Saturday 23 January 2021

America's Tragic Flirtation with the Confederacy

 As a boy growing up in Chicago, I fell in love with the Confederacy. It seems strange now. I was living in the state of Illinois, the "Land of Lincoln" as it says on the license plates. The "Great Emancipator" was also my hero. 

How could I venerate the Confederacy, then? I saw little lead Civil War soldiers in a toy shop. I bought boxes of Confederate ones because I liked their uniforms better than the Union ones. 

They were more colorful and more “romantic” than the Yankee uniforms. Ironically toy soldiers of both sides were made in the UK by a company called Britains. [Image: Confederate Soldiers by Britains. Mine had the red caps and a cannon. These look plastic, but mine were lead. ]



I thought it was sad that such gallant men had lost the Civil War. The dashing General Robert E. Lee should have had the ultimate victory, I thought. He would have, I concluded, if those nasty Union Generals Grant and Sherman hadn't played dirty. [Below: Lee in martial pose; Lee with "Stonewall" Jackson. ]







That is about the level of thinking that still exists in too many parts of America today, though with less innocence than my thinking at the time. I was an ignorant little boy, with malice toward none. I knew nothing about the reality of slavery, the curse of racism, or the true causes of the war.

Later I learned about those realities, and the viciously racist society that followed so-called emancipation. I learned that the greatest tragedy of the Civil War was not that the wrong side won, but that the victors did not go nearly far enough to ensure equality and justice. 

The attempted "Reconstruction" of the former Confederate states (1867-1876) was abandoned too early, leaving southern white elites in firm control. They passed and enforced rigid segregationist laws, violating the human rights of the emancipated. For decades, most people in other states looked the other way or were openly sympathetic. Many took part in bloody race riots, especially in the 1920s, in places like Chicago, Detroit, and Tulsa.

Between Reconstruction and the 1960s racist and racialist ideas flourished in the USA, with little if any check from government. Lynchings became common events, with the victims numbered in the thousands. 

Many films and stories, such as Gone with the Wind and Birth of a Nation, romanticized the “Old Plantation South” and glorified “The Lost Cause” of the Confederacy. The phrase "Moonlight and Magnolias" summed up this misplaced nostalgia. 




Defacto segregation was a fact of life in non-southern states. In the 1940s, Americans, white and black, fought a war against fascism and racism abroad, but nothing much changed at home, at least right away. 

Yet some minds were changing. Significant institutional and legal change, accompanied by many a tragedy, finally came with the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. 

Unfortunately, much of the progress made then was rolled back during Donald Trump’s neo-fascist presidency, which brought violent racism once again out of the American closet. Under Trump, it began to seem as if the Confederacy had won the Civil War. 

Trump's defeat in 2020 may herald the Confederacy's ultimate fall.  The outcome of the current January 6 hearings on the Capitol Riots of 2021 may prove pivotal. Or not. Let us hope they do not end as Reconstruction did. 


   

No comments:

Post a Comment