Nobody–not even members of the Republican Confederate Party–should try and celebrate Confederate History Month without reading Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Today TNC captured an essential fact about the Civil War: that it was three overlapping conflicts:
But I think, it also helps to think of the Civil War as having three factions with three different aims:
1) The South which secedes explicitly to protect the institution of slavery and a system of white supremacy, but also feels that its “way of life” is fundamentally different from the North’s. It’s true that slavery and systemic white supremacy are essential cogs in that “way of life,” but they aren’t the entirety of it.
2) The North which is interested, primarily, in preserving the Union. If destroying slavery will help in that end, then all the better–but destroying slavery is not the primary goal. This is crucial and I want to clear, because it’s easy to conflate this–That the North is primarily motivated by unionism, not emancipation, does not negate the fact the South seceded–primarily and explicitly–to preserve systemic white supremacy. Their own documents tell the tale well. Additionally, the North almost certainly, brings its own cultural baggage and biased judgement on the South’s “way of life.”
3) African-Americans who explicitly sought the destruction of slavery and the end of systemic white supremacy. The African-American war against slavery began as soon as we got of the boat. In relevance to the Civil War, you can likely trace it back to Denmark Vessey, Gabriel Prosser, Nat Turner, and John Brown. But that only counts militant action, and ignores the small everyday acts of resistance (loafing around, breaking equipment, running off for weeks at a time) and individual acts of violence (poisonings, for instance).
The entire essay is amazing, especially the story of Big Jack Johnson, but I want to focus on the three wars of the Civil War. Of these, only one faction won their war. That would be the Union. Their goal was to preserve the Union and that was accomplished.
In the wake of the Union victory the Confederacy has fought on for their goal to protect their ‘way of life’–a world view that was and is firmly rooted in the idea of white supremacy. Over the last 150 years they have fought in many ways and they have won quite a few battles, but mostly they just keep losing and that just makes them crazier and crazier. Having a black President has really sent them over the deep edge. The calls to celebrate Confederate History Month are an attempt by the Republican Confederate Party to inspire the troops and rationalize away their hate, fear and rage.
In the wake of the Union victory African Americans also had some wins, but soon it became clear that the Union was not ready to to really join their fight to end systemic white supremacy and all of its many manifestations. In the sixties the Union finally decided to do the right thing and since then African Americans have been winning more of these fights, but not all of them. America at times can be an unreliable ally. Even with a Black President the fight goes on. The subtle and not so subtle racism of the Right is on display almost daily. Victory is near, but there are still a lot of Confederate deadenders always ready to fight on in their effort to prove that white always makes right.
And even though the Union long since decisively defeated the Confederacy, that does not stop the Republican Confederate Party from trying to re-fight that conflict one more time. So much of wingnut/Teabagger rhetoric and fail comes straight out of old Dixie. It seems that the Confederacy was and is made up of sore losers, cry babies and magical thinkers.
It is way past time for the Civil War to end and to toss the Confederate ideology of white supremacy on the ash heap of history. The day that finally happens will be an event worthy of a month of celebration.
Cheers
dengre
General Egali Tarian Stuck
I would nominate you and TNC for a blog Pulitzer if there was one. Thank you so much for these posts, as they are something every American should be reading, and double so these days.:)
Omnes Omnibus
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: He really is doing a particularly great job this month.
OriGuy
I may have mentioned it before here, but if you are ever in the Cincinnati area, don’t miss the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. The first thing you see when you walk in is a slave pen, moved there from a farm in Kentucky. There are still manacles chained to the walls, which held the men while they were waiting to be sold to their eventual owners.
frankdawg
I think it must be mentioned that a good portion of the Northern resistance to slavery was that slavery represented a pool of cheap labor that could compete against the growing factory workforce and free farmers. There was no pure motive in that, merely committed self interest.
While not a proud moment for mankind I can at least understand fighting a war for your own economic interest.
Sheesh
While not a proud moment for mankind I can at least understand fighting a war for your own economic interest.
Sure, because human dignity has a value, but somewhere less than the value of labor produced by human chattel slavery. So if you look at it, it just comes down to cost-benefit analysis, am I right?
Mumphrey
The whole confederate shit really needs to be buried, and deep enough that it can never claw its way back up above ground, and I say this as a white guy whose forebears (some of them) were big wheels in the confederacy.
One point somebody made and that Coates wrote about made a good point, which I think many of us, and I’m one, might not have thought about: I think a lot of whites really, really want the Civil War not to have been about slavery, so they can keep on believing that the slaveowning south would in time have gotten around to doing the right thing and freeing the slaves. That makes a lot of sense to me.
Now, I don’t believe that’s true; I know my forebears were slaveowning dicks who would never have given up on getting a whole farm’s worth of free work out of somebody else until the end of time. But a lot of people want to believe the best about granpaw and great granpaw and great great granpaw, et al., and they’ll twist anything they have to, including history, to make granpaw and co. look like enlightened folk who really loved their slaves, no really, they did, they treated ’em just like family, you know… And I guess that might even make sense if you have a habit of beating your family and making them work for nothing but some water, a bowl of gruel and a filthy rag to sleep on.
But, anyway… They want to believe that sooner or later, enlightened ol’ grampaw would have gotten around to letting those dear, dear old slaves go and would have helped them rise to a respectable station in life, too, dadgum it, if only, if only those damned busybody abolitionists–who never did understand, mind you, all the benefits the slaves got out of being tutored in the ways of polite and civilized society–had just left them alone. And then, of course, Lincoln had to get all uppity and make it a federal case, and by that time, what choice would an honorable southerner have but to fight–reluctantly, mind you, reluctantly, with the greatest of misgivings and sadness and heartache and such–for his homeland, for his state?
Anyway, I think they–some of them–truly do believe that bullshit. I know that my Great Great Grampaw, Caleb Littleton Upshur by name, who was a blockade runner and a high officer in the confederate navy, was fighting to keep his slaves, and had few if any true high minded reasons for committing treason–though I’m sure he convinced himself otherwise–but a lot of these clowns really do see their confederate ancestors as some kind of noble, beleaguered heroes. You’d think that after 150 years, we could let this thing die the pitiful death it’s earned, but it looks like we’ll have to keep dealing with this bullshit until, well, forever, I guess. It makes me sad.
MeDrewNotYou
I wish I could share your optimism, but I don’t see the light at the end of this tunnel yet. We’re a long ways away from not having to worry about the Confederate Party.
Cheryl Rofer
I’ve contributed one or two comments and lurk here regularly. I’ll probably never participate to the extent that many of you do. I’m impresssed by Dennis G’s series too.
Let me add a bit to TNC’s version and what has been said in a couple of comments upthread. I recently read Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I’m not particularly a fan of hers when she appears on television, but this is a really, really good book. It was the first time that much of the Civil War began to make sense to me.
She doesn’t divide things up quite the way TNC does, and I’m not going to opine on which is right, but I think that the Northern Abolitionists, who shared the objectives of TNC’s third faction, should be mentioned. Lincoln was constantly struggling with them, trying to keep the focus on the Union. They were called…wait for it…Radical Republicans. Every time I came to that phrase in the book, I had to consciously think out that this was not Sarah Palin’s faction.
Jake
What I take from TNC and Dennis G is that we cannot allow our history to be buried…When we do, we provide an opening for the revisionists and opportunists — teabaggers, my Governor, the Republican party, Christianists, the corrupt/corporate media — to define our history for us.
That we even need to revist the Civil War in the 21st century, and that certain elected officials are trying to sugar coat what we all know to be horrible truths, tells us much about where we are as a nation.
jl
I think it is important to argue in detail that racism and racist dogwhistles are an essential part of the teabaggers. And that the GOP is resorting to it knowingly. It is a desperate strategy that might work in the next election. But unless they can win big in 2010, it will probably hasten their long run decline. To most of the country under 50, it makes them look repellent and foolish, and about as viciously goofily retro as can be imagined by the human mind.
But the human mind is the most intricate and dangerous trap, as Gautama Buddha said a long long time ago.
I am sure that some of the teabaggers underlying motive is racism.
But the teabagger polls I saw today suggest that middle class downward mobility of college, or almost college, educated older white people is the most common characteristic. And surprizingly, since they tend to be older, dependence on social insurance program might be the next (Medicare, Social Security, disability, etc.)
Fear of the government taking their stuff away and giving it to other people is the real source of their protest. The Norquist camp of the GOP has promoted the ‘squeeze and displease’ the middle class as a strategy. Squeeze them, and then take advantage of their frustration and anger by providing convenient fake scapegoats that are identified with the Democratic Party.
These marks and dupes will scapegaot anyone who their friendly sympathetic tormenters put into their view: racial and ethnic minorities, union members, bureaucrats, teachers, Cosmopolitans, effete city slickers, anybody.
The history of racism in the country makes racial and ethnic bigotry the most natural avenue for venting their fear. All the lines are rehearsed. The dogwhistles are well rehearsed and all the lines are memorized. All these bitter white people can converse in code words, swap stories and spin tall tales of outrage and grievance in a crowd of 90% white people (and a few minorities who can rationalize away the code words as about lifestyle or the corruption that is inflicted upon communities by liberal policies) without risk of offending anyone.
It is very good way to build community without risk of talking about anything of substance.
For instance, polls say that most of these people do not want significant cuts in any federal program except foreign aid, which is insignificant. But they want lower taxes and a lower deficit. These people would not agree on what should be cut if they tried to talk substance about that topic.
For instance, so many of them depend on social insurance that any real discussion of how that is financed would cause problems.
But they can blabber with each other all day using racial codewords, saying absolutely nothing, and get along fine. It is a kind of improvisational theatre, with such strong conventional plots and routines that everyone can improvise all day and get along fine.
I think the possibility should be remembered that for the average teabagger racism is just as much a convenient avenue of denial as it is a real underlying motive. And for the organizers who are swindling them, it is more a tool for crowd control building esprit de corps and comaraderie and than a real belief.
Bnut
One of the few things I dislike about being an atheist is knowing that the dead can’t hear me. The picture on the front of TNC’s post got to me. I want to tell those soldiers thank you and god speed.
Bnut
And then I use a phrase like god speed, lol.
Yutsano
@Bnut:
It’s amazing how we can use a phrase we don’t intend just because it’s a powerful cultural statement. For example, I’m not a Christian and I will still say “Merry Christmas”, although I’m anal enough to limiting my saying that phrase only on Christmas Day itself.
Viva BrisVegas
I missed this, but how did Virginia Gov McDonnell celebrate the assassination of President Lincoln by one of his Richmond Grays?
After all the anniversary was on April the 14th.
Isn’t that a part of Confederate History Month?
Nathan R
I really don’t have anything substantial to add to the post, but I wanted to say thank you. This has been a great series to read and reflect upon. You’ve been a truly amazing addition to Balloon Juice, Dengre!
And John, thanks for getting Dennis on board.
Brick Oven Bill
‘White Supremacy’ is a 20th Century term Dennis G. The proper term has since been modified to be ‘Race Realism’. It all has to do with facing evolution over the last 30,000 years. Many religious people deny this phase of human development. But it nonetheless happened.
We celebrate Race Realism with movies like White Men Can’t Jump. This title is based in the fact that some people evolved in the presence of gunpowder, and did not have to jump for food.
Instead, accurately directing energy was important to survival, and mating.
Thus NFL defensive linebackers, and NFL kickers.
Here is your disco ball.
Sheesh
@Bnut: I felt the same way! That is a great and powerful photo.
As a side note, I like to subscribe to the ‘good speed’ theory, that Godspeed is just another run-of-the-mill Christian appropriation that nicely assimilated an existing farewell.
Martin
@Yutsano: I brought my mom to my wife’s church for xmas service last year. I’m quite an enigma to her. She didn’t understand why an atheist would go and get dressed up, and would sing from the hymnal (and knows the words) and all of that.
She finally asked after the service and I told her that I didn’t need to believe any of these things to enjoy it. I don’t refuse to go to people’s birthday parties or to sing to them because it’s not my birthday. Everyone else in the room was celebrating a holiday that they love and who am I to not help them celebrate and be happy by that. So, I have no problem wishing people a Merry Christmas or wishing people a happy new year on the Chinese or Persian calendars. I really *do* want them to have a good day.
What catches people off guard is that I’ll wish them a Merry Christmas but I won’t wish them good luck. I focus more on the little crutches that we subconsciously rely on rather than the big ones that we consciously do.
Martin
Yay, overt racist BOB is back. Can we haz ban plz?
mcd410x
There are 9 species of Bermuda grass. And one of humans. We’re all so similar, the gene pool so small, it’s all kind of baffling. Especially how we act towards one another.
stannate
@Mumphrey:
I’ve heard variations of this tale from my wife, whose family history pre-dates the inception of the US. She’s in the Mayflower Society, and as such can trace her lineage back to people who not only fought for both sides of the Civil War, but also for and against the British in the American Revolution. Her father’s family has spent the last few generations in Florida, but she’s a New Hampshire native. Her mother’s parents reside near Gettysburg. To say the least, my wife’s heritage embodies multitudes of contradictions, which makes my Slavic background look simplistic by comparison.
Anyway, enough familial rambling. The setup was to confirm that yes, my wife is under the firm belief that the South would have eventually outlawed slavery due to its economic costs. Her point of view focused on the burden of ownership, as plantation owners couldn’t rely on fresh slaves coming from Africa as the international trade was outlawed in 1808. Because of this trade restriction, she believed that the slave-owners had more of a financial incentive to “care” for the slaves, a burden which would have eventually reached a point where doing so would not have been feasible. At that point, the institution of slavery would have been abolished.
My rejoinder to her theory was to simply point to the various Confederate states’ Declaration of Secession (referred to in this TNC column), which not only explicitly stated that slavery was the motivation for leaving the Union, but also that the view of the slave-bound African “is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations.” With such an attitude of supremacy based in government and in religious belief, I cannot see how ANY Confederate state would have ever voluntarily given up slavery; even if the financial burden was high, it was the will of God and man to keep this arrangement going. Opposing it would have been akin to thrusting the spear in Jesus’ side while he was crucified.
Yutsano
@Martin: I don’t wish people luck either, I just wish them luck and call it good. They can choose to interpret that however they wish, but I don’t ever wish ill for anyone, not even those that have wronged me.
Brick Oven Bill
Deacon Martin, challenge not with silencing, but rather with Reason. We all have our strengths, and our weaknesses. I think you teach college.
Human differences, in my opinion, are not impressed upon us by an Almighty God, but instead by the forces of nature. Unless they are one in the same.
And Another Thing...
I want to add my thanks to both Dengre and Coates. Your postings are the perfect way to celebrate Confederate History month.
In the early 50’s my Dad. a Navy officer, was transferred to Virginia. One of his assignments was to take an honor guard on Memorial Day to a Confederate cemetery and do the rifle volley thing. They stood and waited while a bunch of politicians, etc, made speeches about the “honored dead.” He said the cemetery was well maintained, etc. All the Navy guys got back on the bus and he decided to find the Union cemetery, which was overgrown, where they de-bussed and stood in formation. He hadn’t planned this ahead of time so he wasn’t quite sure what to do, so he recited the Gettysburg Address from memory and the honor guard fired their volleys. Some days later, he was summoned to the Admiral’s office, and interrogated. At one point, the Admiral is reported to have said, “No shit, you really did that?” There had been a bunch of complaints to the Admiral about the goings on at the Union cemetery. When the Admiral inquired about his motivation, Dad said that to only honor the Confederates just wasn’t right. Whereupon the Admiral reportedly rested his forehead in his hand and said “God save me from junior officers with a conscience.” He wasn’t punished in any way even though the Admiral had some political fence mending to do.
This is one of my all time favorite stories abt my Dad & his 34 years in the Navy. Thanks for listening.
handy
Just out of curiosity, what might some of those differences be–you know, beyond physical ones.
And Another Thing...
@stannate: The South wasn’t willing to give up Jim Crow laws without enormous legal and social pressure and troops. We’re supposed to think they would have voluntarily freed the slaves? Not bloody likely. It would have required a massive restructuring of their economy, their social hierarchy, and their fundamental notions of “humanity” which were reinforced by their religion.
Brick Oven Bill
Those differences would necessarily be spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and moral, if one was to leave out the physical handy. There are six or seven billion of us.
Yutsano
@Brick Oven Bill: So unless you’re saying that we’re seven billion different iterations of deoxyribonucleic acid wrapped up in a coating of proteins and various minerals (in other words we’re all unique), then you’re just spouting noise.
Brick Oven Bill
Perhaps we can make it as a couple Yutsano. I have my attributes.
IndyLib
@And Another Thing…:
Thank you so much for sharing this story. I will be sharing it with my husband, a Navy Senior Chief, first thing in the morning. He’ll love it.
stannate
@And Another Thing…: You said it better than I tried to say it here, and also when I was talking about this with my wife. Ironically, since she’s not a fan of Mormons, she used their 1978 proclamation of black men becoming eligible for their priesthood as a justification for her argument regarding the South and slavery. That is to say, people’s interpretations of God’s will changes over time, so in her scenario, she believed it is possible that a moral argument against slavery in the South could have eventually taken place. I don’t believe her scenario is plausible (though the bit about changing religious interpretations rings closer to true).
Yutsano
@stannate: It would not have happened until the South made a concerted effort to change their economy from a primarily agrarian base. With the invention of the cotton gin, suddenly slavery was a VERY profitable venture once again. One could plausibly make the argument that Eli Whitney indirectly caused the Civil War. Ironic part is he made little money for his invention due to copycats, poor patent enforcement, and corrupt Southern justice systems. Poetic justice for what he would eventually wring upon the country I guess.
And Another Thing...
@stannate: Your wife’s idea about an evolution of the religious case for slavery is an interesting one. Citing the case of Mormons and blacks doesn’t really work though. As Mormons believe in living prophets, one man, the then president/prophet of the Mormon church. changed the policy, and it was accepted by the hierarchy & rank and file. Commitment to the idea of prophets is much more central to the doctrine & culture of Mormonism than the status of blacks.
The relevant question would be what other tenets of Southern Baptist 18th & 19th Century theology have evolved in a “liberal” direction. I don’t know the answer to that, and would like to hear evidence of that.
There’s evidence that religion did play a role in “liberalizing” attitudes towards slavery both in the United States and England, and building support for abolition, I’m just not familiar with whether Southern Baptists were part of that change.
philly71
To further the point that the North was more interested in the preservation of Union, rather than emancipation; many historians believe the Emancipation Proclamation was foreign policy coup first. It was an attempt to give moral justification for the war to deter France and Britain to lend support to the South. They had been mulling that over to weaken the US (north) as they saw them as a rising power. Whatever thoughts Britain and France had about allying with the South, they quickly dissipated after the Emancipation Proclamation. Its would have been hard for Britain to support the South as they had outlawed slavery n 1833, now that the ending of slavery was now a war aim of the North. Keep in mind that this was in the second half of 1863. Two years after the war started.
Not exactly what we were taught in grade school.
Comrade Kevin
Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of the best writers in America, in any medium.
philly71
@philly71:
One more point, France invaded Mexico (Maximillian Affair) right about this time in 1863, so they controlled the Gulf Of Mexico (hard for us to enforce the Monroe Doctrine while we are slaughtering ourselves). while it is conjecture, it is likely that the French would have directly supplied the South without the Emancipation Proclamation.
Viva BrisVegas
@philly71:
Well neither did the Confederate states secede to protect slavery in the South. Slavery in the South was under no threat at all and even held legal sway in non-slave states.
What the Confederacy was formed to do was to extend and protect slavery in the West (and Cuba given half a chance).
While it is true that the North initially fought for the preservation of the Union, it’s also true that the North fought for a Union no longer dominated by Southern interests. The chief amongst those Southern interests being slavery.
Christine
I usually just read BJ, but I wanted to thank you Dennis for such an insightful series. I really do hope you turn this into a book. I for one would like to read it.
Lamont Cranston
@Brick Oven Bill:
Gunpowder was invented in the 9th century. How exactly do you think it effected human evolution?
Linda Featheringill
@Mumphrey:
Well said. You managed to collect a lot of the apologies for the south that I have heard over the years and make them coherent.
But I don’t quite understand why people feel they have to whitewash great-great-grandad’s character. Every generation since that time has done a lot of things they should be ashamed of. If Old Grandad were righteous, he would be the only one in the family who is.
You should see my family. Name a sin and we can produce the sinner – from felonies to misdemeanors. Maybe one day we can produce a nice person. :-)
El Cid
On this question of whether or not ‘the South’ might one day have done away with slavery on its own — just what do people think that African American life in the South (or the nation) would have looked like had Southern politicians and large land holders begun to end, or phase out, or allow the local phasing out, of slavery?
It is likely that had Southern elites slowly decided that actual slavery was too difficult or expensive to maintain and allowed formal slavery to end, it might have very much looked like what the South looked like for African Americans anyway from the 1880s through the 1960s.
Perhaps they wouldn’t have been literal slaves any more, but they wouldn’t have had any sort of equality, and, call it a momentary lapse of creativity, but I can’t immediately think of how much worse it would have been than the depths of the Jim Crow South — with the exception of maybe the Southern states imposing laws not allowing African Americans to leave their state, which would have meant that millions of blacks couldn’t have fled the South as was done between the 1910s and 1940s.
SRW1
@Sheesh:
Actually, however despicable that is, it seems to be a historic fact. Heard a podcast today from the BBC program In Our Time about ‘The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Nation’. Apparently, the decision of the British to crush the Zulu Nation was a calculation between the military risks involved and the benefits in terms of making available cheap labor for South Africa’s gold and diamond mines. And that was after the abolition of slavery.
Xenos
BOB: you claim a scientific education, but on your pet issue of race you refuse to read the peer-reviewed journals on the subject. You carry on about white people and iron, when Africans were smelting it and using it systematically long before Europeans. You talk about 30,000 years of white evolution when the best evidence indicates that the first person with blue eyes was born at the end of the neolithic revolution, in an Asian backwater.
Since you are educated about to the scientific method it can only be concluded you are willfully ignorant, preferring racist pseudoscience because it makes you feel better about yourself. This is powerful evidence that you are a really crappy human being, a nasty piece of work who should bugger off and leave decent people alone.
I apologize to everyone for responding to a troll, but I can’t stand to let this crap sit out there without a correction.
El Cid
@Xenos: Remember: fake troll, by someone who thinks it’s funny to pose as a garble-speak racist right winger on a liberal blog. High-larious.
DBrown
The
civil warwar of southern enslavement of blacks was all about this issue – read the confederate constitution and words from their leaders and it was all about this subject. People fight (and kill) for money and property and that is exactly what slave supporters were doing for the south. The worse stupid argument is that 95% of the southerns didn’t own slaves – yet, these people needed slaves to hate and wanted slavery because otherwise, they knew that slaves would partly and in some states, completely control those local/state governments.Also, the North had a large and very powerful block that was totally antislavery. Yes, the Union didn’t make freeing slaves its focus until later in the war because the boarder states needed to be controlled and this was a major issue in these states. While historians can argue that the North didn’t fight (initially) for slaves, the South most certainly did and later, the North most certainly did – so anyone arguing that slavery was secondary, is either denying facts or stupid.
DBrown
@Xenos: It is best not to respond to that useless pile of $hit. That $hit supports slavery and enslavement of blacks and that is beyond the pale. Trolls are well named because they are too $tupid to ever realize how wrong and offensive they are because they refuse to think or even remember what they said the previous day – I do remember what that pile of stinking $hit said and I will not forget. That pile of $hit is not getting better with age and is no longer funny when it supports such inhuman causes.
hypusine
Dennis G., thank you for this series. I grew up in the south and thought I had seen the racism of my relatives as clearly as I could. You’ve changed that.
My 92 year old grandmother, as gentle a racist as one could imagine I suppose, confided to me in December 2007 that Obama would be good for the country. She was a little tipsy.
She’s more open minded than most in her cohort I reckon but still. There is indeed hope.
Xenos
@El Cid: I think he is authentic. Back when I was an archaeologist I used to run across his type on a regular basis – people with a decent education, often successful engineers, who are motivated by some weird desire to prove white folks are the bestest ever. And proceed to come up with astonishingly incorrect and intellectually dishonest arguments about race, glottochronology, dirt archaeology, and so on.
And you can’t disprove anything they say. You point to evidence and reasonably reliable authority, and they ignore you and come back with the same argument two days later. It is like arguing with a religious bigot. The only useful response is to denounce them creeps.
El Cid
@Xenos: It’s not the arguments or the ignorance or the racism which are the tells that BOB is a fake troll. It’s the little insider jokes.
Xenos
@DBrown: We will do well to remember that while the North had a powerful block that was totally antislavery, it was not very enlightened on racial issues – these nice moral crusaders were as freaked out about race mixing as any modern Bircher.
It is far too easy, when condemning the Confederacy and its apologists, to be smug and self congratulatory. I may be proud of my Tennessee ancestor who moved to Illinois rather than don the gray uniform, but I can see the census entries from 1850 that show he held slaves, too. I can sit here in my liberal paradise while the light is fueled by coal supplies that are kept cheap by the negligent homicide of coal miners, wearing clothes made by enslaved women in the Northern Marianas islands, sending my kids to a school named after a man who made a fortune forcing Opium on the Chinese at the point of a gun.
Svensker
@And Another Thing…:
I LOVE that story.
J.W. Hamner
My grandmother on my father’s side was a Lee… yes those Lee’s (though it is Richard Henry, not Robert E. who is the most direct relation).
I was raised to have a certain fondness for the Confederacy (not maliciously I don’t think)… even that W in my name was for a surgeon in the CSA (Wingfield is an awesome name, regardless of treason/slave owning)… so I have found it very helpful to have that all put in perspective by people like Ta-Nehisi and Dennis G. This is a kind of Confederate History Month I can support annually. Keep it up.
SGEW
[Insert standard formal request to ban B.O.B. for outright racism here.]
Graeme
A Southern caller to NPR’s Talk of the Nation made a great point: the south is growing fast, and none of the new arrivals care a whit about Haley Barbour’s nits. This is all dying off.
Really, that may be a big part of why it’s so important to the dead-enders now. This is all fading away, and it is fading fast. Good riddance.
Dennis G.
@jl:
This was sopt on:
Grover, Jack and the gang have been very candid about this over the years. It is a Luntzerific bamboozle that never ends.
Cheers
aimai
My youngest daughter belongs to a repertory group that performs a show called “there’s a meeting here tonight” about a then well known (white) family of singers who were abolitionists–they linked up with Frederick Douglass and with PT Barnum and sang for the abolitionist and temperance movement all around New England. In the performance there’s an amazing moment when they describe going to sing, as a kind of proto USO, for the union troops during the war. They get run out of town on a rail, basically, and they are refused permission to sing and entertain the troops again because they insisted on singing the abolitionist songs and bringing up slavery and the New Jersey troops they were singing for didn’t want to hear it.
aimai
rikyrah
—From Dr. Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
I have to admit, as a Black woman, I shook my head as folks were writing about the South ‘ eventually’ giving up slavery.
Like they ‘ eventually’ gave up Jim Crow and continued to treat Black folks as sub-human for nearly 100 years after the Civil War.
Oh yeah, I’d trust THOSE folks to have ended slavery.
Squeaky Smith
Regarding the comments discussing how the church might have helped confederate policy evolve away from slavery, my wife was raised in the American Baptist church.
There’s an old joke that goes “what do you have when you get three Baptists together? A schism!”
The American Baptist church was born of a schism with what became the Southern Baptist church. Anyone want to guess why there was a schism? Why you don’t see black folks singing at SBC churches?
The schism was over slavery and white supremacy! The whole existence of the Southern Baptist Convention is based upon KKK convictions. The American Baptist churches include black folks, and marched with MLK for civil rights. The Southern Baptists set the dogs on the marchers and blew little girls up with bombs placed in Black churches!
I did have ancestors who fought for the south, and I’m embarrassed to have to admit it, not proud at all.
El Cid
@rikyrah: South Carolina threatened to secede from the Confederacy because the other Confederate states agreed with ending the Trans-Atlantic slave trade versus reproducing from the already existing population.
Nevertheless, it is true that in the long run it’s cheaper for capitalists to just rent workers via paid labor than it is to own & upkeep humans through slavery. So, although it’s possible that slavery itself might have waned, it certainly wouldn’t be because of noble motivations, and it would have been splotchy and had all sorts of intermediate forms.
Michael Sullivan
It’s almost like TNC read that story and thought “confe-what?! Confederate History month?! You want Confederate History? I’ll give you some Confederate History”
That said, he’s been writing brilliantly about civil war history for over a year now.