A Statement on Monuments from a Descendant of Confederate Veterans
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161 years later we are still fighting the Civil War
I was born in Walker County, Alabama in 1978. This was only 9 years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and only ten years after The Fair Housing Act of 1968, which was supposed to end discrimination in renting and selling homes.
I used to look at those black and white photos and think all of that was ancient history. But, as William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead. It’s not even past.”
The official end of the Civil War happened at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9th, 1865 when General Robert E. Lee surrendered. Unofficially, we have continued fighting it for over 150 years. This is evidenced by the modern day fight over Confederate monuments in public spaces throughout the south, most of which went up a generation after the war and even a few at the end of the 20th century.
Why is that? Why are we continuing to fight to keep monuments up to men who fought for a nation that lasted fewer than 5 years? Why is it that, in 2021, we have so many who want to continue to honor those who fought for a treasonous nation, a nation that sought to uphold the evils of slavery and the continued subjugation of a people whose descendants we now call our neighbors? And why won’t we listen to their grievances to the point of outright protesting them. To understand that question, I looked into my own history and that of Alabama.
I’ll start with this. I’m descended from a number of men who fought for the confederacy.
My 3rd great-grandfather fought for the 22nd Regiment of Alabama. His name was Alford Baker. He died 3 days after Christmas in 1863. The family story is that he was injured at Missionary Ridge near Chattanooga and then succumbed to his injuries in Dalton, Georgia nearly a month later. While that is a family story- that he gave his life for the rebellion- the only thing we can be certain of is that he was a Confederate soldier and he died during the war. He is one of 5 Confederate soldiers from whom I am descended.
It would be easy for me to romanticize that story, my brave ancestor loyal to the southern cause and who was willing to pay the ultimate price for it. The fact remains he was a poor sharecropper from Walker County, Alabama who lost his life fighting for the planter class of Alabama, the rich and wealthy who wanted to maintain their power and their right to own slaves. Nothing more. That isn’t romantic. It’s tragic.
As for the romanticization of the Civil War, the Daughters of the Confederacy did just that. With the last of the Civil War soldiers dying off, in my grandfather’s lifetime, the Daughters sought to create their own narrative by erecting monuments and rewriting history books in the South. And it worked brilliantly. It’s the biggest reason the fight over the monuments continues today. It is the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy” narrative.
I am 42 years old and I remember my history teachers, like Gary Bruce Haynes at Lupton Middle School in 1992, augmenting the lessons with Lost Cause lies such as happy slaves singing in the field and the gallant General Lee and his love for his homeland of Virginia making the war a moral imperative for him.
Many of the monuments that were erected in 1915 and onward say things like “Defeated but without a Stain”, showing that no lesson was learned in the war, and the ideals would continue to be taught to the children of the south. History teachers of mine taught our lessons in the 1990s as if the South losing was a tragedy and that the moral decline of the modern day can be traced all the way back to that. Slavery in the south was outright erased or painted in a positive light. “Many slaves came back to the plantation because they had nowhere to work after the war”, as if even that being true was proof slavery wasn’t horrible.
I do, however, come from a region of the South where people either refused to fight outright or joined the Union Army. Throughout Appalachia in the hills, hollers, and mountains running up to northeast Alabama, many were like this. Ironically, a good deal of the descendants of these people now are adamant that we must keep the monuments up or we will be erasing history. A stone’s throw up the road from where I grew up is Winston County, Alabama, a county that seceded from the South when the South seceded from the Union. The vast majority of people there want to see the Confederate monuments remain while the fact is their ancestors refused to join the Confederacy.
If history were to be taught correctly we would know that a significant number of mountain and hill folk opposed the war and the planter class efforts to maintain slavery. There would be no monuments to the Confederacy in places like Marshall County, Alabama where a good deal of folks didn’t support the war and refused to join the Confederacy.
I know many are reading this through their lens of the Lost Cause lies they were taught. It’s the reason letters are written to the newspapers in the South by elected officials and high ranking retired members of the military calling for the monuments to remain. They were taught by teachers who used textbooks filled with the romanticized rewriting of the Civil War by the Daughters of the Confederacy. Because of that they feel folks like Unique Dunston and her group in Albertville, Alabama are trying to rewrite history when it is actually a correction and an honest accounting of what the war was and who we are.
In Albertville’s case it’s particularly egregious considering the monument was moved to the courthouse square in 2005, 140 years after the end of the Civil War.
Alexander H. Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy, once gave a speech on the Confederacy saying “Its foundations are laid, its corner-stone 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.”
Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, at the time said, “You cannot transform the negro into one-tenth as useful or good as what slavery enables them to be.”
So when I hear “It’s Heritage not Hate” I have to wonder what mental gymnastics it takes to separate the heritage from the hate and to support the symbols of the Confederacy being displayed in public places.
Now when we look to history and the men these statues supposedly honor — Jefferson Davis and General Robert E. Lee among them — the narrative isn’t what the history books taught in the 20th Century in the South.
When asked about the symbols of the Confederacy after the war, General Lee said “I think it wiser moreover not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavoured to obliterate the marks of civil strife and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.” At his funeral in 1870 there were no Confederate flags. The symbol, at the time, had been relegated to the dustbin of history. It is what General Lee wanted.
Even the President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis said, “My pride is that that flag shall not set between contending brothers; and that, when it shall no longer be the common flag of the country, it shall be folded up and laid away like a vesture no longer used.”
It is what Jefferson Davis, a man who strongly supported the evils of slavery, wanted as well.
At this point, and with this knowledge, I have to wonder why the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group I am eligible to join but will never, are so ardently opposed to moving the monuments from places of honor. What exactly are you honoring? What message are you trying to send when the leaders of the Confederacy long ago wanted them moved from the public sphere?
Our black brothers and sisters once asked us to listen to their grievances and, when ignored, are now demanding these symbols of oppression be taken from places of honor in public squares. That’s it. They are the direct descendants of a people stolen from their homes, separated from their families repeatedly, and forced to do back breaking labor in fields for free. We should acknowledge their grievances and address their demands properly.
As a lifelong southerner and a descendant of multiple men who fought for the Confederacy I join them in this demand.
These monuments have become in the modern day what they were designed to be in the early 20th century, symbols of white supremacy and a reminder of the desired social order by many in the south. When the facts are laid out as I have, and you still support these monuments in public squares and the Confederate flag flying alongside the flag of the nation from which it rebelled then you don’t support heritage.
You are aligning yourself with hate.
The Confederate flag only came back when it was used by the Ku Klux Klan as a symbol in the early 20th century. It was present at many lynchings throughout the south in an era of racial terror that also wasn’t mentioned in the history books in the South.
It’s time to do the right thing. We must acknowledge the real history behind the reasons these monuments were erected, and why a flag that is a symbol of a nation set on preserving the institution of slavery still flies in our public spaces. It’s time to take them down regardless of where they end up, or if they end up anywhere at all.
They aren’t our history. They are a whitewashing of a horrific era in our past that we have never fully reckoned with. Moving them from places of honor in our towns and cities is a good start. It may have taken a century and more but it is time for that reckoning. Let us join together and do the right thing.
