For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin...
William Faulker, Intruder in the Dust
I understand the obsession with the Civil War. I don't just understand, I partake.
My hometown in Kentucky was one of those little nothing-burgs, a place where both sides in the conflict passed unobstructed and where flags of both nation and would-be nation were kept at the ready to welcome any approaching force. Even there on the edge of events, a hundred years after the guns went silent, the signs of the war were all around. Some of those signs were literal, as in the brass marker showing where Nathan Bedford Forrest had rested on the grass beside the courthouse, along with 300 of his men, on their way to strike the Union line along the Green River at the Battle of Sacramento. Some of the signs took only a bit more interpretation, like the crumbling manor house, complete with slave quarters, that stood at one end of downtown until it was finally replaced by a grocery store, or the mossy markers in the old town cemetery replete with dates in the first half of the 1860s. Some of the signs were more subtle, buried in attitudes about race, embroidered in language about preserving history. This wasn't a conflict removed from us by the space of an ocean. It's an over that next rise war, a just down the street war, a backyard war.
It's also not far removed from us in time. We think of it as something now dusty as the plains of Marathon or the walls of Jericho, but historically it's just over the horizon. My grandfather was born in 1903, too late to have been a participant in that conflict, but in his youth he knew men who had lived through those days. He saw the old men shuffle down the streets on Memorial Day, in faded uniforms of both blue and gray. He saw them in the church pews. He heard their stories first hand, and he told them second hand. Now I have them. We're still that close.
I understand the romance of the lost cause, the draw that Faulkner explains so well, the ache to be a part of great events that happened a short walk from your doorstep, to fight the long odds, to be among those "lean and hungry wolves" taking the most narrow of chances against a relentless foe. Listen to Jefferson Davis welcoming back Confederate troops after they overcame lopsided odds to win an unlikely, and absolutely crushing, victory at the first battle of Bull Run.
Your little army, derided for its want of numbers, derided for its want of arms, derided for its lack of all the essential material of war, has met the grand army of the enemy, routed it at every point, and it now flies in inglorious retreat before our victorious columns.
--Jefferson Davis
Can you feel that? Can you sense the joy and excitement of these people? Can you understand how the reversal of those emotions sends shock waves across decades and centuries? The ragged few facing off with a seemingly limitless, powerful opponent. That's not just General McAuliffe shouting "nuts!" at the siege of Bastogne, that's Aragon defending the White City, that's anyone who ever drew a sword against an army, that's Arthur and Camelot.
The romance of the lost cause is undeniable and overwhelming, and it only requires one thing: forgetting the true nature of that cause.
That cause was chattel slavery, the reduction of a human being to simple property which another human being was free to own, abuse, and dispose of as they saw fit. The men who cut themselves free of the United States had no illusions about this fact. They neither hid from it, nor were ashamed of it. Here's a quote from Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens. It's rather long, but read it all.
The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell."
Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone 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 moral condition.
--Alexander Stephens
Stephen's statement leaves no doubt, no doubt at all, about the nature of the cause. The war was started to defend "African slavery." It was started by men who believed, not that the founding fathers of the United States had been right, but that they had been
wrong. The cause was defined and created by men who did not believe that "all men are created equal," but that some men were fundamentally entitled to buy, sell, torture and kill as they pleased. There have been countless wars fought for vanity and even more fought over greed, but none has ever been fought for a more despicable cause than the preservation of chattel slavery.
That was the cause, and that alone should be enough to drown any lingering sense of romance in an overwhelming flood of shame.
Only it's not turning out quite that way. A few weeks ago, I attended an organizing meeting for a group working to commemorate Civil War era events in the town where I now live. The discussion was held within spitting distance of the building where Grant had organized his forces before moving south, but you wouldn't have known it from the conversation. Almost to a person those in attendance agreed that the Southern cause had not been slavery, but some vaguely defined rebellion against growing federal power. The people at this meeting were not alone. A survey in 2010 found nearly half of Americans reluctant to pin the cause of the Civil War on slavery. A CNN poll released earlier this month repeated those results, with 42% of Americans stating that slavery was not the principal cause of the Civil War. Not only that, but a quarter of all Americans – 40% of those in the South – stated that their sympathies lay with the Confederates.
The highest level of support for the Confederate cause was among those who were white, lower income, older, and with no college. If that combination sounds familiar, you won't be surprised to hear that those who named themselves as Tea Party supporters were nearly twice as likely to be pro-Confederate as those who said they opposed the Tea Party. A majority of Tea Party supporters deny that slavery was the main reason for the war.
It should come as no surprise then that the rise of the Tea Party as the driving force within the Republican Party comes alongside increasing talk about state's rights and even calls for secession. When Rick Perry made claims that Texas still holds some right to secede from the United States, historians and legal scholars were quick to point out that there was no foundation for such a position. Perry's statements were a laughing matter for many, but he did not back away from these statements and they made him a hero in Tea Party ranks.
In denying the truth about the motivations behind the war, the conservative core of the Republican Party has revived the romance of the lost cause. Perry's position may seem laughably extreme, but don't expect to keep laughing. It only takes a glance at the budget proposal passed out of the House this week on a party line vote to see that the most ludicrous visions of the Tea Party faithful can move from wish list to legislation with a speed that mimics the motto (inaccurately) attributed to Nathan Bedford Forrest: get thar fustest with the mostest. What seems unthinkable today, can be policy tomorrow. Don't be surprised if the Republican position on state's rights is extended to the right to secede, if not in this election cycle, then certainly by the next.
It would be nice to believe the Tea Party members polishing the stained edifice of the Lost Cause don't have a grasp of history, but the ugly truth is that most supporters of the cause understand its nature as well as anyone. They simply support it for the same reason that the men in 1861 did -- for the same reasons that Alexander Stephens expressed. They support it because they believe that Jefferson was wrong, the nation is wrong, and equality is wrong. It's a shame that such ideas still linger, but the real cause worth fighting for is to defeat ignorance and racism, no matter how many times they appear. There's no less romance in that struggle, and infinitely more justice.
References
CNN Poll
Alexander Stephen's Cornerstone Speech