Originally published on Forbes.com Oct 7th, 2012
In my interview with Green Party Presidential Candidate Jill Stein I sought to learn more about her and to ask her about specific items in the Green Party Platform that I found interesting, mostly tax items, but not all. I think some people might believe that I should have just asked her about important things like the Green New Deal, but I was pretty sure she would work that in regardless of what I asked her. In my mind, if something is important enough for the Green Party to put in its platform, then it is important enough to ask the candidate about, if you find it of interest. This post is about one of the non-tax items specifically:
We call for an end to official support for any remaining symbols of slavery and specifically call for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from all government buildings.
As you will see I framed the issue a little more provocatively. What is really in my mind is why the Green Party is bothering with this controversy, which I will discuss further on. Here is our discussion
In case you skipped the video or had trouble with it, Dr Stein is pretty hard on the Confederate flag putting it in the same category as the swastika, because of its inherent association with slavery. My bottom line conclusion on this is that the Green Party should get out and about a little more, but the thought requires some working out. Here goes.
For Starters I Get What She Is Talking About
If you are ever within a few miles of a Civil War battlefield, you will see a T-Shirt either for sale or being worn that has an image of the Confederate Battle Flag and the statement “If This Flag Offends You, You Need A History Lesson”. Here is a link to one of their history lessons in case you are curious. Well, the people wearing that T-Shirt could probably also use a history lesson. I’ve tried to give the lesson to some friends of mine, but I never have been able to get any of them to take it. The first thing to do is to look at the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union. Here is some of it:
Those States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
You should really read the whole thing to make sure I am not taking it out of context.
There there is this clause in the Constitution of the Confederacy
The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several Sates; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.
That is more or less enough to explain why some people find the Confederate flag offensive. What the offended people may need more than a history lesson is an historiography lesson.
The Lost Cause
Historiography is – the study of the way history has been and is written — the history of historical writing… When you study ‘historiography’ you do not study the events of the past directly, but the changing interpretations of those events in the works of individual historians. The dominant school of Civil War historiography for the first hundred years or so after the war is referred to as the Lost Cause . It is the version that is most deeply embedded in much popular culture. Among the dominant themes are the courage and nobility of Southern soldiers in the face of great odds and the indifference or even dislike of slavery felt by many of them. It is rather a big topic, but probably the way you see it play out more nowadays is in people who are interested in the Civil War being much more focused on the miliary history than any other related topic. The full blown Lost Cause story as it is portrayed in D.W. Griffith’s Birth of A Nation has explicitly racist elements to it, but at least in popular culture the explicit racism was slowly washed out. One of the best illustrations of Lost Cause iconography in popular culture occurs in She Wore A Yellow Ribbon
John Wayne prays over the newly dug grave of one of his troopers, who was serving under an assumed name:
I also commend to your keeping, Sir, the soul of Rome[ Clay, late Brigadier General, Confederate States Army. Known to his comrades here, Sir, as Trooper John Smith, United States Cavalry… a gallant soldier and a Christian gentleman
The rest of the former Confederate troopers then break out the Confederate flag that one of the officer’s wives sewed for them.
The continuing power of the Lost Cause romance can even be seen in a more recent film such as Gettysburg, which in the ending frames shows the fate of the various major characters.
The mention of Lee as “perhaps the most beloved general in American history” is pure Lost Cause. The treatment of Longstreet is not.
The bottom line of all this is that you don’t have to love the Confederate flag to love the people who love the Confederate flag and love what they think it stands for.
Also it is not as if “revisionist” historians totally disproved the elements of Lost Cause historiography. That is not the way the writing of history works. You get different stories not so much by studying the same sources and coming up with different answers to the same questions, although there is some of that. Rather you look at entirely different types of sources and ask different questions.
Why The Green Party Should Examine This More Closely
Having put the statement in their platform, it might be kind of hard to take it out, because you also have to respect what the people who are offended by the flag think it stands for. They should, however, try to look beneath what motivates people to be emotionally attached to the Confederate flag and see if they can find anything Green there. I think they might.
It is pretty clear to me that the Green Party is at least a spiritual descendant of the ultra-abolitionists. That is why I like them so much. The ultras were the people South Carolina was so upset about:
they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States
A hard core ultra was not just against slavery . There was also a mix of pacifism. women’s rights, racial justice, temperance and economic justice. Slavery became the predominant cause though and the one where they could find allies who were opposed not to slavery itself but to its extension. Opposition to the extension of slavery was sometimes based in racism. There were people, not ultra-abolitionists, who did not want any people of African descent in the territories, slave or free. Viewed through this lens the proto-Greens entered into an alliance with the nascent military industrial complex to crush the slave power. They crushed the slave power so well that the people who cherish the memory of their ancestors who resisted the invasion of their homeland by overwhelming industrial might do not want to admit that slavery was really all that important to them.
Reformers always think there is more work to be done, so they sometimes resist seeing how far they come. Slavery was utterly crushed, but the coalition lost interest in racial justice after about a decade or so. The dropped ball was picked up after a long time. Women’s rights and even temperance have had major strides since 1840. When it comes to pacifism and figuring out a way to have the benefits of capitalism without the downside of inequality, they have not done so well. In some ways there has been backward movement. Originally philanthropic organizations like mutual banks, mutual insurance companies and not-for-profit hospitals have been gobbled up. The labor movement is on the ropes.
Maybe it is time that the original deal with the devil in 1860 be reexamined. Here it is worth taking a look at the work of Eugene Genovese, who recently passed away. His life is a rather strange journey from Marxist to conservative Catholic, but that need not concern us for purposes of this discussion.
Genovese concluded that by recognizing human sinfulness and limitation, the critics more accurately described human nature than did other thinkers. The Southern Agrarians, he noted, also posed a challenge to modern American conservatives, with their mistaken belief in market capitalism’s compatibility with traditional social values and family structures. Genovese agreed with the Agrarians in concluding that capitalism destroyed those institutions.
Rather than condemning the Confederate flag, Greens might want to consider engaging with people who thinks it means something different than they do.
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