavery is our King; slavery is our Truth; slavery is our Divine Right.”

Edward Bryan in running for Governor of South Carolina in 1860 stated, “Give us slavery or give us death!”

Confederate President Jefferson Davis, in an April 1861 address to the Confederate Congress said: “a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States” had culminated in a political party dedicated to “annihilating in effect property worth thousands of dollars.” Since “the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable” to the South’s production of cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, “the people of the Southern States were driven by the conduct of the North to the adoption of some course of action to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced.” 'We went to war on account of the thing we quarreled with the North about."

Remember the scene in “Gone with the Wind” in which Ashley, in the post-bellum South, is challenged by Scralet who tells him that he did not mind owning slaves at one time? “I was going to free them after father died.” he assures her. Yeah, right. Unbelievable how many of them were planning to do that just when that pesky, meddling Lincoln came along with his Emancipation Proclamation.

2

My mistake. The quote in my OP, attributed to Jefferson Davis, is accurate except for the last sentence. This is part of a quote by Confederate guerilla fighter John S. Mosby, (the “Grey Ghost”) who stated: “'We went to war on account of the thing we quarreled with the North about. I never heard of any other cause of quarrel than slavery.”

The Wikipedia article about Mosby quotes him as saying in a letter that: “. . . . he fought on the Confederate side, despite disapproving of slavery. While he believed the South had seceded to protect slavery, he had felt it was his patriotic duty to Virginia.” (emphasis mine).

Mind you, his allegation that he was opposed to slavery is found in a letter he wrote in 1907. It is difficult to imagine anyone with pretensions to the status of a civilized human being in the early 20th century saying “I’m gonna buy me a couple of niggers.”

But the fact remains that this famous Confederate, as late as 1907, still admitted that the south had seceded to protect slavery.

3

I’m not sure that’s a growing argument, although that isn’t necessarily a good thing. It’s been around for a while. It’s revisionism, but it’s not only pushed by racists and people in denial. I think in part it’s also pushed by people who don’t want to offend anyone. In elementary school, I was taught the war was fought over slavery. In high school, I was taught the war was not fought over slavery and that it was, at most, one issue among many. Since then I’ve read enough to realize slavery was far and away the most significant reason for the war. So go figure.

I don’t think that really matters. Soldiers don’t just enlist and show up on the battlefield one day. There are reasons countries or groups have wars and those reasons aren’t only the ones in the minds of the soldiers.

This already goes on, unfortunately. It’s disgusting. And yes, some of today’s conservatives and libertarians have grown fond of arguing that the government overreached. You may be right that it’s going to get worse as people mark the 150th anniversary of the war.

4

That is my point, precisely. Even if you COULD prove slavery was not THE uppermost cause in the minds of every single American or every single southern secessionist in 1861, so what?!!!

It is perfectly obvious from hundreds of quotes, letters, articles and declarations of Confederates themselves that it was HELLUVA BIG cause, and that everyone who fought for or supported the Confederacy knew they were objectively supporting the preservation of slavery.

BTW, I am NOT proposing that modern southerners bow their heads in shame. No more than I propose that for descendants of Europeans who murdered and robbed the Indians, nor Brits who colonized, imperialized and massacred, nor modern Germans whose grandfathers almost made Naziism triumphant. Nor even the French for what their ancestors did under Napoleon, or Belgians for their genocide in the Congo.

But is it not simply possible to admit one’s ancestors fought for an unjust cause motivated by greed and self-delusion?

5

Who wants to accept that their ancestors died for a pointless (much less evil) cause?

6

I think there’s one very important reason for all the revisionist history associated with the South:* there was somebody to blame*.

The Japanese had nobody but themselves to blame when they were pulverized and then basically dictated to after WWII. Same for the Germans; they could have blamed the Jews, but they had murdered most and the rest emigrated.

After the Civil War, though, there were still millions of blacks in the South. Some moved to the Rust Belt and worked in industry, and so on, but most had nowhere to go. I mean, it’s not like a sharecropper with six children can just pick up sticks and expect to find a job somewhere else.

That meant there was an easy target and scapegoat, which meant resentment lingered when in any other society it would have dissipated.

7

Of course it’s possible. Not everybody in the South wants to revise history this way (and for that matter not everybody who plays this game lives in the South).

Lots of people have accepted this fact throughout history, including people whose ancestors died much more recently. There are neo-Nazis in Germany, for example, but I doubt you would see as much of this kind of nonsense over there. In any even, why do we have to we have to take pride or shame in what our ancestors did? We’re not responsible for it.

8

The children of Nazis are not sufficiently removed from the atrocities to excuse them. I bet you’ll see more of this sort of thing in Germany in a hundred years.

9

I guess if I ever visit Germany, it’ll be in less than 100 years. You may be right, and your comments about having someone to blame make sense.

10

I have visited Germany, and my daughter has lived there for the past 2 of 3 years, and this Jew is very impressed. They build the Jewish Holocaust Museum just steps from the Brandenburg Gate, and they deliberately downplay the place Hitler killed himself to avoid neo-Nazis from having a shrine. Nothing equivalent to the stars and bars on flagpoles as part of the culture. Even better, I was on a mostly European mail list during the Bosnian War, and the Germans were more outraged by anti-Bosnian attacks than pretty much anyone - one drawing a large amount of invective from a Serbian who felt very oppressed.

It seems very clear that the South in general never admitted they were wrong after the war, and the oppression began as soon as the Northern Occupation troops left. I learned slavery as the root cause, but the history books I read as a kid had the “carpetbaggers” as villains. We now know that their biggest sin was enforcing voting and other rights for blacks. So I don’t think there was a generation of Southerners (maybe up to the present, but I’m not sure about even now) ashamed about what happened.

11

Yes, they try lots of things such as “The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free any slaves” (it freed over 50K at once).

“The South paid and treated it’s black soldiers better” (at the very end, the CSA did make some efforts to start some units but the results were per wiki “A month after the order was issued, the number was still “forty or fifty colored soldiers, enlisted under the act of congress”[50]. In his memoirs, Davis stated “There did not remain time enough to obtain any result from its provisions”[51]” Who very likely never got paid at all, and in any case, by that time, the Union Blacks had rcvd equal pay, starting in 1864.

12

I recently discovered a few nifty blogs countering the neo-confederacy, my favorite being Blood of My Kindred which goes after the ‘black confederates’ mythbuilders a whole lot (as well as neo-confederates in general).

13

More like a banner four years for those who want to root out every neo-conservative/revisionist word or thought and point out the evils of slavery over and over again.

As a civil war buff (I hate the b word but it gets the point across) I’m sick of it already.

14

So sorry. Can you explain why you think that’s wrong?

15

I’ve heard nothing but good things about how Germany deals with that period in its history. I was just agreeing that maybe things will be different in 100 years, when all the survivors and people who had any direct memory of that time are long gone. But I hope what they’ve done in the 60 years since the war will prevent that.

You don’t need a banner anything to point out the evils of slavery. It’s evil, and attempting to gloss over that is wrong.

16

Let me get this straight. I assume that what makes you a Civil War buff is that you are very interested in reviewing, reliving, examining and studying the Civil War, its battles, its various participants, etc. Perhaps you take part in recreations of battles, or attend the dedication of monuments to combatants who died?

So I assume you do not get sick of the civil war itself, since you are a self-admitted buff. As long as the Civil War is brave men in grey riding off from their plantations, and slavery consists of fat Mammies bustling around comically like a beloved but slightly eccentric member of the family with slightly darker skin.

Are you a Civil War buff or a “Gone with the Wind” buff?

It would seem to me that a controversy surrounding one of the major causes of that war, slavery, and the moral position of those fighting to preserve that institution less than 40 years before the 20th century would interest you as much as, say, a piece of Civil War memorabilia.

Or is the slavery issue an “inconvenient truth” that has to be swept under the carpet?

17

A good point. Civil War historical deniers as a breed are a small minority of Southerners/would-be Southerners and are slowly dying out.

It looks like southern state governments are likely to spend more on events related to the 150th anniversary of Civil War occurrences than their northern counterparts, and in some cases that will mean revisionist propaganda to be swatted down. Interestingly, I’ve noted a couple of op-ed articles in the New York Times in recent weeks, one dealing with the “The Civil War wasn’t about slavery” meme, another focusing on Abraham Lincoln in the days leading up to the war and this online piece regarding misrepresentations about black troops fighting for the Confederacy.

So at least some people for whom the truth is important are paying attention.

18

My point exactly. For example, I am living in Canada which, according to UN surveys, is one of the top 3 or 4 best countries in the world to live in. I am aware that this situation came about because my European ancestors ruthlessly robbed the Indians of their land. But late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, (who was part Ojibway btw) used to enrage some native rights advocates by saying “We owe you as fellow human beings today. We don’t owe you for what happened in the past.”

Read about how the crowds in Europe used to cheer and shout with pleasure as a heretic was tortured and set on fire. Probably millions of Europeans enjoyed such a spectacle over the centuries. If you are white or part white, think about how likely it is that some of those people were your biological ancestors. Like maybe 100%?

Perhaps the problem is that many white southerners think we are asking them to be personally ashamed. Not at all.

What I object to is the revision of historical facts with irrelevant bullshit like the so-called “black conferedrate soldiers” or the concept that some blacks owned slaves (it was true in a few cases, but mainly because of a legal technicality.)

Or irrelevant facts such as the participation of black African kings in the slave trade, or the fact that some Indian Tribes owned slaves and fought for the South. How do either of these facts change the basic fact that slavery was a main cause of secession and the resulting war?

19

I’m interested but don’t see it as that big of a controversy… I’ll even put it differently than you did… slavery was the root cause of the CW.

My problem with it is that many get all emotional about it and react to the Lost Causers accordingly … and many others have agendas of their own to make race as big an issue as they possibly can whenever they can.

20

I don’t see it a banner year for Southern Apologists, given the amount of material that continues to come out.

This morning’s LA Times mentions a new PBS documentary on Lee:

What I HOPE to see in this anniversary is more analysis of the support and lack thereof for the war in both the North and South. Even in this thread we are talking about the South - how about the North? What did THEY do wrong in the lead-up to the war? How much support was there? Who REALLY benefitted from the war? What was the money trail?

This could be a great review of the war from ALL angles.