The Confederate Flag Has Always Been About Hate, Not “Heritage”
The people who continue to claim that the Confederate Flag is about anything other than hatred, racism, and a nation that celebrated slavery are lying to you and to themselves.
Steven Talyor’s post about a rally in Montgomery, Alabama in support of the Confederate Battle Flag, along with a conversation I got dragged into on social media this morning, led me to this piece by University of Illinois History Professor Bruce Levine, who has closely studied the Civil War and its aftermath, which completely demolishes the idea that the flag has ever been anything other than a symbol of racism and hatred:
In fact, claims like these have little to do with historical reality. The Confederate States of America firmly and emphatically stood for slavery and white supremacy from its birth. Modern-day racists like Roof who brandish Confederate symbols are not distorting their meaning. On the contrary: these racists stand squarely within the Confederate tradition. Pretending otherwise is an obstacle to coming to terms honestly with this country’s history and the enduring strength of the racist views that its symbols celebrate.
(…)
In 1861 Confederate president Jefferson Davis reminded his congress that because “the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable” to southern prosperity. “With interests of such overwhelming magnitude imperiled” by the election to the presidency of an antislavery man like Abraham Lincoln, he declared, “the people of the Southern States were driven . . . to the adoption of some course of action to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced.” The Confederacy’s vice president, Alexander Stephens, also acknowledged that disputes about “the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization” between North and South constituted “the immediate cause” of secession. “Our new Government,” he exulted, was founded “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 new slaveholders’ republic fashioned itself a constitution that reflected secession’s central purpose. In most ways a carbon copy of the U. S. Constitution, the South’s version distinguished itself by guaranteeing that no “law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves” would ever be enacted by a Confederate government.
Union victory in the Civil War destroyed slavery. The thirteenth amendment enshrined abolition, and two additional amendments promised black men the same civil rights that white men enjoyed. During the 1870s and afterward, however, champions of white supremacy led a vicious terror campaign that successfully stripped former slaves and their descendants of many of the gains that they had achieved during the war and its immediate aftermath. Leaders of that campaign and upholders of the long-lived segregationist Jim Crow system that terrorism imposed regarded themselves as heirs of the Confederacy. The Sons of Confederate Veterans, for example, boasted more than half a century after Appomattox about the South’s postwar victory in the “great battle for white supremacy and southern ideals.” And as new efforts to overthrow Jim Crow gradually grew in strength during the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, segregationists fiercely resisted under the banners of the Confederacy. Various southern states incorporated Confederate insignia into their flags in defiance of that rising civil rights movement.
Dylan Roof and his kind, thus, do not dishonor the memory of the Confederacy; they do not misrepresent and misuse its symbols. The Confederate States of America came into existence to preserve African American slavery and white supremacy. After slavery’s legal abolition, the defenders of white supremacy quite logically looked back upon the slaveholders’ republic as their true forebears. If the country is at last really ready to cease celebrating and honoring the Confederacy and its symbols, it should do so with a full awareness of the long and poisonous traditions that makes this necessary.
Anyone who takes a look a history realizes, of course, that Levine is absolutely correct. Many in the South and others who have an alternative views of history will claim that the Civil War was about something other than slavery, or at least not primarily about slavery, and that other issues such as tariff policy, the economy, political power in Washington, and so-called “states rights.” While all of those issues played a role in the relationship between the North and the South in the years leading up to secession and war, though, it was slavery that drove the dynamic of that relationship and it was the desire to protect the institution of slavery and extend it into new territory that led to the creation of the Confederacy. American political history from the founding until the firing of the first shots in Charleston’s Harbor in 1861 is full of that history, including the Fugitive Slave Act, the Compromise of 1820, the Missouri Compromise, the battles over Kansas between forces for and against slavery, John Brown’s raid in Harper’s Ferry, and the Election of 1860 itself. The secession of South Carolina and the states of the Deep South was not prompted by any overt act by the United States, but by the fact that Abraham Lincoln, who wasn’t even necessarily an abolitionist himself, was elected President. The fact that Lincoln could not have done much of anything to threaten slavery in the South thanks to the fact that Congress, and especially the Senate, was firmly in the control of Southern politicians, was seemingly not sufficient succor to the group of elitists and pro-slavery radicals who pushed the secession movement. What did push the movement, though, was slavery and racism. One need only read the Secession Resolutions themselves, or the words of the man who became the Vice-President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens: (emphasis mine)
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone 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. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.
The historical record is clear as to what the Confederacy was, and to display their banners in anything other than an historical context is to give implicit endorsement to those doctrines the same as if one were to file a Nazi Flag from their window.
As if the history of the Confederacy weren’t enough in and of itself to refuse the hate versus heritage argument, the history of how the flag came to be used in modern times ought to confirm it. In the aftermath of the war, the various flags of the defeated nation largely faded away. Robert E. Lee himself, who after the war became President of what is now Washington & Lee University in Virginia argued that the flag should not be displayed in public and left instructions that no such flags were to be displayed at his funeral or his grave after he died. To the extent the flag was seen, it was in the hands of the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist organizations that existed in the South n in the years after the war, and the reasons they chose to adopt that banner were obvious to everyone. It wasn’t until the Civil Rights Era that the flag we know today started appearing in public in an official capacity. South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and other states across the Old Confederacy adopted the flag by either flying it at state buildings, incorporating it into the state flag, or both as a symbol of resistance to the Federal Government’s efforts to protect the rights of African-Americans and as a symbol to intimidate African-Americans who lived in the South. These states did not start flying the Confederate flag in the 1960s and earlier because of heritage, they were flying it for the same reason that Bull Connor had his officers beating and using water cannons on peaceful protesters, because they wanted to protect and preserve a system of racial repression and discrimination. That is what that flag stands for, nothing more and nothing less.
If it’s a symbol of gracious heritage and not hate, why are the only people outside of the south who flaunt it dirtballs? Outlaw bikers love it. Neo-Nazis love it. Convicted criminals love it (it’s a favored prison tat.)
Their heritage is hate. They celebrate George Wallace, Orval Wallage and Strom Thurmond.
I played in a tennis foursome with Dr. Levine many years ago. Lost touch. Still have a copy of his book, Half Slave and Half Free. Very good account of antebellum conditions. Good to see him turn up here.
As Gustopher says, my heritage IS hate. It’s many other things as well. But so is yours Doug. We have all profited from the enslavement of millions, the genocide of tens of millions. We continue to do so. Glass houses.
I am proud to be a Southerner, and I am proud of the unique place it holds in the world – a unique culture, and a unique history. It’s people are by-and-large the best, most friendly people I have met anywhere in the country.
But if you love something you don’t lie about it’s flaws. You won’t hear me trying to historically revise what the war was about. As I’ve said here before, it was not some holy crusade against slavery, but it was ABOUT slavery . The flag has been used by white supremacists for over a century. It is irrevocably intertwined with hatred and I do not oppose efforts to remove it from government property when it is not used in a historical context.
What the Southern people (of all colors) could benefit from now is reaching for a less controversial symbol, one not synonymous with white supremacy. I understand the feeling many Southerners have of our symbols being under attack. Yes, they are tainted symbols, but symbols are important (Gawker has a good article about this, essentially using fancy words to say people want to be part of something bigger than themselves because we are mortal) and people don’t like to have their identity stripped away. And no, it’s not “having their white supremacy stripped away” as many of you will likely retort. This change doesn’t solve white supremacy in Charleston, and it certainly doesn’t solve it in LA, New York, and DC. But Southerners should look elsewhere and forge new identities that recognize our commonalities in opposition to Americans from elsewhere. Blacks and whites in the South generally have more in common with each other than with outsiders, after all.
I do not support, however, its removal (or, perhaps, more appropriately, we would replace it with a CSA national flag) from historical monuments that honor wartime valor, etc., of which there are many in the South. Nor should we seek to snuff out every historical figure tied to the Confederacy or white supremacy for which a building is named, etc. The fact is, the war happened, and we have to carry the burden of that legacy.
I continue to see the Confederates’ act of secession as Patriotism in the truest spirit of the American Revolution, but the unfortunate reality is they chose to exercise that civic interest and right to self-determination in a way which simultaneously sought to keep their black countrymen in perpetual slavery. It was an ignominious cause to be sure. I am capable of separating these two facts without ignoring the War’s inherent injustice.
The funny thing is, people are willing to pile on for something easy like taking this flag. For black folks living in the poor parts of Charleston, they aren’t going to sleep better tonight because this symbol of white supremacy has been removed from a public building. How about treating the root causes of poverty, which is rampant in the South and which I myself have experienced, and maybe work on education, healthcare, technical skills, and myriad social issues which hurt poor Southerners. That doesn’t mean that the flag shouldn’t come down, but boy there’s been a lot of celebration about something with no real impact. It’s like electing Obama in 2008 – it’s a nice gesture, but it doesn’t change centuries of history and it doesn’t make the practical job of governance any easier.
Having been born and spent most of my life in Western Oregon the Confederate flag and in fact the Civil War has always been a mystery to me. I realized a few months ago that although I’m a 69 and have a Masters Degree I knew nothing about the Civil War and the events that led up to it. so I read a couple of books. It was indeed shocking. I think it was about hate but not just about slavery and Negros but a hate for the Federal Government. The South will change over time. I used to travel to Houston for business when I was still working and saw it transformed from a Southern City to a modern city. About the only place you would find a Confederate flag was on the occasional sleazy bar, gun store or boot shop. I could goes days without hearing a Texas drawl. My sister lives in an upscale neighborhood in Houston and what you will not see is a confederate flag.
There is a city called Americana on Brazil precisely because slavery was outlawed in the US, but not here.
Confederate Battle Flag is a heritage of Haters who became Traitors and then Losers.
@aFloridian:
“I continue to see the Confederates’ act of secession as Patriotism in the truest spirit of the American Revolution, but the unfortunate reality is they chose to exercise that civic interest and right to self-determination in a way which simultaneously sought to keep their black countrymen in perpetual slavery. It was an ignominious cause to be sure. I am capable of separating these two facts without ignoring the War’s inherent injustice.”
There are no “two facts”. THE fact is that Secession was about keeping black people in perpetual slavery and therefore denying them the status of countrymen. (And It wasn’t a crusade against slavery either, all it took was a threat on the extension of slavery) It’s not an “unfortunate” collateral damage. It’s the core of the secessionist argument.
Seeing any patriotism in this act of rebellion is just an opinion.
@murray:
Who said it was collateral damage? It was certainly unfortunate. Again, slavery was the driving cause of the war, as I wrote.
But there is still a distinction between taking a stand (i.e. particularly at the lower levels and outside the slave-holding oligarchy) in defense of hearth and home and in support of an effort at self-determination. … and whether that drive for the self-determination to be rotten to the core. Just as it’s revisionist history to pretend high-minded ideals of the Enlightenment were really enough to launch a war against His Majesty, it is revisionist to suggest the South would have been willing to fight a war just over an incongruous thing like “state’s rights.”
@CSK:
Good point. I sometimes see the Confederate flag on the back of pickups with New Hampshire plates. I can’t figure out why as New Hampshire’s “Don’t Tread On Me” state flag seems more appropriate.
I appreciate that you’re trying to make a reasonable explanation of the attitude of many Southerners. However, I think you’re having trouble coming up with a southern regional symbol that isn’t tied up with slavery and the War.
I view myself as a mid-westerner. I’m unaware we have any symbol. I’m also a northerner (my people were still in Norway during the “recent unpleasantness”). Again, no symbol. Neither identity is terribly important to me. I think Southern identity has something to do with barbeque and accents and whatever, but it’s largely wrapped up in race and the War. Maybe it’s time to let it go and adopt as your symbol the flag of the United States?
@aFloridian:
Why on earth not? As you pointed out, we all live in glass houses. As a Californian, I live on some very prime real estate that was stolen from Mexico in a war of conquest. Now I have no doubt that many American troops displayed singular valor in the Mexican American War, but I don’t glorify it, and I have no wish to see it celebrated in the public square.
@aFloridian: @aFloridian:
“Who said it was collateral damage? It was certainly unfortunate. Again, slavery was the driving cause of the war, as I wrote.”
From my POV, saying that slavery, the driving cause of the war, was “unfortunate” is considering it as collateral damage. What was the fortunate part of the story?
“But there is still a distinction between taking a stand (i.e. particularly at the lower levels and outside the slave-holding oligarchy) in defense of hearth and home and in support of an effort at self-determination. … and whether that drive for the self-determination to be rotten to the core. ”
No. There is no distinction. There was no effort at self determination other than the right to enslave blacks. No other right was under threat from the Union. The “low levels and outside the slave-holding oligarchy left themselves be drawn into a war to defend not their homes or heart but the privileges of a wealthy minority.
Humph, some things never change…
@Argon:
Funny, a few days ago I mentioned the same thing: If you see a pick-up truck in rural New Hampshire bearing the flag, beware of the driver.
My suggestion for a southern heritage flag is a mosquito and a cockroach sharing barbecue against a background of grits.
But I’m no graphic designer.
Just to be fair, by the way, I’m prepared to see a new and more relevant California flag as well. Susan Sarandon and Steve Jobs eating tacos in a modest 2 million dollar flat with flames representing wildfires and a pile of bricks for the earthquakes?
@aFloridian:
No. But their kids or grandkids might.
@aFloridian:
Dude, why don’t you give it up. Look, the “Confederate flag” was the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, whose exploits the South is most proud of. They invaded the North twice. Both times they rounded up every free black they saw and shipped them south into slavery. That army was led by a slave-master whose ex slave described him as a ” hard taskmaster” who insisted that his slaves be whipped hard for their infractions. Explain to me, please , why I should admire that heritage or tolerate that symbol on any monument. I’m OK with it being in a museum , sure. But no other publicly funded place.
Meanwhile let’s cheer this lady
Now that’s some “valor” I can appreciate. The woman has more balls than any ten men I know.
@aFloridian:
I completely agree with you on this part, BTW. I think one of the reasons why conservatives are caving so quickly on that flag is precisely because they don’t want to discuss that stuff , or sensible gun safety laws. Taking down the Confederate flag is cheap: doing that other stuff is not.
Note, too, that a hell a lot of the flag supporters (and people who were flag supporters until about ten minutes ago) would fight tooth and nail against any efforts to ameliorate that poverty or pass those gun safety laws.
@stonetools:
With a broad definition of museum, I agree. Historic forts should fly the historically accurate flag, etc. Any monuments to war dead, sure, but keep them away from state houses. Bring it out on the anniversary of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever”.
There are lots of places it is appropriate, but it should always be a symbol of the past, and not a symbol of Southern governments going forward.
I’m torn on “Dukes Of Hazard” toys, but that’s not a government function, so whatever. Some part of me doesn’t want to mess with history, but we don’t sell a lot of lawn jockeys in this country anymore either.
Speaking of flags, it seems that in covering a gay pride event some CNN reporters mistook a flag with outlines of sex toys for the ISIS flag. Check out the video.
Thanks to CNN again humorously demonstrating their inability to convey news correctly, we close out what has been quite a week for national events.
BTW, Not to hijack a thread but Obama’s eulogy on Friday for the victims of the Charleston was incredibly moving. Everyone should watch it in its entirety.
For an awe-inspiring display of Failure To Get It, see Patrick Buchanan’s article defending this flag at The American Conservative. Words fail.
Abraham Lincoln, like many abolitionist that distrusted him, supported re-colonization of blacks in either Africa or Latin America. To place a particular onus on the Confederacy for racism, as opposed to slavery, is not historically accurate. By our modern standards, most whites on both sides of the conflict were racist. The South did not invent slavery; heck, America didn’t invent slavery, but it did invent a form of heritable race-based slavery that the South wished to continue when the rest of the country did not, though again not for entirely benevolent reasons.
The NAZI analogy is manipulative; lawyers use analogies to persuade people with strong feelings about one thing to adopt that view to some thing else less considered. The NAZI’s didn’t invent anti-semitism, which was rampant throughout continental Europe, but they did overthrow a democratic government and replace it with a totalitarian state, and they did invent new horrors like concentration camps and gas chambers. The leaders in the Southern states simply wanted it to to be 1852 again and again, and when they knew that era was over they tried to withdraw.
@PD Shaw:
Yet he still freed the slaves. In the final estimation, Lincoln listened to the better angles of his nature, and removed a vast evil from the land.
The confederates? Not so much…
@PD Shaw:
The Nazis did not invent concentration camps. If you are going to lecture others about historical accuracy, you should put more effort into practicing it yourself.
@PD Shaw:
Only if it’s inaccurate. Is it?
Remember, the question is not “were the Confederates like the Nazis?”. The question at hand is “Is the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia comparable in its uses to the Nazi flag?” It’s that pesky heritage claim — if you’re going to claim that the BFANV is a symbol of heritage, you’re stuck with the historical facts concerning what that particular flag was used to symbolize. That’s the only heritage you get to claim for that particular piece of cloth.
Meanwhile, the Confederates committed treason against our country because their lovely institution of slavery was being threatened…the Nazi analogy is perfect because both flags are symbols of hideous racism…
They’d like to forget that part about white supremacy being rife in most of the country. But you can believe Whites are superior to other races and still find slavery an abomination. Or as Lincoln’s electoral position was, just not want to see it expand.
But as always many things are being rolled into one in history.
Fact: The Confederate States of America was formed to continue and expand slavery.
The Civil War, however, came about for a variety of reasons that arose due to the formation of the CSA and its purpose to continue slavery. The proximate causes of hostilities were secession (states rights), but more inflammatory was the taking of US forts and arsenals, along with supplies and guns by CSA state militias and the Confederate Army. The CSA officials initially thought that the division of the taken military material would be negotiated, but then Jefferson Davis decided to have a fireworks show in Charleston harbor when one USA commander refused to yield. Once the newspapers, on both sides, got that juicy story, they roused the populaces to what sadly both sides thought would be a few weeks of war at best. To be clear though, this rallying to the CSA cause had been going on rather openly in the Cotton states and in Congress for several years.
The Civil War was the first real mechanized war with the importance of trains and the telegraph. I wonder the impact of the telegraph on the push to war by newspapers on both sides?
But regardless of why the fighting started, the fact that the elites in the Cotton States decided to form a union to perpetuate the enslavement of Blacks, whether out of animosity or economics, is the linchpin for all the events. But let’s be fair, the elites liked the money and they liked their society. Both depended on slavery.
Ashley Wilkes: Scarlett, before the war, life was beautiful. There was a glamor to it, a perfection and a completeness and a symmetry to it like Grecian art. Maybe it wasn’t so to everyone. I know that now. But to me, living at Twelve Oaks, there was a real beauty to living. I belonged in that life. I was a part of it.
{cue the sound of slaves singing in the cotton fields}@Zachriel: Yeah, I can see why there have been some calls recently to get rid of Gone With The Wind. Just another piece of telling yourself about those happy darkies….
(I’m against getting rid of Gone With The Wind. It’s a piece of art that had a great affect on the US, and getting rid of this–or, say, Confederate soldier monuments–is a wee too bit like Soviet erasure of cosmonauts from official group photos after they died in test flights. Besides which, I think having pigeons crapping all over your Confederate soldier monument is the most appropriate reaction.)
Here’s your stinking Heritage.
Neshoba County, Mississippi deputy sheriff Cecil R. Price June 21,1964
Fifty one very short years ago this month. I was 16.
RIP James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael “Mickey” Schwerner
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_civil_rights_workers'_murders
So Bruce Levine –the Marxist– objects to the Confederacy and Confederate flag?
Marxism? Isn’t that the ideology that was responsible for the slaughter of over 100 million people?…and the enslavement of as many more?