Day 113. June 21, 1862.
113
no matter what, America wins….
–Saturday 21 –
The sun came up quite bright this morning. Cousin John and May Stones came to our place to attend a Pick nick at the [illeg. looks like cane or cave]. We got ready and started to Canoe Valley to Mrs S. Harnish.* Arrived there in the evenning. Found all well accept Rachel had her shoulder hurt very much from a fall into the Ice house
*Ephraim’s mother-in-law Susanna Keller Harnish, married to Samuel Harnish. Susanna and Samuel had 13 children. They lived at Water Street (still a small unincorporated village) near Ephraim and Mary, in Canoe Valley in Huntingdon County, PA.
Note: By now there must be a betting pool in the Oval Office behind L’s back, how long until he utterly melts down about McClellan:
Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology 1809-1865 Volume III: 1861-1865 C. Percy Powell P. 122
“June 21, 1862: Receives request from Gen. McClellan for permission “to lay before your Excellancy… my views as to the present state of Military affairs throughout the whole country.’”
[Telegram.]
“Washington, June 21, 1862. 6 p. m.
Major-General George B. McClellan.
Your despatch of yesterday (2 p.m.) was received this morning. If it would not divert too much of your time and attention from the army under your immediate command, I would be glad to have your views as to the present state of military affairs throughout the whole country, as you say you would be glad to give them. I would rather it should be by letter than by telegraph, because of the better chance of secrecy. As to the numbers and positions of the troops not under your command in Virginia and elsewhere, even if I could do it with accuracy, which I cannot, I would rather not transmit either by telegraph or letter because of the chances of its reaching the enemy. I would be very glad to talk with you, but you cannot leave your camp, and I cannot well leave here.
A. Lincoln, President.”
Note: Secrecy, now: Any U.S. President’s DISA “Boeing Black” satellite phone that will delete all data then self-destruct if someone tries to break it open. But Trump stays using his unsecured line, an iPhone, with “Russian and Chinese spies eavesdropping on a regular basis,” “even after being told over and over again about the security risk.” Many such cases! Many are saying. This, I imagine, requires some explanation. Which I do not have. As you were. Then Trump tweets, “Story is sooo wrong” and “I like Hard Lines. Just more made up Fake News!” Just visualize, in all his 5’5– though no one knows since he never takes the shoes off– the smug rat-faced Putin straining to make out words like double bogey or a hole in one while he sits on his line at the Kremlin 5,668 miles away, hours before Biden swears in, as a banner floating behind a Cessna along the Mar-a-Lago coast reads, TRUMP YOU PATHETIC LOSER GO BACK TO MOSCOW. Anyway, it’s got epoxy around the casing, & screws, not the plane but the phone, as did Brad Pitt’s, as he talked low into it around those zombies in World War Z. https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2017/01/exclusive-super-secure-presidential-phone-trump-may-not-be-using/134928
Lincoln’s Spies: Their Secret War to Save a Nation Douglas Waller P. 186
“By the third week of June, Lee had assembled the largest army he would ever command– as many as 94,000 combat-ready men– coming the closest he ever would to matching McClellan’s force of about 115,000. Jefferson Davis was confident of success. “A total defeat for McClellan,” he wrote his wife on June 21, “will relieve the Confederacy of its embarrassments in the East.’”
This Hallowed Ground: The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War Bruce Catton P. 137-138
“By the end of the third week in June, McClellan had an effective strength, present for duty in front of Richmond, of approximately one hundred and five thousand men. They were arrayed in secure fieldworks, safe from any direct counterthrust, and although the humid lowland heat was so oppressive that many men had fallen ill and the air was hideous with the odor of bodies still unburied from the Fair Oaks-Seven Pines battles, morale was high. The men understood McClellan’s plan and believed in it: to advance by slow stages, fortifying each gain, wheeling the heavy siege guns forward until finally they could blast the Confederate works out of the way and go on into Richmond.
Lee understood this plan, too, and on the surface it did not appear that there was much he could do to stop it. When he had scraped together the last possible reinforcements (Including Jackson’s men, who finally slipped down from the valley to join him) he had perhaps eighty thousand men. During most of June his total was far short of that, and it could never go any higher. His defensive works were nor nearly as powerful as they were to become two years later. If he was to drive McClellan away he would have to work something like a military miracle.
McClellan’s own hopes were high. During the first three weeks of June his dispatches to the War Department and his letters to his wife (as revealing a set of documents as any general ever wrote) were full of promises. He was always going to make his big move in just two or three more days– as soon as the rains stopped, as soon as so-and-so’s division joined him, as soon as this or that or the other thing was all ready. The two or three days would pass, the rains would stop, the other things would work out right, but nothing would happen. Never could he bring himself to the point of action.
He believed he was horribly outnumbered. He had always believed it– even in the fall of 1861, when Johnston waited in his works at Manassas with no more than half of McClellan’s strength. He had believed in on the peninsula in April, when Johnston was writing scornfully that “no one but McClellan would have hesitated to attack.” He believed it now. Lee, he was convinced, had between one hundred and fifty thousand and two hundred thousand men, possibly more.”
The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History Gary W. Gallagher and Alan T. Nolan, Editors (2000) “The Anatomy of the Myth” Alan T. Nolan P. 17
“Like the apologists who created the “stabbed-in-the-back” myth to explain Germany’s defeat in World War I, Lost Cause spokesmen sought to rationalize the Southern military loss. This presented a confusing and sometimes contradictory set of assertions, the first of which simply manipulated semantics: the Confederates had not really been defeated, they had instead been overwhelmed by massive Northern manpower and materiel. This was presented with a suggestion that the North’s superior resources constituted Yankee trickery and unfairness. Furthermore, the South’s loss was said to be inevitable from the beginning; the fact of loss was somehow mitigated in the myth because it was said that winning had been impossible. If the Confederacy could not have won, it somehow did not lose. On the other hand, the myth asserted that had the South won at Gettysburg, it would have won the war. The loss at Gettysburg was attributed to Lt. Gen. James Longstreet. The “Longstreet-lost-it-at-Gettysburg” thesis was presented in this way by Rev. J. William Jones, secretary of the Southern Historical Society. He wrote that “the South would have won at Gettysburg, and Independence, but for the failure of one man” (emphasis in original).
Another Lost Cause rationale for the loss at Gettysburg was Stonewall Jackson’s death earlier in 1863.”
P. 137-138
“However, no present-day historian has attacked Longstreet’s performance at Gettysburg more than Robert K. Krick. In a volume of essays by various scholars on the second day’s battle, Krick describes Longstreet as “small minded and mean spirited,” with a “tincture of the dullard.” The author quotes Armistead Long of Lee’s staff– “what can detain Longstreet,” Lee said to Long– but places the comment out of the proper chronological sequence on that day. Krick further colors his characterization of Longstreet by using the words “sullen” and “sulking” to indicate Longstreet’s temperament. His portrait of Longstreet is harsh, unleavened by countervailing evidence.”
YouTube Renactment Video Comments, Various:
HUZZAH! 2nd South Carolina!!
reply– They RULE!
“What a bunch of douchebags. Why can’t these guys get a more productive hobby like collecting stamps or feeding squirrels? Being so obsessed with the Civil War and the old South just comes across so tasteless and rednecky. Notice you never see any black people or anyone of color in these silly reenactments. If you’re a person of color, why would you want to be reminded of a time when you weren’t even thought of as human? You were subhuman “property.” It’s only these fat rednecks that are so into this crap. I bet they are stuffing Big Macs and Jumbo Jacks in their war rations.”
reply– “You’re an asshole really”
“How do they know when they get hit? Do they use blanks?”
reply– “Getting hit is up to the honor system. At this scale though, its probably just if you feel like it. And when it comes to the shooting, they ignite the gunpowder in their weapons but they do not load musket (or cannon) balls, so nothing is ejected.
reply– “When it’s a reenactment of an actual battle, we all have a general idea of when to fall/die. In this fight (Pickett’s Charge) about 75% of us were supposed to die @ the fence line immediately after, 10% make it to the wall and 15% retreat alive or wounded. Normally, it’s all for show for the spectators. We make it look good…. or try to lol.
“It’s alright the south has guns and 4×4 trucks that can get across anything. The north has weed and faggots everywhere driving there Prius. Lol I’m just fine being a southerner.”
“Do you ever get a piece and you’re like man I cant wait to”
reply– “Oh, it’s amazing”
“If you ever want to see a bunch of middle aged heterosexual men freaking out over fabric, come to reenactment cuz they’ll be like OMG OMG have you seen my new satinette? I mean it’s really funny.
reply– “That’s cool. I can relate to that.”
reply– “Yeah, it’s fun”
“We will no longer live under Northern tyranny.”
reply– “What specifically has Lincoln done that you disagree with so far?”
reply– “he has taken the rights from the states. A fed gov that is too strong and oversteps its boundary will take away the rights of its citizens. The rights of property, the right to make their own decisions of how they want to live.
reply– “The right to wear woolen clothing on a 90 degree day”
“Oh, hard tack. It’s like beef jerky, just….”
“Oh, they actually ate this, huh?”
“Do they have like any hummus, or?”
“Northern interference”
“South Park brought me here.”
“Would Lincoln have gladly accepted being shot if he was attending a Justin Bieber concert?”
reply– “Oh, I don’t know. I’m not sure he would be @ a Justin Bieber concert.”
“omffg there wasn’t even electricity.”
“where are the black folks?”
“They are all around you, you just don’t see ’em”
“Why do you look like a lesbian librarian?”
“Is your favorite actor John Wilkes Booth?”
“Give me a civil war and I’ll suggest a rap about it”
“I despise rap”
“Cheers: To Slavery”
“Asking Lincoln: Is there any truth to the gay rumors?”
“The nice thing about the Civil War is no matter what, America wins.”
“Americans are pretty good at killing anybody, especially ourselves.”
“It seems like living in the past sucks.”
“Why not solve the war with a dance-off.”
“Hey are you dead?”
“I am a reenactor. We die when we run out of ammo or almost out or we just get too lazy and want to sit down.”
Note: Random, but https://www.facebook.com/110thPennVol/is a European 110th reenactor group, seemingly inactive. Efforts to interview them were unsuccessful. “A group based in the Netherlands and Germany that intends to recreate the 110th Pennsylvania Infantry in the later half of the American Civil War.
We re-enact a company of the 110th Pennsylvania, a Union infantry regiment that was raised in 1861, fighting at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, Petersburg and several other engagements, all the way to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. We picked this regiment not because of some heroic achievements (though it’s long service is definitely a heroic achievement), but because we feel it represents the ‘average soldier’ in the ACW. The 110th did not have the beautiful uniform of a Zouave, nor the reputation of the Iron Brigade; it was a unit like so many others.
We concentrate on the Mid-war period, ’63-’64, but are capable of going out of that frame. Interested in maybe joining up? Maybe just have some questions? Feel free to send this page a message, and we’ll happily reply.”
Note: One “heroic achievement” would be the 110th remains, unless Jackson rises from the dead, the sole Union force to kick his ass (Kernstown), plus the 110th nearly trapped the man June 9, 1862 at Port Republic, which likely would have ended war in the Valley, if not elsewhere too. The 110th also won mention in dispatches. And that near the end of 1862, the 110th has 150 men still hanging on.
The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction Edward L. Ayers P. 335
Note: Henry James on the Lee statue:
“Nine thousand whites of all ages, occupations, and genders dragged, by rope and hand, a new statue of Robert E. Lee to its site in Richmond in 1890. Over a hundred thousand people attended the unveiling three weeks later, the largest ceremony attendant to any Confederate monument. Yet even this, the greatest monument to the Confederacy, could provoke disquieting thoughts. The Lee statue* seemed stranded in anomalous surroundings. “The place is the mere vague centre of two or three crossways, without form and void, with a circle half sketched by three or four groups of small, new, mean houses,” Henry James noted. Lee, his likeness sculpted in Paris, seemed to stare off into the distance, studiously ignoring his crass setting.”
*This Marse Robert is bronze on a granite pedestal, & he & his horse span 26 feet high, 12 feet long, 8 feet wide. 26X12x8= 2496, the year the Rebels concede defeat. At last, at last, 9/8/21, all his 12 tons came down to a count of 3,2,1… & shortly after, he got severed in half. Today (9/8/21) he is “headed to women’s correctional center” on State Route 6.” Too perfect. Are those 3 thousand children rolling in their graves today? The Virginia Flaggers posted a meme: Clint Eastwood with two guns, & the words, “2021 is proof… the south was right in 1861. The Confederate Cross.”
Trump weighed in on the 8th with wishing Lee were resurrected & here. “If only we had Robert E. Lee to command our troops in Afghanistan, that disaster would have ended in a complete and total victory many years ago. What an embarrassment we are suffering because we don’t have the genius of a Robert E. Lee.” 😑
Another ludicrous line from Trump: “….because of his great love of Virginia, and except for Gettysburg, would have won the war.” Various comments that day from the peanut gallery: “Welp. I’m shocked to know Robert E. Lee is not in Afghanistan.” “This makes me mad to no end. Why, the dammed demorats [sic] started the kkk and then they turn around and blame the Republicans, way to go BLM, you all make me sick.” Other comments included gems like, “Carpetbaggers. No shame” and “Grave robbers at work” and “Another photo op for the phony blm movement.” To add insult to just about anyone’s injury a supposed time capsule put in the foundation when Lee went up either went missing or was never placed there when he went up on that horse.
When Lee went up: James Ford Rhodes and his posse of “Southern Vindicationists” (Blight’s term) & the cracked White nationalists, days before the statue was unveiled– in 1907 for the Jefferson Davis one, to unveil it, the UDC had three thousand children to haul the man for two miles using 700-foot long ropes, ritually clapping their hands like circus acrobats later–after which everyone got a piece of the rope maybe about the size of a tampon? If they wanted it? Then the KKK of course had to drop in & burn a cross or two whilst parading about town to sanctify their myths, or something given in that description. Say “participation” when say trophy, because that’s what Confederate monuments are, and because nowhere else across the world does any country do this with hard boulders– make them erupt from Earth’s surface right after a war they purport to glorify in the eternal 2nd place position– all of them like tiny infectious droplets that rise quickly like little islands, larval, which lay eggs that go in thousands of directions, and after a while no one knows how they came to be there, improvidently granted with actual history, yet they have no historical value in & of themselves, just like a statuette of a seal balancing a ball at Wally World, a curved chunk of rock formation. They’re stone chunks, just out of the ground with no value beyond the actual rock they’re carved out of, in from Italy with Mussolini’s breath on them, Lee himself an illicitly entitled slab carved out of dark stone Italy will ship right past the Statue of Liberty on a day with a tailwind, & something gets extended outside the concrete, a voice-over at some point covenanted with a history that seals in White Supremacy in the shade of the statue, an underground tell that grows & becomes something far more compelling than reality. The White men left in the park, in the monuments, haven’t abandoned their pedestals yet, & are not willing to leave the plaque & plinth. In the night they tie their horses then wander town by foot in a white flame reinscription, like an Ordinance of Secession. States’ Rights, the term’s exhaustion, how much further can it go, the term in the elaboration of the legend the set to a play they are all still starring in.
**Most governments of the world would laugh at this dying for an abstraction, an idea. Liberty, the idea of it. Before our times started calling liberty privacy. Or however you consider it, a mass noun we’re all still waiting for like something that breeds in slow or still waters.
The Unwritten War: American Writers and the Civil War Daniel Aaron P. 118
Note: Henry James describes the South in The American Scene (1907), which Daniel Aaron sets up:
“The discrepancy between his expectations and what he found was both poignant and anticlimactic. Once the thought of these cities had made his imagination wince; he had come to savor all of his horrendous associations of the War. What now impressed him was the enormous vacuum it had left. He pondered the absence of visible symbols, “the mercilessly small” mementos of the Confederacy, the pathetic museums and meager public buildings. In contrast to the dense texture of Europe, the emptiness of the Southern scene struck him as all the more vacant, emptier even than the empty North.
This very absence of effect dramatized for him as nothing had before the exploded expectations of the Southern megalomaniacs and their plans for a slave empire with its own values and culture. It had never occurred to them that they were doomed from the start, that the rest of the world would never have recognized the achievements of a parochial slave society. Hence the statue of General Lee dominating the emptiness of Richmond suggested to James “something more than the melancholy of a lost cause. The whole infelicity speaks of a cause that could never have been gained.”
“We talk of the provincial, but the provinciality projected by the Confederate dream, and in which it proposed to steep the whole helpless social mass, looks to our present eyes as artlessly perverse, as untouchable by any intellectual tradition of beauty or wit, as some exhibited array of the odd utensils or divinities of lone and primitive islanders.”
Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture Karen L. Cox P. 65
“The role of children during Confederate monument unveilings was a symbolic endeavor by the UDC to transmit the values of the Confederate generation to future generations of white southerners. The UDC made children a central part of the ritual in an effort to immerse them in the spirit of the Lost Cause. Pulling the cord to unveil a monument, dressing in the colors of the Confederacy, forming a living Confederate flag, and singing “Dixie” were all part of a calculated attempt to impress children with the Lost Cause message of reverence for the southern past.
P. 68
The Confederate monument at Arlington National Cemetery, more than any other built by the UDC, symbolized the South’s longing to be recognized as patriotic by the rest of the nation. This monument, they believed, would serve notice that the region’s defense of state’s rights was not a defense of slavery, but rather evidence of a committment to constitutional principle. It was also intended to serve as a token of reconciliation with the North. For the Daughters, reconciliation could occur only when Confederate men had been vindicated. The federal government had, for all intents and purposes, met the Daughters’ conditions for reconciliation when it allowed the burial of Confederate soldiers in the cemetery and gave the UDC permission to build a monument to honor those soldiers.
P. 87
The UDC’s devotion to impartial history was motivated, to a large degree, by class pride. The Daughters were descendants of the Old South elite and refused to remain idle while historians condemned their fathers. They were unwilling to accept the allegation that slavery was a cruel institution and pledged themselves to defend the region’s people and its past. As one Daughter put it, the organization intended to continue its crusade until “all the world admits that the Confederate soldiers were loyal, brave, gallant men, justified in their construction of constitutional right.” Convincing “all the world” was a difficult task; still, the UDC was committed to perpetuating a benevolent image of their ancestors as kind masters of faithful servants.
The Daughters’ efforts to provide impartial history were first launched by the state divisions, which received some directives from the general organization. Writing correct history required documentation, so in addition to gathering artifacts, the Daughters also collected manuscripts. Preserving documents was important if the UDC was to defend its version of history. “Unless we rouse ourselves,” Mildred Rutherford reported to the Richmond convention in 1899, “most valuable records will slip from our grasp and beyond the proving power of witnesses.”
Note: Uh huh, Mildred, you with a long-handled fan to shoo the past away so far back even God can’t find it, much less 21st century historians.
P. 157-158
After World War I the Daughters did not return to monument building with the same sense of purpose as they had before the war. In fact, the task of monument building as set out by the founders was nearly complete. By the 1920s there were increasingly fewer Confederate men and women who needed the UDC’s assistance. The Daughters’ success, as much as the passage of time, led the UDC to a change in emphasis. Textbooks in the South’s public schools now emphasized “true” history, and the Daughters’ work with children continued outside of the classroom; in 1917 the Children of the Confederacy became the organization’s official auxiliary. The UDC had also earned respect as a national patriotic organization, as evidenced by their partnerships with other voluntary associations during the war. The Daughters interpreted their success and expressions of respect as vindication. White southerners were praised for their patriotism without having to relinquish their belief that the Confederate cause was a just cause. Because patriotism was integral to the doctrine of states’ rights, southern whites regarded northern administration of the South’s patriotism as evidence of vindication.
Vindication for the Confederate generation, of course, had been the primary goal of the UDC from its founding in 1894. Every monument placed in a courthouse square, every veteran or widow cared for, every history book removed from a library or school for being biased against the South, and every chapter of the Children of the Confederacy formed was done to vindicate Confederate men and women. World War I, moreover, gave the UDC its best opportunity to vindicate the Confederate generation, and they capitalized on it. “In this crisis in our country’s national life,” Poppenheim wrote during the war, “we must give our best and a best worthy of our Confederate lineage.” When the war ended, the Daughters, at least in their own minds, were confident they had accomplished this task “without sacrificing a single principle.” For the first time in the twenty-five years since the UDC had formed, the Daughters genuinely believed that vindication for the Confederate generation had been achieved, as the feelings of reunion blossomed between the North and the South.
National reconciliation had been achieved effectively on the South’s terms, and certainly on the Daughters’ terms. The North had accepted the Lost Cause narrative as fact, which was an essential element of reunion. That narrative, perpetuated most vigorously by the UDC, was, at its core, about preserving white supremacy. Reconciliation had allowed white southerners to return to the American fold as patriots, not traitors, one of the desired results of the Daughters’ work. For African-Americans, however, the result of this reunion would add decades onto their journey for freedom.”
Letter re the laying wreath habit they got themselves there (yes, the link looks cut off):
https://www.hnn.us/article/dear-president-obama-please-dont-honor-the-arlingt
Reverend James Power Smith, last surviving member of Jackson’s staff, 1907 (as quoted on The Virginia Flaggers Facebook page, June 2020):
“There was no surrender at Appomattox, and no withdrawal from the field which committed our people and their children to a heritage of shame and dishonor. No cowardice on any battlefield could be as base and shameful as the silent acquiescence in the scheme which was teaching the children in their homes and schools that the commercial value of slavery was the cause of the war, that prisoners of war held in the South were starved and treated with a barbarous inhumanity, that Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee were traitors to their country and false to their oaths, that the young men who left everything to resist invasion, and climbed the slopes of Gettysburg and died willingly on a hundred fields were rebels against a righteous government.”
Note: It’s a cheap word to them, “surrender.”
The Past is a Foreign Country David Lowenthal P. 368-369
“Yet despite their apparent veracity, relics and records are increasingly known to have been altered. The survivals that form our views of the past are now seen as continually reshaped. And widespread awareness of manipulation makes the past seem in some ways more like the present. The same forces that affect new creations impinge on what is left of the old; growing demands to supplement a missing or deficient tangible heritage, growing capacities to transport and to copy vestiges lead us to expect our past to be one remade for us, rather than part of the past as it originally was.”
Note: Edward Carmack’s dedication speech June 3, 1907 at the Jefferson Davis monument (Monument Avenue) in Richmond, Virginia. Carmack was U.S. Senator to Tennessee from 1901-1907 (lost race for Governor; thereafter became editor of what’s now The Nashville Tennessean, endorsed several lynchings & the reason Ida B. Wells (“get the black winch” – Wells’ newspaper office got torched) left the South for 3 decades). His prominent statue at the entrance to the Tennessee State Capitol was expropriated by BLM protesters just 4 days after George Floyd’s (2020) murder. Carmack was shot to death in an “editorial feud” 4 days after his 50th birthday.
“Standing in the presence of this noble and impressive monument, we proudly front the world and proclaim to the present and the coming time: ‘This was our hero and his cause was ours.’ Whether for chieftain or for private, we make no confession of wrong, we plead for no forgiveness of error, we ask no tenderness of the future historian, no charity from the enlightened judgment of mankind. If there are those who are shocked by such sentiments, let me add that this reunited country will not be best defended by conscious criminals crawling for mercy at the victor’s feet.”
Note: For a few statues that actually mean something, there’s an African American Civil War Memorial & Museum in D.C., dedicated in 1998 “to correct a great wrong in history that largely ignored the enormous contributions of the 209,145 members of the United States Colored Troops.” https://www.afroamcivilwar.org
Note: In 2021, a group calling itself “White Lies Matter, Inc.” will claim to have stolen the $500k Jefferson Davis Memorial Chair from a Selma cemetery; the ransom was for the UDC to hang an Assata Shakur banner on its building, headquartered in Richmond, from 1pm April 9th to 1pm April 10th. “Failure to surrender to this request by the aforementioned time will result in the chair being carved into a toilet. See enclosed photograph.” On the banner, Shakur’s quote: “The rulers of this country have always considered their property more important than our lives.” The theft was confirmed by Selma police and the D.A., but a woman answering the line at headquarters called it “fake news.” Of course she did. 3 feet tall, weighing several hundred pounds of stone, it was “presented” in 1893 by “The Ladies of Selma.” All that remains in its place is a slab with a historic marker like a haint removing a curse no one can fathom what the cause of was.
Note: Along the lines of traitors: at scvasj67.org, you can find the Sons of Confederate Veterans mission statement from 1906:
“To you, Sons of Confederate Veterans, we will commit the vindication of the cause for which we fought. To your strength will be given the defense of the Confederate soldier’s good name, the guardianship of his history, the emulation of his virtues, the perpetuation of those principles which he loved and which you love also, and those ideals which made him glorious and which you cherish.”
Time passes, but the SCV keeps at it next century:
“If you are interested in perpetuating the ideals that motivated your Confederate ancestor, the SCV needs you. The memory and reputation of the Confederate soldier, as well as the motives for his suffering and sacrifice, are being consciously distorted by some in an attempt to alter history. Unless the descendants of Southern soldiers resist those efforts, a unique part of our nations’ cultural heritage will cease to exist. If you would like more information about the Sons of Confederate Veterans,*** call 1-800-MY-SOUTH, or 1-800-MY-DIXIE. Our ancestor may have been out-numbered, out-gunned, and out-supplied: BUT NEVER OUT FOUGHT.” “Adopted children are not eligible for membership by virtue of the adoptive parents’ bloodline, but solely by virtue of their natural or biological parents” in the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Also, “No Confederate ancestor who took the Oath** of Allegiance before April 9, 1865, shall be eligible to be used for application for membership. If proof of further Confederate service is available, thereby nullifying the Oath of Allegiance, the ancestor shall be considered for approval.”
Note: After the 2015 Mother Emmanuel Church massacre in 2015 in Charleston, Tennessee’s Sons of Confederate Veterans license plate orders also shot up. SCV pulled in a cool 60k from the plates in the 2017-2018 fiscal year ($57,700). Proceeds go to the battle in its lawsuit against the city of Memphis for the public land sale which was intended to remove a Nathan Bedford Forrest and Jefferson Davis statues. So the funds collected by the state for the plates are turned into funds used to sue the very state that raised the funds. Recently the SCV put $12,000 toward restoration of Sam Davis’ overcoat (Confederate soldier hung by the Union). In Tennessee July 13 is celebrated as “Nathan Bedford Forrest Day,” January 19 is “Robert E. Lee Day,” and June 3 is “Confederate Decoration Day.” Up until 1969, the three days were legal holidays in the state. Each year the Governor has the “duty” to signs the proclamation reconfirming these days into law. According to Tennessee Code 15-2-101 “The governor shall invite the people of this state to observe the days in schools, churches, and other suitable places with appropriate ceremonies expressive of the public sentiment befitting the anniversary of such dates.” Thus far, Democrat lawmakers have failed in efforts to remove these days of observance, and to remove the Forrest bust at the state Capitol rotunda (installed 1978) Protests by Black Tennesseans for Action were met by burned crosses. The year after, it was “damaged after someone struck it in the head with a blunt object.” In January 2019, the State Capitol Commission vote was 7 to 5 to keep Forrest where he is.
“More Tennesseans are sporting confederate license plates than ever before” says the news, & Virginia allowed motorists to sport the SCV; however, in 2015, in Virginia the emblem on plates is not longer allowed, a state decision currently contested in court. See also: Turns out, removing “war memorials” in Virginia is illegal due to a 1950s regulation about disturbing or interfering with “any monuments or memorials so erected.” Therefore, they keep Lee sitting there on his high horse in Charlottesville. Virginia has 242 standing Confederate monuments, Texas 209. In the U.S. Capitol building, eight Confederate figures stand, many in uniform. Soon enough, the 1950s statute will be a century old… will it still stand? Coins and stamps, military bases, various facilities, ships, multi-state highways, schools, streets, you name it; they get you from the dead don’t they. Always they come back for you one form or another. The Southern Poverty Law Center has an interactive world map of 1,728 “place names & other symbols still in place honoring the Confederacy” where you can become surprised there’s not a Confederate monument in Libya or Iceland. 110 Confederate symbols have been removed since the Charleston attack; SPLC tracks by Feature Name, Unique ID, Honoree, City, County, State, Side, Coordinates, Symbol Type, Symbol Category, Sponsor, Year Dedicated. You have to ask why they’re there. Do you not. Where does authority lie for these statues? SPLC says 700 Confederate monuments & statues were put up quite a while after the war implicitly and explicitly sponsor White Supremacy, moves that ideology into physical reality, stone & concrete hi jinks. Everything is present from the start & they meant the things they had to say to the last. Initiation into the North Carolina SCV in 2020 includes raising one’s right hand to “pledge of allegiance to the Confederate States of America and the cause for which our Confederate ancestors fought and died to uphold.” One must swear “I do” to gain membership. “So help me God.” Then, “Welcome home.”
Note: Should you be a member of “Virginia Officers Division of Confederate Veterans” there’s a page where you can post your Rebel ancestor’s picture which then, combining features of you with your ancestor (courtesy of time-travel software which plays tricks with the trailing shadow) the men of 160 years ago, who are time-darkened, in one endless moment the line snaps and he becomes disinterred, becomes you, & you’ll begin to get bleed-through from the screen, the morphing into the depths of the pixels comes awake, it’s him washing into you across the generations, into your own face on the screen, & now you are him with that rifle slung over your shoulder, not a laptop bag. The end & beginning were always there like something in the wind, gone yet returned. It’s wild how you can see the morphing, same cheek bones, eyes, that tousle of hair. It’s something carried in the blood.
And their Sons of Veterans Mission Statement can set you back a century and a half if you’re so inclined, & here you can take the Salute to the Confederate Flag, which goes I salute the Confederate Flag with affection, reverence and undying devotion to the Cause for which it stands; you can peruse the document “The South Not Responsible for Slavery” with, “Undoubtedly England, Spain and the Dutch were primarily and largely responsible for the introduction and the earlier importation of slaves to this country….” and, quoting Senator John Daniel of VA., “Slavery was thrust on the South an uninvited, aye, a forbidden guest. The institution of slavery was not of their making: it had been thrust upon their fathers against their violent opposition.” Yet they refused to free the slaves who had been “thrust upon their fathers” until forced by the side that kicked their ass.
Note: Ten percent had “major rebellions” on cross-Atlantic voyages the “cargo” ships took, Edward Ayers says, that of the 12.5 million people who were taken from Africa, 10.7 million arrived in the Americas.
Civilwartalk.com/threads/what-would-they-say.
“Bdw1964
Buda, TX
I am a descendant of three CSA soldiers and one Union cavalryman. I joined the local SCV group in my town, in the naive belief that I could indulge my personal interest in the history of the Civil War. I attended two meetings and have never been back since. The whole singing Dixie and saluting the Confederate Battle Flag, et al, was beyond bizarre in the 21st century. The discussions did not at all focus upon real history, but were a strange commingling of dislike of Lincoln and Obama. It reminded me of that scene from Oh Brother Where Art Thou, with the Klan oompah loompah singing.”
“byron ed
Midwest
And while we’re on the topic of puffery, can you believe that, in 2019, the imperative of the SCV is still “we will commit the vindication of the cause for which we fought.” Outrageous really. What exactly do you suppose is meant by “vindication” in 2019? In other words what is supposed to happen in satisfying “vindication.” Though the “cause” to be “vindicated” is cagily left undefined, c’mon everybody knows what it is: “Slavery was right” or in SCV-speak: “The preservation of liberty and freedom.”
My SCV imperative would instead be: “…we will commit to honor the sacrifice and dedication of the Confederate Soldier,” but that’s neither here nor there.”
“GwilymT
Pittsburgh
I think a confederate soldier would be surprised to find out that he was fighting for lower tariffs and a federal soldier would be surprised he was fighting to free slaves.”
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found all well accept Rachel….
Don’t forget the intentionality in all this smashing past & present together, the northern statues that all face south, the southern statues that face north like competing origin myths. There’s something there they don’t want you to see, for the same reason people scratch the eyes out of photographs. Angle of the head, tip of the hat, the eye still having a pupil set dead staring in that stone. They stay there atop pedestals, each daring the other to step down first, start toward that direction until shot down or captured. Until then, just put the neo-confeds & their stunted understanding in period costumes to rent out Chucky Cheese on Confederate Rememberance [sic] Day. Slick & parodic displays of willful vacuity, those who live inside their own specious logic in a clear silhouette of stuntedness & a proprietary sense of the ground where the footsteps start up again, but you know they never really stopped anyway because Tiki torches stay lit, get passed hand to hand across generations, a century-by-century malignancy in the hands of dudes with typical clipper ship* tattoos long ago deaccessioned from the Crown, & the crossed bars of the “confederate flag tattos for the ladies.” The South still thinks it can rise in the sky if buried in a Confederate uniform. Some still want buried in those clothes. Think they’ll get resurrected. Were they that far off?
Most statues were erected three decades after the war, from 1894 to 1914. Some of them were simply inscribed “Confederate Dead.” For a while, they placed ’em in cemeteries, but then they got bold, used city monies, playing with House money now; Edward Ayers: “While early postwar monuments were located in cemeteries, the new monuments went up in the center of town; funeral urns and obelisks gave way to statues of solitary Confederate soldiers, vigilant forever as they faced to the north.”
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