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It would seem important to keep these facts in mind as we review a tiny part of the historical record and ponder the present near-universality of the South’s acquiescence to a comically simplistic and largely inaccurate “victor’s history” of the war. But perhaps facts no longer matter.

The long, arduous road toward national reconciliation and equal rights need never have included cultural annihilation: historical, symbolic or otherwise. Yet that is what Southerners face today, and it is their own fault.

By failing to educate their children, or by allowing others to miseducate their children, and as evidenced by their willingness to repeatedly allow the definition of their cultural symbols – from the Confederate battle flag down to a bow-tied, fancified Southern colonel in a funny suit – as symbols of “hate,” they are ultimately, finally, characterizing their forebears – soldiers, yes, along with doctors, lawyers, philosophers, scientists and farmers, free blacks (including slave-owners), businessmen and politicians (many of whom were abolitionists) – universally, as the simple, hateful hicks federal propagandists once made them out to be.

By abandoning these most sacred and most benign symbols of Southern heritage, they admit a deeper commitment to ignore and let others define their past. Worse perhaps, they turn their backs on the legacies and souls of real American patriots and heroes.

When they once again encounter their ancestors, which I believe they will, how will so many Americans account for their feeble treachery?

Maybe, like the Mississippi student, they will say: “We just wanted it to be over.”

I wonder what some of those old heroes might say in reply.

What about:

And here you are, my spiritually impoverished progeny, 300 years after the first war in which we fought and died that you might be free from a tyrannical central government, and almost 200 years after another great and terrible war, the worst imaginable, in which we fought our brothers and died for the very same cause. You have now willingly disgraced not just this cause – which might have been understandable given the terrible complexity of the time – but also almost every vestige of our memory, corrupting even the flags on our graves.

The degree to which you are now indebted to, and dependent on, your federal government is a most bitter reminder of our failure. But you have failed in a deeper sense. You, like many Americans, have in your ignorance abetted in the practical destruction of our founders’ Constitution. Having surrendered liberty, you are no longer entitled to its blessings. So please do not speak of slavery. You have stripped yourself of your knowledge, pride and heritage. You have shamed and prostrated yourself, and, to no small degree, it is you who are now enslaved.