There's an old joke--"it's a Southern thang, you wouldn't understand." That kind of applies here.
It really is, to an extent, a "Southern thing." It's hard for somebody who didn't grow up down here (I grew up 25 miles from Appomattox, FYI) to understand the pervasive hold that the WBTS has in parts of the South. If you think about it, the South is the only large part of the United States since 1814 that has known what it's like to be occupied by a foreign power (taking Hawaii from the natives excepted). Hundreds of thousands of Southerners died in that war. An entire generation was decimated. Cities were destroyed (almost every historical marker in Columbia ends with "...burned by Union troops on February 17, 1865"). The South suffered military occupation for up to 12 years. The Southern economy was shattered for a generation or more.
But even beyond that is the attitude of the rest of the country. I know I'm damned sick of anyplace Southern being a laughingstock to New York and Hollywood. When was the last time you saw a positive portrayal of race relations in the South in the media? When was the last time you saw a white non-liberal non-"enlightened" Southerner portrayed in a good light? When was the last time you heard about the bravery of those men who wore the gray and fought for their homes against what they saw as a rampaging, invading army? It's like we're STILL being held responsible for what John C. Calhoun and the boys decided to do in December 1860 and the repercussions thereof. Hell, we have to jump through hoops on things like redistricting that other states don't have to (thanks to the renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act), even after having proven again and again that there is no institutional racism left down here.
So it's a big middle finger to the haters, in some ways. It's a way of telling the liberal northeasterners and the NAACP race pimps and the "diversity" crowd that they can't erase my history. Call me a hick, call me a redneck, call me an inbreed, but I'm still proud of who I am and where I'm from, and I'm going to defend the history of my home, and of men like Lee and Jackson and Stuart and all the others. A lot of people use it as a hearty "screw you." Others are passionate about preserving the history of the WBTS. Some fall into both categories.
The particular situation in SC is simple. That flag is a battle standard. It was never one of the three political flags of the Confederacy. It was the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, and it stands behind a monument to South Carolina's WBTS dead that's been on those grounds since the late 1800s. It's a soldier's flag, at a soldier's memorial, so I guess I fail to see what the problem is.
}:-)4
Well said!
I always thought the Civil War was to free Grant's personal slaves.
One small detail and then I will agree with you. Wasn't John Calhoon in 1860. He was dead and gone by the time SC seceded. The North still gloats over the victory in 1865, and fails to realize what damage they did to the South.
As you say, they killed and maimed most of a generation of southern leadership. The physical damage to cities like Richmond and Atlanta--which is preserved in photographs--reminds me of war damage in France in 1914-1918. This did not prevcent the South from regaining political control of their governments after ten years. Don't know why southerners should be blamed for the craven abandonment of their black allies, although our owntreatment of them is certainly nothing to be proud of. The Yankees let us do them a favor by keeping blacks from migrating northward until the cotton industry was ravaged by the boll weevil in the early 20th Century. When they did begin to move north, they were treated with the same savagery that our grandfathers used. People forget that the KKK was stronger in Indiana and Oregon than in Mississippi.