In my opinion, the entire modern idea of the American
Civil War is completely wrong. This was not a war about fighting for the
control of a single country. For entire duration of the war, there existed two
countries, the United States of America and the Confederate States of America.
Each was fighting for existence. The Confederate States existed because, when they were part of the United
States, they were afraid that the U.S. government was going to put an end to
slavery.
That was the entire reason for the existence of
the Confederate States. Full stop. People couch the Civil War in terms of
states rights, but the right for the states to say whether or not they would be
slave states was the one right the Confederate States were specifically
fighting for. If there had been a compromise as there had been in years before that
allowed those states to keep slaves as long as they had seen fit, there would
have been no secession, and no war.
Whatever you believe, this is the truth; there was no
wrong reason for wanting to end slavery.
Just as there was no right reason for
wanting to keep it.
Why do I bring this up? Because almost 160 years after
the Civil War ended, the beliefs that created it are alive and well.
Reconstruction failed miserably, and nowhere is this more evident than the American
South.
During the prosecution of (or in the aftermath of) wars,
people often talk about winning “hearts and minds.”
I am here to tell you that the entire notion of “hearts
and minds” is unbelievably stupid.
Sometimes, in order to win a mind, you have to break a
heart.
In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War it made
sense to pardon the soldiers who fought for the South. It never made sense to
prosecute the average soldier, and people like Robert E. Lee were so beloved
that any prosecution would have resulted in further bloodshed. It also never
made any sense for the U.S. government to name military bases after Southern generals.
One hundred and sixty years later, we still have military bases named after
people like Braxton Bragg, a Southern general who by all accounts was a
sadistic tyrant who delighted in executing his own men.
But heritage, not hate, right? Tradition is an excuse
to keep ignorant rules and ignorant behavior alive.
Look, I grew up in (currently live in) Virginia. I live next to Lee Highway.
I have to drive on Jefferson Davis Highway, through a largely black
neighborhood in Richmond, to get to the VA hospital. To say that I grew up with
a high regard for people like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson would be an understatement.
(This sort of thinking is why it took Virginia a full 100 years after the Civil
War to legalize miscegenation.) It seems like there is a deliberate effort to
brainwash people into thinking that, despite the readily apparent horror of the
cause that they fought for, these people were inherently noble.
That in itself is another lie that Americans tend to
believe. War is, in and of itself, inherently ignoble. “Dulce et decorum est. Pro
patria mori.” That is rarely true. And it certainly should not extend itself to
people who were enemies of this country.
That is the thing that I understand the least about
the veneration of the soldiers of the so called “Lost Cause.” The Confederate
States, for their entire brief existence, were enemies of the United States of
America. It makes zero sense for an American to display any sort of reverence or
veneration for the leaders or symbols of their cause.
Allowing this sort of belief by canonizing the leaders
of the South through federal and state recognition has led to an ongoing
generational memory, one that portrays the Union as the aggressor and in the
wrong. It has led to a century and a half of often state sanctioned racism.
We do not allow children to continue believing in
Santa Claus after a certain age. At some point, we need them to understand that
there is no longer any charm in furthering the belief in what amounts to a mass
delusion.
Similarly, the belief that there was some sort of
nobility in the leaders or the cause of the Confederate States is a 160-year
delusion. It is equally as implausible as the notion of a genial, red-faced, bearded,
and obese man distributing Christmas presents to all the children in the world
in a single night, via the means of a magical group of reindeer and a sleigh.
It is passed through the generations, perpetuated by a continued belief in the
supremacy of the white mind.
This belief and the attitudes it creates are readily
apparent. A black man goes jogging in Georgia. He stops for three
minutes at a house that is under construction. He leaves, is chased and
confronted by two armed white men, struggles for his life, and is murdered.
The white men, instead of being arrested and prosecuted
by local prosecutors, are protected by them. The men are only arrested after a
video of the incident is released. The video was released by a lawyer for one
of the men because he believed it would exonerate them.
Because “they” should just do what “they” are told, and
everything will be fine.
I am sure the Confederate Generals and other leaders
thought about slaves the same way.
