Extra anti-Lost Cause posts?

People following my Twitter or Google+ feeds may be wondering why blog posts from 2004 on Confederate "Heritage" Month keep popping up.

It's because I'm moving those posts from my original blog, which is still public on Blogger as AOL Journals 1st Old Hickory's Weblog to this one.

As the original title suggests, I started this blog in 2003 as an AOL blog. AOL later discontinued their blog function and we could select to move the old posts to Blogger. But since I had already created the Blogger version of Old Hickory's Weblog and started using it instead of the AOL version by then, I had to have the AOL conversion go to a different blog name.

I do have good memories of the AOL blog function. Blogging then was still a bit "techie," in that it required some more HTML and software skills than a lot of people like me were ready to take on to have a blog. AOL's service hired science-fiction author John Scalzi as their blog coach, who provided daily tips on how to blog, how to popularize your blog, blog etiquette, etc.

Scalzi has continued to build his impressive reputation as a science fiction writer. He also continues to blog at Whatever, his blog that he was already writing in the AOL days.

Back in those days, Scalzi also indulged in the occasional tirade against neo-Confederate nonsense, e.g., Another Confederate Smackdown 01/31/2005.

Confederate "Heritage" Month: April 16

Edward Sebesta's daily entry for April 16 deals with a 1905 quotation from the Confederate Veteran. Despite the weird posturing - at least the part meant to sucker the uninitiated - of today's neo-Confederates claiming that they hobby horse has nothing to do race, it's "heritage not hate", one of their favorite bumperstickers says - in fact the celebration of the holy Confederacy has always been bound up with support for Jim Crow laws, racial segregation and ideas of white supremacy.

This is a partial quote from Sebesta's entry from the 1905 article (Sebesta's emphasis in red):

The VETERAN for September has much about the "old-time darkies." " There ought to be a lesson in it for young negroes. Their aspirations for social equality will ever be their calamity. If they will observe the situation as it really exists, they will see that not an old-time negro lives in the South to-day faithful to white people who has not among them sustaining friends. Devotion between them and those whose slaves they were is steadfast. It will continue until the last white-haired "Uncle" or "Auntie" is laid away, often in the family lot, by those they served in their youth.

The younger generation sees this condition and should profit by it. Northern people cannot comprehend it, and they are at grievous fault, maybe unwittingly, for having done so much to cause it. Those who yield graciously to the inevitable --- such, for instance, as specified places in the street cars of Tennessee -- will soon find that the kindliest sentiment of white people will manifest itself.

Successful negroes, however much wealth they may accumulate, will find that most indigent whites, who are fitly mentioned as "poor white trash," will no more defer to them than did white masters to their slaves. This line of demarcation is of healthy moral character. The only solution of this matter is for negroes to accept the situation, treat the whites with deference, and they, will soon realize the best they need ever hope to exist between the races.

This following article provides a little real-time Confederate history, showing how Southerners who are interested in promoting historical interest and legitimate historical celebrations have to be careful to disassociate themselves from the neo-Confederate types. I don't know enough of the details of this celebration to judge if they've been entirely successful in this case.

Confederate sub's crew to be buried 10,000 people expected to make 4.5-mile funeral march USA Today 04/16/04.

Tags: confederate heritage month 2004, neo-confederates, racism

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2004, April 10: "States' rights" to slavery

Today's offering from Edward Sebesta's site is a quote from Jefferson Davis in a message to the Confederate Congress (presumably in 1861) justifying secession. I'll only quote a brief portion here. But the statement is notable because even though he uses the classical "states rights" arguments of John Calhoun, his concern is as clear as Calhoun's. The only "states right" that truly interested either of them was the right to hold property in other human beings. Davis:

When the several States delegated certain powers to the United States Congress, a large portion of the laboring population consisted of African slaves imported into the colonies by the mother country. In twelve out of the thirteen States negro slavery existed, and the right of property in slaves was protected by law. This property was recognized in the Constitution, and provision was made against its loss by the escape of the slave. ...

In the interest of adding perspective, I'll provide another quote that gives a picture of how completely pseudohistorical it is for the neo-Confederates to argue that slavery "had nothing to do with the Civil War" or a similar argument. (Neo-Confederates aren't the only ones who think that, because the Lost Cause version of the war was taught in Southern history books for generations.)

This is from Bertram Wyatt-Brown's The Shaping of Southern Culture: Honor, Grace and War, 1760s-1880s (2001). He describes an incident in the secession convention in South Carolina, Calhoun's home state and always the most hardline of the Fire-Eater hotbeds (my emphasis):

In 1860-61, the lower South separated from the Union out of a sense of almost uncontrollable outrage. To be sure, slavery was the root cause of sectional conflict. When the South Carolina secession convention met in November 1860, fire-eater congressman Lawrence Keitt insisted that the rationale should center solely on the issues of slavery. That was, he said, "the great central point from which we are now proceeding." Other fire-eaters sought to add a wider agenda. Robert Barnwell Rhett and Maxcey Gregg, two stalwart secessionists, protested that singling out just one grievance "dishonored the memory of South Carolinians" who had opposed the Tariff of Abominations [in their losing contest with President Andrew Jackson], various internal improvement bills, and the second Bank of the United States. Keitt replied that these were no reasons for leaving the Union. Only slavery was. The dissenters were defeated. (p. 177) [my emphasis]

Tags: bertram wyatt-brown, confederate heritage month 2004, jefferson davis, lost cause, slavery

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2004, April 9: Roger Taney and the Dred Scott decision

The April 9 quote from Edward Sebesta's Web site is once again from Jefferson Davis.; This one concerns the notorious Dred Scott decision, which was a major factor in bringing on the Civil War. Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote what was probably the most disastrous Supreme Court decision in the history of the United States. (Bush v. Gore would be a major contender, but we don't know the final consequences of that one yet.)  I won't quote Davis' statement here, which blamed the abolitionists for all the trouble the decision caused. Instead, I'll talk about the decision itself.

Taney (whose name was pronounced like "Toney") had been US Attorney General under President Andrew Jackson, and later became Secretary of the Treasury. Ironically, though history rightly remembers him as worst of the worst reactionaries in US history for the Dred Scott decision, he achieved a reputation during the Jackson Administration as an economic radical (i.e., of the left-wing variety) during the fight with the Bank of the United States. It was Old Hickory himself who nominated him to be Chief Justice in 1835.

But Taney stands as a reminder and embodiment of the contradictions of Jacksonian democracy.  There was the side of the movement that fought for an expansion of democracy and an empowerment of the majority, which Taney represented in the battle over the Bank. And there was the side that represented Southern whites in their slaveholding interests, which Taney represented in the most destructive way in the Dred Scott decision of 1857.

Taney was a Catholic, and he reportedly believed that slavery was wrong. He manumitted slaves that he had inherited. But in the Dred Scott case, he threw the weight of the Court behind the Slave Power.

The case involved a slave suing for his freedom, contending that because his master had brought him to live in a territory in which slavery was not legal, he was made legally free by that residence. The decision denied Scott's appeal on the grounds that he was not a citizen of the United States and therefore had no grounds on which to appeal to the federal courts. "A free negro of the African race, whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves, is not a 'citizen' within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States." That was bad enough. But the language of the decision went far beyond that:

The act of Congress, therefore, prohibiting a citizen of the United States from taking with him his slaves when he removes to the Territory in question to reside, is an exercise of authority over private property which is not warranted by the Constitution and the removal of the plaintiff, by his owner, to that Territory, gave him no title to freedom.

Regulating slavery in the territories had been an accepted power of the national government even in the days of the Articles of Confederation. It had formed the basis of the various compromises in Congress which had until then prevented the slavery controversy from breaking out into secession and war. The Dred Scott decision destroyed the legal basis for further compromises of that kind.

In the context of Lost Cause dogma, this decision is also important because it was an exercise of national power on behalf of slavery. During the 1850s especially, when the Slave Power controlled the Presidency, the federal judiciary and much of the Congress, they were happy to use federal power to overrule "states rights" in defense of slavery. Given the choice between defending slavery and the abstract principle of "states rights," the slaveowners always chose defending slavery.

Abraham Lincoln, in a speech of June 26, 1857, attacking the Dred Scott decision, cited Andy Jackson in criticizing the decision. In that speech, Lincoln denounces the parts of Justice Taney's decision that argue that the Declaration of Independence never meant to include black people as even theoretically equal to whites:

In those days [of the Revolution], our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, and sneered at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it. All the powers of earth seem rapidly combining against him [the negro]. Mammon is after him; ambition follows, and philosophy follows, and the Theology of the day is fast joining the cry. They have him in his prison house; they have searched his person, and left no prying instrument with him. One after another they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him, and now they have him, as it were, bolted in with a lock of a hundred keys, which can never be unlocked without the concurrence of every key; the keys in the hands of a hundred different men, and they scattered to a hundred dfferent and distant places; and they stand musing as to what invention, in all the dominions of mind and matter, can be produced to make the impossibility of his escape more complete than it is.

Tags: abraham lincoln, andrew jackson, confederate heritage month 2004, dred scott, lost cause, roger taney, old hickory

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2004, April 8: Jefferson Davis and Reconstruction justice

Today's Confederate "heritage" quote from Edward Sebesta's Web site is from Jefferson Davis, again in his 1881 memoirs. In this one, Davis tells with approval the story of a Virginia judge in 1867 who closed his court rather than follow the ruling of the military government to include freed slaves in the pool for jury selection:

The question of the qualification of jurors now became important. General Canby issued an order on September 13th, which required the jurors to be drawn from the "qualified voters," which included the newly emancipated slaves. The judges met, and sent a respectful request to the general to change the order to conform to the law of the state. By the jury law, as it then stood, no person was qualified to serve as a juror unless he was a free white man, twenty-one years of age. The judges were sworn to enforce the law and the constitution of the state. No notice was taken of the application. At the next court in Edgefield, Judge Aldrich, charging the grand jury, brought to their notice the order, the law and the constitution, and the oath of office, and then declared "he could not and would not obey the order." On going to open court a few days after, the adjutant of the post delivered to him a military order suspending him from office. He proceeded and opened the court, read the order and stated the circumstances, and, laying aside his gown, directed the sheriff, "to let the court stand adjourned while justice is stifled."

The context of the military order in 1867 is that it was part of the Northern occupation authorities' responsibility to enforce the recognition of citizenship for freed slaves. And the right and obligation to serve on juries is one of those, as most of us are reminded periodically when we receive those notices in the mail.

In the "antebellum" (prewar) South, even freed African-Americans were not allowed to serve on juries. And no white coule be convicted of a crime based soley on the testimony of a black person or persons. So it was a very important step to give black citizens equal standing in the courts.

The relation to the neo-Confederate mythology is that it tries to minimize the role of race and white racismin the Civil War, its preceeding events and its aftermath. Racism by blacks against whites is always an acceptable topic for discussion and emphasis for the neo-Confederate crowd.

Tags: confederate heritage month 2004

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2004, April 7: Jefferson Davis

Today's quote from Edward Sebesta's Confederate Heritage Month page is from Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate State of America. This quote is doubly interesting because it's from a speech he made in the US Senate where he represented Mississippi in 1850. But he also repeated it will approval in his memoirs of 1881.

It gives an idea of how the defenders of slavery typically spoke about the Southern cause before the war (emphasis in red are Sebesta's; those in bold are mine):

... They see that the slaves in their present condition in the South are comfortable and happy; they see them advancing in intelligence; they see the kindest relations existing between them and their masters; they see them provided for in age and sickness, in infancy and in disability; they see them in useful employment, restrained from the vicious indulgences to which their inferior nature inclines them; they see our penitentiaries never filled, and our poor-houses usually empty. let them turn to the other hand, and they see the same race in a state of freedom in the North; but instead of the comfort and kindness they receive at the South, instead of being happy and useful, they are, with few exceptions, miserable, degraded, filling the penitentiaries and poor-houses, objects of scorn, excluded in some places from the schools, and deprived of many other privileges and benefits which attach to the white men among whom they live. And yet, they insist that elsewhere an institution which has proved beneficial to this race shall be abolished, that it may be substituted by a state of things which is fraught with so many evils to the race which they claim to be the object of the solicitude! Do they find in the history of St. Domingo, and in the present condition of Jamaica, under the recent experiments which have been made upon the institution of slavery in the liberation of the blacks, before God, in his wisdom designed it should be done -- do they there find anything to stimulate them to further exertions in the cause of abolition?

The paternalistic fakery about slavery still appears in neo-Confederate writing. Contrary to being cared for in old age, many slaves were compelled to work in some form until their deaths. Death often came long before old age, because a real doctor was rarely provided even for sick slaves. It was also a common practice to manumit (free) slaves when they became too old to do any work. Then they were left to fend for themselves in "freedom."

Tags: confederate heritage month 2004, jefferson davis, lost cause, slavery

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2004, April 6: Robert E. Lee (2 of 2)

The source page I've been using for this series of posts has been transferred to the Edward Sebesta's Temple of Democracy Web site: Confederate Heritage Month. It also allows links to individuals days' material. Which for April 6, is more on Robert E. Lee and African-Americans postwar.

What is provided there is a bit of testimony of Lee's before Congress in 1866, in which he endorses the notion that he would like to see Virginia get rid of its black citizens. But the idea of mass expulsion of black Americans (it's only the last decade or so we've started calling it "ethnic cleansing") was always unrealistic. Prior to the Civil War, many Northerners endorsed the idea of voluntary colonization of free blacks "back" to Africa, which was the origin of the nation of Liberia.

But few actually went. And the notion that colonization was a solution for more than a small minority of African-Americans was one that generally rejected by black Abolitionists. Lee's postwar advocacy of the idea really was little more than an expression of racial hostility and contempt. Alan Nolan in Lee Considered (1991) described Lee's postwar position this way:

In regard to blacks, Lee's public and private assertions were also in conflict. Publicly, he was protective and benign. Everything would be all right if the North did not "stir up" the blacks. Dependent on their labor, the South would, of course, employ them. Privately, he was bitter toward the freedmen and intervened personally to their detriment. In truth, Lee and his fellow Southerners were groping for a new method of white supremacy and exploitation of the blacks. With Northern complicity, the Southern effort was eventually to succeed; the outcome was a hundred years of near-slavery: disenfrachisement, Black Codes, Jim Crow, and suppression.

Tags: confederate heritage month 2004, lost cause, reconstruction, robert e lee

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2004, April 5: Robert E. Lee (1 of 2)

Today's Okaloosa NAACP quote is also about Robert E. Lee's attitude toward slavery. But I'm not going to quote that one here. It's available at the NAACP site. And I want to add some value to some of these as I call attention to them.

So I'll mention today why Robert E. Lee is particularly important in the neo-Confederate pseudohistory. It's because he became the favorite symbol of the Confederacy for unreconstructed white Southerners after the war, more so than Jefferson Davis, who was kind of a stiff and was never all that terribly popular anyway. Lee's image was invested with a myth of Southern benevolence, extending even to the false claim that he had been a prewar opponent of slavery.

Alan Nolan in "The Anatomy of the Myth" in The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History (2000), writes of Lee:

The [Lost Cause] legend's image of Lee is at odds with the facts. He was not anti-slavery as the image claims; he was a strong believer in the institution. His secession, following Virginia, was not inevitable, but a calculated act of will in highly ambiguous circumstances. His aggressive, offensive generalship cost his army disporportionate, irreplaceable, and excessive casualties, which led to his being caught in a fatal siege. Contrary to the legend of his magnanimity, he was hateful and bitter toward the North during and after the war. His persistence in continuing the war after he realized the South was defeated was costly in the lives of his men as well as the Yankees and not necessarily a creditable act. In the postwar, peiod, he was less of a healer than he was a conventional advocate of Southern positions.

I'll also emphasize here that I'm posting this stuff because I actually am interested in the history of the Civil War and what it means for American democracy. The neo-Confederate crowd isn't. They're pushing a pseudohistorical version of the past to promote a racist and anti-democratic program in the present. The only past they're interested in "honoring" is that of Southern segregation still in living memory of so many of us.

Tags: american civil war, confederate heritage month 2004, lost cause, robert e lee

Confederate "Heritage" Month: April 4

The Okaloosa NAACP's featured item for April 4 is from the same book on Robert E. Lee quoted in my previous post.

It's from a letter of Robert E. Lee's of March 12, 1868 (emphasis in red from the Okaloosa page):

I rode out the other day to Mr. Andrew Cameron's and went into the field where he was plowing. I took great pleasure in following the plows around the circuit. He had four in operation. Three of them were held by his former comrades in the army, who are regularly employed by him, and, he says, much to his satisfaction and profit. People have got to work now. It is creditable to them to do so; their bodies and their minds are benefited by it, and those who can and will work will be advanced by it. You will never prosper with the blacks, and it is abhorrent to a reflecting mind to be supporting and cherishing those who are plotting and working for your injury, and all of whose sympathies and associations are antagonistic to yours. I wish them no evil in the world-on the contrary, will do them every good in my power, and know that they are misled by those to whom they have given their confidence; but our material, social, and political interests are naturally with the whites. Mr. Davis's trial was fixed for the last of this month. If Judge Chase's presence is essential, I do not see how it can take place, unless that of Mr. Johnson is to be postponed. I suppose that will be decided to­day or tomorrow, and then I shall ...

The site also recommends Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee & Civil War History (1991) by Alan Nolan. I agree with their recommendation. Nolan gives attention to aspects of Lee's life that have been badly distorted in the Lost Cause mythology.

Tags: confederate heritage month 2004, lost cause, robert e lee, racism

Confederate "Heritage" Month: April 3

The item for April 3 from the Okaloosa NAACP's site focus on Robert E. Lee's post-Civil War attitudes toward the newly liberated slaves. They feature a quote from Recollections and Letters of General Lee (1904) by his son Robert E. Lee, Jr. The incident described by the younger Lee here (in Chapter 8) is apparently in 1865 after the war, when Lee was dining at the house of a formerly prosperous Southern family (the Okaloosa page's emphases shown here):

So we sat down to a repast composed of all the good things for which that country was famous. John and I did not seem to think there was too much in sight-- at any rate, it did not daunt us, and we did our best to lessen the quantity, consuming, I think, our share and more! We had been for so many years in the habit of being hungry that it was not strange we continued to be so awhile yet. But my father took a different view of the abundance displayed, and, during his drive back, said to Colonel Carter:

"Thomas, there was enough dinner to-day for twenty people. All this will now have to be changed; you cannot afford it; we shall have to practise economy."

In talking with Colonel Carter about the situation of farmers at that time in the South, and of their prospects for the future, he urged him to get rid of the negroes left on the farm--some ninety-odd in number, principally women and children, with a few old men--saying the government would provide for them, and advised him to secure white labour. The Colonel told him he had to use, for immediate needs, such force as he had, being unable at that time to get whites. Whereupon General Lee remarked:

"I have always observed that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and wherever you find a white man, you see everything around him improving."

Tags: confederate heritage month 2004, lost cause, racism, robert e lee

Confederate "Heritage" Month: April 2

For April 2 the Okaloosa NAACP site provides excerpts from a notorious speech of March 21, 1861, by Alexander Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy, describing the basis of the Confederate revolt:

The prevailing ideas entertained by [Thomas Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the instituion would be evanescent and pass away.

As mentioned in the April 1 installment, this opinion was still reflected by Robert E. Lee in 1856, but by then it had become an empty excuse for slavery. And most defenders of the "peculiar institution" by then were characterizing it as Stephens did in this speech:

Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundation are laid, its cornerstone 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 moral condition. [Applause] This, our newer Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

After the Civil War, former secessionists, including Stephens, often had very different explanations of what the Lost Cause had meant. Their speeches and actions before and during the war tell a different story.

The complete text of the speech can be found here: Cornerstone Speech. (The quotes above are from this text; punctuation and spelling have slight differences in the Okaloosa NAACP's text.)

Tags: alexander stephens, confederate heritage month 2004, lost cause

Confederate "Heritage" Month: April 1

Our quote from today from the Okaloosa NAACP Web site is about Robert E. Lee, patron saint of the Lost Cause. It's from a private letter Lee wrote to his wife in 1856, and is essentially the only basis for the much-repeated claim that Lee was anti-slavery before the Civil War. He wrote:

In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral and political evil in any country. ... I think it however a greater evil to the white than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, ... How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. There emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy ... While we see the Course of the final abolition of human slavery is onward, & we give it all the aid of our prayers & all justifiable means in our power, we must leave the progress as well as the result in his hands who sees the end; who Chooses to work by slow influences; & with whom two thousand years are but as a Single day.

Note that Lee envisions the gradual elimination of slavery by about, say, the year 3856. After a couple more millenia of Christian patience and the "mild & melting" but "slow" influence of religion. With all deliberate speed, we might say.

This justification of slavery as a necessary evil for the slaves' uplifting and "instruction as a race" was actually still a conventional justification for slavery at that time in Upper South states like Lee's Virginia. But, as Lee himself was surely aware, most Southern apologists for slavery had long since abandoned that paternalistic line, and praised slavery as a positive good and an eternal institution essential for "white supremacy."

Tags: confederate heritage month 2004, lost cause, robert e lee, slavery

April is Confederate "Heritage" Month

Yes, April is the month that the neo-Confederate groups celebrate as Confederate Heritage Month. No, this is not an April Fools joke.

The Okaloosa (FL) NAACP has a page that provides a counter-commemoration for every day of the month, talking aspect of the real history of the Confederacy, slavery and the Lost Cause mythology. Unfortunately, their site has been down for several days. So I'm providing a link here to a version cached on Yahoo!: Confederate Heritage Month.

I'm planning to post comments during April using material from that site. If their live site comes back online, I'll link to it. Otherwise, I'll link back to this post, because the address on the cached version probably takes up about half the 2500-character limit by itself.

Tags: confederate heritage month 2004, lost cause