from the New York Times - Celebrating Secession Without Slaves and One State Takes a New Look at War

What do you think? Can it be done?

Celebrating Secession Without the Slaves

for The New York Times

Published: November 29, 2010

ATLANTA — The Civil War, the most wrenching and bloody episode in American history, may not seem like much of a cause for celebration, especially in the South.

And yet, as the 150th anniversary of the four-year conflict gets under way, some groups in the old Confederacy are planning at least a certain amount of hoopla, chiefly around the glory days of secession, when 11 states declared their sovereignty under a banner of states’ rights and broke from the union.

The events include a “secession ball” in the former slave port of Charleston (“a joyous night of music, dancing, food and drink,” says the invitation), which will be replicated on a smaller scale in other cities. A parade is being planned in Montgomery, Ala., along with a mock swearing-in of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy.

In addition, the Sons of Confederate Veterans and some of its local chapters are preparing various television commercials that they hope to show next year. “All we wanted was to be left alone to govern ourselves,” says one ad from the group’s Georgia Division.

That some — even now — are honoring secession, with barely a nod to the role of slavery, underscores how divisive a topic the war remains, with Americans continuing to debate its causes, its meaning and its legacy.

“We in the South, who have been kicked around for an awfully long time and are accused of being racist, we would just like the truth to be known,” said Michael Givens, commander-in-chief of the Sons, explaining the reason for the television ads. While there were many causes of the war, he said, “our people were only fighting to protect themselves from an invasion and for their independence.”

Not everyone is on board with this program, of course. The N.A.A.C.P., for one, plans to protest some of these events, saying that celebrating secession is tantamount to celebrating slavery.

“I can only imagine what kind of celebration they would have if they had won,” said Lonnie Randolph, president of the South Carolina N.A.A.C.P.

He said he was dumbfounded by “all of this glamorization and sanitization of what really happened.” When Southerners refer to states’ rights, he said, “they are really talking about their idea of one right — to buy and sell human beings.”

The secession events are among hundreds if not thousands that will unfold over the next four years in honor of the Civil War’s sesquicentennial. From Fort Sumter to Appomattox, historic sites across the South, and some in the North, plan to highlight various aspects of America’s deadliest conflict — and perhaps its least resolved.

Many of the activities are purely historical, and some, like a gathering this month in Gettysburg for the 147th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, will be solemn. At Antietam, on Saturday, the annual memorial will feature 23,000 candles, representing that battle’s casualties.

Some cities and states are promoting their Civil War history with an eye toward attracting tourists. In Atlanta, the Cyclorama, a giant painting-in-the-round that depicts the first day of the Battle of Atlanta, is being “refreshed and rebranded” as part of an overall marketing plan, said Camille Love, the city’s director of cultural affairs.

Commemorating the Civil War has never been easy. The centennial 50 years ago coincided with the civil rights movement, and most of the South was still effectively segregated, making a mockery of any notion that the slaves had truly become free and equal.

Congress had designated an official centennial commission, which lost credibility when it planned to meet in a segregated hotel; this year, Congress has not bothered with an official commission and any master narrative of the war seems elusive.

“We don’t know what to commemorate because we’ve never faced up to the implications of what the thing was really about,” said Andrew Young, a veteran of the civil rights movement and former mayor of Atlanta.

“The easy answer for black folk is that it set us free, but it really didn’t,” Mr. Young added. “We had another 100 years of segregation. We’ve never had our complete reconciliation of the forces that divide us.”

The passion that the Civil War still evokes was evident earlier this year when Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia designated April as Confederate History Month — without mentioning slavery. After a national outcry, he apologized and changed his proclamation to condemn slavery and spell out that slavery had led to war.

The proclamation was urged on him by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which asserts that the Confederacy was a crusade for small government and states’ rights. The sesquicentennial, which coincides now with the rise of the Tea Party movement, is providing a new chance for adherents to promote that view.

Jeff Antley, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Confederate Heritage Trust, is organizing the secession ball in Charleston and a 10-day re-enactment of the Confederate encampment at Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the war were fired on April 12, 1861. He said these events were not about modern politics but were meant to honor those South Carolinians who signed the state’s ordinance of secession on Dec. 20, 1860, when it became the first state to dissolve its union with the United States.

“We’re celebrating that those 170 people risked their lives and fortunes to stand for what they believed in, which is self-government,” Mr. Antley said. “Many people in the South still believe that is a just and honorable cause. Do I believe they were right in what they did? Absolutely,” he said, noting that he spoke for himself and not any organization. “There’s no shame or regret over the action those men took.”

Mr. Antley said he was not defending slavery, which he called an abomination. “But defending the South’s right to secede, the soldiers’ right to defend their homes and the right to self-government doesn’t mean your arguments are without weight because of slavery,” he said.

Most historians say it is impossible to carve out slavery from the context of the war. As James W. Loewen, a liberal sociologist and author of “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” put it: “The North did not go to war to end slavery, it went to war to hold the country together and only gradually did it become anti-slavery — but slavery is why the South seceded.”

In its secession papers, Mississippi, for example, called slavery “the greatest material interest of the world” and said that attempts to stop it would undermine “commerce and civilization.”

The conflict has been playing out in recent decades in disputes over the stories told or not told in museum exhibits and on battlefield plaques.

“These battles of memory are not only academic,” said Mark Potok, the director of intelligence at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “They are really about present-day attitudes. I don’t think the neo-Confederate movement is growing, but it’s gotten a new shot of life because of the sesquicentennial.”

One State Takes a New Look at Causes of War

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Published: November 29, 2010

ATLANTA — The 150th anniversary of the Civil War is prompting some states to change the way they confront their unsettling past.

During the centennial of the Civil War starting in 1960, Georgia celebrated the Confederacy and the view that the state had seceded in a valiant act of defending states’ rights against Northern aggressors.

This time around, state historians are taking a different approach, declaring that Georgia seceded to defend the institution of slavery.

On Jan. 19, the date in 1861 when the state seceded, the Georgia Historical Society and others plan to dedicate a historical marker at the old statehouse in Milledgeville. The marker, citing Georgia’s secession ordinance, will say that the state seceded in response to the election of Abraham Lincoln, who was “anti-slavery.”

This may be one of the first official recognitions in the state, at least in modern times, that slavery was the overarching reason for secession, said Todd Groce, president of the historical society. While some pro-Confederate groups may disagree with this conclusion, he said, mainstream historians do not.

“The marker is based on overwhelming evidence from the 1860s,” Mr. Groce said, “not based on what the apologists said in the 1890s, when former Confederates were backfilling about states’ rights.”

The historical marker is one of 15 that are being installed for the sesquicentennial under a partnership between the historical society and the state. Most tell of less heralded events, including the disaster at Ebenezer Creek, where hundreds of fugitive slaves drowned, but one will note the burning of Atlanta, which has not been marked until now.

The markers tell their stories in about 100 words.

“After that,” Mr. Groce said, “people lose interest.” KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mary Chestnut on November 30, 2010 at 11:50am

Slavery is the beginning and end all, the reason for this war. That's what we keep hearing, we keep repeating, but I honestly wonder if it really is all about racist southen rednecks jerking each other off, or could there be something else? Why is this issue so hard to lay at rest? What is it that perfectly functional people cannot come to agreement on? I see it here, true rage and accusations, because points are thrown across each side, and then listening reduces.

Why can't ancestors of confederate veterens let it rest? Can the decendents be so simple minded?Is it really always about slavery?

I say, not always. Sometimes it's the sound of an old man's heart cracking, of having not been heard, of being accused of heinous acts, while knowing what happened to family members. We've all heard that this had been a rich man's war and a poor man's fight, that officers were rich men who often owned slaves, and then the discussion continued with that the war was all about slavery. That the home guard didn't treat people right. And we question no further. But what about this?

What about those southern men who were not rich? Who died or suffered because they were ordered into a rediculous battle by a slave-owning officer? What would have happened if those fellows stayed home? How would they have faired at the home-guard's hands?

Probably killed or tortured. Southern regular men were conscripted, and as they were too poor to own slaves, surely considered that serving against the Union was correct because one should defend one's home. They were invaded and I'd think that invasion would weigh heavier on their minds than that some rich guys elsewhere had issues over slavery.

Certainly I would not have thought about those rich folk and their things or beliefs if I knew that some Union soldiers might be just on the other side of the rise, might want to rape and pillage and harvest from my home. Would you? What would you fellows do if your own nation invaded your city? Honestly, have you ever thought about that? To me the implications are terrifying.

Those southern soldier's mothers, sisters, wives, fathers, children suffered at the hands of the union invaders. If those southern boys and men chose to stay home to protect their loved ones, the home-guard often found them and did them in.

No way to win in the end or beginning of this one, not if you know your family suffered through the war between the states. From a modern person's standpoint, it's pretty hard to truly understand all the implications of slavery. I think I might be able to, but then things happen and I am shocked or surprised again, so I'm not sure we modern Americans can ever do anything but imagine. But it's easier to comprehend one's great grandfather, who's photograph we might have seen all of our growing-up days, on that mantle, or hanging above the dresser. We can imagine him with those tough choices - "Jeez - should I stay home and protect my family from my neighbors or the Yankees and then get killed for sure, or should I fight against the invading troops with my neighbors and maybe get killed, maybe get hurt, but do it en force?"

Tough questions, and tough choices. I imagine that the southern guy today, the older fellow, feels deep frustration at his side never being heard. That it wasn't always about slavery for people in the south. That sometimes it was just about survival.

Survival during war times is a curious thing. Imagine the young German soldier, barely dried behind his ears, who bought into the brown shirt crap, who fought and killed innocent people just because he was ordered to do so, who knew no better, knew only what he'd been brainwashed to believe. Society makes excuses for him, reminds people that he lived during hard times, that he did as he was told, that many of these young men were forgiven for what they did - they were only following orders.

Can we not see how it might have been for American youth too, who grew up in the Southern states? Who lived to know that their own country, (their own COUNTRY!!!) actually would arm itself and attack, reap vengeance against the soil, the buildings, the barren rocks, the infirm? Yet they were never considered. The invasion of a nation by it's very own self - never disgussed, never admited too, never appologized for. I'll bet those penniless southern farmers or field workers or share-croppers who came home from nothing, to even less, felt betrayed, powerless, never heard, might as well just give up and die. It'd be mighty hard to go home after that, see the starved children - those that hadn't died from lack of...everything, the raped women, the burned fields. Just imagine how it must have been for the regular guy, the same fellow who is likely to be the ancestor for most of the Sons of Confederate Veteren members today.

My husband's qualifying soldier was nothing special, a mountain man who'd sprung from the rocky clay of Tennessee. His family's hard-scrabble-existence was threatened by invaders. Some of the family tried to hide out in the woods - in the Devils Backbone, but the Fifth Volunteers found 'em and strung 'em up nekkid, then killed them. And no, my husband's family owned no slaves. No one in the area did.

Yikes.

I'm just saying...

(by the way, I'm first generation American. My parents both grew up in occupied Holland during the Second World War. Mom had an SS officer stationed in her house while her father lived and worked in a slave camp. Dad's father had his house blown up from around him for activity in the Dutch underground. My birth-family did not develop and spring from Southern pain, humiliation and misunderstanding, I harbor no weird feelings of racism, and can see what invasions might be like.)

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Permalink Reply by Che Pancho Villa on November 30, 2010 at 4:04pm

Oh no - here we go again - we have already beat this rented mule into submission - Yankees will never understand where we Southerners are coming from, and we'll never understand the Yankee slavish worship of that war criminal Lincoln. Let it go - we'll just go ahead and do our ancestor worship, and we'll leave them alone with their Ken Burns version of the Civil War - nothing will ever be settled until we get another bite at the apple, and push their sorry asses into the sea, that is, after burning out their rusted cities and raping their ugly women - ugh, on second thought maybe raping their cattle and putting bags over the heads of their women?

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Permalink Reply by Mary Chestnut on November 30, 2010 at 4:25pm

Yes, it's a dead mule that is beginning to stink, that's for certain, chePV. I know it. And yet I don't think this kind of explanation is usually offered. I believe that we are all a collection of our experiences, whether achieved physically or through consideration, and that this aspect is not usually explored.

The nice thing about when people with differing views converse is that we all might learn something, see things from an alternate aspect, and isn't that what life is all about - learning things? Expanding our comprehension? I think so.

I'll tell you this - I learned something deep once, when I visited the Deep South up north from Florida. I saw an ancient mansion built of brick. It was lavish and truly conjured up images of Tara (where the mythical Scarlet O'Hara lived) complete with slave cabins out back. Imagine my surprise when I learned that the mansion had, during and before the war of 1860 to 1865, been part of the underground railroad. How could that be? Did the owners of that plantation truly believe that slavery was unacceptable, except for in their own situation? I'll never know, and I cannot wrap my mind or heart around it.

It did show me that things are not always what is presented up front, and that actual life is often layered in different shades of grey, different depths of truths.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Walker on December 1, 2010 at 6:49pm

I'm from West "By God" Virginia and I love my State. I am a Southern Yankee from Mercer co. Mecer County sent more to fight for the Va. Army than any. families split in my state many brother against brother, son against father. In 1863 became our own state sworn loyal to the Union. Southern county representatives from the southern counties swore loyalty as their boys were fighting for Virginia. Nothern counties sent many to fight for the Union some really important regiments that fought at Gettysburg from what I understand. This is all from my WestVirginia history coming back to me from the eighth grade.

I understand what Mary C. is talkin' about when she talks about the good ol' boys who fought for their state. I really think most Whites who like fried chicken certainly do.

I understand why black folks get pissed when they see any kinda celebration you know wavin' nem stars and bars!!!!yehaw!!!!yahooo!!!

It hasn't been long enough and when they party they gotta say before it starts, "the war was over slavery and we are sorry" ya got mean it and how do ya do that? How do you do that?

I was raised all my life in prejudice. When I was a kid I thought a Nigg@$ was a race of people, If you were black you were a Nigg$@ in my house. I'd say I was about 9 or 10 years old before I new you could say that and be mean to a black person. I mean I was basically tought to despise them when I was really young. I had a black friend that happened to be a girl when I was in highschool and my mom would not allow her to come over with my other friends. She didn't want the neighbors to think I was seeing a black girl. Mom is 74 now and my father passed when I was 16 years old. She is doing better but still has problems. Yellow Dog Democrat all her life but she wasn't voting for Obammy, hell no!

I've learned alot in my life got over alot and I know we are all in this struggle together. I love good people, thats what I teach my kids. I teach my kids Red White and Blue but they are the stars and stripes.

I understand small Fed and states rights I'm a West "By God" Virginian before I'm an American today!
I love my state and our good people. We are a melting pot in a melting pot. The coal mines have worked Whites of all imigrations, blacks, Asian and my favorite the Italians.

It is gonna stay or it's gonna fade away.....

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Permalink Reply by Che Pancho Villa on December 2, 2010 at 6:44am

You make some very salient points about West Virginia - that region was similar to Eastern Kentucky, Eastern and the Highland Rim region of Middle Tennessee, and Northern Alabama. These regions had always felt they were not represented by their state capitols. Almost no slavery existed in these regions, and they supplied large numbers of soldiers to the Union. In fact, some of the Union's best cavalry units came from these regions such as the 2nd Kentucky USV, 1st and the 5th Tennessee USV, and the 1st Alabama USV. Despite being poorly equipped these orphan units had outstanding battle records.

These regions also supplied large numbers of unwilling conscripted Confederates. There was simply no way to remain neutral in these parts during that war. My relatives that fought with the North claim they are no relation to my relatives that fought for the South although clearly they all came from an area called "George's Store" in Lincoln County. That's funny.

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Permalink Reply by Van on December 2, 2010 at 7:39am

So Southerners are going to celebrate the institution that forced them to fight?
Mary said:

What about those southern men who were not rich? Who died or suffered because they were ordered into a rediculous battle by a slave-owning officer? What would have happened if those fellows stayed home? How would they have faired at the home-guard's hands?

Probably killed or tortured. Southern regular men were conscripted, and as they were too poor to own slaves, surely considered that serving against the Union was correct because one should defend one's home. They were invaded and I'd think that invasion would weigh heavier on their minds than that some rich guys elsewhere had issues over slavery.

Now explain to me why you are anyone would want to celebrate this?

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Permalink Reply by Che Pancho Villa on December 2, 2010 at 10:49am

To many in the Sons of Confederate Veterans there is no cause to celebrate other than to recognize these soldiers for their military service to their country just like veterans of Vietnam, WWI, and WWII, Korean War, etc. In fact, the United States Veteran Affairs provides the markers for these soldiers, and we have approximately 1,500 soldiers buried in Lincoln County, Tennessee that have no markers. This task is overwelhing in that we often must travel by horseback into the hills, find these cemetaries, clear away the brush, and identify where the soldier is buried before setting the marker. You assholes can make what you want about this, but it's just what I do.

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Permalink Reply by Fang1944 on December 4, 2010 at 10:45am

But it wasn't military service to their country. It was armed rebellion against their country. I grew up in the most Confederate part of Texas, but I never romanticized treason.

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Permalink Reply by Mary Chestnut on December 4, 2010 at 12:42pm

After announcing the intention to secede (a right of states determined during ratification at the beginning of our nation) the soldiers were then performing military service for their country. The north - from whom those southern states intended to secede from, no longer was their country.

Jiminy Cricket - here we've gone back to slavery again. Yeah, slavery sucked - it was about as wrong as wrong can get. Does anyone really believe that it wasn't?

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Permalink Reply by Che Pancho Villa on December 2, 2010 at 11:02am

Van, you have no idea what was on these soldier's mind nor do I. We only have the record left by such people as Samual Watkins, Maney's 1st Tennessee Infantry in Co. Actyh or Fletchers' Private Front and Rear To read that these young men were considering the fate and freedom of colored people is absurd and stupid. Although one fellow was Tennessee and the other from Texas, neither addressed the subject in their journals. You may have Confederate ancestors, but clearly, you are not Southern by culture.

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Permalink Reply by Van on December 4, 2010 at 6:29am

Che, I was responding to what Mary posted about poor soldiers being forced to fight. As for being Southern by culture, I grew up in VA in the 60s where they drilled that BS about the Confederacy being a noble cause into you daily, even in the public schools. Luckily my mom, who grew up in a house on a farm that was a hospital for both sides during the Civil War, didn't buy into that bullshit. I have at least one relative who was a soldier during the CW and another who owned slaves. But the idea that the Cicil war was a noble cause is belied by the fact that the South enforced Segregation and denied Civil Rights to blacks for 100 years after the war. so honor your poor schmuck of a relative who for whatever reason fought in the civil war, but stop trying to polish that 'noble cause' turd.