From someone who teaches AP US History:
If you are confused as to why so many Americans are defending the confederate flag, monuments, and statues right now, I put together a quick Q&A, with questions from a hypothetical person with misconceptions and answers from my perspective as an AP U.S. History Teacher:
Q: What did the Confederacy stand for?
A: Rather than interpreting, let's go directly to the words of the Confederacy's Vice President, Alexander Stephens. In his "Cornerstone Speech" on March 21, 1861, he stated "The Constitution... rested upon the equality of races. This was an error. Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; 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."
Q: But people keep saying heritage, not hate! They think the purpose of the flags and monuments are to honor confederate soldiers, right?
A: The vast majority of confederate flags flying over government buildings in the south were first put up in the 1960's during the Civil Rights Movement. So for the first hundred years after the Civil War ended, while relatives of those who fought in it were still alive, the confederate flag wasn't much of a symbol at all. But when Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis were marching on Washington to get the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965) passed, leaders in the south felt compelled to fly confederate flags and put up monuments to honor people who had no living family members and had fought in a war that ended a century ago. Their purpose in doing this was to exhibit their displeasure with black people fighting for basic human rights that were guaranteed to them in the 14th and 15th Amendments but being withheld by racist policies and practices.
Q: But if we take down confederate statues and monuments, how will we teach about and remember the past?
A: Monuments and statues pose little educational relevance, whereas museums, the rightful place for Confederate paraphernalia, can provide more educational opportunities for citizens to learn about our country's history. The Civil War is important to learn about, and will always loom large in social studies curriculum. Removing monuments from public places and putting them in museums also allows us to avoid celebrating and honoring people who believed that tens of millions of black Americans should be legal property.
Q: But what if the Confederate flag symbol means something different to me?
A: Individuals aren't able to change the meaning of symbols that have been defined by history. When I hang a Bucs flag outside my house, to me, the Bucs might represent the best team in the NFL, but to the outside world, they represent an awful NFL team, since they haven't won a playoff game in 18 years. I can't change that meaning for everyone who drives by my house because it has been established for the whole world to see. If a Confederate flag stands for generic rebellion or southern pride to you, your personal interpretation forfeits any meaning once you display it publicly, as its meaning takes on the meaning it earned when a failed regime killed hundreds of thousands of Americans in an attempt to destroy America and keep black people enslaved forever.
Q: But my uncle posted a meme that said the Civil War/Confederacy was about state's rights and not slavery?
A: "A state's right to what?" - John Green
Q: Everyone is offended about everything these days. Should we take everything down that offends anyone?
A: The Confederacy literally existed to go against the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the idea that black people are human beings that deserve to live freely. If that doesn't upset or offend you, you are un-American.
Q: Taking these down goes against the First Amendment and freedom of speech, right?
A: No. Anyone can do whatever they want on their private property, on their social media, etc. Taking these down in public, or having private corporations like NASCAR ban them on their properties, has literally nothing to do with the Bill of Rights.
Q: How can people claim to be patriotic while supporting a flag that stood for a group of insurgent failures who tried to permanently destroy America and killed 300,000 Americans in the process?
A: No clue.
Q: So if I made a confederate flag my profile picture, or put a confederate bumper sticker on my car, what am I declaring to my friends, family, and the world?
A: That you support the Confederacy. To recap, the Confederacy stands for: slavery, white supremacy, treason, failure, and a desire to permanently destroy Selective history as it supports white supremacy.
It’s no accident that:
You learned about Helen Keller instead of W.E.B, DuBois
You learned about the Watts and L.A. Riots, but not Tulsa or Wilmington.
You learned that George Washington’s dentures were made from wood, rather than the teeth from slaves.
You learned about black ghettos, but not about Black Wall Street.
You learned about the New Deal, but not “red lining.”
You learned about Tommie Smith’s fist in the air at the 1968 Olympics, but not that he was sent home the next day and stripped of his medals.
You learned about “black crime,” but white criminals were never lumped together and discussed in terms of their race.
You learned about “states rights” as the cause of the Civil War, but not that slavery was mentioned 80 times in the articles of secession.
Privilege is having history rewritten so that you don’t have to acknowledge uncomfortable facts.
Racism is perpetuated by people who refuse to learn or acknowledge this reality.
You have a choice. - Jim Golden
The perspective as an AP U.S. History Teacher is oddly devoid of certain facts and reads more like feelings and opinions. One does have to wonder if this type of education is why the youth in this country come across as ignorant idiots. Let’s remedy the omissions with facts in 2 parts since there are convoluted issues throughout the writing.
Pretty much the only thing the South and Lincoln ever agreed on were their shared racist views.
On 18 September 1858, during the Lincoln-Douglas debates for the Illinois Senate seat, Lincoln stated, “While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it.
I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.” Lincoln went on to reiterate his racist views several times throughout the debates. He did however also believe they were covered under the Constitution for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The Southern states hated and distrusted Lincoln almost universally over his often stated positions on slavery, state rights (self-government), western expansion and the lingering threat of increasing tariffs. I would remind you that in 1832 South Carolina approved an Ordnance of Nullification, which served notice on the US government that a high tariff would not be tolerated by the State. While slavery was the predominant motivator behind secession, one has only to look at each state’s “Articles of Secession” to also find the issues of States’ Rights and Lincoln’s election included among the multiple grievances raised by the seceding states.
The use of the terms insurgent and treason in reference to the Confederate States.
This would be an opinion not supported by any law in 1860. South Carolina joined the U.S. in 1788 of its own free will and believed it had the right to leave when it chose. Nothing in the original Articles of Confederation or the subsequent Constitution prohibited secession. In fact, the Declaration of Independence specifically states, “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” Even James Madison in 1833 held the opinion that the right of seceding from intolerable oppression is another name only for revolution and affirms an extraconstitutional right to revolt against conditions of intolerable oppression.
Friendly reminder that on 25 December 1865, President Johnson granted unconditional pardons to all Civil War Rebels. Does it remain appropriate then to call them traitors? Are Presidential War Pardons worthless? In the 1930’s the Federal Government also began paying the pensions of Civil War Veterans and Widows.
It took a 5-3 SCOTUS opinion, over a bond issue and after the war ended, in the case of Texas v. White (1868) to rule “unilateral secession unconstitutional, while commenting in that decision that revolution or consent of the states could lead to a successful secession.” To do otherwise would in essence invalidate this country’s secession from British rule and subsequent Revolutionary War.
There’s a reason Lincoln referenced it as a “Southern Rebellion” and not a “Southern Revolt” as a revolt would be legitimizing secession according to our founding documents. Secretary of State Seward and other conservatives expressed great concern to Lincoln that the
slaveholding border states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri could also decide to secede if he became aggressive towards the South. The Confederates attempted multiple times to peacefully clear the Fort and offered safe passage to all Union troops within it but were met with Union delay tactics. South Carolina had made it very clear that any attempts to reinforce Sumter would mean war, yet Lincoln still sent a flotilla of supplies and troops to Sumter because it served his purposes to cause the Confederates to fire the first shot.
Two things are clear in history. From the Confederate point of view it was Northern Aggression and had Lincoln not been elected President the Civil War would not have happened.
No one should ever argue that slavery was anything except abhorrent and needed to cease. Hindsight provides us with 20/20 vision to look upon our historical past with a unified understanding of that fact.
What seems to always get lost is that
75% of Southern families did not own slaves. The Southern Democrat slave holders in charge successfully used fear mongering along with frontier pride and independence to rally up some of the first wave of Southern troops.
Those that joined the fray later did so in response to having their families and farms raped, pillaged and burned and their livestock stolen or slaughtered by Union troops. These men and boys were defending their loved ones and futures. These are some of the Southern ancestors that are remembered in the South, just as the Patriot fathers and grandfathers of the Rebels are remembered for doing the same against the British.
As for the flag, despite
never having historically represented the Confederate States of America as a country, nor having been officially recognized as one of its national flags, the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia and its variants are now flag types commonly referred to as the Confederate Flag. A Politico-Morning Consult poll of June 2020 shows that 44% view it as a symbol of Southern pride while 36% say it is a symbol of racism.
It might also shock some to know that as of 2013 the federal government has spent more than $2 million in the past decade to produce and ship headstones honoring Confederate dead, often at the request of local Confederate heritage groups in the South, and overwhelmingly in Georgia. Going back to at least 2002, the government has provided more headstones for Confederate graves than for Union soldiers' graves. In that time, the Department of Veterans Affairs has provided approximately 33,000 headstones for veterans of the Civil War. Sixty percent of those have been for Confederate soldiers.
TL,DR-Part 1 response to the opinions of the History teacher with facts.
