A Southern Woman Shares Her Story of Statues, Lies, and Listening

[mia]

I am a proud Southern woman.
I drink sweet tea like nobody's business, know the difference between a Western and English saddle, and can make a pecan pie from scratch.
Believe me when I say I love my heritage and my culture.

I grew up one block down from the Chickamauga battlefield in Georgia.
I had picnics in that park, went hiking on those trails with my girl scout troop.
Confederate statues are all too familiar to me.

In fourth grade I took a field trip to Stone Mountain to see the faces of Jefferson Davis, Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson up close and personal...

But you know what I don't remember? Anyone telling me,
"These men carved into this mountain are the men that lost the Civil War.
These are the men who fought to be a separate America and lost.
These are the men that fought to keep slaves."
No one took the time to educate me on the real history of these men....

http://www.womenforjustice.us/blog/a-southern-woman-shares-her-story-of-statues-lies-and-listening

[Stryst]

1. The illusion that Confederates were Americans is, I think, the root of the problem.

These are people who tore up their citizenship and then pissed on it. Yet we were good enough to welcome them back, and our reward was that they have fought all social change since. The fact that many of these statues are from the civil rights eara as a big old "screw you" to the country that took them back, and now pumps federal money from states they fought to keep their states running.

Most major religions believe that certain sins are passed from parent to child. Maybe firing cannons at your former country-mates is one of those things.

[LexVegas]

9. What a load of bullshit. nt

[pnwmom]

14. What part of that isn't correct? nt

[lark]

18. This is what's wrong.

"Most major religions believe that certain sins are passed from parent to child. Maybe firing cannons at your former country-mates is one of those things."

That's what's wrong. Saying someone is inherently a racist and hater/destroyer of the union because their great-great granddaddy fought in the Civil War is not correct and is mean and hateful. Did you notice that the Nazis at Charlottesville came from all over the nation, not just the South? How do you explain that?

Because my dad was anti-gay, I'm doomed to be that way and hate my son - hell fucking no. People have choice, they can grow and learn. Hell, even ignorant southerners can do that.

[pnwmom]

22. Okay, that makes sense.

But unfortunately, there are LESSONS that have continued to be passed down through the generations in some families -- lessons reinforced by all those monuments. Lessons that this wasn't a war about slavery, it was a war of aggression and states rights. Lessons that "the south will rise again."

You are also right that those Nazis came from everywhere -- and I know that most of the counter-protesters were from Ch'ville.

[lark]

24. Sadly true.

Kids are being taught to hate by way too many parents, teaching their kids exactly the wrong thing.

[LexVegas]

43. I am from the South and have not heard these "lessons". nt

[TomSlick]

56. Also from the South.

Not the 'lessons" I was taught. I was taught quite the opposite.

Bill Clinton grew up about a thirty minutes down the road from where I was raised. Do you think he was taught these "lessons."

[billh58]

25. Not entirely wrong...

Today's White Supremacists, KKK, and other racists actively teach their children to hate other races and religions, and this form of indoctrination has indeed been going on for generations. "The South shall rise again" is a rallying cry that reaches far beyond the South, and has produced the likes of Trump and his "base" of White Supremacists and bigots -- and their indoctrinated children.

It is true, however, that some children eventually overcome their antisocial heritage and disavow racism, bigotry, and hatred. Unfortunately, just as many (or more) go on to pass their hatred along to future generations.

[billh58]

11. +100! n/t

[thbobby]

2. American Racism runs deep

I am from Texas. All my life I have seen racism in many different forms. As a child, it was open and obvious. Then it became sneaky and devious. Trump is making it open and obvious again.

I do not pretend to know if that could be a positive sign.

I do know that until we confront it in schools, churches, families, politics, etc. etc. ad nauseam we do not have a chance of ending it.

Voter suppression, police violence. Just a modern guise of racist policies that have endured throughout US history.

Lord help us. Seriously, if you are Christian pray for us. I am agnostic, yet I repeat LORD HELP US. PLEASE!

[iluvtennis]

3. +++ Agree

[mia]

4. Runs so deep and has taken root in the souls of some of my family members.

I'm from the DC area and found out too late that I had married a racist. We divorced when the kids were pre-teens. He influenced our son the most. While he never makes racists comments, he's proTrump like his father. Some of my brothers are also Republicans. It's heartbreaking.

[Lithos]

5. The history is darker and more human

The war was fought to keep slavery. However, the war was also fought by men who did so out of obligation to home or because they could not say no when they were told to fight.

The War started in 1861 with a wave of Volunteers. By 1862, the draft had come because the Volunteers had left. These were the men who fought and died during the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. Slavery was the cause of the war, but it did not sustain the war once it started. Even at the end, the South was willing to create Black regiments - freeing them in order to perpetuate the war.

We need to stop politicizing the dead. We need to honor the soldiers by remembering their loss and choosing to not have another war. We need to honor and remember the slaves and freedmen by choosing to not hold up one group over another.

[mia]

12. Thank you for your insights.

I have a lot to learn.

[billh58]

13. Nice apologist rant. n/t

[nolabear]

15. Counter that argument with facts. I mean that.

If it's not true I want to know what the truth is. I was raised in the deepest South and there's a lot I was never taught because of anger, so teach me.

[billh58]

17. The facts are out there...

Slavery and white supremacism

In his 1997 book For Cause and Comrades, which examines the motivations of the American Civil War's soldiers, historian James M. McPherson contrasts the views of Confederate soldiers regarding slavery to that of the colonial American revolutionaries of the 18th century.[27] He stated that while the American colonists of the 1770s saw an incongruity with slave ownership and proclaiming to be fighting for liberty, Confederacy's soldiers did not, as the Confederate ideology of white supremacy negated any contradiction between the two:

Unlike many slaveholders in the age of Thomas Jefferson, Confederate soldiers from slaveholding families expressed no feelings of embarrassment or inconsistency in fighting for their own liberty while holding other people in slavery. Indeed, white supremacy and the right of property in slaves were at the core of the ideology for which Confederate soldiers fought.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_Army

Slaveholders who volunteered to fight for secession and slavery were morally reprehensible and traitors to their country. Today's White Supremacists and KKK militia members are no better and are nothing more than racial terrorists.

[Lithos]

33. Ah, good old Wikipedia

Easily updated and lacking in any scholarly rigor.

But before I go on - I am not saying Slavery was not the reason for the war. It was. However, as Goering said, you have to come up with sufficient reason as to why a farmer (or average man) must take up arms when the very best they can hope for when they come back is to return to no more than what they had when they left. Why should they risk their lives, their family for something. What I'm saying is Slavery itself was not it - the war escalated to a point which involved far more than just that.

You also cherry picked what you wanted to read. You are also conflating people's knowledge of what the stakes of the war was about and what they were supporting vs the reason why they put their life on the line. For many Slavery was not the only reason they fought and in many cases it was an insufficient reason why they fought. You are also simplifying the motivation of people - even the article you cited gives several main reasons.

Individuals put their lives on the line for the following reasons

1) True believers - everything you talk about is true here. This represented a fair number of those who went to war in 1861.
2) Obligation - they were conscripted - this accounted for a large percentage of those entering the Army from 1862 onwards.
3) Religion - People fought because they believed they were doing the service for God. Remember until very recently many sects (Methodists, etc.) were divided because of those in the South viewed/believed there was a mandate for Slavery by God.
4) Home & Family - People went to war because they thought they were under attack. Virginia voted 2:1 against secession originally until Lincoln's call up for troops which scared people to the point a second vote of 2:1 for secession occurred. And as the war went deeper and deeper into the South along with the hardships of the war, the number of desertions escalated as people left to go back to their home.

[billh58]

37. I'll give you this:

you are a great apologist for a seditious, racist society of slave holders. James M. McPherson is not the same as just anyone posting to Wikipedia, and is definitely not "lacking in any scholarly rigor."

[Lithos]

40. Nope not gonna take that

I am not apologizing for anything they did. Slavery was wrong and its end was one of the few good things to come from the Civil War. I am stating it was a different world and a different time and that it's highly incorrect to judge them with singular stereotypes.

James McPherson in his book "For Cause and Comrades" talks to a great length about the duty, obligation and honor as figuring significantly as to why men on both sides enlisted. He talks about this being the time of Victorian America where the masculine code of honor the norm and not the exception. Virginia was not going to leave the Union until it became obvious that Virginia was about to become a battlefield. He even uses as an example Lee's choice as not being a choice for supporting slavery or secession, but because he felt honor bound to protecting his home state, right or wrong.

There are other authors as well and James wrote significantly about this - to summarize what even he said in three short blurbs is a dramatic loss of information and insight.

[billh58]

44. You, of course, don't have to take anything.

I still maintain, based on historical evidence (and current events) that there was absolutely nothing noble about the "Southern cause," or those that volunteered to defend it.

Ymmv.

[Lithos]

48. There was nothing Noble about WW1

Yet people still thought it a Noble thing at the time, especially when viewed in the lens of the Victorian era. It was also highly manipulatable at the individual level - see the White Feather Movement (https://the-white-feather-movement-worldwarone.wikispaces.com/) for an example with a different war.

[billh58]

49. You win.

I honestly can't compete with your high intellect, or knack for storytelling and painting scum of the earth villains as misunderstood heroes. You really should write a revisionist and apologist history book.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

53. You already have.

I don't care how they try to dress it up. We do not now owe "honor" to those who fought against the USA on the side of the Confederacy.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

52. Fighting a bloody war to protect something, right or wrong, is not honorable.

We need to honor the soldiers by remembering their loss and choosing to not have another war.

I understand that this immoral code was prevalent in society at the time of the Civil War, but that doesn't make it something we should venerate today.

Treating the memory of those who fought on the side that killed Americans in order to preserve slavery, who thought "whites" were a superior race, with honor and reverence has kept those racist attitudes and resentment toward those who opposed and oppose it alive in the South and in Northerners who share that reverence and honor.

Are we to give the same honor to those who participated in the post-war persecution and torture of blacks. After all, there was also peer pressure to participate in and celebrate lynching. Does that make it excusable? Honorable?

[LexVegas]

16. ...

[lark]

19. Thank you for your open mind and kind soul.

[greymattermom]

6. But consider this

I'm in the Atlanta area, and the closest suburban areas to downtown are becoming less white while the city itself becomes more white. The real racists have to either at minimum learn to be civil or move to the next county to the north. They will soon be so far gone that they can be forgotten, and the jobs aren't moving with them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Atlanta

[zentrum]

7. "No one took the time"

.....But you can bet they took lots of time in private meetings carefully discussing and agreeing on what not to teach, what not to say.

They spent time alright. Time suppressing. Time oppressing. Time committing lies of omission.

That teachers could know and not teach the truth is just the tip of the iceberg of all the subtle and not at all subtle things that went on and were said in their classrooms.

[Augiedog]

8. The simple fact of the matter is that what was considered "total war" wasn't total enough. In the

War of southern treason the destruction was formidable and the deadliest in U.S. history. Some claim it an example of "total war".

The complete destruction of a society is the hallmark of total war. So complete that what arises from those ashes is new, not a even a shadow of the former self. So complete that to reemerge in a similar cast is unthinkable. That is what happened to Germany, and would have happened to Japan in world war 2.

The south still complains that Sherman's march to the sea was an abomination and unnecessary "total war". Clearly, contemporary evidence demonstrates that it wasn't total enough.

[LexVegas]

10. Where the hell is she from? I was educated on all of that. nt

[cwydro]

20. So was I.

In North Carolina.

[LexVegas]

23. Virginia here. nt

[cwydro]

26. And I've NEVER heard it called the

"War of Northern Aggression".

Ever.

[LexVegas]

27. I have seen more "Stars and Bars" in the midwest and up north than I have seen here.

And just for reference, my hometown is the burial place of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

[cwydro]

28. Same here re the flag.

Apparently Lee was not in favor of statues.

[LexVegas]

29. Apparently myself and my entire family for generations to come are traitors.

[cwydro]

31. I'm first generation of English parents,

so I guess I'll escape that particular branding.

How ever will you live it down??!!

[LexVegas]

32. Apparently members of my family fighting in WWI, WWII and Vietnam don't help.

Also, fighting against the Brits in the Revolutionary War doesn't count.

[cwydro]

38. Some of the stuff I read here is amazing.

Not in a good way either.

[kwassa]

51. Who called you a traitor?

I am not getting why you are so upset.

The young woman who wrote the OP said she was not educated in anyway about the legacy of slavery. You act as if this is unlikely.

[LexVegas]

54. Not really upset. And it is unlikely.

[Lithos]

34. Only time I heard that growing up

Was to mock the bigots...

Always heard and read it as "The American Civil War" or "War between the States" and the only two saving graces for such an awful conflagration and disaster was the freeing of the Slaves and people stopping to think of themselves first and foremost as citizens of a State, but of the United States.

[LexVegas]

35. Same for me. Always in a mocking way. No one seriously called it that. nt

[cwydro]

39. Yes, same here.

But I always read on du how anyone from the south calls it that.

Such utter nonsense.

[Whiskeytide]

45. Same here growing up in ...

... Alabama. I also saw it on cheap souvenirs at Cracker Barrel restaurants. Never said seriously.

I recall historian Shelby Foote saying in Ken Burns' film that "before the Civil War people said 'the United States are...', and after the war people began to say 'the United States is...' ". That always stuck with me as a pretty profound statement. It was a transforming event in our history.

It was a different time. I have no doubt some fought for the South because they were racist assholes. But I suspect many fought because they were Virginians, or Georgians, or Alabamans ... etc. first, and their government was at war, and they felt a patriotic duty to join the fight. For many at the time, it was as simple as that. Slavery was no doubt the political issue for the war. But I don't think it was the driving motivation behind most Southern soldiers.

[Lithos]

46. Agreed

"The United States are" vs "The United States is". I was trying to remember the source, thanks!

L-

[cwydro]

47. And to mock the Yankees lol.

They never get it

[Hangingon]

55. Same here growing up in Texas in the 50's

[jalan48]

21. Another thing she missed is that it wasn't only men who supported slavery.

They may have been the ones doing the actual fighting in the Civil War but the women who lived in the South benefited from the white privilege they enjoyed as a part of the slave based society.

[The Wielding Truth]

30. Women had very little rights at that time so I'm not sure if they enjoyed, but tolerated it.

The wives were probably not happy with the slaves as concubines and the treatment of slaves made them see that they too were considered property in the eyes of the men and the law.
Some may have thought that slaves were their property, too and treated them badly, but that would have been set by the head of the household to manage.

No one should be owned. No one should be treated in an inferior way. Each individual is their own person and should be treated as an equal human being. How anyone could be a white supremacist is beyond me.

[mia]

36. "The majority of Southern women eventually withdrew their support from the Confederate government."

Women's Rights During the Civil War

The American Civil War illustrates how gender roles can be transformed when circumstances demand that women be allowed to enter into previously male-dominated positions of power and independence. This was the first time in American history that women played a significant role in a war effort, and by the end of the war the notion of true womanhood had been redefined.

During the decades prior to the Civil War, female activists flocked to the abolitionist movement and exerted considerable pressure on the Southern slavocracy. Authors like Lydia Maria Child published pamphlets and books condemning the institution of slavery. Although many male politicians searched for a negotiated settlement, female abolitionists refused to accept any compromise on slavery. During the first two years of the war, women delivered speeches, conducted letter-writing campaigns, and pressured President Abraham Lincoln to free all slaves held in bondage in the South....

...The majority of Southern women eventually withdrew their support from the Confederate government. Many poor, working class, and even some upper-class white women came to believe that the Confederate government did not protect them or represent their interests, or simply that the cost of continuing the war was too great. This erosion of Southern women's support for their government ultimately undermined the war effort and contributed to the fall of the Confederacy.

Some Southern women remained loyal to the United States throughout the war, and many expressed their Northern sympathies by feeding and quartering Union soldiers, hiding escaped Union prisoners, or like Elizabeth Van Lew of Richmond, serving as spies. As women suffered increasing privations on the home front, many previously loyal Confederates began voicing their discontent in diaries, newspapers and letters to the Confederate government and loved ones on the battlefront....

https://www.civilwarwomenblog.com/womens-rights-during-the-civil-war/

[Lithos]

41. I remember reading somewhere

of a very hard-core Confederate die-hard who complained that had women pressed harder to having the men come home, then the war would have been over much sooner.

As I stated above, most of the reasons why men went to war was due to the then prevalent Victorian "masculine code of honor".

[The Wielding Truth]

42. Great lesson in history. Thanks.

[recovering_democrat]

50. i was educated on all the things you "don't remember" learning about

Born and raised in Georgia, on family side from Stone Mountain, the other from Marietta. Spent much time in both with relatives and learned all the history. I knew the truth about the mountain monument and its creation with the encouragement and support of the KKK powerful in that area which is how it got done.

I had honest parents not redneck crazies who were not educated. I learned the rest in grammar school, high school civics, all in Decatur Georgia, and then in college in Florida. If you don't remember YOU DID NOT PAY ATTENTION!