The Secesh category archive

At The Roanoke Times, Robert Myers recounts how he came to realize the picture of the Old South fed to him in his Virginia elementary school was a somewhat sanitized view of the South and slavery a Confederate crock of lost cause myth-making (my words, not his).

Aside:

It is extremely likely that he and I had the same textbook.

(Misplet wrod correx.)

At The Roanoke Times, Reggie Figard responds to those who protest the removal of Confederate monuments; he reminds them that their treasured “Southern Heritage” is not what they would claim it to be. Here’s an excerpt:

Whenever a segment of a country takes up arms in rebellion against the rest of the country those individuals are by definition “traitors” to that country. Rebelling against your country for an immoral cause such as retaining slavery is not a noble cause.

At the Bangor Daily News, historian and pastor the Rev. J. Mark Worth shreds the long-standing Southern propaganda effort to protray secession as somehow a noble and worthy cause. He points out that there are not statues to Benedict Arnold ans asks why we have monuments to Confederate generals.

Here’s a bit of his answer (emphasis added):

The answer lies in the myth of the “ Lost Cause,” a pseudo-historical ideology that claims the Confederate cause was a just and noble one. Central to the Lost Cause myth is the idea that the South was fighting to preserve states’ rights and Southern culture against Northern aggression, not to defend slavery.

(snip)

Did Southerners also want states’ rights? Yes, when it meant their right to enslave other human beings. But they opposed states rights when Northern states didn’t want to return black people to enslavement in the South.

The New Secesh have embraced today’s technology.

They are using QR codes.

My local rag published the letter I wrote to the editor on Monday. You can find it on their website, but I’ll save you the trouble. Here is the text:

I find myself bemused by those who refer to the removal of Confederate monuments as “erasing history.”

Let’s consider the history.

Almost all of the monuments in question were erected in the 1890s and early 1900s coincident with the imposition of Jim Crow and the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan. They were intended to remind freed slaves and their descendants of their “place” and of who was in charge. They memorialized, not gallantry on the battlefield, but racism, oppression, and theft of labor in daily life.

When invoking history, invoke the history that was, not the history that was made up.

“Base” desires.

Ironically, Robert E. Lee did not want monuments.

Monumental mayhem in the Tar Heel state. Here’s a bit from the report:

Competing demonstrations over a Confederate monument in Alamance County ended after two supporters of the statue were arrested for assault and disorderly conduct, according to police and media reports.

Police said one of the men, 39-year-old Christopher Overman, hit Elon University professor Megan Squire, who was protesting a statue in Graham, about 55 miles northwest of Raleigh. Squire researches online right-wing extremism at the university, according to the school.

And, in more news of still rising again . . . .

In Maine, you might expect to see a moose, but a noose?

A noose was removed from telephone lines along Route 15 in Deer Isle on Saturday, while nearby Black Lives Matter signs were vandalized the day before. The Hancock County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the incident.

In Delaware, where I used to live, there is a NASCAR race track. If you ever drove by a NASCAR track on race day, you likely saw more Confederate battle ensigns than were at Gettysburg.

My brother told me–this was probably 15 years ago at time when NASCAR was trying to broaden its audience and especially attempting to attract more minorities–that my nephew had asked (I don’t remember his exact words), “How are do they expect to do that with all those Confederate flags in the parking lots?”

I guess that push has come to shove.

NASCAR has banned Confederate flags.

H/T to my brother for giving me a heads-up on this story.

The Roanoke Times’s editorial board channels Isaac Newton’s third law of motion. A snippet (emphasis added):

Here’s some more Newtonian politics: More Confederate statues have come down throughout the South under Trump’s presidency than all the previous presidents put together.

For some Virginians, this is a disorienting moment, to the say the least. State Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield County, and a candidate for governor next year, took to Facebook to say: “Let’s be honest, there is an overt effort here to erase all white history.” This would be laughable if she didn’t mean it so seriously.

Taking down a statue is not “erasing” history. It’s re-appraising whether we’re honoring the right people from our history.