Charleston, South Carolina
Late June turned out to be an opportune time to find myself standing on top of Little Round Top looking out over arguably the most important battlefield on the North American continent. The cause that brought the Confederate army to rural Pennsylvania in July 1863 was once again at the centre of a national debate, this time triggered by Dylann Roof walking into a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and killing nine innocent parishioners in the name of white supremacy.
The Charleston tragedy raises a whole host of issues concerning guns, mental health, domestic terrorism, and religion, but media attention has focused on the role that the Confederate flag played in Roof’s personal iconography. Like almost all US white supremacists, Roof wrapped himself both literally and metaphorically in the ‘stars and bars’. But instead of starting a race war as he intended, his actions catalysed a much needed national debate about the long shadow that the Civil War casts over US society and specifically how that war should be commemorated.
Within days of the shootings, products bearing the image of the Confederate flag were purged from the shelves of major retailers like Walmart and Amazon; the leading flag manufacturer said it would discontinue production; and within weeks the flag was removed from the grounds of the South Carolina State Capitol where it flew above a Confederate war memorial.
The strange persistence of the Confederate flag in US public life can partly be explained by how the South hijacked history. Usually it’s the victors that get to write the stories, but the defeated Confederates picked up pens as soon as they put down their rifles and took control of the narrative. In doing so, they created a mythology that enabled an honouring of the Confederacy while avoiding much of the troublesome moral baggage of slavery.
The contemporary record demonstrates unequivocally that the Civil War was about the protection and expansion of slavery in the United States. Yet almost immediately a revisionist view began to emerge that cast the war in terms of broader states’ rights and as an economic conflict between the agrarian South and the industrial North. In this account the legality of slavery was relegated to merely one example of a states’ rights issue, and the broader conflict framed in terms of a political and ideological struggle where there was merit on both sides. Over time the idea that the Civil War wasn’t just about slavery took root in the national consciousness and even now the US citizenship test lists three possible answers to the question ‘name one problem that led to the Civil War’; the acceptable answers being slavery, economic reasons, and states’ rights. Interestingly it is the only question on the test with multiple right answers.
Behind this distorted veil of history the Confederate flag could be positioned as representing heritage not hate, therefore allowing it to maintain a legitimate place in white Southern culture. From 1961 until 2000, the Confederate flag actually flew on top of the dome of the South Carolina Statehouse in a place of honour alongside the Stars and Stripes. Even today, the ‘stars and bars’ is still visible on the state flags of Florida, Mississippi and Alabama. The problem is that the Confederate flag still represents a divided nation, just as it did in the 1860s. Recent polls suggest that the vast majority of white Southerners see the Confederate flag as a source of pride, while the vast majority of non-whites see it as a symbol of oppression. That divide has been there for 150 years, but it took the shootings in Charleston to force a broader recognition that, for many Americans, the Confederate flag still stands for subjugation and unalloyed racism.
The events of the last few months have also raised questions for me about my attitude towards the Confederacy. Over the last 30 years I’ve come to admire the tactical genius of many of the Confederate generals and the resilience and courage of the men they commanded. I’ve been seduced by the image of swashbuckling cavaliers and inspirational leaders. I’ve been taken in by the ‘lost cause’ argument that reveres a group of underdogs pulling off improbable victories against long odds before being overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Yet I abhor the cause for which these men fought. At the root of this schizophrenia is that I struggle to place the Confederate South in the same moral category as say Nazi Germany. The idea of a Confederate flag flying over a cemetery at Gettysburg just doesn’t provoke the same moral repugnance that I would have seeing a swastika flying over a cemetery at Omaha Beach in Normandy.
I don’t have that same visceral reaction because I don’t project evil onto the leadership of the Confederacy the way I do with the Nazi’s. For every caricature of a sadistic slave overseer separating families and whipping runaways, there are other stories of great kindness and humanity within that immoral system. Again, the contemporary record shows that there were many slave owners who genuinely – although misguidedly – believed that the slave system gave African Americans a better life than they would have had as ‘wage slaves’ in the industrial North. As late as 1906, a Southern apologist wrote in the Confederate Veterans’ magazine that ‘the kindliest relation that ever existed between the two races in this country was the ante-bellum relationship of master and slave – a relationship of confidence, dependence and fidelity’. Maybe growing up in the sectarian west of Scotland I’m used to the co-existence of bigotry and compassion in broad swathes of the population and hence recognise it as something far more complex and nuanced than the hate-filled actions of Dylann Roof.
The slave system of the Confederacy also needs to be seen in the context of an America that was changing and evolving during the 19th century. Although debates over the future of slavery were the immediate cause of the Civil War, the South wasn’t that far behind the rest of America in its attitudes towards slave ownership. Many of the Founding Fathers, including Washington and Jefferson, were slave owners who talked without irony about a new country where all men were created equal. At one point in the 18th century, more than 40% of New York City households owned slaves, and slavery was only abolished there in 1827. And despite an increasingly strident abolitionist movement, the North bought, shipped and traded agricultural goods created under the slave system right up to the day war was declared, as did the UK and the rest of Europe, collectively showing at least tacit acceptance of the social system that created those goods.
There were also many Southern leaders, including generals like Robert E Lee, James Longstreet and Pat Cleburne who expressed reservations about the continuation of the slave system, but they were products of their environment, and when push came to shove they chose to defend their states from what they saw as unwarranted and unconstitutional interference. The potential of the South to evolve may best be indicated by the fact that the spiritual ‘Amazing Grace’ – so movingly sung by President Obama during his eulogy for the pastor shot in Charleston – was written by John Newton, a British slave trader turned abolitionist.
But even if you believe that the defence of slavery by the Confederacy – while morally wrong – was at least somewhat understandable in the context of the times, it offers no justification for the persistence of Confederate symbolism in today’s public life. While slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment in 1865, in many ways the ultimate legal defeat of the racists in the South didn’t happen until the civil rights movement of the 1960s ensured equal rights under law for African Americans. During the 50s and 60s not even avowed segregationists like Governor George Wallace of Alabama could openly defend slavery, but they could use the Confederate flag as a dog whistle to rally white supremacists to their cause.
It’s no coincidence that the Confederate flag reappeared above the South Carolina Statehouse on the centennial anniversary of the start of the war in 1961, just as the Jim Crow discrimination laws were being dismantled by the US Supreme Court. And it is that recent history that really explains why the raising of the Confederate flag on government property is such an incendiary issue for African Americans. Unlike a statue of a Confederate general which is a passive memorial (although it may still be offensive to some), the daily raising of a Confederate flag or the continuous issuance of state licence plates with that flag on them, are explicit acts of commemoration that say more about today than they do about the 1860s.
If you are African American or any minority in the South, despite what white Southerners may believe, the message the flag sends is not heritage but hate, as personified by Dylann Roof. The removal of the Confederate flag from public buildings isn’t just a matter of ‘good manners’ as Nikki Haley the Governor of South Carolina put it, but rather a necessary step in rebuilding trust with an African American community that continues to feel that it suffers from all kinds of institutional discrimination, from voter suppression to unlawful killing by the police.
But where do we draw the line? Which historical symbols – although tainted – can still be revered and which need to be discarded? Britain committed its fair share of atrocities in building and defending its empire, but we don’t demand that the Union Jack be struck from public buildings and replaced by something that represents our current more enlightened state. Does the fact that Washington and Jefferson owned slaves disqualify them from being on US bank notes? I think the key difference is that the Confederacy chose to fight to defend an outdated institution at a time when the moral argument against it was clear, and that the continued official use of the flag in 2015 shows that there are those who wish to continue that fight.
As we walked back to the visitor centre at Gettysburg our tour guide let slip that he only worked at the weekends because he is an active duty Marine Corps colonel currently on the faculty of the US Army War College just up the road in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. We chatted a little about his service and the controversy around the Confederate flag, and he made the point that even if you don’t believe in the cause of the South (or for that matter the cause that got us into Iraq or Afghanistan), it’s still possible to honour the service of those who fought in the war. Maybe that’s the point of balance that we need to find.
A Confederate battle flag flying at half-mast over a cemetery on Veterans Day can still honour a legacy of service, but exactly 150 years after the surrender of the Confederate Army, maybe it’s time for the South to finally surrender the idea that that flag also represents a philosophy and a way of life that deserves to be honoured. There are many reasons to like the South: its food, weather, music and friendly people to name but a few, but it’s now clear that we need another symbol for that culture that doesn’t also give succour to racists and murderers.
for Alan Fisher’s despatch from South Carolina
By Alan McIntyre | August 2015