Confederate "Heritage" Month , April 6 : Contemporary Confederate spirit

Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America: "slavery is the cornerstone of the Confederacy"

Dave Neiwert at his Orcinus blog reminds us on a regular basis of the role that neo-Confederate ideology plays on the American right, both far-right and the respectable verions, as he does in Those Confederate values by 02/19/08.

He quotes a Red State blogger calling himself "haystack" defending the wonderfulness of the Confederacy with the usual Lost Cause rhetoric. Neiwert then notes:

Haystack's lame defense of the Confederacy as representing values beyond "the darkness of slavery" is of course disingenuous, but again, this nothing particularly new for Southern conservatives - or for Republicans generally, who have been insistent in their state of denial regarding the legacy of the Southern Strategy. (my emphasis)

Addressing a couple of pieces of Lost Cause pseudohistory, he quotes a contemporary editorial from a Charleston newspaper on the notion of using slaves as Confederate soldiers. And he links to this interview with historian Brooks Simpson, White Lies Intelligence Report Summer 2000. Simpson addresses the up-is-down style of argument that Lost Cause ideology virtually demands, since it's so far from reality-based:

There is a strange paradox here. These people deride what they call political correctness, and yet one of their first missions is to whitewash the Confederacy of any connection with slavery. They actually seem sensitive to any possibility that the Confederacy is linked with race, and want to absolve the Confederacy of any charges of racism at all.

You can see that in the fight over the Confederate flag, where the neo-Confederates say, "This is heritage, not hate. It has nothing to do with race at all." At the same time they're essentially defending white supremacy, they deny race has anything to do with it.

Simpson talks about the role of slavery in launching the Confederacy:

Confederates during the Civil War had no problem whatsoever in associating their cause with the protection of slavery and a system of white supremacy which they thought was inherent in the Confederate world order. The Confederates of 1861-65 were much more honest about the importance of slavery than are the neo-Confederates of today.

In a famous address [known to historians as the "Cornerstone Speech"], the vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, said in 1861 that "slavery is the cornerstone of the Confederacy." And as late as 1865, Robert E. Lee, who's often cited by neo-Confederates as an opponent of slavery, claimed that while blacks and whites were together in the South, their best relationship would be that of master and slave.

A great many Southerners were directly or indirectly involved in slavery - they were either slaveholders, members of slaveholding families, or involved in business enterprises that depended upon slavery for their prosperity. (my emphasis)

And Simpson reminds us how bogus the neo-Confederate/Lost Cause argument is that secession was over the sacred principle of "states' rights":

White Southerners had no problem using the federal government's powers when it came to protecting and promoting the interests of slavery. They only invoked states' rights rhetoric in trying to restrict federal power against slavery.

Divisions over the interpretation of the Constitution were directly related to the issue of slavery. (my emphasis)

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was one of the most notorious instances in which the slaveowners successfully demanded that the federal government override states' rights in order to protect the slaveowners' human property. The Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision was another.

And here's a final example for today of Simpson addressing the thorough dishonesty of neo-Confederate pseudohistory, in this case the favorite argument that large numbers of Southern blacks fought for the Confederacy:

From a light-hearted point of view, if there were all these black Confederate soldiers, given that we don't see them show up [in historical records] as prisoners or killed or wounded, they must have been the best troops the Confederacy ever had, because they were never killed, wounded or captured. So an entire army of black Confederates would have been invincible.

If black Confederates were already there, one is at a loss to understand why white Southerners debated so ferociously over the introduction of blacks in the Confederate army late in the war. Certainly, there were blacks who accompanied the Confederate armies — servants of officers, wagon drivers, cooks, teamsters and the like. But they weren't there, by and large, of their own volition.

They were there because they were enslaved. In terms of blacks actually in the ranks of the Confederate army, we're talking about a handful of people at most.

You see a very selective use of the historical record by certain academics who are pushing an agenda. So where there has been some evidence of an African-American taking a weapon up in a Civil War battle and firing away in self-defense, that is transformed into regiment after regiment of African-Americans ready to fight.

There's a conscious effort among these people [neo-Confederates] to distort and exaggerate whatever they find in the historical record to serve their ends.

Simpson's interview provides a very good, brief look at some of the favorite themes of Lost Cause ideology and at the very flimsy historical basis on which they rest. And calling it "very flimsy" is putting it generously.

Tags: confederate heritage month 2008, dave neiwert, neo-confederates