10-16-15

This is what the author of a book on the Rebel Yell thinks of the Confederate flag controversy

by HNN Editor

S.C. Gwynne is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Rebel Yell and Empire of the Summer Moon, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He spent most of his career as a journalist, including stints with Time as bureau chief, national correspondent, and senior editor, and with Texas Monthly as executive editor. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and daughter.

Q: Your book came out just as the Confederate flag became a subject of national controversy. Did you have any interesting experiences as a result? Did neo-Confederates try to adopt you in their cause?

I was interviewed several times relating to the proposal to remove Confederate monuments from the grounds of the University of Texas. This is part of a larger movement in Texas and elsewhere in the South, to eradicate lingering reminders of the Confederate rebellion, including names of schools, parks, street names, and various monuments. The main controversy here was over a statue to the Confederate dead featuring Jefferson Davis. The inscription reads:

"Died for states rights guaranteed under the Constitution. The people of the South, animated by the Spirit of 1776, to preserve their rights, withdrew from the federal compact in 1861. The North resorted to coercion. The South, against overwhelming numbers and resources, fought until exhausted."

This of course is standard "Lost Cause" b.s. -- the word slavery is not mentioned -- and as a result I was happy to see the monument go. (It has been transferred to a state museum.) I am also in favor of removing the Confederate battle flag from public places. Though it had a humble start fronting the brigades of the Army of Northern Virginia, it has morphed into a symbol of hate.

But in general I am very much against, on many levels, treating Confederates like Nazis -- i.e. wiping all traces of them from our popular history. I hear Northern commentators rant on about how crazy it is for street names in the South to be named for Confederate generals. I don't think it is crazy at all.

Beyond that, the slope of political correctness gets very slippery very fast once you start talking about removing the name Robert E. Lee from public places. If you do that, and you are being fair and even-handed, then you must talk about removing all public evidence of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who were both major slaveholders and not particularly enlightened ones at that. Much of the slave trade -- the shipping of black people from Africa under imaginably cruel conditions -- was financed and supported by men and organizations in New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. At one point in the 17th century, much of the economy of my home state, Connecticut, was related to the slave trade. New York companies like JP Morgan, Aetna, NY Life, etc. got rich off it. The economy of Newport , RI was almost entirely dependent upon it. Of course northerners too owned slaves. One of the biggest slave markets was in Manhattan. It is worth repeating that the South was not the only part of America deeply involved with slavery.

So I preach moderation. We can use a lot of these public icons as opportunities for teaching. We can all learn and appreciate that the great national evil of slavery was wound around the soul of our country for a long time, and no amount of revisionism is going to change that.