Refighting the Civil War - It Was Treasonous, Not Romantic

When Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell declared April 'Confederate History Month' and overlooked slavery in his proclamation, a well deserved firestorm ensued. As an elementary school student I was taught that the Civil War was fought over slavery. By time I reached college, I learned about more complicated issues involving regional economics, foreign trade policy, and industrialization.

When it was all said and done, the Civil War was over slavery. No slavery, no war.

In his proclamation, McDonnell wrote that Virginians should "understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War."

Writing in the Nation, Melissa Harris-Lacewell eloquently expressed the feelings of the millions of descendants of slaves:

As I child I lived in the shadow of Monticello. As a teen I lived on Jefferson Davis Highway, and there I discovered the other Virginia history. This is the Virginia history that is etched in the stony faces of confederate traitors who line Monument Avenue in Richmond. This narrative of Virginia laments the end of slavery, romanticizes traitorous action against the state and memorializes sedition. This history is built on a false and romantic notion of an imagined Confederate past that refuses to acknowledged the ways that slavery degraded not only black labor, but white labor; how it destroyed the land; and how it starved the region of innovation.

Going back to my own youth, I found that the romantic portrayal of the ante-bellum south to be a gross distortion of the truth. As Harris-Lacewell notes, little has changed for many Americans in the past fifty years.

Comments

[R.J.]

I see a lot of dippy kids with Che T-shirts, too.

[Soon to be ex-alderman Steve]

"I see a lot of dippy kids with Che T-shirts, too."

Your complaint would have a lot more merit if a sitting state governor had declared a "Che Guevera Appreciation Day" in honor of the fallen Cuban/Argentine revolutionary, putting the stamp of gub'mint authority to an official commemoration of the Cuban revolution.

By contrast, those "dippy kids" were just exercising their first amendement rights as individuals, probably just to annoy grouchy guys like you.

[JT]

Sorry, cannot agree the CW was over slavery. If you read the letters of folks at the time (not just news stories) it is clear that a sense of pride and a belief in the right to self-governance and secession (as afforded in the Constitution) were prime matters at hand. Slavery may have been a straw. It was not the camel. The CW was neither treasonous nor romantic. By their own monikers it was rebellious fueled in part by the same emotions and reasoning which guided Jefferson's words against King George in the Declaration of Independence. Foolishness was displayed on both sides in a situation that rapidly spiraled out of control. To try and label the entire thing as one 'this' or 'that' or it's cause as such is pretty swift and somewhat shallow.

[R.J.]

Nah, I'm sure they're clueless and just like how the shirt looks. Sometimes it takes "grouchy guys" to take offense to idolizing genocide.

[Bill Geist]

The Jefferson Davis Museum in coastal Mississippi tries hard to spin the war as a "State's Rights" issue. And, for the leadership of the movement, I'm guessing it was a little of both. For everyone else...uhh, yeah, it was probably slavery.

Interestingly, many of the southern States are struggling with how to mark (and profit from) the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War. I was in Tallahassee last year, where there is a great deal of pride that it was the only Confederate State Capitol that didn't fall to Union troops. When the discussion turned to how to commemerate the battle that saved the Capitol, the local African American community said..."and just what are we celebrating?"

Not a lot of Sesquicentennial events are planed for Tallahasee.

[Soon to be ex-alderman Steve]

"Nah, I'm sure they're clueless and just like how the shirt looks. Sometimes it takes "grouchy guys" to take offense to idolizing genocide."

Let's see...the Cuban revolution was "genocide", but the Civil War was just a bunch of civic minded folks in the south trying to live free (at least if they were white men with land) with no connection at all to the "peculiar institution" that served as the foundation of the regions economy.

R.J., you've got a pretty peculiar notion of what constitutes "genocide".

Personally, I'm glad the North crushed the Confederacy. Good riddance...

[freelunch]

If the treasonous southerners hadn't wanted the right to treat human beings like chattel, they never would have fought this war. American slavery is every bit as evil and indefensible as anything Stalin or Hitler did. Because it lasted so long, it is not unreasonable to say it was worse.

The Germans have the good sense not to be proud of the Nazi era. What is the excuse for fans of the Sedition in the South?

[Soon to be ex-alderman Steve]

"What is the excuse for fans of the Sedition in the South?"

I suspect it is based on a nostalgia for a romantic past conjured up by D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of A Nation" or David O. Selznick's "Gone With the Wind" rather than the actual very ugly historical record. As Melissa Harris-Lacewell pointed out, there are good reasons why the South remained a social and economic backwater for so long, and how the southern economy only took off after the civil rights movement brought Southern whites kicking and screaming into the American mainstream.

I am happy to celebrate the valor of the best of the soldiers of both sides, nor do I have any illusions about the deeply embedded racism of the North, but let's not kid ourselves about which side held the moral high ground in the Civil War.