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

Great Debates
41

I would honestly say that any sort of neo-Confederacy sympathies are at an all time low in the United States. One of the main reasons is the demographics of the changing South. Texas and Florida, two states which were definitively parts of the Confederacy have had so many people move and settle there from the rest of the country since the Civil War that I don’t view either State as having very strong modern day associations with the “old Confederacy.” Most people in Texas or Florida are not part of families that have lived there for 140 years.

Of course, you have a lot of people saying “Florida and Texas aren’t part of the South in any case.” We can debate that back and forth but they both fought for the CSA.

As someone educated in the South, I’d say my education concerning the Civil War in school went like this:

  1. One time there was a war between the Union and the Confederates here in the United States, the Confederates were the bad guys and lost

  2. The Confederates were the bad guys because they wouldn’t give up their slaves and the Union successfully freed the slaves.

  3. (Around High School) The Civil War was a complicated event that was many decades brewing and resulted out of lots of different issues coalescing into a major problem.

I should note I wasn’t educated in the public schools.

I think that what I was ultimately taught in High School about the ACW is roughly true, and corresponds with things I’ve learned as an adult.

The problem in talking about the causes of the Civil War is you have several competing interests. Neo-Confederates, slavery apologists, and outright racists have a vested interest in arguing that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery. At the same time, a proper treating of the history would examine the full scope of why the states warred with one another. I think the fair treatment would acknowledge slavery was “the issue of the day” but that it was only translated into secession and civil war because of a lengthy list of historical and political events and issues.

Essentially I think the South seceded because:

[ul]
[li]Dating back to the time of the revolution, American political thought said that the States had a huge deal of rights. This was at various times thought to include the right to leave the union freely entered into or even to nullify Federal legislation or actions.[/li][li]The United States was and still is a strongly federal state. The states have a huge deal of power and are directly responsible for much of the government that the people interact with on a daily basis. What this means is that each of the states is fairly “experienced” in running itself, and they were so prior to the revolution. [/li]
This is important, because various regions of England had rebelled against royal authority throughout history. For example Henry VIII had to quell some religious uprisings in the northern part of England. However, in a fairly centralized state like England (I’m of course speaking of England prior to the creation of the U.K. in this particular instance) if a civil war is going to break out it is most likely going to be an ideological war and not a conflict between regions. The various regions of England did not have a strong history of self government, nor the existing institutions to support the concept of them breaking away as sovereign states.

In the United States, the various states did have traditional government institutions and a history of running their own affairs. Especially in the time frame of the civil war, when the Federal government was very small and quite uninvolved with many areas of public policy.

You obviously do not need regional political institutions to have a civil war. The English Civil War proves this, as do various other civil wars throughout history. However, to have a regional civil war, in which one region of the country secedes, you would typically be looking at a state which has a federal system with strong government entities in the regional governments. In the United States you actually had a system in which the states were (and still are) sovereign, cannot be dissolved by the central government and have an intrinsic right to exist.

[li]Finally, there must exist an issue that gives cause for these sub-national political units to want to secede from the whole. In the case of the American Civil War that cause was slavery. You had a bloc of states that were pro-slavery, they feared the gradual expansion of non-slave states (which because of the American political system would mean eventually the non-slave states could impose their will on the slave states), and also importantly the strongly pro-slavery states were all contiguous with one another.[/li][/ul]

So I think it is fair to say the cause of secession is the American political system and the history up to that point, with the various legal philosophies that had gone around. During the War of 1812 some of the New England states had flirted with secession because those states overwhelmingly did not want to fight the War of 1812, and they saw it is a war being fought to further the interests of the western states. Since New England actually bordered the enemy in that war, they were additionally pretty pissed they were being exposed directly to the threat of the enemy’s armies in a war they wanted no part of. There was additionally an instance in which South Carolina wished to secede because of a tariff that was passed by the Federal government which was harmful to the economy of South Carolina. So as you can see, the “cause” in my mind, for secession, was the political and historical reasons I mentioned above. Basically, there had to exist a certain environment for secession to happen.

The reason the states wanted to secede was slavery. However the reason for the secession itself has to be explored in the context of the greater history of the United States, the regionalism of the United States, and the political system. If slavery wasn’t practiced along regional lines, if the federal system had not created such strong states, if there had not been a history of political discourse in regard to the legality of secession, we would not have seen the American Civil War.

If you’re trying to explain the ACW to a 10 year old, I think it is appropriate to say “the Civil War was fought over slavery.” That was the issue that sparked the conflict, no doubt. However, I feel a full treatment of the Civil War has to talk about things other than slavery. That is when you run into trouble, some people will assert if you want to talk about the build up to the Civil War and any issue other than slavery, you are a slavery apologist and a racist trying to distort history. It doesn’t help things that there actually are to this day slavery apologists and racists seeking to distort history.

42

I get what you’re saying, but do you actually have any evidence that “neo-confederate revisionists” by and large are trying to justify the actions of their direct ancestors? Like I said earlier, I bet most people do not know anything about who their family was or what they did more than 2-3 generations back. I don’t know much of anything about an entire side of my family prior to 1900, and probably never will. I’ve actually bothered to look into it, most people haven’t.

I’m not really sure I even agree with the premise of the OP that there is a significant amount of neo-confederate revisionism these days. I have no idea how we’d quantify it, but aside from some corners of the internet I honestly think the ACW is one of the biggest non issues there is in the daily discourse of the United States.

What neo-confederate ramblings I have seen tend to be from people who are: 1. Racist, 2. anti-Federal types who want to see the Federal government demolished or enormously weakened, sometimes just one or the other, but often both in conjunction.

43

Earlier, I asked if some Civil War buffs are really “Gone with the Wind” buffs, since their conception of the era seems to be based more on that movie and others like it than on historical realities.

As I recall, the slaves shown in GWTW are almost entirely “house servants” like Mammy and Prissy. They are depicted as having a loving, familial relationship with the whites they serve. The only indication of the violence and brutality on which the slave’s obedience was founded is found in one line in which Scarlet O’Hara says “I’m gonna take a strap to that Prissy.”

The vast majority of slaves were employed on labour-intensive plantations in which they were handled by an overseer. The rich families who profited from their exploitation were not even likely to have known their names.

But in GWTW, the only indication that these slaves even existed is a single line in which one of minor black characters says something like “We can’t work in the fields, we’s house servants.”

44

I’d wager most people under the age of 60 have had their views of slavery in the South shaped more by the miniseries Roots than Gone With the Wind. I’ve seen GWTW but honestly, for a movie that was so hugely popular and made so much money I actually think it has very little exposure these days. Other movies from that era like Citizen Kane and The Wizard of Oz seem a lot more prominent amongst people who didn’t actually live through that era (or were too young to remember watching movies back then.)

45

Yup, there definitely were quite a few — particularly toward the end of the war, I seem to recall anti-slavery ideology became more popular. It wasn’t why the US went to war, though, and it was certainly a minority opinion (depending on how you define “anti-slavery”).

46

Viewership statistics on the Roots miniseries:

cite Part VIII was the third most watched telecast in American history. Each part of the miniseries is on the list of 100 most watched telecasts in American history, in its original broadcast 85% of American homes saw at least part of the series, and it was seen by over 100 million viewers during its run.

I still remember when Roots first ran, it was a huge deal and immediately got huge play in local public schools as well, and is still shown in these parts to pretty much every student that goes through middle school (GWTW isn’t shown at all to my knowledge.)

47

I’ve taken note of your statement that “revisionism” in favor of the North does not equate to the level of denialism by Confederate apologists, so I know you’re not playing a tu quoque game here.

But I’m curious - what issues and events, substantive or otherwise, do you think serve as the basis for historical revisionism by those who feel that the Union was in the right?

48

Nice, I’m gonna reuse that line.

49

Well, there’s why a country goes to war, and there’s why people fight. They’re generally different. The North went to war to preserve the union, generally. The South went to war to preserve their way of life (which revolved around slavery.) The soldiers fought because they were drafted, or to support their homeland, or… well, any number of reasons.

50

Well first, I also feel the Union was in the right, or at least that the reasons elucidated by Lincoln are legitimate and that quelling the rebellion was proper. But I don’t think the type of revisionism I’m talking about is really motivated by defense of the social, political or economic positions taken by the Union during the Civil War itself, but like Confederate apologia is really driven by present day concerns.

As I said before, those [pro-Union? anti-Antebellum?] revisionists seem to want to shut down neo-confederate hate mongering (a very real thing) by denying any positive aspects of the South or any negative aspects of the North before or during the war. This sometimes involves dismissing evidence of the ambiguous motivations of participants on both sides, or of any actions which don’t reinforce the relative overall rightness of the Union or wrongness of the Confederacy.

To give two quick personal examples from the SDMB, which please note I do not wish to re-argue, I’ve been involved in:

a) a recent discussion in the Straight Dope Chicago forum involving an infamous prison camp in Chicago in which Confederate prisoners perished through deprivation and exposure. In the course of the discussion (which was actually initiated only in order to find directions to any memorial of the site), the maltreatment of those prisoners was excused by reference to the even more horrifying Andersonville facility. On the one hand Union mismanagement and malice was handwaved away and on the other Confederate abuses were used as justification.

b) a Great Debates discussion many years ago (you should remember this one, Jack, IIRC) in which I was vilified when I argued that the history of one of the KKK’s “heroes” (founder Nathan Bedford Forrest) rather undercut their position, as he’d reportedly expressed later regret for his part in the Klan. I also argued that the account by Klansmen of the Fort Pillow incident during which NBF supposedly ordered the execution of black Union soldiers was quite probably inaccurate, or at least disputed by historians. Even though my position in that debate was unabashedly and explicitly anti-Klan and anti-racist, I was painted as an apologist for failing to agree that Forrest was a one dimensional villain and that his actions were uniformly racist.

Having given those examples, I want to say again that, due to the very nature of the conflict there are fewer opportunites to revise history in favor of the Union or to the detriment of the Confederacy. Both at the time of the war and in retrospect the Confederate cause is morally (and of course practically) indefensible.

I won’t speculate further on the motivations of people who justify, deny or exaggerate the known historical record, but clearly there are issues surrounding the Civil War which are vulnerable to revisionism from more than neo-confederates.

51

I’d say the important point was that there was someone to exploit. Since blacks were still going to be working to enrich white people (mostly through the sharecropper system) racism still provided an important social function in justifying the situation. Revisionism was part of that package.

Also there is the fact that despite the outrage over Reconstruction, the North was a reluctant conqueror. The hand of ocupation rested lightly. Governments were turned back over to Southerners very quickly and only removed again when disgust with the black codes and lynchings created the political will to intervene more directly. Even then it didn’t last long. Within a decade the federal government was allowing Southern Democrats to resume control through campaigns of intimidation and direct violence.

After Civil Rights former Klansmen like Senator Byrd had to own up. In order to remain politically viable they had to renounce their former beliefs. Not so after the Civil War. Secessionists remained stubbornly unrepentant and were allowed to regain power so quickly that they had no reason to change.

52

You don’t think that most who have an interest in the history of that era have a semi-realistic view of what slavery was like?

53

The romanticism of the Civil War actually started with veterans in the years immediately following the war. By the late 19th century organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy (they were literally the daughters of Confederate veterans back then) fostered the image of a genteel south destroyed by the barbaric north, of a benevolent/paternalistic slave system, and of great military geniuses that were only defeated because they couldn’t compete with the north’s resources. So it’s very different from post WWII Germany where many of the children came to accept and renounce what their nation had done.

54

Another thing that goes with is is the denigration of General Grant, he should be one one America’s greatest heroes but he is often relegated to second tier status behind the southern generals. There have been some recent books that attempt to restore his rightful place in American military history.

Check out these radio guys, southern, racist, true conservatives, the south will raise again in full force.

http://libertynewsradio.com/shows/tpc/2010/december/

55

This is something I’ve realized since I got the new Mark Twain Autobiography for Christmas. I haven’t actually gotten to the actual Autobiography part yet, but I’m working on the part where the editors discuss the various fragments and pieces and previously-published editions and all that, and there were fairly extensive sections detailing Clemens’s relations with the Grant family. Grant was HUGE in the latter portion of the 19th century. When he died, town and church bells all over the country were rung in mourning. He commanded huge crowds when he appeared in public. He was politically influential, even beyond and after his presidency. And yet the things you hear most about Grant today (and for at least the last 30 years) are that he was a drunk, and that his Cabinet was filled with corruption.

56

But very similar to Germany after WWI however.

57

I’m not sure there are many good parallels between post WWI Germans and southerners living through Reconstruction. The Germans were given a raw deal by the allied powers whereas the south was treated fairly well by the Union victors.

58

To xenophon41:

I did not see the Chicago forum discussion of a Northern prison camp, but it strikes me that what you’re describing would not be historical revisionism, but a tu quoque fallacy by bringing up Andersonville, a notorious Confederate prison.

As to Nathan Forrest, his role in history got wrangled over in GD just recently and again I don’t think there was anything close to revisionism on the part of his critics. There was rejection of attempts to rehabilitate Forrest’s image not just by minimizing the Fort Pillow massacre but by bringing up a speech this former slave trader made late in life which supposedly argued for more economic opportunities for blacks. It is not “revisionism” to argue that Forrest’s legacy on race matters is dismal or that it is disgusting that two U.S. high schools remain named after him.

E.J. Dionne had a good take on the issue of Civil War denialism in a column published a couple of days ago, in which he discusses the South’s secession declarations (and remarks by Jeff Davis and Alexander Stephens) which make explicit that the rupture with the Union was over slavery, and notes that revisionism was resorted to early on.

*"After the war, in one of the great efforts of spin control in our history, both Davis and Stephens, despite their own words, insisted that the war was not about slavery after all, but about state sovereignty. By then, of course, slavery was “a dead and discredited institution,” McPherson wrote, and “(to) concede that the Confederacy had broken up the United States and launched a war that killed 620,000 Americans in a vain attempt to keep 4 million people in slavery would not confer honor on their lost cause.”

Why does getting the story right matter? As Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour’s recent difficulty with the history of the civil rights years demonstrates, there is to this day too much evasion of how integral race, racism, and racial conflict are to our national story. We can take pride in our struggles to overcome the legacies of slavery and segregation. But we should not sanitize how contested and bloody the road to justice has been. We will dishonor the Civil War if we refuse to face up to the reason it was fought."*

By the way, to correct your probably accidental reference to Forrest as the founder of the Ku Klux Klan - he was not the founder, but has the dubious honor of being its first Grand Wizard.

This is beyond the scope of this thread, but the idea that the Germans got a raw deal is a crock, considering the vast damage and loss of life for which they were directly responsible, as well as their history of demanding crippling reparations from a defeated foe (France in 1870).

59

To Jackmannii: It’s not the criticisms of Forrest that irked me; it was the criticism I received for noting the two things - ambiguity of Forrest’s late life positions, and historical uncertainty regarding the specifics of the Ft. Pillow massacre. Noting a hisorical dispute regarding facets of a poorly regarded figure should not be treated as an attempt at rehabilitation of that figure. You can’t fight denialism with more denialism.

As far as the Fort Douglas discussion, yes, there was the tu qoque at the heart of the argument, but there was also minimization of Union mismanagement and exaggeration of the importance of Confederate outrages in forming Union prison practices. You can argue whether that sinks to the level of revisionism, but it was damned irritating.

60

Maybe not in specific facts, but in the attitudes : pre-WWI Germany (from potential world power to Third world country) /Antebellum South (from alleged economic powerhouse to Third world country also), both destroyed by their opponents, “great” military geniuses crushed by their opponents in both cases (+ in the case of Germany the “infamous” backstabbing by the “cowardly” civilians although it was Ludendorff that demanded an armistice be signed).