This past Friday, I was introduced to Lee-Jackson Day, a Virginia holiday commemorating the births of Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. As the idea festered, I knew a blog post was imminent, and I began searching for any information about this heretofore unheard of holiday.
Throughout my upbringing, the Civil War was framed as the racist "bad-guy" South vs. the caring "good-guy" North who loved everyone, no matter the color of their skin. An unfair over-simplification, I now know, but an idea that had colored my view of the South and Southerners for so many years. It wasn't until my senior year of college, while reading John C. Calhoun during my American Political Thought class, that I started to realize just how complex the Civil War actually was.
When Southerners talk about the Confederacy, they rarely mention slavery. To them, secession was an absolutely logical outcome after the gross infringement of states' rights by the federal government. As a libertarian-leaning Republican, I'm sympathetic to this argument. Any power not constitutionally given to the national government should be reserved to the states -- true now, true then.
However, when was it ever a right to oppress another human being based solely on characteristics completely out of one's control, such as skin color or ethnic background?
Southern culture is something of which to be proud. I wouldn't have started this blog if there wasn't something so attractive and enamoring about it. But the blemish of slavery can't be ignored, and to say that the Civil War had nothing to do with the South's treatment of African-Americans is irresponsible and foolish.
Yesterday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and I, like many of my peers, was given a paid holiday. I was thankful for the time to myself and was well aware of the irony of using my time off to write about the Confederacy, especially when I did nothing else to celebrate such a great man remembered most for his immense contributions to the Civil Rights Movement.
I felt guilty for a bit before I went about my business of relaxing with my laptop and a large glass of Malbec.
As I mentioned in my last post, tradition is the safety-net to fall into when nothing else works. The Lost Cause of the Confederacy understood this, only a few years and a half a million casualties too late. While reneging on the slavery issue, the Lost Cause reframed the Civil War as a fight for their way of life -- the traditions, customs, and institutions innate in the "Southern way of living". How unfortunate that, at that point in time, the "Southern way of living" included so much more than collard greens, sweet tea, sorority mansions, and debutante balls.
We do not live in the ideal world of Dr. King or Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson. We do not live in the ideal world of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or Christopher Columbus, either. Yet we celebrate the legacies of all these men, for they all contributed to the melting pot of American culture.
