contextualizing confederates: part two

the lost cause

This essay is part of a three part series I wrote in order to contextualize the current discussion we are having about our confederate monuments.  Last week I explored the causes of the Civil War, and this week I turn to the aftermath of the war, the Lost Cause narrative, and the initial erecting of monuments.

After the Civil War, the Confederacy was in shambles, economically ruined.  Although the Union won, the union of states that survived was deeply weakened by the death toll, the loss of a free Southern work force, and destroyed landscapes.  In an intentional choice to reconcile, the congress passed laws to forgive confederate treason, allow former confederate leaders to run for federal office, and for the South to create their own racially based laws as they reorganized as a society.  The South, shocked at having been defeated, reeling from the abrupt erasure of the foundation of their economy, and outraged at their forced submission, was desperate to redeem the noble purpose of the cause for which they fought the war in the first place.  As the Civil War came to a close, a new war began for the memory of the war, and the South won this conflict handily.

The narrative of the Lost Cause, shared through Southern publications, memorial days, books, films, and throughout the political arena, created a memory of the antebellum South in which slaves were fiercely loyal to their masters, masters were good Christians who took care of their slaves with gentle, fatherly guidance, and all Southerners were committed to hospitality, Christianity, and kindness above all.  Historian David Blight explains, "the Lost Cause took root in Southern culture awash in a mixture of physical destruction, the psychological trauma of defeat, a Democratic Party resisting Reconstruction, racial violence, and, with time, an abiding sentimentalism.  On the broadest level, it came to represent a mood, or an attitude toward the past…For many Southerners it became a natural extension of evangelical piety, a civil religion that helped them link their sense of loss to a Christian conception of history."

The Lost Cause represented a Christian narrative in which masters and slaves were friends whose relationship was built on mutual sacrifice and steady loyalty.  This narrative was undermined by the fact that hundreds of thousands of slaves abandoned their masters and their plantations during the course of the war.  Nevertheless, the Lost Cause asserted slaves were not mistreated, but they, being either helpless children or wayward beasts, needed the paternal guidance a white Christian male could offer them.  Slavery simply provided the framework that allowed generous white people to care for lost and lazy black people.  

In their view, and for many Southerners today, the Civil War was not fought to selfishly protect slavery, but to defend a state’s right to do what is best for its people. Historian Walter Johnson clarifies, "when slavery was over and the slave market was closed, former slaves and slaveholder alike found themselves marooned on a shoal of history.  The longings of slave holders to hold onto the past as it receded from their grasp are well-documented. Well-known, too, is the disbelief they experienced, the sense of betrayal they talked about, when their slaves left them behind."

The narrative of the Lost Cause created a context in which a man who owned slaves, committed treason by seceding, and led an army who killed others to protect the right to own, abuse and economically benefit from forcing others to do labor from which they would not profit, became a sympathetic character.  After all, he was just protecting his people—slaves and family—from an overreaching North.  He had worked so hard to take care of these poor wayward black folks, and he sacrificed himself to protect a way of life they appreciated.

Those who nurtured the thinking of the Lost Cause soon created societies and clubs committed to memorializing their heroes.  The first Confederate statues were put in place in the 1870s, but most were erected after 1890.  Although confederate soldiers were not granted pensions at the same rate as their Union counterparts, they were memorialized, honored and held up as the best of the South.  The organizations who commissioned them, like the United Daughters of the Confederacy, endeavored to remind every person who walked by the town square that the South laments the death of and memorializes the life of these great men who lived honorably and fought nobly for a sweet Southern, Christian way of life that honored everyone involved, black and white.

““The Lost Cause left just such a legacy; it was not essentially inhuman in character, but its very existence depended on dehumanizing a group of people.” ”

— David Blight

The North, anxious to put the country back together, allowed such intense memorializing to occur.  Indeed, twelve Confederate monuments were built for every one Union monument, shocking numbers when we remember the Union, who fought quite literally—in the words of Isaiah in foretelling the birth of Christ—to “release the captives”, won the war.  Indeed, “The Lost Cause left just such a legacy; it was not essentially inhuman in character, but its very existence depended on dehumanizing a group of people” (Blight).  Part of our American history is that the South was encouraged in this revising of history, and that they built monuments to men who defended the right to ignore and erase the dignity of other human beings in the public square.  While it is perhaps true that many white Southerners cherish these monuments because they celebrate a beloved South, the monuments themselves were erected to memorialize a mostly fabricated version of the South.  In this way, the monuments symbolize the collision of Christianity, white supremacy, and loyalty, ideals that Southerners conscientiously admired and promoted.  Blight argues this movement, “reinvigorates white supremacy by borrowing heavily from the plantation school of literature in promoting reminiscences of the faithful slave as a central figure in the Confederate war.  Together, these arguments reinforced Southern pride.” 

“While it is true that many white Southerners cherish these monuments because they celebrate a beloved heritage, the monuments themselves were erected to memorialize a mostly fabricated version of the South. ”

The monuments’ place in society is problematic not because liberals want to rewrite history or because African Americans are sensitive; their place is fraught because of what they commemorate, then and now.  Consider this: At the unveiling of General Stonewall Jackson’s monument in Richmond, Virginia in 1875, the KKK, the sponsoring group, was present. They wore hoods and carried arches which read: “Warrior, Christian, Patriot.” Knowing this past, should patriots—and Christians especially—be troubled by the version of history commemorated by confederate monuments?  If we are concerned about erasing history by removing them shouldn’t we ensure we have learned all the lessons embedded in the history they honor? 

Next week, thoughts on what to do with these signs of our past.

contextualizing confederate monuments: part 1

Three weeks ago, we witnessed a tableau of hate, violence and tension as white supremacist groups and others protesting them descended on the campus of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.  At the center of those gathered was a statue of Robert E. Lee, Commanding General of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.  The violence on display there was despicable, but beneath all of the hate and frustration lurks a question haunting every American: What do we do with our past? 

In Charlottesville and in many other cities, citizens are asking and yelling answers to the question of how we deal with the many confederate monuments littering our town squares. America has a wonderful history of liberation, sacrifice and generosity.  We also have a lengthy past of violence against people of color, greed and hypocrisy.  For the most part, we have not found a way to explore these conflicting legacies in our churches, classrooms, or in the public sphere. 

Abraham Lincoln famously signed the Emancipation Proclamation; Lincoln also less famously argued that if he could preserve the Union without ending slavery he would do so.  The conflict he experienced and the priorities he gave his passions can serve as a metaphor for our current conversation.  Most Americans agree that slavery was bad, but many refuse to admit that the idea of the South to which they cling produced the odious institution of slavery.  If monuments celebrating the Confederacy only represented slavery, people would be less likely to overtly defend their places of honor.  These mementos do not only represent one story though, and if we examine what they signify we might better understand the debate surrounding them.

“Most Americans agree that slavery was bad, but many refuse to admit that the idea of the South to which they cling was based on white supremacy and produced the odious institution of slavery.”

I believe the magnitude of passion surrounding this issue is due, in large part, to the national angst felt about the Civil War.  Was secession a hateful and treasonous act of aggression in order to protect the cruel practice of slavery?  Was it a noble stand to preserve states’ rights and defend against Northern aggression?  Having studied many angles of American history and the conflicts that resulted in and were partially resolved by the Civil War, I would like to contextualize this debate by revisiting the history that is memorialized by the argued-over monuments.  I do this hoping we can be more precise in what we are arguing about, and to help articulate precisely the history for which we advocate.

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, Southern states and their congressional representatives began to realize that they were in danger of becoming a minority in the United States’ Congress.  This reality, along with the impact of William Lloyd Garrison, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, whose abolitionary voices were growing louder, and the active resistance of the slaves themselves, led the Southern states to actively advocate for new states to enter the Union as slave states.  Battles over this desired balance led to legislation like the Compromise of 1850, the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  These acts upheld the precarious balance of states, providing equal numbers of slave and free states, and importantly, protection for the rights and legislative power of slaveowners.  The South seceded when threats to that balance—and the power it protected—finally seemed to permanently favor free states. 

“Profits from slavery paid off American debts after the Revolutionary War, and continued to be crucial to the economic foundation of our country.”

The economic stability of the country, both in Southern plantations and in Northern factories, was dependent on harvested cotton.  Harvested cotton was entirely dependent on the practice of slavery.  Indeed, the work product of slavery had paid off American debts after the Revolutionary War, and continued to be crucial to the economic foundation of our country.  Knowing this, many defenders of Confederate monuments, and lovers of a romanticized Southern past, remember that slavery was not only a dirty pleasure of the South, but a necessity for the United States of America.  These Americans feel unfairly blamed for slavery, as if white Southern ancestors were evil and greedy, rather than making the best of a system the entire citizenry willingly endorsed and relied on for decades. 

It is likely that America’s survival as a postcolonial powerhouse would have been impossible without the foundation of slavery.  Slaves provided the expertise and labor that made the South financially great and culturally worth remembering.  Our country was built by, on the bodies of, and under the creative leadership of African and African American men and women who were owned by white people.  The entire country benefitted from this institution, and white Southern defensiveness about being solely blamed for two centuries of an atrocious moral lapse is logical when seen in this light.  However, when powerful voices began to acknowledge the horrific nature of slavery, and tried to take active steps to free slaves and extricate themselves from this outrageously destructive bind, Southern states defended the practice to such an extent that they seceded from the Union that gave them their American identity.  Despite the justifying narrative of Christian paternalism, the Confederacy was established and built on the idea of white supremacy and cruelty against slaves.  Indeed, the Vice-President of the Confederacy, in his Cornerstone speech, asserted his new government was built “upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.” Confederate soldiers fought and died to uphold a racial hierarchy, and the monuments at issue here are, by definition, representatives of this view. 

“Slaves provided the expertise and labor that made the South financially great and culturally worth remembering.  Our country was built by, on the bodies of, and under the creative leadership of African and African American men and women who were owned by white people.”

Although the South lost the war, a new war quickly began for the memory of who the South was, how slavery functioned in it, and why the physical war occurred.  In the words of Robert Penn Warren: “in the moment of its death the Confederacy entered upon its immortality.”  Peter Kolchin, in his definitive history American Slavery, explains that during and after Reconstruction, and later while monuments were erected, “white scholars, politicians, and publicists celebrated the virtues of a Southern civilization now ‘gone with the wind’ and sang the glories of the ‘lost cause.’ An uninformed observer of the South in 1910 might well be pardoned if he or she concluded that the Confederates had won the Civil War.”  The placement of Confederate monuments all over the South solidified this created—and now lasting—memory of Southern nobility.  In next week’s essay I will define the mythology of the Lost Cause, explaining how it came to define the South, fueled the monument movement and solidified the new foundation for white supremacy.  As one historian put it, “High atop his monument in Richmond, Lee represented many of the inspirations Southerners now took from their heritage: a sense of pride and soldierly honor, an end to defeatism, and a new sense of racial mastery” (Blight).  In forming our views on the monument debate, it is worthwhile to examine our own thoughts about the South, the reasons for secession, and the place of white supremacy in our past and present.

all (black) lives matter

A cursory view of American headlines in the past three weeks reveal a deep sickness in the way we relate to and value each other.  The spotlight on the unjust treatment of people of color has unfortunately led to an increase in the societal divide we experience in our view of race.  When Obama was elected, celebratory cries of a post-racial society were heard.  When Trayvon Martin’s death kicked off a spree of monthly spotlights on the killing of men of color by white civilians and police officers, thoughts of a post-racial society were arrested.  At times I feel like we are experiencing a time warp, as if this pattern of openly hating or killing members of our society must be viewed as an admission that men of color (and women, like Heather Heyer, who stand with them) are seen as criminals at worst and as expendable, or not valuable, at best.  For many, the 2016 election and recent conflicts in Charlottesville confirm that some Americans do not value others who are not white and Christian.  In other moments, when I remember the long view, the historically slow path resistance and change must take, I am encouraged that at least such routine and rampant injustice is finally being broadcast.  Exposing the status quo as unsustainable must happen before resisting the status quo can take root.  Surely these reports, and the public outcry and angst they cause, are a good thing. 

“Exposing the status quo as unsustainable must happen before resisting the status quo can take root.”

Just as one can view the last 40 months as depressing or as a step toward health and healing, the dominant responses to these patterned killings are disparate, and seem to feed off of different realities.  For many, the sequential headlines force us to acknowledge our systems and structures of power place an unjust burden of suspicion and criminality upon people of color.  For some, these deaths are deserved—a result of criminal behavior and disrespect for noble and selfless authority figures.  For others, the fact that these deaths are now headlines is evidence of a biased, liberal-leaning media.  For a few, like many of the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, the unrest is due to an unfair world that values new minorities and punishes old majorities.  These responses, and the passion with which they are held, belie a stubborn commitment to hold our views tightly, refusing to consider new information or the perspective of another.  Rather than engaging those around us with curiosity, we often resort to shouting our own experience, unaware of our particular bias.  If a person does not struggle under the particular curse of being born into poverty or with darkly hued skin, she can live freely in a world in which she expects to be helped in stores, respected by strangers, and kept safe by law enforcement officers.  However, a poor or black or Hispanic person has no such luxury.  Their experiences of life—not liberal bias or manipulated optics—teaches them that strangers treat them with suspicion and the police are sometimes not allies, but a hindrance to their flourishing.  Until we learn to engage each other’s stories, listening with interest instead of attacking out of a posture of defense, we cannot hope to understand what half of our country believes about the images and reports of the last few months.

“Until we learn to engage each other’s stories, listening with interest instead of attacking out of a posture of defense, we cannot hope to understand what half of our country believes.”

The response to Trayvon Martin’s death gave birth to the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM).  The movement, fluid and evolving, orients itself around a few guiding principles: “Lead with love. Low ego, high impact. Move at the speed of trust” (Jane Kramer, Oct. 19, 2016, New Yorker).  Although this movement has often been characterized as full of angry and irrational people with chips on their shoulders, these principles suggest a value system built on humility, and therefore highly resonate with Christian perspectives.  Didn’t Christ also demonstrate a foundational belief in the community’s worth instead of a self-centered orientation?  The guiding principles of BLM, if not always demonstrated in action, suggest a way of moving that requires consideration of another’s perspective, rather than boldly moving forward in “rightness”, or even justice.  These principles suggest that change is possible, and can even be achieved, with civility.  Despite the higher calling here, this movement, because of its actively-resisting-oppression name, gave birth to exasperated counter claims that “All lives matter!” 

“Didn’t Christ also demonstrate a foundational belief in the community’s value instead of only a self-centered orientation?”

Of course all lives matter.  That is the point!  What if, as a society, and particularly as people following Christ, we started to listen to one another?  What if we decided to recognize that each of us has an experience and a bias, and perhaps we should claim those truths about our selves even as we also listen to the—by definition, different—perspectives of an other?  What if we decided to eliminate defensiveness as an option of a response?  The All Lives Matter (ALM) reaction and claim suggest that their adherents are correcting BLM so that it can be more inclusive.  Not so.  The cry of ALM is more often a stubborn endorsement of the status quo.  It refuses to acknowledge that in this country, many of our laws, educational systems, housing plans, stereotypes, law enforcement officers, financial systems and neighborhoods, black lives do NOT, in fact, matter.  Black lives are underestimated, feared, rejected, suspected and criminalized as a matter of course.  This movement is, foundationally if not always in action, a humble but persistent plea for people to agree on this most basic of assumptions: that all lives matter.  It is also a damning indictment that ALL lives cannot matter until black lives matter.

“It is also a damning indictment that ALL lives cannot matter until black lives matter.”

This easy jump to “all” without acknowledging the “black” has a long history in our country.  Tane-hisi Coates, in his book Between the World and Me, helpfully reminds us that in this very country our mainstream version of history simply erases the contributions of people of color.  If anything, we celebrate any teacher or curriculum that offers a level of robust explanation about what slavery is and how it worked.  We are thrilled when these questions are answered.  And yet, this easy satisfaction ignores the fact that these very same slaves created the wealth, infrastructure and buildings of the Southern United States, paying off the country’s debt from the Revolution in the process.  No, slaves were not just victims; they were craftsmen, artisans, child-rearing experts, chefs, physicians, builders, farmers and administrators.  Just as our history has denied the fact that our country was built by—not just on the bodies, but with the help of and under the leadership of—African American slaves, so the “all lives matter” cry seeks to ignore and overlook the needed assertion that black lives do matter. The legacy of our claimed history is that black lives were maybe one day abused, but now they matter just like the rest of us.  Until we proclaim all the ways in which black lives have contributed to our country, despite living through centuries of terror and pain, we cannot admit the many ways that black lives continue to be viewed as expendable, despite their great worth. 

Next week, thoughts on Labor Day.