All over the world, the battle flag of the Confederacy is a sign of independence
from the central state. Ten years ago in the nations of Eastern Europe, for example,
many dissident and revolutionary organizations carried it, showing that they knew
our history better than those in the U.S. who currently protest the flag.
The most recent flare-up was in South Carolina. The football stadium
at the Citadel College was mistakenly built over the remains of 22
Confederate sailors. When this was discovered, they were removed and
reburied in a nearby cemetery. At the ceremony, 2,500 people came to
honor the dead, and the valiant cause for which they fought and died.
Of course Confederate symbolism was everywhere. Confederate monuments
filled the cemetery. The caskets were wrapped in the battle flag. Before
the bodies were lowered into the graves, the flags were carefully folded
and handed to a lady in period costume. Re-enactors let out the rebel
yell. The crowd sang Dixie. It was a glorious occasion, without a dry
eye in the place.
In a normal world, this mass outpouring would be seen as a magnificent display of a
people’s love and respect for their history. But in recent years, this history has been
declared evil, and cast out of American public life. Any unfurling of the flag elicits
cries of racism, even when it is done by black members of Confederate
veteran groups (yes, many blacks proudly fought for the Lost Cause).
Given the size and intrusiveness of the federal government, it’s not
the fault of Southerners that the display of Confederate symbolism takes
on a political meaning very similar to the original one. The more the
feds and affiliated propaganda organs attack the South and its history,
the more they inspire displays of independence, and the growth of
organizations devoted to Southern rights.
It so happens that South Carolina continues to struggle with the
issue of the flag on the statehouse. The NAACP has an on-going economic
boycott against the state, which unfortunately doesn’t mean that the
organization refuses to take South Carolinian money as a part of the
generous federal grants it enjoys.
The grounds of the boycott are as familiar as they are tedious: the Confederate
battle flag is said to represent slavery. Why? The Southern troops were fighting for
states that permitted slavery. But the same could be said about the U.S. flag. It too
was carried by a nation that permitted slavery. Of course slavery isn’t what the
Union flag was primarily intended to represent. So it is with the battle flag, despite
the paranoia of liberals who think evil resides in the heart of everyone
sympathetic to the South.
In fact, only a small number of soldiers in the field came from families that owned
slaves. A quick glance at any of the speeches or letters from any Southern patriot
at the time shows, as multitudes of historians have proven, that the real issue was
freedom. They all believed they were repeating and renewing the ideals
of the original American Revolution.
In particular, the South was fighting for the right not to be
tyrannized by the North, which had captured control of the federal
apparatus of power with the election of Lincoln in 1860, and promised to
impose every manner of economic oppression on states already
disproportionately taxed by the tariff. Given that prospect, the South
decided to exercise its right to secede, one that was widely thought to
be guaranteed by the Constitution.
The right of secession was taught in the constitutional law text used at West Point.
The right was written into several state constitutions when the federal constitution
was ratified. It was threatened by Northern states during the War of 1812 at the
Hartford Convention. Indeed, until the South surrendered, the idea of secession
was seen as the most fundamental guarantee of federalism. Notice that
federalism has been dead ever since the South lost, exactly as that great
defender of the Confederacy, Lord Acton, said it would be.
Opponents of the Confederate flag are quick to point out that these
flags haven’t flown continuously on state houses since the War on the South. They
popped up in the late 1950s and early 1960s during struggles over forced
integration. True indeed, but that doesn’t demonstrate that racism was the motive. The
operative term here is “forced”: just as the Northern troops invaded the South in
war, and then established a military dictatorship, to deny the region its right
to self-government, forced integration was an unconstitutional imposition on the
rights of the South to manage its own affairs.
But haven’t violent hate groups used the flag as a symbol? Yes, and
true Confederates are quick to repudiate them. On the other hand,
symbols as powerful as this one, representing a rebel spirit and
opposition to the ruling regime, are likely to be used by any opposition
group. Those who honor the memory of the Confederacy are no more likely
to let the Klan take their symbol than they are to let liberals blot out
their noble history.
Granted: it would be a lot easier just to surrender and stop honoring
the Confederacy, to pull down the statues, to stop singing Dixie, to
topple the gravestones. But all these represent more than their physical
properties. They show forth the original idea that freedom is worth
fighting for even if the odds are against you, and that it’s worth
remembering and honoring that cause even when it is lost.
It is for this reason that the great philosopher and literary figure
Richard Weaver wrote that “the South is the last non-materialist
civilization in the Western World. It is this refuge of sentiments and
values, of spiritual congeniality of belief in the word, of reverence
for symbolism, whose existence haunts the nation. It is damned for its
virtues and praised for its faults, and there are those who wish its
annihilation. But the most revealing of all is the fear that it gestates
the revolutionary impulse of our future.”
To prevent even the prospect of that gestation is precisely why they
want to take the flag down.
