Mississippi Goddamn!
April in Mississippi is designated as Confederate Heritage Month. For the past 30 years, governors from both parties, have set aside April to honor those who fought in the Civil War and acknowledging the state’s legacy. Proponents of this 30-day commemoration argue it's about understanding and learning from the past.
I am in complete support of learning from the past. Where shall we begin?
Here’s a softball question: What was the reason for the Civil War?
A) Slavery
B) State’s Rights
C) Something else
This is where rational discourse goes off the rails. It is profoundly American, but no less tragic, there is not common acceptance on the fundamental question involving America’s greatest crisis (to date). No doubt the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), the brainchild of this malevolent celebration, would choose B, while critics of this effort would most likely choose A.
Neither are correct. It was, in my view, something else. The “Reason” for the Civil War was 11 southern states seceded from the Union. If those states do not secede there is no war. No reason for Fort Sumter to be fired upon and no reason for President Lincoln to send federal soldiers South.
For those who chose A, and wish to hold my designation is a distinction without a difference, in 1861, the North was not fighting for the emancipation of the enslaved. That did not occur until January 1, 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. Moreover, a response of A is to prematurely grant the North the moral high ground.
This leads to the second question: Why did the Southern States secede?
A) Slavery
B) States Rights
C) Something else
Only a revisionist romanticism of history could conclude anything other than A.
South Carolina, the first state to formally secede from the Union, stated in the third sentence in its Articles of Secession there was, “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding states to the institution of slavery.”
In case you’re wondering if South Carolina was an aberration, Seven of the 11 seceding states, including Mississippi, expressly mentioned slavery in its declarations to leave the Union. I have no doubt Confederate Heritage Month makes the latter point clear in their “Lost Cause” mythology.
The Crittenden Compromise was a failed 1860 proposal (the War did not commence until 1861) by Senator John J. Crittenden to prevent the Civil War by reestablishing the Missouri Compromise line and making slavery permanent in the South that could not be amended by the Constitution.
In pursuit of understanding and learning from the past, one wonders which day does Confederate Heritage Month examine Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens’ 1861 “Cornerstone Speech,” especially where he states:
“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
Are the aforementioned facts included in Mississippi’s month-long attempt to “honor all who lost their lives in this war?” I agree, it is, as the proclamation states, “Important for all Americans to reflect upon our nation’s past, to gain insight from our mistakes and successes, and to come to a full understanding that the lessons learned yesterday and today will carry us through tomorrow.” Can this be achieved authentically while one wishes to emphasize Southern participation in the War was for a higher, dare I say, moral purpose, arguing slavery was at best a secondary consideration?
Many may have indeed fought for reasons other than the preservation of slavery but it does not absolve them of a central truth: slavery was the reason 11 Southern states seceded from the Union. The abstract rationale that the “Lost Cause” disciples wish to promote does not mitigate the institution of slavery was the overriding factor for secession, which prompted the War.
The rank-and-file Confederate soldier is an underreported tragic figure in the Civil War. Without his valor and authentic determination to not have his homeland invaded there would have been no war.
The non slave owning Confederate soldier may have also been motivated by the economic fears of what emancipated slaves might mean for him along with the social construct of whiteness. His primary reason for fighting for the South most likely was not congruent with the official cause for secession. In this context, he too becomes an oppressed victim to maintain a status quo that he was not privy. But he nevertheless fought to preserve a macabre system by his participation to overthrow the federal government.
I’m not sure how one can set aside a month for that. But 156 years after the Civil War concluded was there not attempts to rewrite the motivations of those who stormed the Capitol on January 6?
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