A Southern Heritage, Impressive and Unstained

In the debate over the Confederate flag, its defenders commonly make two claims:

1.     The flag is central to southern heritage

2.     The flag has no racist connotations, because the Civil War was not about slavery, but about states rights.

I’m not arguing #2, because I think it’s evident from innumerable statements by southern individuals and legislatures that the only “right” the South was defending was the right to own slaves.

            But there are two other more interesting points.  As James Loewen has pointed out (http://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths-about-why-the-south-seceded/2011/01/03/ABHr6jD_story.html) the South was energetically  resisting the rights of the North by demanding the return of fugitive slaves, and seeking federal help, both judicially and militarily, to abrogate the rights of states like Massachusetts to enforce its own laws.  (There’s an interesting parallel: English courts decreed in 1722 that a slave who stepped onto English soil was thereby free. 

            But on to #1, where the story get more complicated and leves room for a different discussion.  Here’s another side: yes, that flag flew for four years, and meant a great deal to some Southerners.  But without it, the South would have 240 years of pre-1861 heritage, and 150 of post-1865 heritage, including enough history for any region or even country.

Quick, make a list of the greatest Southerners in American history before 1861.  Then erase those who lived under the Confederate flag.  Aside from Jefferson Davis and the Civil War generals, you’d still have the vast majority of the list.  For example, you’d have 17 signers of the Declaration of Independence, including its author.  Also 25 delegates to the Constitutional Convention, 8 presidents, the consensus greatest Supreme Court Chief Justice, Senators Calhoun and Clay, Dolly Madison, Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Stephen F. Austin, and on and on.

Odd notes: as governor of Texas Sam Houston refused to support secession and was removed from office; and Andrew Johnson, the last Southern president before LBJ (okay, Woodrow Wilson if we’re going by birth state), was  a diehard Unionist and the only Senator from the South to remain in the Congress during the war. Only President John Tyler  saw and supported secession, for the last nine month of his life (April 1861 to January 1862).

Then there’s the 150 years after the flag came down, during which a president from a former slave state integrated the U.S. military, four Supreme Court justices from former slave states voted to end school desegregation in 1954, a Texan pushed through the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, and southern presidents have appointed more than 2/3 of all African-American cabinet members.  Oh, and the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to Carter, Gore, and the Virginia-born Wilson.

Finally, without the Confederate flag “Southern heritage” would include Frederick Douglass, George Washington Carver, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, MLK Jr., Rosa Parks, Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy, etc. etc., not to mention at least half of America’s greatest musicians.

So let’s agree with Southerners that the Confederate flag represents 1% of its history, just as the Nazi flag represents 8% of the history of a unified Germany.  Then let the South join the rest of us in celebrating the other 99%.