Pathetic

In this post about the Atlanta, GA teabaggers' convocation at the state capitol, Jim Galloway of the AJC mentioned that "today [April 26th] is Confederate Memorial Day." 

I must confess that I've never heard of such a thing.  To Wikipedia!

Confederate Memorial Day, also known as Confederate Decoration Day (Tennessee) and Confederate Heroes Day (Texas), is an official holiday and/or observance day in parts of the U.S. South as a day to honor those who died fighting for the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War.

Just when you think you've seen it all, here comes something that once again beggars the imagination.  Something which confirms that, no matter how far they have previously sunk, there is no depth to which the revisionist historians of the American south cannot sink in their quest to celebrate one of history's greatest evils and the monsters who caused it.

"Confederate heroes?"  There were no Confederate heroes, only massive numbers of relatively ignorant people duped into fighting and dying for the region's moneyed elite, goaded into violence by twisted racial propaganda and enough theological blasphemy to make the Dutch Reformed Church blush.

Now, 144 years after the end of their treasonous war against their brothers and sisters, they still have holidays which celebrate that massive betrayal, closing state offices.  Further, several states combine this observance with the federal day honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.  But they're not racists!  There's no hard feelings about the Civil War!  Oh no, it's just a coincidence that Arkansas and Texas honor their homegrown traitors and terrorists on the same day the nation honors - halfheartedly, to be sure - the memory of the man who, more than any other, taught reconciliation between the races.

The only honor the Confederacy needs is to know the truth of what they did and why, to be glad they're dead and gone and to vow to never again betray one's fellow citizens.

Comments

[Sir Charles]

But Stephen,

It's hate not heritage.

Wait a minute, that's not it . . . .

[low-tech cyclist]

Of course, what they'll tell you is that the War of Northern Aggression (they've got collective amnesia concerning who fired the first shots at Fort Sumter), or at least Southern secession, wasn't about slavery at all.

Which is bullshit, of course: several Southern legislatures issued statements explaining why they were seceding - and it was all about slavery, and the Northern refusal to recognize its moral legitimacy and desire to limit its spread, which would have eventually ended the institution.

Plus there's Confederate V.P. Alexander Stephens' "Cornerstone Speech" that says pretty much the same things.

Falwell U. used to teach that the Civil War wasn't about slavery - something about the tensions resulting from the Second Great Awakening instead. Can you say "bearing false witness"? Dunno if they still teach that - they very well might.

[MR Bill]

The problem for me is that the whole "Southern Identity" politics has been sold so long and for so may southerners is a seamless whole, they can't admit the reality of racism and the real history of the South.
The "Late Unpleasantness" was about Slavery. And Class, and how an upper class lead a people over a cliff in a rebellion that was probably doomed from the inception. (Although you'll admit, it looked bad for the Union at the beginning, and is a tribute to the greatness of Lincoln that he was able to hold it together long enough for the North's great economic/tactical advantages to kick in).
A lot of folks buy the mythology because it was what they were taught, up to the 70s. And the rise of conservative media and it's alliance to the Christian Right mean a lot of folks can live entirely in the Dixie bubble, ignorant of the rest of the world except for the caricatures oof it they receive from their preachers and radios and Fox News. They were aided and abetted by popular culture, romanticizing the old South, in inane retellings of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and feeding the racism with "history wrote in lighting" of Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind.
Of course, The North never really dealt with the Reconstruction and what the Jim Crow South would mean to freed slaves, and for political purposes allowed the South's ruling class to perpetuate the Southern ideology (replete with Alexander Stephens' casuistry). It looked for a while like the South might grow out of its fever dream of false history during the Carter years, but that was dashed by the Republican's Southern Strategy.
If you ever find yourself on I-20 in Georgia, near Crawfordville, between Atlanta and Augusta, you might tour the preserved home of Stephens, a modest house on a few acres in town, with a two room law office behind it, in the state's least visited State Park. The family servants, former slaves, were buried with Stephens and his parents..It's not mentioned by todays Neoconfederates that he was probably gay, or at least had 'passionate friendships' with male friends. Also, Stephens' tried to broker a deal that would have stopped the Secession with a promise from Lincoln to end attempts to end slavery. Lincoln, bless him, refused.