Reflections on the Confederate States of America

Some Thoughts on Confederate Heritage Month

The South and Me

On December 20th, 1860, the State of South Carolina, one of two states in which my American ancestors resided at that time, made the decision to declare independence from the United States of America and assert its sovereignty as a nation. It was the first of a slew of Southern states which would do so over the following months, with the State of North Carolina, the other state in which my American ancestors resided, being the last of the list, seceding on May 20th, 1861. A few months prior to North Carolina’s secession, a decision was made on February 8th, 1861 for these Southern states to unite into one confederacy — the Confederate States of America.

On April 12th, over two months after the formation of the Confederacy, disputes over the military presence of the United States of America in Confederate territory led to the firing of what are typically considered to be the first shots of the American Civil War, the bloodiest war in American history. It was a war of anger, of hatred, of intense bloodshed and prejudice that made it the stuff of legends. I truly believe that the intense feelings in the United States today regarding the American Civil War dwarves the intense feelings of enmity between peoples like the Japanese and Chinese, English and French, Russian and Pole. The Southerner — the redneck, the rebel, the traitor, the slaver, the racist, and the Yankee — the puritan, the loyalist, the fed, the stooge, the merchant, the activist, the entrepreneur, the industrialist, the heartless, the savage. Roughly 700,000 of them lay dead at the end of the conflict.

I have several ancestors¹ who fought in that Recent Unpleasantness. None of them fought for the Union that bore the name of the federation their ancestors before them fought to establish. At least one direct ancestor I am aware of gave his life in the conflict, dying at the Sunken Road near Fredericksburg over 300 miles away from his home, his wife, and children. Another ancestor, a direct paternal ancestor whose last name I bear, braved the front lines time and time again, bullets whizzing by and often lodging themselves into the man beside him, eventually being blasted in the hip in the aforementioned Battle of Fredericksburg and being shot through the wrist in another, less note-worthy campaign. After Appomattox, he was one of the lucky ones who got to come home with a hero’s welcome. He oversaw the annual reunions of the members of his company from the county and became an important member of the local community. There are roads that bear his name (and therefore mine) in those parts.

I love the South. True, when I was younger, there was much of the South that I was not comfortable with. My sense of elitist intellectualism was strong in middle school, high school, and college, and the “simple,” “backward,” “redneck” culture of my home region was something I looked down upon. The Southern accent was used for caricatures of idiots and so I sought to remove my Southern accent. This was facilitated through nationwide communications (television cartoons), meetings with a speech pathologist when I was in elementary school, and choosing to default to terms that lacked a regional character —“Y’all” never became a natural part of my vocabulary. I cringed at the word “cooter” and made a point to call them “snapping turtles.”

But despite this elitism, my identity was still rooted in the South — As much as I loathed rednecks, I loathed transplant Yankees just as much, if not more, who desired the culture of the place into which they moved to adapt to them rather than for them to adapt to the environment. Their directness, curtness, never-ending search for efficiency, and restless nature in the pursuit of constant improvement for better things whether they be material or in terms of social justice always irked me. The United States of America is much too large of a state (in the political science sense of the term) to really serve as the base of identity. Colonial Americans and Americans before the Civil War always identified with their state (in the US administrative division sense of the term) first and foremost, and later with their section. The Civil War helped to crystalize and solidify sectional identity. My identity was rooted in the South. The South was my country. The Southerners were my people. I come from generations of Southerners stretching back to the founding at Jamestown in 1607. The South is my nation. Its bluegrass and country is my music. Its accent sounds like home. The Southern sun is the sun under which I grew and the Southern lands and fields are those which I walked or drove through. To me, there is no sense of a common identity with Americans outside the South anymore than there is with Canadians, Australians, and modern British. There definitely is a common heritage of Anglo-Saxon England, but while old medieval Northern English folkways subtly remain in the Southern tradition, it is much more muted in practice in Yankeedom, Australia, and Canada and much more muted in spirit in the United Kingdom.

Southerners cluster on a different genetic cline than other Americans. They have different values. They have a different identity. Some posters, I’ve found, have really dug into the “America is a nation” bit in response to the idea that often gets propagated, the idea that “America is an idea.” But both of these propositions are lies. America is not an idea, that’s obvious. But America is not a nation, either. Americans are not a people. “American” as a term is functionally closer to the term “European” in how it should be used than it is how “English” should be used. There are a group of different, distinct nations that have some common threads under which we can refer to them as “American” nations.² The South is an American nation. New England is an American nation. But the South is not New England and New England is not the South, neither are they the same nation. When it comes to national identity, first and foremost, I am a Southerner. If you push me to posit a second “layer” of identity, I am more likely to say “Carolinian” than I am to say “American.” I don’t think I have anything meaningfully connecting me to a Californian more than to someone in the Maritimes or Tasmania. But I find natural affinity for people from the Florida panhandle, the Mississippi Delta, the mountains of Appalachia, Piney Woods Texas and Tidewater Virginia so long as they are still in touch with the Old Ways.

Despite my initial problems with Southerners, those have been fading away. For one, distance makes the heart grow fonder and while I love living in Okinawa, living abroad makes me conscious of what was done differently at home. On top of that, regular interactions with non-Southern Americans make me realize just how different we are in our mannerisms, values, and so on. Second, my conversion to Christianity changed everything. The missing piece between me and fully embracing the South with all its faults was in the shape of a cross. I had been an atheist in the South, an atheist in one of the last lands of the earth in which 82% of the people (at least in real Southlands) believe in God with utmost certainty. And upon moving to Japan, a land where roughly 1% of the population believes in God with utmost certainty, I converted. Forever a stranger in a strange land, I suppose. But Christianity was absolutely key to understanding, relating, and loving the Southern tradition, the Southern people as a whole, and participating in the ways of the Southern nation. And to a lesser extent, as I was becoming more aware of my Southern-ness and converting to Christianity made me more inclined to respect the Southern tradition, I began to research more into the Southern tradition through the likes of Richard Weaver³ and Dr. Alan Harrelson, coming to realize that there was much more to the South and the Southern people than I had been aware of from an intellectual standpoint but all too aware of in my heart.

I love the South.

The American Civil War — An Anomaly?

I don’t talk about the Confederacy much. I suppose first and foremost, it is possibly the most controversial subject in American culture (if such a thing exists). The South is the US’ whipping boy and the scapegoat upon which the Yankee nation places all of its sins it cannot bear within its post-Calvinist intellectual framework. Something about the Confederacy makes Americans go insane. Every war and historical event is “complicated” and “nuanced” and “we must consider a number of factors” except when its the American Civil War. Thankfully, it seems, our largest, bloodiest, and most impactful conflict also happens to be the only conflict that is so completely black and white when it comes to good and evil. Who would’ve thought?! And people who say otherwise? They are revisionists who are twisting events to their favor because, if we know anything, its that the only reliable accounts of large conflicts are those that come from the governments of the winning side who surely have no way of benefitting from controlling the narrative.

The idiocy that arises when people talk about the Confederacy hurts my head. The fact of the matter is:

• The American Civil War, like every conflict in history, is nuanced and does not fit a “good vs evil” model that aligns with sides.

• The Southerners were not motivated solely by the preservation of the institution of slavery anymore than the Thirteen Colonies soldiers were.

• The Confederate States of America was a country, with everything good and bad that comes with a country.

• The Southern people are a distinct people and culture with politics influenced by their values as a whole.

• The Confederate flag is not a hate symbol. There really isn’t a point in debating this — Those who get it already get it, those who disagree will never change their mind.

• The Confederate States of America and Reconstruction were the catalyzing agent for the awakening of Southern identity and as the Confederacy was the last time the South operated as a nation state, it is not surprising or inappropriate at all that Southerners would identify with the Confederacy as their country anymore than a Tibetan would identify with Tibet or a Ukrainian with Ukraine, even if some of the history is romanticized.

April is Confederate Heritage Month. I suppose I would much rather it be “Southern Heritage Month” to help facilitate the spread of awareness of Southern culture and identity in a way without necessarily entwining it with the legacy of the Confederacy and, consequently, the Civil War. The fact that the Confederacy brings up such controversy inclines me away from talking about it in public. It does not dissuade me from identifying with it, however. I have a Confederate flag magnet on my refrigerator. Above my desk at home, I have a massive Confederate flag (this is why I don’t do many vlogs walking around my room like I used to. This is not because I’m ashamed of the flag, but because it will inevitably distract the viewer and comment section from the content of what I would be saying in the vlog). I am from an area where the Confederate flag is not rare and can easily be found on a flagpole outside someone’s house. Bring up the idea of the flag as a hate symbol to somebody, and you will be met with a confused look. Online, it seems to be the other way around — The idea that the flag is genuinely simply the symbol of a nation seems alien to so many social media users, including US senators who deem it appropriate to antagonize a whole section of a country during its heritage month. It is a symbol of my nation. Of my people. In so much as the Confederate cause was about asserting the independent sovereignty of the Southern people, I support the Confederate cause.

Oh, So You’re a White Supremacist?

I suppose I should get some things out of the way first. I know there’s no point in debating with people who don’t already get this⁴, but I’ll write my points out here so I never have to write them out again and I can simply direct people to this post.

Claim: If you support the Confederacy, you are a white supremacist.

I am no more a white supremacist than those who celebrate the 4th of July. Southern racial attitudes in the mid-19th century were no different than the racial attitudes of the Americans in the American War of Independence. The British offered freedom to African slaves who fought for them against the Americans. Did that make the American War of Independence about slavery?

Claim: The Confederacy was racist.

It was the mid-19th century. The Confederacy was “racist,” sure. So was the United States. So was the British Empire at the time. And Germany and Russia and France and Japan and China and Italy and Sweden. Yet this does not make people dissociate themselves from being American, British, German, Russian, French, Japanese, or Chinese.

Claim: The Confederacy fought for slavery.

Before the American Civil War, the South was a deeply stratified society built up between two different groups, groups David Hackett Fischer called the Planters and the Borderers. The Planters themselves were a hodgepodge of people from two classes — The aristocracy who sought to duplicate the old ways of the English gentry and the feudal estate in the South and the poor who came to the South as indentured servants, seeking to emulate the aristocrats in their ideals, values, and folkways and to become self-made aristocrats upon the ending of their own indentured servitude. The aristocracy became the elite (and slaveholding class) in the Southern colonies and later states, holding a vast amount of the political power. The plantations were the center of Southern culture. The Borderers, meanwhile, were made up of people of Anglo-Saxon stock who came from Northern England, Lowland Scotland, and Ulster. These were a backcountry people, used to the marching armies of Scotland and England crossing the borderlands and destroying everything in their path. They were predisposed towards self-independence and a distrust of a centralized government. The Planters and the Borderers were all deeply religious and similar in values though their philosophies on government and independence differed.

The Borderers always tended towards independence and resisting a powerful government, especially a powerful government dominated by foreigners (as the United States was becoming. Foreigners, of course, refers to non-Southerners in this example). The Planters tended to be less concerned with political affairs so long as it did not bother their personal wealth.

The point is, the South was not a homogenous bloc (though it would grow into one due to the leveling impact of the Civil War on the Southern economy and the comraderies experienced between soldiers from different backgrounds during the war). As it was not a homogenous bloc, it is disingenuous to present “the South” as “fighting for” any one specific thing.

My view is that the Borderers and descendants of indentured servants were always inclined to support a Southern declaration of independence from the United States of America.⁵ The aristocratic Planters who actually held power were less inclined to do so as they could flourish within the Union and conflict would always be an economic risk. One would not risk conflict if one could avoid it. The platform of Abraham Lincoln (who was never president of the entire United States, by the way) convinced the gentry that the Yankee drive to abolish slavery would result in just that and decided to use their political power to kick secession into gear. Did the Confederacy fight for slavery? Did the South secede for slavery? I would argue that, unless slavery was threatened, the actual political class of the Southern states would not enact a secession. But that doesn’t mean the vast majority of the Southern people themselves weren’t already in favor of independence, the independence for which they fought. This was the class from which my ancestors came from. This was the class from which a vast majority of Southerners come from. When it comes to the animating spirit of the Confederacy, while the political class’ fear of losing slavery opened the gates, it was the spirit of independence that came running through the doors.

Is slavery good? No, I think the slavery seen in the United States was bad for several reasons. Is Southern independence good? I think it is, so long as Washington, D.C. is hostile towards the South.⁶ Though our political class had self-interests that were evil in nature, will I dissociate myself from the legacy of the men who did not? From my very ancestors? No.

Some Considerations on Confederate Symbols

But when it comes to symbols and their efficacy, we must be prudent. Moreso than trying to make people who don’t get it honor the Confederacy, I would simply like people to understand the Southern people themselves. To that end, Richard Weaver said something about symbols in his Southern Tradition at Bay:

“One word of advice must be given to workers for this new order. Considerations of strategy and tactics forbid the use of symbols of lost causes. There cannot be a return to the Middle Ages or the Old South under slogans identified with them. The principles must be studied and used, but in such presentation that mankind will fell the march is forward. And so it will be, to all effects. It is a serious thing to take from the average man, and perhaps from anyone, his belief in progress. The average man’s metaphysic is summed up by this word; “progressive” is his token of approval. Therefore the future will always be the future, and we need not lecture tediously on the imperishability of principles. It is enough if we let them inform the new order, while adorning them with the attractions of the hour. “The river of knowledge often turns back on itself,” and there are progressive revolutions to an earlier condition. As long as we keep our course clear by acknowledging the primacy of knowledge and virtue and avoid a surrender to suppositious “objective necessity,” we can still reconstruct our life on a humane basis.”

In the current moment, when dealing with the general public, Confederate symbols will do more harm than good in seeking to help the Southern position in American society. The flag turns away people who otherwise might be willing to open their minds to learn about the beauty of Southern culture and tradition. Its an unfortunate situation that a people be discouraged to fly their own flag, but perhaps this part of the pain of being a defeated and conquered nation. I still have not yet sorted my thoughts out on this idea.

1. All of them being third great-grandfathers

2. You must read Albion’s Seed

3. You must read The Southern Tradition at Bay

4. I don’t know who exactly I’m writing this post for. I have been working on “living in the moment” and “living authentically” lately and part of that includes “writing like nobody will read what you write,” apparently. So I guess I’m writing this… for me?

5. In so much as any nation in the Age of Nationalism would trend towards independence.

6. People tend to overlook the Amnesty period symbolized by the Arlington Monument. In 1914, as the Yankee-led United States grew into an empire and a major world power, efforts were made to make Southerners feel welcome within the Union that had crushed them. As such, Southerners fought and bled for the Union in the world wars it dragged the country into. While there may have been some genuine good will in the decision to try to cooperate in 1914, by the time the Cold War came around this amnesty was proving more and more to be a facade. The 2023 removal of the statue brings us to the status quo.