Tag Archives: civil war

Books, Politics, Society

How Do We Overcome Our Bi-Partisan Ignorance?

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Ignorance stalks us wherever we go. Stupidity too—it’s easy to lash out in anger or dismissiveness. And maybe arrogance as well, to think that none of these apply to us. To me. We—I—live a great contradiction.

It’s so prominent in the political debate in this country right now—filibusters and sit-ins over gun rights, refusing to consider Supreme Court nominees, etc.. One side decries the other side’s actions, even though the first side has used the exact same tactic in the past. Both sides do it.

And so it goes. And that’s just in politics.

I read a lot. Some might say too much. In that reading I come across portrayals of overwhelming ignorance. Just this morning, in a matter of pages I read about The Colored Motorist’s Guide that told black people in the first half of the twentieth century “where they could and could not sleep, in what towns the citizens would shoot them if they stayed after dark,” and then that “deaf schools banished sign language, declared it backward and a threat to the wholesome spoken word, subscribed to the theory that sign language would encourage the deaf to marry only each other and create a perpetuating race of non-hearers, and swaddled the hands of their most defiant students in thick cotton mittens.” Continue reading How Do We Overcome Our Bi-Partisan Ignorance? →

History

Confederates in the Attic

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I’ve never truly understood the Confederate perspective in the Civil War. I’ve blogged about this before, including the Confederate flag, civil rights as an end to the Civil War, some interesting historical perspective and the question of whether or not a state can secede (which still draws comments six years later).

This summer I made my first in-depth trip to the deep South (short stays in Charlotte and Nashville don’t seem to count), spending a week in Oxford, Miss. It was hard to avoid the rebel spirit and I found myself again wondering about this war that divided a nation. I’ve always understood slavery to be the cause and considered this a racist war and continued support for the Confederate cause 150 years later is surely proof of continued racism. But that’s also my Northern perspective, gained from growing up in a state that seemed far removed from Civil War battles (Michigan); living in a state that was barely on its feet when the war started (Minnesota—though for what it’s worth we did volunteer the first regiment, by luck of timing); having roots in a state that served as a flashpoint over slavery and ultimately sided with the North (Kansas); and having never really traveled in the original Confederate states.

In short, it’s a perspective I’ve had very little exposure to over the years.

While browsing in a bookstore in Mississippi I came across Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. It’s a fascinating read that essentially tries to do what I’ve never been able to—understand the fascination and respect that goes along with the defeated Confederate States of America.

A lot of it has to do with the underdog cause, with states rights versus an over-reaching federal government. Some of it is land and loyalty, going along with your people because they’re, well, your people (I’m not sure that’s something we can understand today as few people are as locally fixed as people were back then). And many Southern soldiers weren’t slaveholders—apparently you could be excused from fighting if you owned more than 20 slaves.

“They were poor men fighting a rich man’s war,” says high school teacher Billie Faulk. That seems equally true today.

Historian Shelby Foote offers an interesting defense of the Confederate Flag. It was a battle flag, not the political flag, and veterans revered it as soldiers do. It became associated with hatred during the civil rights era when educated Southerns allowed white supremacists to misuse the flag. “That’s when right-thinking people should have stepped in and said, ‘Don’t use that banner, that’s not what it stands for.’ But they didn’t. So now it’s a symbol of evil to a great many people.”

That’s where the shift gets interesting. There’s this on-going animosity in the South, which I suppose is to be expected of a conquered people. After the Civil War they didn’t celebrate the Fourth of July in Mississippi again until 1945. In Richmond, the Confederate capitol, there’s Monument Avenue, which is effectively a shrine to the defeated leaders of the Confederacy (except for black tennis star Arthur Ashe, added in the late 1990s with its share of controversy). How odd is it to have monuments to what amounts to insurrectionists and traitors? And Richmond certainly isn’t alone. Confederate monuments are sprinkled across the South (Vicksburg, Miss., is apparently home to more than 1,300 plaques and monuments).

That’s what is perhaps most surprising about the Civil War. For four years brother fought against brother, but when it was over we became one nation again. Reconstruction wasn’t exactly pretty (which is why I’m even writing this today), but that it happened at all was amazing. Most Confederate leaders were never tried (only two Confederates were brought up on war crimes, commander of the Andersonville prisoner camp Henry Wirz and guerrilla fighter Champ Ferguson). Even Confederate President Jefferson Davis was released after two years in prison and no charges were brought against him. The Confederacy was not labeled as an insurrection and all supporters branded traitors.

In the end I’m not sure if I’ve made any ground. At the very least, I’ve come to understand the whole situation as being incredibly complicated. I do think its disingenuous when Confederate supporters and rebel flag flyers dismiss slavery as part of the issue. It’s part of what makes America uniquely, well, American (and how American is it to talk about how unique we are?). We were founded in the contradiction that all men are created equal, except for the slaves and Indians, maybe those Jews and immigrants we don’t like, and oh yeah, the Irish. We eventually went to war with ourselves over it and came out united. Of course freeing the slaves didn’t exactly fulfill the promise that all men were created equal and it was another hundred years before that was carried out.

Even today we continue to live with the contradiction. Though we’re past slavery and segregation, we still have racism and self-imposed segregation. Though equality isn’t exactly there, the fact that we finally have a black man as president shows how far we’ve come. That he opted to hang a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation in the halls of the White House is powerful (the fact that no president did that before shows how blind we can be to the power of our own history).

I don’t know where I’m going with any of this, but it’s an interesting history to wade through.

History

Mulling Over the Civil War, 150 Years Later

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150 years ago the United States of America went to war with itself. An interesting article over at CNN explored four reasons why we’re still fighting that war.

It’s full of interesting ideas and rationales. I found two of them worth talking about here:

1) Power of the Federal Government

H.W. Crocker III, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War, says Southern secessionists were patriots reaffirming the Founding Fathers’ belief that the Colonies were free and independent states.

They were also reaffirming the Founding Fathers’ belief that black men only counted as two-thirds of a person and could be sold like cattle. But you know, details.

But I’ll give Crocker some credit, he does pose a fair question:

“If the Southern states pulled out of the union today after, say, the election of Barack Obama, or some other big political issue like abortion, how many of us would think the appropriate reaction from the federal government would be to blockade Southern ports and send armies into Virginia?”

Ouch. There’s a question for the pro-life crowd. If Roe vs. Wade is overturned and California says “We’re out,” is the appropriate response to go to war?

An over-simplified question for a way more complex issue. Of course Abraham Lincoln said yes and did go to war over a moral issue. Which brings me to the second interesting idea.

2) Christianity Poisons Politics

At the time of the Civil War the political center disappeared in the wake of the Second Great Awakening, according to David Goldfield, author of America Aflame, a new book that examines evangelical Christianity’s impact on the war.

Goldfield says evangelical Christianity “poisoned the political process” because the American system of government depends on compromise and moderation, and evangelical religion abhors both because “how do you compromise with sin.”

“By transforming political issues into moral causes, you raise the stakes of the conflict and you tend to demonize your opponents,” Goldfield says.

So Christianity is to blame for the Civil War? Ouch. I’m over-simplifying (again), but it’s an interesting idea.

Some might say that’s good. Eradicating slavery is a battle worth fighting and in the case of the Civil War that’s meant literally. It’s interesting to make comparisons and talk about whether that’s worth doing today, but that’s probably one of the few times in history when you can invade to enforce a moral issue. Who would the pro-life crowd propose we invade in order to stop abortion? Or perhaps less inflammatory, who could we invade today to stop human trafficking? There’s no country that legalizes and supports slavery today like the South did 150 years ago.

I don’t have any answers here, I’m just mulling ideas.

History, War

Did Martin Luther King Jr. Finally End the Civil War?

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PRI’s The World has a fascinating series of stories on how wars end. The series is looking at past wars to give insight into how the Iraq war might end. Yesterday’s story covered the end of the Civil War and the failure of Reconstruction.

What’s so interesting is the assertion that the Civil War didn’t end at Appomattox. The battle continued, though it wasn’t always a military battle (though people still died):

Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations says it helps him understand how it’s possible to win the war, capture the capital but still lose the peace. He notes the North won the big military contest between 1861 and 1865, but that didn’t end the struggle. And over time, Biddle points out, Southern resistance paid off. In 1877 President Rutherford Hayes withdrew Northern troops from the South.

“And the South proceeds to essentially run out the Northern installed governments of the remaining Southern states, institutes what amounted to white one-party rule, removed blacks from voter rolls throughout the South and established a system of segregation, and that system remains to a significant degree all the way up until the civil rights movement of the 1960s.”

Biddle says if you look at in political terms, it’s possible to construct an argument that the South actually won the war.

That’s quite a claim, but it’s interesting to consider. If the Civil War was fought to bring freedom to blacks, you could argue that freedom wasn’t fully achieved until Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. How’s that for a long view of the conflict? Never thought I’d consider MLK a Civil War hero. That’s probably taking it a bit far, but it’s interesting to consider and is a strong counter to the myth that the Civil War ended amicably at Appomattox.