Mythology masquerading as history
Pondering why the spoils go to the losers of an insurrection
Last week, the Republican president of the Florida Senate killed a bill that would have punished local officials who oversaw the removal of Confederate monuments from their municipalities. The bill was just one of many promoted by Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who prides himself on remaking Florida into the state “where woke goes to die.”
The bill might have made it to the Senate floor for a vote were it not for a public hearing of the Community Affairs Committee, where a witness, attorney Charles Patrick, speaking in support of the bill, criticized the actions of those who sought to remove Confederate monuments from the public square as “part of the cultural war being waged against white society.” The comments took Republicans and Democrats by surprise and prompted one Republican senator to seek clarification from the witness:
“In supporting White culture, or supporting the concept or the need to push white supremacy is what I heard. White culture, white supremacy. I just want to clarify that was your intent in your public testimony here today,” Senator Alexis Calatayud (R-Miami) said addressing Patrick, to which he responded, “Yes, it was.”
The Democrats on the committee walked out in protest, and the Republicans complained that the bill had nothing to do with embracing the Confederacy or white supremacy and that their sponsorship of the bill was being misrepresented. Although they voted unanimously to move the bill forward, Senate President Kathleen Passidomo blocked it, saying, “I'm not going to bring a bill to the floor that is so abhorrent to everybody.”
Despite what happened in Florida, there is a concerted effort in many state legislatures to prevent the removal of Confederate monuments.
In the past decade, a USA TODAY review found, legislators in at least 20 states have proposed more than 100 bills that would limit changes to hundreds of Confederate monuments across the United States. Some of these “statue statutes” propose harsh financial penalties or even criminal charges against municipalities that remove monuments. Others would create complex approval systems that ultimately let state leaders decide the fate of monuments.
To obscure their apparent intent to protect Confederate monuments, the bills have euphemistic titles like “Veterans’ Heritage Protection Act,” “Soldiers' and Heroes' Monuments and Memorials Protection Act,” or “Cultural History Artifact Management and Patriotism Act.” The Florida bill was called the “Historic Florida Monuments and Memorials Protection Act.”
Proponents of these bills claim they are not endorsing the insurrection of the southern states that was the Civil War, the bloodiest in American history, nor the causes of chattel slavery and white supremacy that the war was fought to defend. Instead, they declare them to be about preserving American history. This has always raised a question, and I’ve never found a satisfactory answer. Let me highlight the question for emphasis:
In what nation are the losers of an insurrection allowed to honor the insurrection by erecting monuments, flying flags, and naming buildings, roads, cities and towns, and national military installations after the leaders of the failed insurrection?
In 1891, Missouri Senator George Graham Vest, himself a former Confederate legislator, complained, “In all revolutions, the vanquished are the ones who are guilty of treason, even by the historians, for history is written by the victors and framed according to the prejudices and bias existing on their side.”
However, he underestimated the South's intense desire to recast their treason as an act of honor against an oppressive state and the North’s weariness over the residual conflict, their longing for peace, however superficial, and their indifference to the consequences of letting the South rewrite history.
Thus began the creation of the mythology that came to be known as the Lost Cause. This noble moniker masks an insidious, inhumane, and un-American worldview that elevates one people group over another, in contravention of the declaration that “all men are created equal.” In 1917, after U.S. Army Brigadier General Joseph E. Kuhn named several of its newly established training installations after Confederate generals, a great propaganda victory for the Lost Cause, a publication dedicated to former Confederate soldiers defended their beliefs:
After Kuhn’s plan was adopted, Confederate Veteran published an essay titled “Why Did the Confederate States Fight?” Its conclusion was that the war was not about slavery. Instead, “every Confederate soldier, however poor in worldly goods, cherished in every fiber of his nature this sense of race superiority as his patent of nobility, and instinctively he felt that he was fighting to maintain that superiority against a party intent on making the negro his equal. He cared nothing for slavery, but he fought for his own race standing.”
How is it that the United States government tacitly encouraged the promulgation of a worldview centered around white supremacy and the legal and extrajudicial oppression of an entire people group based on the color of their skin? For starters, the federal government had already demonstrated it lacked the endurance and will to bring the former insurrectionist states into compliance with the law of the land when it withdrew the last U.S. troops from the South in 1877. The Compromise of 1877, intended to resolve a disputed presidential election, effectively ended Reconstruction and left Black people to the whims of an embittered and angry white population seeking retribution for their lost status and willing to resort to any means necessary to regain it. Their promises to protect the civil liberties of Black people were abandoned, and Jim Crow laws, the domestic terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan, lynchings, and the literal eradication of some Black communities from the map intimidated Black people into submission or drove them out of the South altogether in one of the most significant population shifts in U.S. history, referred to in history as the Great Migration.
In 1917, the U.S. Army was establishing training camps for troops preparing to fight in World War I, and they needed bases in the South to accommodate year-round training. Therefore, they had to find a way to persuade the Southern states to allow U.S. troops back on their soil. This requirement, combined with a president sympathetic to the Lost Cause, native Virginian Woodrow Wilson, led the U.S. government to another compromise: naming these training installations after Confederate generals. While one op-ed in a northern newspaper lamented, “Since 1861 to 1865, the South has won back all that it lost in that memorable struggle except its slaves,” the die was cast. The U.S. government, tired of policing the South, abandoned the Black people they had set free in the Civil War and added insult to injury by facilitating the South’s intention to elevate their insurrection to a noble quest and lionize its leaders. Those intentions were the motivation behind Confederate monuments springing up in town centers and on courthouse lawns across the South. They were placed in prominent locations to remind everyone which populace was dominant and which should stay in its place.
Likely, you didn’t read any of what I’ve just recounted in a public school history text. I am not a historian but a history student, and much of what I’ve learned over the years has been outside of the classroom, and of my own volition. I once believed that history was a pure discipline because it was impossible to dispute events that occurred and everyone witnessed. I have realized how easy it is for people to witness the same thing and arrive at diametrically opposite conclusions, depending on their perspective, motivations, and ability to shape the narrative and persuade others of their version of events. That is how, as a child, I was quickly taken in by the Lost Cause.
For example, I used to admire Confederate General Robert E. Lee, portrayed as a man of great virtue and nobility in history books. They said he was conflicted about slavery but devoted to his home state of Virginia and fought bravely but surrendered with dignity and grace. However, I learned later that, by some accounts, he was a cruel slavemaster and, in the wake of the Civil War, did not condone equality for Black people and said before a congressional committee that he hoped Virginia would one day be “rid of them.” In a letter to his wife before the war, he characterized slavery as a necessary evil that placed on white people the burden of civilizing their slaves and converting them to Christianity:
In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly interested in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is Known & ordered by a wise & merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy. This influence though slow is sure. The doctrines & miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to Convert but a small part of the human race, & even Christian nations, what gross errors still exist! While we see the Course of the final abolition of human slavery is onward, & we give it the aid of our prayers & all justifiable means in our power we must leave the progress as well as the result in his hands who Sees the end; who Chooses to work by slow influences ; & with whom two thousand years are but a single day.
The similarities between Lee’s statements in his day concerning the pace of abolition and the statements of moderate white people in the South in the 1960s about the urgency of civil rights reform are striking. Note the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s recounting of the reticence of moderate whites to join in the fight for racial justice:
First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail was written in response to an op-ed in the local newspaper by local white clergy criticizing the civil rights movement as an unnecessary provocation from “outside agitators.” When the white clergy suggested, as Lee did over a century prior, that Black people should wait for change to come, King didn’t hide his disgust:
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
If you have never read the entire letter, I encourage you to do so to have your assumptions shaken about the civil rights movement and the intentions of those who fought ferociously to maintain white superiority and Black subjugation.
While credible historians widely regard the Lost Cause as misguided and misleading mythology, its pervasiveness during the formative years of millions of Americans and its adoption in formal history texts used in schools around the country have allowed it to shape policy decisions and cultural conversations to the present day. I once shared a story about how the academic department I served at Liberty University decided to host a gathering at The Museum of the Confederacy to begin the school year and how uncomfortable I was as the only Black person on staff, only to be surprised at what I experienced:
Before the start of the 2014-15 academic year at Liberty University, the Helms School of Government held a social event at the Museum of the Confederacy in Appomattox, reserving it for the evening so the faculty and staff and their families could gather, enjoy a potluck dinner, and tour the museum afterward. The museum staff entertained us with musket firings, games, and marching demonstrations, and answered questions about the many exhibits.
As the only Black faculty or staff member at the time, I suppose I could have politely declined, but these were my friends and colleagues, and we had not had a gathering like this since my family and I first arrived at Liberty University in 2011. I looked forward to the food and fellowship and figured I would tolerate the rest of it. Although I love history, I figured that a museum in Appomattox, Virginia dedicated to the Confederate States of America might present a different perspective on the Civil War than the one I had come to believe.
I was pleasantly surprised, however, by the objectivity and balance of the exhibits and the narratives accompanying them, and the accounts presented in the words of those who lived during those times were particularly moving. The exhibits end with a display recognizing the 1960s civil rights movement and offering a poignant acknowledgment that we are still dealing with the central issues of the Civil War in our current time and have yet to truly close the chapter on a terrible and defining moment in our nation’s history.
I sought out the education director of the museum afterward to tell her how impressed I was with their exhibits and the even-handed way in which they handled a sensitive and controversial topic. She said they are educators and historians first and foremost, and they strive to let the events speak for themselves, leaving the patrons of the museum to draw their own conclusions. I told my boss during and after the tour how much I appreciated their approach, and he was relieved because he had some reservations about how comfortable I might be in such a place. Knowing that he was concerned made me feel valued, and an evening I approached with some trepidation turned out well.
If only the “anti-woke” politicians had such integrity. If state legislators were sincere about preserving history, they would have no issue with these monuments being displayed in a museum, along with a description of why they were erected in the first place. The evidence proves that these statues were intended for more than just memorializing:
The biggest spike in Confederate memorials came during the early 1900s, soon after Southern states enacted a number of sweeping laws to disenfranchise Black Americans and segregate society. During this period, more than 400 monuments were built as part of an organized strategy to reshape Civil War history. And this effort was largely spearheaded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who sponsored hundreds of statues, predominantly in the South in the early 20th century — and as recently as 2011.
From around 1920 to the early 1940s, there was a second wave of statue building. Jane Dailey, professor of American history at the University of Chicago, said this period of construction coincided with more Black Americans’ fighting for civil rights and pushing back against widespread lynchings in the South. “You have Black soldiers who have just fought for their country [in World War I] and fought to make the world safe for democracy, coming back to an America that's determined to lynch them,” said Dailey. “[T]hose were very clearly white supremacist monuments and are designed to intimidate, not just memorialize.”
At best, the politicians seeking to block the removal of Confederate monuments are making a cynical play for brownie points with an intellectually incurious electorate that doesn’t care to learn the history behind these monuments. At worst, they endorse the idea that these monuments are essential to the preservation of white supremacy, as Charles Patrick stated at the public hearing.
As I’ve watched the debate rage over Confederate icons and their place in the 21st century, my position is pretty straightforward. Without entering the “heritage or hate” quagmire, the questions I had to ask myself were, first, do Americans have the right to display such symbols? Second, is God glorified when His people promote their allegiance to the Confederacy?
The answer to the first question is easy. The display of Confederate symbology is a form of expression. Whether it’s a matter of law (i.e., the First Amendment) or custom, Americans can express themselves, even if others take offense. However, I would add that this applies to private displays only, and the question of whether there should be Confederate flags or statues on public land is altogether different. I also believe there is a difference between education and celebration, and acknowledging the sins of our past does not require a public place of honor for their icons.
The second question, however, goes right to the heart of The Great Commandant:
Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)
Is it conceivable for a Christian to honor the Confederacy and what it represents to them individually, whether it’s ancestry or territory, and still give God the full measure of their devotion? I can’t answer that question for anyone else; only they know in their hearts the depth of their passion for this relic of our nation’s history.
What I can say with certainty, however, is that God is not honored if Christians allow their affections for the Confederacy to bring division to His church, hinder the spiritual well-being of other believers, or detract from the Great Commission to make disciples for Christ.
Russell Moore, formerly president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and now editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, is a leading Christian voice in the public square and a son of the South. He declares that, while Christians are free to support the Confederate battle flag if they so choose, “we should not prize our freedom to the point of destroying those for whom Christ died. We should instead ‘pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding’ (Rom. 14:19).” By that standard, he doesn’t believe the cross and the Confederate flag can co-exist:
The Confederate Battle Flag may mean many things, but with those things it represents a defiance against abolition and against civil rights. The symbol was used to enslave the little brothers and sisters of Jesus, to bomb little girls in church buildings, to terrorize preachers of the gospel and their families with burning crosses on front lawns by night.
That sort of symbolism is out of step with the justice of Jesus Christ. The cross and the Confederate flag cannot co-exist without one setting the other on fire. White Christians, let’s listen to our African-American brothers and sisters. Let’s care not just about our own history, but also about our shared history with them. In Christ, we were slaves in Egypt—and as part of the Body of Christ we were all slaves too in Mississippi. Let’s watch our hearts, pray for wisdom, work for justice, love our neighbors. Let’s take down that flag.
In studying Dr. Moore’s reference to the apostle Paul’s words in Romans 14, I learned that Paul was dealing with a question not unlike the question we face, even if the object of discussion was different. I addressed this in a previous article:
Paul was addressing a division in the church between former Gentiles and former Jews over ceremonial dietary laws, and he is saying, in effect, that those in Christ who believe their salvation has freed them from these laws should not be so callous in the exercise of their Christian liberty that it becomes an obstacle to “peace and mutual edification” with believers for whom the dietary rituals still had significance. Note that he wasn’t making an argument about who was right or wrong, although he did have an opinion on the topic. He elevated unity in the body of Christ, however, above the petty divisions over diet. He challenged the Roman church to decide what was more important – “peace and mutual edification”, or “eating and drinking”.
Paul described the acts of those Christians who insisted on exercising their freedom to do as they pleased concerning diet as “a stumbling block in the way of a brother or sister.” He said, “Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble.”
Note that he didn’t condemn food, declaring it to be “clean,” but that was not the standard he used to determine the appropriateness of their behavior. Instead, he challenged the Roman church to consider how their actions affected their fellow Christians and whether they were an obstacle to peace and unity. This is the same standard that Dr. Moore implores Christians to uphold when considering their allegiance to the Confederacy and its symbols.
One of Dr. Moore’s associates, Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s “flagship school,” the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, agreed that the Confederate flag, no matter what the reasons for cleaving to it, is an insult to our Black brothers and sisters in Christ:
I know full well that today’s defenders of that flag — by far most of them — do not intend to send a racial message nor to defy civil rights. But some do, and there is no way to escape the symbolism that so wounds our neighbors — and our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Today, most who defend that flag do so to claim a patrimony and to express love for a region. But that is not the whole story, and we know it.
Symbols matter, and sometimes they matter in different ways to different people. For most people in the South, the Confederate Battle Flag does not now represent racism or any reference to rebellion against the Union. Nevertheless, every symbol has a historical context and associations. For this specific flag, the most immediate context is the civil rights movement and resistance to its central goals. As Christians, we are called to love God and to love our neighbors. Some of our neighbors–and some of our own brothers and sisters in Christ–are deeply wounded by this flag. They see it as a denial of their essential humanity and as a statement of racial superiority. For that sufficient reason, gospel-minded Christians should support taking down the flag. Love of neighbor outweighs even love of region, and it certainly requires that we disassociate ourselves from any hint of racism, now or in the past.
Jonathan Falwell, one of the sons of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr. and the current chancellor of Liberty University and senior pastor of Lynchburg’s most prominent and perhaps most well-known church, Thomas Road Baptist Church, gave an impassioned sermon on the subject in 2015 that echoes Dr. Mohler’s remarks:
We as Americans, we have one flag to fly. That’s the American flag, and we should not be flying a flag that is a stumbling block that is hurtful to other people in our midst, in our country and in our church. We shouldn’t be doing it…
It maddens me, it embarrasses me that in our country today in 2015, some 50-odd years later from the 1960s, that we are still dealing with racism.
Later, in an interview given after the sermon, he expounded on his views:
I just know this, I know that there are people when they see that flag that they are profoundly hurt and profoundly saddened, and I know as a result of that as a person of faith and myself as a pastor, I would not want to do anything that would not only push people away from the opportunity for me to reach them with our church and our ministry and our message, and I most certainly wouldn’t want to do anything that would hurt them so deeply.
While the emphasis of these statements is on the Confederate flag, they apply equally to any display honoring the Confederacy, including the statues that stand between us and unity as Americans and Christians. I recall a story shared with me by a former Liberty University colleague who is fiercely proud of his family’s Confederate heritage and previously expressed through social media his disagreement with efforts to erase the flag from public view. This same colleague, however, told me he once refrained from displaying outside his home a beautifully embroidered Confederate banner given to him as a gift because he thought it might offend his Black neighbors across the street. Despite his strong allegiances to his family heritage, he ultimately loved his neighbors as himself and put their sensibilities above his own.
Most of the legislators protecting Confederate monuments would probably also profess to be Christians. Think of how different their positions would be if they resolved to live by the call in Philippians 2:3-4, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” Ultimately, our devotion should be not to lost causes but to the cause of Christ, in whom we all are one.