Is Marking Confederate History Benign?

The place in which the Confederate Battle Flag was designed and adopted was marked over the weekend in Fairfax, Virginia.  Part of the plaque reads as follows:

“During the First Battle of Manassas, amid the smoke of combat, troops found it difficult to distinguish between Union and Confederate flags. Generals P.G.T. Beauregard, Joseph E. Johnston and Quartermaster General William L. Cabell met near here in September 1861 and approved the first Confederate battle flag.”

There is nothing too difficult to understand here, nothing outrageous in terms of the historical context.  The Virginia Board of Historic Resouces even approved the wording on the plaque and a member of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, Kenneth Alexander had the following to say:

“They are within their right to commemorate the design of the Confederate battle flag. I may have personal objections and other individuals may have objections, but again that is also our right.  We have the right to object and to protest, but as long as we do it civilly and within the law and also at the same time respect the group that wants to commemorate the battle flag. This is what makes America America, and what makes America great, the greatest country in the world.”

Great, the African-American community is not upset, the neo-confederate community is on a flag high and all is right with the world!  It is quite possible that this marker is nothing to get upset over or protest or boycott…but is the marker telling the whole story?

 

Does the marker explain that the flag was created by a Government that was at war with the United States of America?  Does the marker explain that that government at war with the United States of America had as its main goal the protection and expansion of slavery?  One of the many historical facts about the flag the neo-confederates tout is that it never flew over a single slave ship and that is historically correct.  It actually flew over the heads of soldiers, who, despite their reason for fighting, fought for the institution of slavery and fought to make that institution all encompasing.

 

Like it or not, as we have seen the neo-confederate opposition to the NPS adding the story of slavery into battlefield interpretation, slavery in connected to the Civil War and the Confederate battle flag whether they like it or not.  The sooner we place slavery and the battle flag in the correct historical context, the sooner we will be able to understand the Civil War and the current situation of Race in this country in a better light.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Celebrating “Confederate History Month” Southern Style

I thought that since everyone down south must be in a big flurry of confederate euphoria now that it is Confederate History Month that I would allow some real confederates do the talking.  Here we have Jabez Curry who was the Secession Commissioner from Alabama to Maryland.  You can find the full text here.

You will notice that at no time does Curry ever address the non-slaveholding states, as if there was ever a question in his mind as to the real reason for secession-Slavery.

“as to what is best to be done to protect the rights, interests, and honor of the slave-holding States,” menaced and endangered by recent political events. Having watched with painful anxiety the growth, power, and encroachments of anti-slaveryism, and anticipating for the party held together by this sentiment of hostility to the rights and institutions of the Southern people a probable success, too fatally realized, in the recent Presidential election, the General Assembly of Alabama, on the 24th of February, 1860, adopted joint resolutions providing, on the happening of such a contingency, for a convention of the State “to consider, determine, and do whatever the rights, interests, and honor of Alabama require to be done for their protection.”

You will also see that African Slavery is a the very forefront of his thoughts.

Recognizing the common interests and destiny of all the States holding property in the labor of Africans, and “anxiously desiring their co-operation in a struggle which perils all they hold most dear,”

and…

“When Mr. Lincoln is inaugurated it will not be simply a change of administration–the installation of a new President–but a reversal of the former practice and policy of the Government, so thorough as to amount to a revolution. Cover over its offensiveness with the most artful disguises, and the fact stands out in its terrible reality that the Government, within the amplitude of its jurisdiction, real or assumed, becomes foreign to the South, and is not to recognize the right of the Southern citizen to property in the labor of African slaves.”

and again…

The minority section must have some other protection than the discretion or sense of justice of the majority, for the Constitution as interpreted, with a denial of the right of secession or State interposition, affords no security or means of redress against a hostile and fanatical majority. The action of the two committees in the Senate and House of Congress shows an unalterable purpose on the part of the Republicans to reap the fruits of their recent victory, and to abate not a jot or tittle of their Abolition principles. They refuse to recognize our rights of property in slaves, to make a division of the territory, to deprive themselves of their assumed constitutional power to abolish slavery in the Territories or District of Columbia, to increase the efficiency of the fugitive slave law, or make provision for the compensation of the owners of runaway or stolen slaves, or place in the hands of the South any protection against the rapacity of an unscrupulous majority.”

He ends his letter/speech with the following…

“It gives me pleasure to be the medium of communicating with you, and through you to the Legislature of Maryland when it shall be convened. I trust that between Maryland and Alabama, and other States having a homogeneous population, kindred interests, and an inviting future of agricultural, mining, mechanical, manufacturing, commercial, and political success, a union, strong as the tie of affection and lasting as the love of liberty, will soon be formed, which shall stand as a model of a free, representative, constitutional, voluntary republic.”

After reading this I can only wonder where neo-confederates and false historian like Tommy Dilorenzo come up with the tariff or any other neo-confederate revision.

Irony in Florida

Over at Civil War Memory, Kevin made mention of the fact that Florida’s Confederate license tag is dead in the water.  I also notice this story that may have a connection.

Since Florida just issued an apology for slavery, I wonder if they just felt that following that up with a Confederate Heritage Plate would have been just poor taste.

No Black Confederates Here!

I found this picture on the Military History Online’s page on Gettysburg Photographs

Amateur Photos from the 1913 Reunion at Gettysburg - Final Entry 1-29

I would have thought that these good southern slaves would have joined their master and fought the damn Yankee Invaders to the end…but alas…they done joined the Yankees!

Memories in the Making!