I typically reserve these conversations for the battlefield. The toxicity of the Confederacy mixed with the Internet and long-held beliefs is a recipe that I prefer to avoid. Instead, I wait until I am with friends, family, or coworkers at Gettysburg or Antietam. There, I can talk freely about military strategy and tactics, and provide perspective on the causes of the Civil War and the origins of the Confederacy without anyone concerned about a hidden agenda.
I have found this approach works every time. After someone spends 10 hours hearing you rattle off generals and colonels, troop counts, and casualties from memory, they are more open to your thoughts about bigger topics. After people see you deconstruct the 20th Maine myth or recount the Sickles-Meade controversy, they have no issues hearing you unabashedly talk about how the Confederacy formed to protect slavery. They have no issue hearing how the Army of Northern Virginia captured free black Pennsylvanians and took them south, making them slaves.
I love history with a passion that borders on the fanatical. My desire is to learn, analyze, understand, and then share the experience with others. The journey of discovery is often as entertaining as the story itself. I loathe hidden agendas, political or otherwise. I am not interested in holding, exposing, or fighting political causes.
More importantly, I have zero interest in making people feel stupid for unwittingly holding a view stemming from some manipulative source. This is partially why I have gravitated toward the ancient and medieval worlds. No one is offended when you point out that Athens was a democracy for free white males only, or that Alexander probably killed more Greeks than the Persians ever did. Intrigued, yes, but rarely offended.
I grew up believing the Civil War was about states’ rights. No one ever explained that slavery was the only right in question. No one pointed out how Texas, my home state, issued a secession declaration that reaffirmed its right to “maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery” and the subservient nature of the African to the white was a relationship that “should exist in all future time.” That meant that when my great-great-great-grandfather, Benedict Manning, rode with the 33rd Texas Cavalry, it was in defense of a state that sought to keep whites above blacks.
I thought the Confederate battle flag was cool. When I first moved to Pennsylvania fifteen years ago, my uncle bought me a Christmas gift, the only one I recall him buying for me. It was a Civil War pocketknife in a Confederate battle flag adorned box. With it, he left a note saying “Don’t forget your roots, Yank.” I thought it was funny. I still do. However, I never fully appreciated what the gesture meant and neither did my uncle.
No one ever explained that Mississippi and Florida incorporated the Confederate battle flag into their own state flags during the Jim Crow era, or that Georgia did the same during the Civil Rights Movement.
No one explained that the Confederate battle flag gained its prominent association with the South in 1948, not the 1860s. The flag was all over events of the States’ Rights Democratic Party that year, which came about in defiance of President Harry Truman after he ended racial discrimination in the military and started promoting civil rights. Their platform aimed at maintaining segregation and “racial integrity.” In the 1948 Presidential Election, they won four states—Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina. That year, the Confederate battle flag became the stereotypical representation of the South. This was the same year that universities such as Ole Miss and Alabama started donning the Confederate flag en masse.
The Confederate battle flag became a fad briefly, outselling the United States flag in the early 1950s all over the country (including the North). Because of the fad, the flag was prominent in national memory. You could see the flag at any football game featuring a southern university, car-racing tracks, and among US military units in the Korean War looking for a means to differentiate themselves from the United Nations banner.
Then the Civil Rights Movement swung into high gear in the mid-1950s and culminated in the late-1960s. Virtually every white supremacist, pro-segregationist group had the Confederate battle flag displayed prominently at rallies. Those marching for Civil Rights saw bands of whites brandishing the flag in protest.
Politicians were just as active with the use the flag too. The year before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. echoed Lincoln in his Dream speech with “Five score years ago,” South Carolina raised the Confederate battle flag above its State House.
As I studied Gettysburg for what happened on those three blood-filled days, I also learned about the history of the past 150 years of that battlefield. I learned how Daniel Sickles, a veteran congressman from New York, was responsible for drawing the lines of the park in the 1890s, which remained in place until the 1970s. I learned how each monument has a history that was always much more complex than simply honoring the men who fought there. I learned how one US unit would support the placement of a Confederate monument in hopes of bringing attention to their own actions that day. I learned how the Virginia Monument with its glorious portrayal of Robert E. Lee came about in 1917 with the goal of bringing attention to the Confederate lines.
Like the Confederate battle flag, the stories behind these symbols are complex and rewarding. Yet as with all history, we should not confuse complexity with something worth resurrecting or even celebrating.
The history of how the Civil War erupted, brought about emancipation, and killed 600,000 people is complex. But the simple fact is that Texas and other Confederate states left the United States for fear that the President-elect was going to target slavery for elimination. The Confederate battle flag is a symbol of that cause. Its roots come from the armies that marched in defense of the Confederacy, the country that Texas and other slave-owning states formed. It is an important part of history, but like many such relics, it belongs in a museum, a haunting reminder of our darkest hour and greatest triumph.
If you’re interested in learning more about the history of the Confederate battle flag, I highly recommend John M. Coski’s The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem. The book provides a blunt look at the flag’s history without an axe to grind.