Of Guilt and the Late Confederacy

Townhall.com ^ | August 14, 2018 | Bill Murchison

[Kaslin]

Anti-Confederate liberals (of various races) can't get over the fact that pro-common-sense liberals, moderates and conservatives (of various races) can't go over the fact that rhetorical agitation over race has led us down a blind alley.

The supposed "nationalist" rally in Washington, D.C., last weekend was more an embarrassment to its promoters than it was anything else significant. No one showed up but cops, journalists and anti-nationalist protesters.

Ho-hum. We're back approximately where we were before the Charlottesville, Virginia, disaster the Washington march was meant to commemorate -- a foul-tempered shouting match that ended in death for a bystander hit by a "nationalist"-driven car.

A vocal coterie continues to think all vestiges of the late Confederacy -- especially, statues of Gen. Robert E. Lee -- should be removed from the public gaze. A far larger number, it seems to me, posit the futility, and harm, that flow from keeping alive the animosities of the past.

The latter constituency rejects the contention that, look, the past is the present: requiring a huge, 16th-century-style auto da fe at which present generations confess and bewail the sins of generations long gone. The technique for repenting of sins one never committed in the first place is unknown to human experience. Nevertheless, it's what we're supposed to do. Small wonder we haven't done it, apart from removing the odd Lee statue, as at Dallas' Lee Park. To the enrichment of human understanding? If so, no one is making that claim.

Looks as though we're moving on to larger goals, like maybe -- I kid you not -- committing "The Eyes of Texas" to the purgative flames, now that the venerable school song of the University of Texas, and unofficial anthem of the whole state, has been found culpable.

Culpable, yes. I said I wasn't kidding. The university's vice provost for "diversity" has informed student government members who possibly hadn't known the brutal truth that "The Eyes" dates from the Jim Crow era. "This is definitely about minstrelsy and past racism," said the provost. "It's also about school pride. One question is whether it can be both those things."

Maybe it can't be anything. Maybe nothing can be, given our culture's susceptibility to calls for moral reformation involving less the change of heart than the wiping away of memory, like bad words on a blackboard. Gone! Forgotten! Except that nothing is ever forgotten, save at the margins of history. We are who we are because of who we have been; we are where we are because of the places we have dwelt and those to which we have journeyed.

A sign of cultural weakness at the knees is the disposition to appease the clamorous by acceding to their demands: as the Dallas City Council did when, erratically, and solely because a relative handful were demanding such an action, it sent its Lee statute away to repose in an airplane hanger. I am not kidding -- an airplane hanger.

Civilization demands that its genuine friends -- not the kibitzers and showmen on the fringe -- when taking the measure of present and future needs, will consider and reflect on the good and the less than good in life, not to mention the truly awful and the merely preposterous. To remember isn't to excuse; it's to learn and thus to grow in wisdom and understanding.

In freeing the slaves, Yankee soldiers shot and blew up and starved many a Confederate. Was that nice? Should we be happy that so many bayonets ripped apart so many intestines? No. Nor should we be happy that so many Africans came in innocence to a land of which they knew nothing to work all their days as the bought-and-paid-for property of others.

History is far more complex, far more multisided than today's self-anointed cleansers of the record can be induced to admit. I think the rest of us are going to have to work around them. In the end, I think, and insofar as it can be achieved, we're going to have to ignore them.

[golux]

Yes, you are right.

Southern congressmen had already left Washington.

Lincoln. Not my favorite president, but he was a PR genius.

Alas - did he ever check his White Privilege? I think not!

[BroJoeK]

golux: "The "Yankees" did NOT free the slaves."

Of course the "Yankees" freed the slaves, all of them without exception, that's what the 13th, 14th & 15th amendments were all about.

Preliminary to required constitutional amendments, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed any slaves under jurisdiction of the US Army in regions under rebellion.

It was totally straightforward and why you people keep getting your panties in a bunch over it, I'll never know.

[Ohioan]

The problem is that the delegated powers involved much more than explicit statement. The constitution involves the unnamed powers necessary to carry out those functions.

Not to the extent that you imply. [Implied Powers?]

[RipSawyer]

Seems like you are the one with his panties in a bunch.

[Ohioan]

Guys:

Sorry to intrude, but the mention of D'Souza--whom I really have not followed--making contentions about van Buren, reminded me of the Novel fragment written by Virginia's Judge Tucker, about 1836, which both predicted the coming war--although pictured in 1849, and skewered van Buren, pictured as having won a fourth term in 1848.

The point of my butting in, however, really goes to the very interesting reflection of Virginian attitudes in the 1830s. If interested: The Partisan Leader.

There are scenes in the novel, which offer a very different picture of pre-war life in the Old Dominion, than some have tried to rewrite into a make believe smear narrative.

[Ohioan]

Thanks for the praise.

Did you catch the reply, where our antagonist--perhaps unwittingly--confirmed my point about the toxic disrespect, by injecting intended insulting terminology in reference to the Southern leadership? I mean, really, over a century and a half, after the slave issue ceased to be contemporary, still hissing insult at those, he claimed were morally supposed to continue the original federal partnership?

While we can speculate on the actual motives of those who simply refuse to dispense with the active war on your heritage, it is very clear that it is basically a verbal exercise to them. The type of argument employed is always a form of verbal quibbling over cherry picked incidents--as opposed to a dynamic, ongoing view of the continuing interaction of the players.

All I am saying is that the miscategorization of those incidents is totally unnecessary, if they really had a point to make; but very revealing as to the emotional tangent behind the persistent word games.

[wardaddy]

What’s most telling is that the actual folks who fought the war then after the
War seemed to have genuine respect and affection for one another as survivors of a brutal five years

The only real vitriol was about a dozen radical republicans and newspaper editors and occupation governors

Juxtapose thst with today’s perspective from the Left and National Review sorts

Which is essentially the same

Over the nearly two decades here I’ve observed the absolute nuttiest comments about southerners

From the usual we are descended from Nazis refrain to al slaveowners and their families should have been summarily hanged

This sort of politically correct crap used to be heralded here and dovetailed nicely with open borders and other race tinged issues thst were much stronger here then

Most of these posters you engaged here only come here to play on civil war threads and to race bait eleswhere...a few exceptions

We know who you are...a prolific attorney from the Midwest who writes why quite well

Folks know I’m a Mississippi native who owns car washes in middle Tennessee with deep southern roots back to Rolfe and Pochahontas

But all these guys.....they probably know one another through freepmail but they dare not say what their personal perspectives are though over the years it leaks out

One observation

A nigh incidence of nevertrumpism ran in that group

No big Shock right

The forum has thankfully moved way past their drumbeat

[rockrr]

The specific functions--which did not include one faction imposing its will on internal affairs on another--became virtually impossible with the decline in mutual respect, and a common identity.

If you mean the slave holding states imposing their will upon the rest of the states, I agree wholeheartedly. The degree to which the slavers imposed the Peculiar Institution either directly, in the case of border states and new states or indirectly, as in the case of the Fugitive Slave Act, served to churn the passions between north and south.

[BroJoeK]

golux post #16: "The "Yankees" did NOT free the slaves."

RipSawyer post #22: "It [Emancipation Proclamation] did not do that at the time it was written, the war was still being fought, it had no more real effect than if Harry Truman, during WWII, had written a proclamation that Hitler’s soldiers could not eat black forest ham."

RipSawyer post #204: "Seems like you are the one with his panties in a bunch."

I'd say any time you're forced to lie to defend your team, your panties are in a bunch, and posts 16 & 22 are outright lies.

So why do you do it?

[Ohioan]

Your insulting hissing at those who disagree with you confirms my point in replies above. If you can write with such contempt of fellow Americans over what ceased to be an issue over a century & a half ago, it should be obvious why the South thought they could no longer remain in a Union conceived in a once common purpose with comrades in victorious arms in the late 1780s. (By the way, the Fugitive Slave Act was specifically authorized in the Constitution, and was one of the compromises based upon mutual respect.)

While you and I may agree that the feudal/Biblical labor system, which was replaced at various places, before and after the 1860s, around the world, was properly replaced by volitional contracts between employers & employees; that does not change historic facts.

[John S Mosby]

Damned lucky to only have been captured after the slaughter in the 2nd battle. Someone has done digital analysis of the photo record of that scene, inclusive of the headless fellow determined to be a CSA officer. War is certainly Hell.

[John S Mosby]

Love it— Zinn and Macpherson.... two truly idiotic creatures of academe on this topic and in Zinn’s case, history—period. No pun intended.

[John S Mosby]

thanks— will check out the novel. And explore the use as a smear.

More of the same “judging the past on the basis of the current considered “norms”? Such a stupid thing to do. What is so often missing is first hand (like in family) accounts. there not being contrived videos available from the times. Hollyweird has made up for that by fictionalizing falsehoods, known falsehoods.

[John S Mosby]

Eloquent, succinct and dead on commentary about the “whack a mole” posters who come to threads like this to flog their absolutist “world according to Princeton history dweebs” opinions as fact. Particularly to flog Southrons, just cause it makes them feel good.

And yeah— neverTrumpers, who mimic and parrot the uni-party and inside the Beltway screed that we’ve lived with for over 50 years. They’ll never get it.

Thanks for your post.

[John S Mosby]

FYI— the dude operates under many screen names, and fully ID’d. Networks private message-wise with others who lurk on this topic. Lot of cover names of others as well. All with zero respect and monolithic views. Deo Vindice.

[Ohioan]

I am well acquainted with the variety of hysterical fanaticism, which some of these Historical revisionists demonstrate. Edgar Alan Poe used to call out their like in the 1840s, in some of his literary reviews. Fanaticism can be very ugly.

[rockrr]

Please feel free to point out this alleged “insulting hissing” you feel I’m committing.

[RipSawyer]

Post 16 was not mine, as far as my number 22 being an outright lie, that may be your opinion but I totally disagree with you.

[Pelham]

There was an attempt at something like what you are suggesting, led by former President John Tyler; it's described here:

Peace Conference of 1861

It's not mentioned in the wikipedia piece but one problem with such proposals was that Lincoln was never going to do anything that equated to recognition of the Confederacy, so he refused to meet with them.

Lincoln's position from day one is that the states had never left the union; they were simply controlled by rebellious men. His position was remarkably similar to what King George had to say in 1775: A Proclamation For Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition

[x]

War seemed to have genuine respect and affection for one another as survivors of a brutal five years

It's called catharsis. People got a lot of their animosity out of their system. And when one side is left ruined by the war, it got harder for the other to hate them. I think you could even say something like that about our feelings for the defeated in both world wars, whether they deserved it or not. Still, it wasn't exactly a love fest after the Civil War.

The only real vitriol was about a dozen radical republicans and newspaper editors and occupation governors

The country was more local back then. People were more preoccupied with what was going on locally than with what was happening at the other end of the country. But I'm pretty sure there was a reservoir of hatred left over in those who fought the war. Look up the "Good Old Rebel" song or the phrase "Wave the Bloody Shirt." What old men got up to fifty years later at reunions didn't necessarily reflect their feelings about each other when they were in the prime of life.

Folks know I’m a Mississippi native who owns car washes in middle Tennessee with deep southern roots back to Rolfe and Pochahontas.

Dude, we know things about you that you are afraid to tell your wives. Look up "oversharing."