On Republicans and Confederate Statues

The battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia was rejected as the national flag of the CSA, but is the most common confederate symbol known today.

Currently in our country (June 2020) there is a national discussion in regards to public statues dedicated to the memory of confederate soldiers. I personally believe that this is a healthy discussion currently being had in immature and unhealthy ways, but we will set that aside for a moment.

The puzzling part is that, judging from my social media feeds and the mainstream media... it seems to be primarily southern Republicans who are defending the statues with the "history not hate" mantra, and the Democrats on the left who are trying to remove them. Both sides have some valid points... and some nonsense ones.

But THIS post is directed towards those southern Republicans currently opposed to the removal of the confederate monuments.

Ya'll need a little history reminder.

I am generally very opposed to oversimplification of thorny issues. It is natural to take complex issues and reduce them down to good guys in white hats and bad guys in black hats. I am of the opinion that this is not the best way to process history, though I fully admit I fall victim to it sometimes.

But in the interest of making a larger point and not getting off in the weeds, I am going to have to simplify a bit. I know you could pick around the edges and find individual exceptions that prove the rule... I acknowledge that, and if we ever find ourselves with 37 hours to sit and discuss it... then we can get in to the details. Right now we need a quick overview.

So here are a few things for my Republican friends to understand about those statues and that flag.

Slavery is wrong.

Slavery was always wrong. This is the entire basis for the founding of your political party. OK?

There were abolitionists from the moment the first slaves hit the shore. There were people who were horrified the first time they became aware of the practice. There just weren't enough of them. But they were always there and their ideas spread, even if not as quickly as we might have wanted.

In the mid-1850s.. things started to reach a tipping point. The agricultural south had built almost their entire economy on the use of slave labor in the fields, and the politicians and rich landed slave owners (often the same people) were far more reluctant to see the horrors of slavery than the industrial north where slavery wasn't as critical a part of the economy. 

This is the environment in to which the Republican party was established in Wisconsin on March 20, 1854 by a bunch of abolitionist Whigs. (...OR on July 6, 1854 on the outskirts of Jackson, Michigan if you guys need more stuff to argue about...) In any case, they soon developed a following in the north and grew in power and the Democrats in the south soon saw which way the wind was blowing. By 1860, the southern Democrat states threatened secession if the Republican, (one Mr. Abraham Lincoln) won the presidency. 

He did... and we were off to the races.

The Republican party was non-existent in the south as the war started, and the majority of the Democrats in the north tried to foil Lincoln at every turn. Many Democrats died wearing the blue of the union army, I don't want to minimize their sacrifice. There were "War Democrats" and even some abolitionist Democrats. But for the most part, politically speaking, the Civil War was largely the Republicans in blue vs the Democrats in confederate gray. 

The confederate flag you defend is essentially a Democrat flag. It exists because a Republican won the presidency.

The southern Democrats were afraid the Republicans were going to take their slaves and the rest is history. The Republicans won. The Republicans passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments... but old habits die hard.

After the war, as Republican party chapters were being established in the south, (often by blacks), six southern Democrat ex-confederate soldiers formed the Ku Klux Klan, which quickly grew to be an underground wing of the Democrat party known for their subversive and terrorist tactics in fighting Republican reconstruction initiatives by any means necessary.

Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest joined a couple of years later and became it's first "Grand Wizard". (In fact, his Civil War nickname of "the wizard of the saddle" is why the klan has a "grand wizard" designation. That is where that comes from.) He was also a delegate to the 1868 Democratic Convention, and his friend, Frank Blair Jr was the Vice Presidential Candidate.

Nathan Bedford Forrest

The campaign slogan of the Seymour-Blair Democratic Ticket was "Our Ticket, Our Motto, This Is a White Man's Country; Let White Men Rule."

They were beaten by the Republican, Ulysses S. Grant. His slogan was "Let Us Have Peace."

The Democrats maintained almost universal power in the south after reconstruction, writing Jim Crow laws and burning crosses and lynching folks and such, but eventually, the klan died down. and Republicans and blacks made progress.

But just after the turn of the century. Democrat Woodrow Wilson (possibly the most racist man to ever serve as president, IMHO) was elected and RE-segregated the federal government. The first movie ever shown in the white house was D.W. Griffith's 1915 film "Birth of a Nation" (originally called "The Clansman"), shown in the East Room, on February 18, 1915.

That movie was a blockbuster before the term ever existed and the klan rolls swelled again among southern Democrats. The image of the righteous klansman was so popular in the south that there was even a short-lived soda marketed called "Klu Ko Kola". In many small towns, it would have not been unusual for the mayor, the police chief, and many of the major business owners to be klan members. Crosses were burned again. Republicans were targeted and killed. New Jim Crow laws were written and those that had gone un-enforced for years began to be enforced again.

...and it was during THIS period, 50 years after the end of the Civil War, that most of these confederate statues went up in parks and courthouses. The Democrat (and reportedly KKK connected) "Daughters of the Confederacy" raised funds and erected statues to confederates and klansmen alike. Schools and parks and streets were renamed after prominent (Democrat) confederates. They tried to re-define the reasons for the war into ONLY a noble states rights argument... (some of it WAS, but it was PRIMARILY over preservation of the south's slavery economy.)

There might have been SOME people who supported the placement of the statues out of a spirit of reconciliation, but again... this was ~50 years after the war. Mostly, those statues were put up by Democrats in order to show blacks and Republicans (often the same people) who was in charge in the south in the early 1900's. It is really that simple.

I could go on... the Democrats racist nonsense lasted up until the Civil Rights act of 1964 was passed (by 80% of Republicans and 63% of Dems), but that gets us to these statues, which brings me to my point.

If Democrats today want to undo monuments to their shameful history of racism which THEY erected as a threat (at the time) to Republicans... I have no idea why any Republican would object. 

I really don't. It makes no sense to me.

I say "good on 'em". It has nothing to do with me. I am not a flag waver for any party. None of them represent me adequately so I don't represent them. Every vote I cast requires me to hold my nose.

Listen... I think that confederate flags are fine in museums, or at confederate battlefields, or on confederate graves or in historical re-enactments (and I do NOT think confederate re-enactors are doing anything remotely racist - we need to preserve history to learn from it.). 

I think having a tantrum over a flag painted on the roof of a fictional character's 1969 Dodge Charger on a TV comedy from the 80's is absurd. What are we going to do next? Digitally remove all of the swastikas in "Saving Private Ryan"?

That being said.. I don't personally see any virtue or historical value in flying the flag of a conquered nation... which is how I view the confederacy. (YMMV.). And I think confederate monuments should be at battlefields or museums... not at the court house that is supposed to blindly dispense justice to people of color who, understandably, might see those statues as monuments to INjustice.

I have plenty of southern pride. I don't need to fly the flag of a failed and conquered Democrat state (or a failed Democrat attempt at secession if you prefer) in order to love the south... it's people... and much of it's culture.

but I also do not need to turn the front line confederate soldier in to a moustache-twirling villain. Some of them were... no doubt... but so were some union soldiers. For most, they were just defending what they viewed as their homeland, and many had no strong opinions about slavery either way prior to the war. My beef is, (as always), with the politicians. THEY were the rich slaveholders. THEY seceded.

Perhaps your great, great, great grandfather fought for the south. I am not saying you should replace his name in the family tree with a black bar.

But that flag, and particularly those statues erected in the early 1900s, are not YOUR legacy as a Republican. They are the legacy of southern Democrats... and if they want to undo some of the harm they have done, let them.

It has nothing to do with you.