Why McDonnell's Confederate blunder is important
Race has never been far below the surface in American politics, and in the Obama era it has risen into plain sight. It is everywhere. If you disagree with the President, extremists on the Left both inside and outside the mainstream media (and the leadership of the Democratic party) are likely to ascribe that opposition to racism. On the surface, this provides them with a potent weapon and a ready tool for claiming the moral high ground on virtually any issue that might arise. The damage it does is, of course, incalculable. Not only does it obfuscate and falsify the content of our national debate on issue after issue, but it cheapens and effectively neutralizes what ought to be an ugly and potent accusation. If opposition to the President's health care program constitutes racism, what word does one use to describe actual hatred of and discrimination against people of other colors?
Likewise, the American Civil War is a subject which, especially for those south of the Mason-Dixon line, is an emotionally charged subject. With the exception of a few Alaskan islands attacked by Japanese forces in one of the more obscure campaigns of World War II, the American South is the only part of the United States ever to have been occupied by an enemy army. For those of us in the North, Sherman's march to the sea is a chapter from the history books. Not so for the people of Georgia, whose reasonably recent ancestors saw their homeland devastated by a slash-and-burn campaign of deliberate devastation waged by those they must now call their countrymen, and sometimes literally rendered homeless and destitute by Yankee torches and predation.
At one level, the war was the natural outcome of a debate which began among the Founding Fathers and continues to this day between those who have seen the United States as a federation of semi-autonomous quasi-nations at one extreme, and those who, on the other, have seen the states as little more than administrative provinces of a powerful central government to whom Americans owed their primary allegiance. There can be no doubt that the war itself permanently settled the question of whether it is proper to say, as was common before the war, "the United States are," or, as has been customary since, to say, "the United States is." There is no longer any doubt that we are a nation, and not an alliance of nations. Yet just how federal our federal republic is, or ought to be, remains perhaps our most fundamental and divisive political disagreement.
It is customary on the Right, and especially in the South, to see the Civil War (or "the War between the States," or even "the War of Northern Aggression," as it has sometimes been called in the South) as essentially a military struggle between advocates of Federalism and those of a strongly centralized government. There is, to be sure, some truth in this view. In fact, a strong case can be made that at least one of the reasons why the South lost the war was precisely that power was so decentralized under the Confederate constitution that it could not efficiently pull together in the kind of common effort a nation at war requires. Jefferson Davis had to constantly deal with state governments which saw themselves, rather than the government in Richmond, as the higher and more legitimate authority, often headed by governors of strong ego and sensitive sensibilities when it came to their personal prerogatives, and those of the states they governed. Davis was in the position not only of having to herd cats, but of leading them into battle. History will never properly recognize the genius required to lead a monstrosity like the Confederacy in even as effective a war effort as it finally waged.
But the proven inadequacy of a government as decentralized as the Confederacy hardly speaks to the legitimacy of the concerns of those who nevertheless pick up on the fact that the Founding Fathers visualized a far less centralized government than we have today. Southerners and others sensitive about the prerogatives of the several states have the preponderance of the Founding Father's writings on their side, and quite justifiably see themselves as more faithful to their vision than are those who favor a more centralized national government.
But none of this can ever change the fact that the practical issue which brought the question of states rights versus centralized government power to a head was slavery- and, in some ways even worse, the mindset which made slavery possible. The question of states rights in a federal republic and the matter of race are two separate issues- a fact of which conservatives are well aware. But liberals (excuse me- progressives) can hardly be blamed for having difficulty forgetting that, as history played itself out, the matter over which the advocates of states' rights and those of a strong Federal government actually came to blows was that of slavery- and, in a larger sense, of race.
And as reluctant as conservatives (and Southerners) may be to admit this even to themselves, the fact of the matter is that the experiment of the Confederacy is hopelessly tainted by the fact that the specific freedom it fought to preserve was the freedom to hold other human beings, assumed as a matter of philosophical conviction not to be entitled to basic human rights, in captivity. It is perfectly true that most Southerners did not own slaves. It is equally true that many of the leaders of the Confederacy- Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson come to mind- were personally opposed to slavery, and fought not to preserve it but to defend their home states against an invasion. But the fact remains that slavery was the issue over which the advocates of states rights asserted themselves in 1861, and while the two matters are entirely different and in no way necessarily even related from a philosophical point of view, they are directly and inextricably interrelated when the subject of the Civil War is raised.
In the movie "Gettysburg," General James Longstreet- admirably portrayed by Tom Beringer- muses that "we should have freed the slaves and then seceded from the Union." Doubtless that would have been an effective strategy, and one which many admirers of the Confederacy- who themselves are by no means racists- wish had been followed. But the fact remains that without slavery, there would have been no ultimate reason to secede. Even as it stood, men like Alexander Stephens- shortly to be the Vice-President of the CSA- argued eloquently in the aftermath of Lincoln's election that the South had adequate means and resources within the Union to defend its interests. Until Lincoln made the decision to supply Fort Sumter, only six Southern states seceded; others- notably including Virginia- flatly refused. But it was slavery- and the fears of slaveholders for its survival under a Republican administration- which caused the secession of those original six states, and put Lincoln in the position of having to make the decision which led to the secession of the other seven Confederate states in defense of the integrity of the Union. And as an aside, while it is true that some of the Founders did write in favor of a right of secession, there is not so much as a hint of it in the Constitution or in any other document of legal standing. The oft-repeated allegation that the treaty by which Texas gave up its own independence as a step toward admission to the Union contained a provision guaranteeing such a right is, in fact, an urban legend. If any legal principle governed here, it would have to be contract law. And viewed as a contract, the dissolution of the Union would have required the consent of all of the parties, and not merely the desire of some.
But even if one granted a legal right of secession, there would still be no way to get around the fact that the states of the Confederacy ultimately exercised that theoretical right with the explicit purpose of defending the institution of slavery. The Confederacy, as an historical phenomenon, simply cannot be rehabilitated. As a practical matter, it is so intertwined with the issue of slavery- and thus of racism- that the two can never be completely distinguised by anything resembling honest history.
That is not to say that good and decent men didn't fight for the Confederacy. Nor is it to say that everything about the Confederacy was bad because it was the issue of slavery which gave it birth. If Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell had issued a proclamation commemorating Lee and Jackson and all of those who fought specifically to defend their homes, or the principle of states' rights, that would have been one thing. Even then, to have failed to acknowledge the abomination of slavery would have been an inadmissible blunder.
But his mistake goes beyond not mentioning slavery in his proclamation commemorating the Confederacy. Especially at a time in which extremists will seize upon any excuse to falsely raise the cry of racism, it was a blunder for McDonnell to have sought to commemorate the Confederacy as such at all. Conservatives- and Southerners- need to get over their romance with the Lost Cause, and stop trying to pretend that it is not morally tainted beyond all possibilty of redemption by the practical issue which provided the ground upon which it fought for abstract philosophical principles which themselves might well have been worth fighting for.
The Confederacy does not deserve to be commemorated. Some of its heroes and some of the issues for which it stood, and which are by no means inseperable from the twin abominations of racism and slavery, certainly do deserve to be commemorated- and not only by Southerners. But if the memory of those men and the power of those ideas are to be the things upon which our minds and imaginations are cast, then we cannot afford to commemorate them in a context which cannot help but be an affront to our fellow citizens who are understandably unable to ignore the fact that racism and slavery form as great a part of that context as the individuals and the more worthy ideas we mean to commemorate.
Likewise, the American Civil War is a subject which, especially for those south of the Mason-Dixon line, is an emotionally charged subject. With the exception of a few Alaskan islands attacked by Japanese forces in one of the more obscure campaigns of World War II, the American South is the only part of the United States ever to have been occupied by an enemy army. For those of us in the North, Sherman's march to the sea is a chapter from the history books. Not so for the people of Georgia, whose reasonably recent ancestors saw their homeland devastated by a slash-and-burn campaign of deliberate devastation waged by those they must now call their countrymen, and sometimes literally rendered homeless and destitute by Yankee torches and predation.
At one level, the war was the natural outcome of a debate which began among the Founding Fathers and continues to this day between those who have seen the United States as a federation of semi-autonomous quasi-nations at one extreme, and those who, on the other, have seen the states as little more than administrative provinces of a powerful central government to whom Americans owed their primary allegiance. There can be no doubt that the war itself permanently settled the question of whether it is proper to say, as was common before the war, "the United States are," or, as has been customary since, to say, "the United States is." There is no longer any doubt that we are a nation, and not an alliance of nations. Yet just how federal our federal republic is, or ought to be, remains perhaps our most fundamental and divisive political disagreement.
It is customary on the Right, and especially in the South, to see the Civil War (or "the War between the States," or even "the War of Northern Aggression," as it has sometimes been called in the South) as essentially a military struggle between advocates of Federalism and those of a strongly centralized government. There is, to be sure, some truth in this view. In fact, a strong case can be made that at least one of the reasons why the South lost the war was precisely that power was so decentralized under the Confederate constitution that it could not efficiently pull together in the kind of common effort a nation at war requires. Jefferson Davis had to constantly deal with state governments which saw themselves, rather than the government in Richmond, as the higher and more legitimate authority, often headed by governors of strong ego and sensitive sensibilities when it came to their personal prerogatives, and those of the states they governed. Davis was in the position not only of having to herd cats, but of leading them into battle. History will never properly recognize the genius required to lead a monstrosity like the Confederacy in even as effective a war effort as it finally waged.
But the proven inadequacy of a government as decentralized as the Confederacy hardly speaks to the legitimacy of the concerns of those who nevertheless pick up on the fact that the Founding Fathers visualized a far less centralized government than we have today. Southerners and others sensitive about the prerogatives of the several states have the preponderance of the Founding Father's writings on their side, and quite justifiably see themselves as more faithful to their vision than are those who favor a more centralized national government.
But none of this can ever change the fact that the practical issue which brought the question of states rights versus centralized government power to a head was slavery- and, in some ways even worse, the mindset which made slavery possible. The question of states rights in a federal republic and the matter of race are two separate issues- a fact of which conservatives are well aware. But liberals (excuse me- progressives) can hardly be blamed for having difficulty forgetting that, as history played itself out, the matter over which the advocates of states' rights and those of a strong Federal government actually came to blows was that of slavery- and, in a larger sense, of race.
And as reluctant as conservatives (and Southerners) may be to admit this even to themselves, the fact of the matter is that the experiment of the Confederacy is hopelessly tainted by the fact that the specific freedom it fought to preserve was the freedom to hold other human beings, assumed as a matter of philosophical conviction not to be entitled to basic human rights, in captivity. It is perfectly true that most Southerners did not own slaves. It is equally true that many of the leaders of the Confederacy- Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson come to mind- were personally opposed to slavery, and fought not to preserve it but to defend their home states against an invasion. But the fact remains that slavery was the issue over which the advocates of states rights asserted themselves in 1861, and while the two matters are entirely different and in no way necessarily even related from a philosophical point of view, they are directly and inextricably interrelated when the subject of the Civil War is raised.
In the movie "Gettysburg," General James Longstreet- admirably portrayed by Tom Beringer- muses that "we should have freed the slaves and then seceded from the Union." Doubtless that would have been an effective strategy, and one which many admirers of the Confederacy- who themselves are by no means racists- wish had been followed. But the fact remains that without slavery, there would have been no ultimate reason to secede. Even as it stood, men like Alexander Stephens- shortly to be the Vice-President of the CSA- argued eloquently in the aftermath of Lincoln's election that the South had adequate means and resources within the Union to defend its interests. Until Lincoln made the decision to supply Fort Sumter, only six Southern states seceded; others- notably including Virginia- flatly refused. But it was slavery- and the fears of slaveholders for its survival under a Republican administration- which caused the secession of those original six states, and put Lincoln in the position of having to make the decision which led to the secession of the other seven Confederate states in defense of the integrity of the Union. And as an aside, while it is true that some of the Founders did write in favor of a right of secession, there is not so much as a hint of it in the Constitution or in any other document of legal standing. The oft-repeated allegation that the treaty by which Texas gave up its own independence as a step toward admission to the Union contained a provision guaranteeing such a right is, in fact, an urban legend. If any legal principle governed here, it would have to be contract law. And viewed as a contract, the dissolution of the Union would have required the consent of all of the parties, and not merely the desire of some.
But even if one granted a legal right of secession, there would still be no way to get around the fact that the states of the Confederacy ultimately exercised that theoretical right with the explicit purpose of defending the institution of slavery. The Confederacy, as an historical phenomenon, simply cannot be rehabilitated. As a practical matter, it is so intertwined with the issue of slavery- and thus of racism- that the two can never be completely distinguised by anything resembling honest history.
That is not to say that good and decent men didn't fight for the Confederacy. Nor is it to say that everything about the Confederacy was bad because it was the issue of slavery which gave it birth. If Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell had issued a proclamation commemorating Lee and Jackson and all of those who fought specifically to defend their homes, or the principle of states' rights, that would have been one thing. Even then, to have failed to acknowledge the abomination of slavery would have been an inadmissible blunder.
But his mistake goes beyond not mentioning slavery in his proclamation commemorating the Confederacy. Especially at a time in which extremists will seize upon any excuse to falsely raise the cry of racism, it was a blunder for McDonnell to have sought to commemorate the Confederacy as such at all. Conservatives- and Southerners- need to get over their romance with the Lost Cause, and stop trying to pretend that it is not morally tainted beyond all possibilty of redemption by the practical issue which provided the ground upon which it fought for abstract philosophical principles which themselves might well have been worth fighting for.
The Confederacy does not deserve to be commemorated. Some of its heroes and some of the issues for which it stood, and which are by no means inseperable from the twin abominations of racism and slavery, certainly do deserve to be commemorated- and not only by Southerners. But if the memory of those men and the power of those ideas are to be the things upon which our minds and imaginations are cast, then we cannot afford to commemorate them in a context which cannot help but be an affront to our fellow citizens who are understandably unable to ignore the fact that racism and slavery form as great a part of that context as the individuals and the more worthy ideas we mean to commemorate.
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