Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog

The situation in New Orleans, prompted by the city’s removal of the Battle of Liberty Place monument and planned dismantling of three more dedicated to Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and P. G. T. Beauregard, continues. It’s a tinderbox, with Confederate heritage folks, Three Percenter milita types, Oath Keepers, “Antifa” anarcho-communists, and God only knows who else, all jostling and trying to provoke one another and get themselves on the teevee. As best I can tell, not many of these folks are actually from New Orleans. There has been sporadic violence, and threats made against public officials. It’s ugly, and we should all hope that whatever becomes of the monuments, no one else gets hurt.

I did find this piece interesting, from the website/blog The Hayride, that challenges the central tactic of “heritage defense,” namely “flagging.”

Neither side is particularly angelic, either with respect to the monument fight or the Sterling matter. [Alton Sterlng was an African American man killed by police in Baton Rouge in July 2016; the monument protests in New Orleans and Baton Rouge coincided with protests in the latter city over the the announcement that the U.S. Department of Justice would not file charges against the officers involved.] Last night the preservationists who could easily have found themselves at an Alamo-style disadvantage didn’t do themselves too many favors; while they weren’t the aggressors in the hostilities that took place at the Jefferson Davis monument, brandishing a bunch of confederate [sic.] flags to go with Mississippi and Alabama accents as they did was stupid. The persuasive case for preserving the statues to Davis, P.G.T. Beauregard and Robert E. Lee isn’t made with a confederate flag, as those three figures offered more than just four years of rebellion against the Lincoln administration. Davis, Beauregard and Lee are figures of American history, and as such the people resisting the bowdlerization of their statues ought to have been flying American flags.

Lee and Beauregard, after all, signed loyalty oaths to the union after the war in 1865 – though Davis never did. Beauregard’s was especially eloquent…

“In taking up arms during the late struggle (after my native state, Louisiana, had seceded) I believed, in good faith, that I was defending the constitutional rights of the South against the encroachments of the North. Having appealed to the arbitration of the Sword, which has gone against us, I accept the decision as settling finally the question of secession & slavery – & I offer now my allegiance to the Government of the United States, which I promise, truly and faithfully, to serve & uphold hereafter, against all external or internal foes.”

One of the stupid things said by New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu during this controversy was that the monuments he’s trying to take down are an “aberration” or a “denial” of history, since the Confederacy only lasted for four years. But Davis had been a U.S. Senator before the secession in 1861. Lee and Beauregard were heroes in the Mexican-American War. Lee’s efforts at bringing the South back into the union were lauded on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line following the war, which was the reason Lee Circle was so celebrated when it was constructed in 1878 (and the statue was crafted in New York, of all places). Beauregard played a substantial role in the post-war history of New Orleans, not the least of which was his having designed what ultimately became the city’s streetcars. Their influence on the culture of New Orleans and the South greatly transcends the four years between 1861 and 1865. But the people waving confederate flags around are poisoning the case that those historical monuments represent more than mere slavery.

And what we do not need is a bunch of confederate flag-waving out-of-towners coming up to Baton Rouge and goading the Alton Sterling protest crowd into a rumble.

This piece really underscores something that I’ve long had a sense of, but often had difficulty articulating — when people are (rightly or wrongly) put off by Confederate iconography, you’re not going to win them over by flashing more and bigger Confederate flags in their faces. When heritage groups do that (“pepper Danville with flags,” etc.) they’re essentially conceding defeat on the issue they’re supposedly trying to reverse. It’s defiance, sure, but it also almost always results in the targeted organization or institution — the VMFA, Lexington, Danville, and now New Orleans — digging in its own heels. Why on Earth do heritage folks assume that they’re the only ones who can display resolve and intransigence in the face of adversity?

What’s most interesting to me about this argument is that it’s coming from the right of the political spectrum, not the left — The Hayride is VERY conservative, a sort cayenne pepper-flavored local alternative to Breitbart. When you lose those guys, seems to me, it’s really time to re-think your tactics.

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h/t RBLee