Historian: Civil War tales are pure bunk

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History doesn't lie. Right? Well, the winners want history to make them look good. Sometimes the losers get their say, too.

Perspectives can change. Villains can be made to look like heroes. Interpreting the past can lead to lively debates. And because it is history, often the only confirmation comes from what was written down or told orally through generations.

When talk turns to the Civil War and blacks' role with the Confederacy, there is no room for revisionist theories for Asa R Gordon.

The war between North and South was not about states' rights or a War of Southern independence. States' rights and independence are WHATS of the Civil War. The WHY of it was to preserve slavery, Gordon told a small group at St. James AME Zion church in Kissimmee last week.

Simply put, there should be no memorials honoring men like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. They and others resigned from the Union Army and fought against their country.

They were rebels, and they are traitors to the United States. Nations normally don't honor traitors, Gordon, a retired astrophysicist, said to a crowd that included a group from the Osceola Children's Home.

People normally don' t build memorials for traitors, racists or those who practice genocide.

In the United States, Confederate memorials dot the countryside. The flag is flown with pride. The Nazi flag - and Nazi leaders - inspire hatred.

It should he no different for Lee and others who fought for the South. The real heroes, Gordon said, are those Southerners who fought for the North.

As for those who try to promote the idea that blacks were willing soldiers for the South, Gordon's research disproves it.

In a lecture that was close to three hours long, the founder and executive director of the Washington, D.C. -based Douglass Institute of Government left no doubt about the fantasies and historical myths of Afro-Confederates.

The commitment to the neo-Confederate movement is often emotional rather than intellectual, he said. It cannot stand the scrutiny of scholarship. The belief that blacks willingly served in the Confederate Army is ludicrous and harmful, he said.

"A slave didn't have a choice. If his master said he was going, the slave couldn't say no. He was a slave."

Those who say blacks fought for the South should look at Confederate documents, which ban blacks serving as regular members of the Army. They also need to look at records showing that those who did serve deserted when they got the chance.

Propagation of the present-day theories make it hard for people to realize that blacks were unhappy about their condition, Gordon said.

"How can you owe a people anything, if in fact they were so satisfied with the state that suppressed them?" he asked. "How can you correct that legacy if you are in denial about the true reasons?"

Gordon's visit was sponsored by Ann Tyler and Evan McKissic. McKissic, a retired Osceola teacher, has been critical of the theories of another retired local teacher, Nelson Winbush.

Winbush travels the country recounting the stories of his grandfather, who he said willingly and proudly served with Southern forces.

"I try to get the truth out. I talked with my grandfather, and I know what he said," Winbush said.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Pino welcomes comments. He can be reached at (407) 931-5935, by e- mail at OSOpino1@aol.com, by fax at (407)931-5959 or by mail at The Osceola Sentinel, 804 W. Emmett St., Kissimmee, 34741.

Slavery is not legal in the US now. I take this as evidence that the South lost.

And if the South would have won, slavery would have been legal for how much longer again is it? Slavery was still legal immediately following the War within these United States. And you'd think that if these folks in the north were so concerned with abolishing slavery they might have done it sometime at the beginning of the War to claim a moral high ground

States' rights do not trump anything at the federal level. I take this as evidence that the south lost.

And we're happy about this for what reason again? Could you fill me in? I seemed to have missed that memo. Even abe in his first inaugural address recognized the rights of the states to control their own domestic issues. Mind you, he also went on to rant about 'union before the states' and enforcement of 'trade laws'(i.e. continued raping of the South through tariffs) to the general government as well but even a blind squirrel will find a nut from time to time

I can't help wondering (in these perilous times) why folks don't find more appropriate targets for their hate (too strong?).

The current wave of confederatist bilge and bile goes back to the end of the Cold War. When we didn't have an external enemy, national unity and identity slackened and people started to look for an internal enemy and some great narrative to account for everything that seemed wrong with the country. Not having a British or German, or Japanese, or Soviet empire overseas, they fixed on the remaining empire, ours, but didn't quite understand how that empire had been formed, or what their role in it was.

A decade or so ago, people must have gotten a thrill attacking not the usual targets, Wilson, FDR, LBJ, the Kennedys, but Lincoln himself. And the idea that somehow all our problems could be traced back to the maintenance of the Union in the 1860s appealed to the hunger of some for all-encompassing, "big" explanation. As did the idea that, but for Lincoln and the Union Army, "we" would have been "truly free." The holes in this theory have been amply discussed, but it has acquired a religious hold on some people's minds. It is the Garden of Eden story all over again.

The realignment of American politics along North-South lines, and the fact that the passions and controversies of the civil rights movement were a generation in the past also contributed. The NAACP and the various confederatist groups feed off each other, the outrages of the one leading to the outrages of the other. The purposelessness of one and the hopelessness of the other resolved by their confrontation.

Confederatism comes to be seen as a defense of Southern honor and virtue. Unfortunately, history has to proceed in a "let the chips fall where they may" spirit, and not be tied to defending wounded pride. There may be some points where the confederatists are right, but their approach is to create some "stainless myth" of pure good and evil that doesn't allow for complexities and the humanity of both sides. The emphasis is not on putting together all that we know, but on using allegations and charges to depose some alleged myth and enthrone another in its place.

So little of what one finds in today's confederatist writing is new. So much goes back to previous generations. But clearly, in the 1960s, this sort of thing didn't have the appeal it does today because it was saddled with segregationism.

The present generation takes pride in the fact that it doesn't carry around the racial baggage previous generations did, and should do so. But surely the fact that other generations of Americans -- and of Southerners -- did have racial attitudes that we would regard as pernicious shouldn't be ignored or forgotten. You can mentally construct a version of the Confederacy that had neither slavery nor ideologies of racial superiority. You can imagine that slavery would have been abolished by the victorious Confederacy simply by snapping its fingers. But your conceiving these things doesn't make them true.

So why do some react so strongly against contemporary confederatism? Many reasons. The contempt for our united country. The desire to break it up into ineffectual or tyrannical smaller units. The slurs of Nazi or Communist that idiots hurl at Lincoln. The abuse of fine Northern writers. Washington's views ignored or traduced. The willful distortion of history. The amnesia about the conflicts of the 1850s. The endless repetition of the same lines that we've heard so often and ought to be moving beyond. The neglect of all counterarguments to those confederatist slogans. The sloppiness and contempt for the intelligence of readers that so many neo-confederate writers show. The reasons are many, but I don't think it adds up to a hatred of the South or any other part of our country. Don't make the mistake of thinking that anyone here speaks for anything other than one person.

The world has grown dangerous again, and if we really are to be locked in a conflict that will last for many years and hit home again, we can expect this confederatist sentiment to subside, as we recognize that we are one country again. We will come togther as we did in 1941. Indeed most of us alredy have. But if the war against terrorism is already behind us, one can expect neo-confederatism, like other pernicious post-modern fashions, to persist and attract followers.

You fail to convince. Now..................now, you're taking the position that it was the Southern states that actually dictated to the North. This is utter nonsense.

Is it?

Why do I say this?

The north had the overwhelming interest in manufacturing. A high protective tariff helped them much more than it would the fewer manufacturers in the south. And yet the tariff was low -- lower in fact in 1860 than in 40 years. This is a datum. It is in the records. Alexander Stephens made the point that the tariff was "exactly" what southerners made it.

Now, look at the record --- You won't consult the record.

The record shows that you are wrong. Southern interests were served much more in the ante bellum US than northern interests were.

You said in #202:

Are you suggesting that the Federal Government in no way attempted to dictate to the Southern States or otherwise interfere with what THEY saw as their conduct of commerce?

That statement is simply not suppported in the record.

Walt

I'm a little torn between making this a private post but I guess I'll do it this way, .. I seriously can't help wondering from whence your vociferous animosity toward the South comes. Are you a radicalized Black? Did you lose family members in the Union army? I've seen your posts on the subject many times and perhaps this has been asked before, but I'd like you to address it.

I can't help wondering (in these perilous times) why folks don't find more appropriate targets for their hate (too strong?). I offer the Islamists, for one.

I'd be glad to let all this drop. I don't perpetuate it.

It is perpetuated by what "everbody knows."

Everybody knows the ACW was not over slavery.

Everybody knows that most southerners had no interest in slavery.

Everybody knows that the federal government was oppressive and the secessionists were defending the true ideals of the Declaration of Indepenence.

Everbody knows secession was legal under U.S. law.

In point of fact, every one of those points is absolutely false.

Now, I am a white bread white boy from Chattanooga, Tenneessee. I had a number of relatives in the CSA army. Two were in the Army of Northern Virginia, and a distant relatve was captured here in Atlanta at the Battle of Peachtee Creek. One of my CSA relatives was later a major player in writing the new Alabama constitution in the 1890's.

But even a cursory reading of the history of the ACW will show the bankruptcy of the "everbody knows" I mention above. And it will show that the true heroes of the war were the loyal Union men from all the states who fought for Union, progress and freedom.

As soon as the neo-rebs stop spreading their "everybody knows" manure, you'll not see me any more.

Walt

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