Hey, I said it was going to be history-geek day!
Edward Sebesta's April 22 entry is from the October 1957 issue of the United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine. That particular group is kind of the ultimate stereotype of old Southern ladies reminiscing about the good ole days of mansions and mint juleps before the Yankees messed everything up.
Sebesta explains why he uses this article in the context of shedding light on the neo-Confederate hokum, which is the focus of his Confederate Heritage Month page:
The Confederate organizations are fond of claiming that the KKK somehow hijacked the meaning of the Confederate flag and gave it a popular impression of it being racist. However, you can see here that the Confederate organizations themselves made it quite clear ... that the meaning of the Confederacy was racism.
The article quoted is by Judge William Beard, a former head of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV). Beard writes:
Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jonathan Stonewall Jackson, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Raphael Semmes and the 600,000 soldiers and sailors of the Confederacy did not fight for a "Lost Cause." They fought to repel invasion, and in defense of their Constitutional liberties bequeathed them by their forefathers. Their second war for Independence has inspired heroic people everywhere in their struggle against the invader and for the right of local self government.
The valorous deeds of the Soldiers and Sailors of the Confederacy will stand forever as beacon lights of human courage and endurance for the integrity of principle.
One imagines that Judge Beard never troubled his head much about incidents like the Fort Pillow massacre carried out by the holy Confederates, "one of the most brutal massacres of the Civil War," or other similar incidents.
Beard proceeds to link the Confederate cause with resistance to the Supreme Court's school desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education:
Since the Supreme Court decision of May 17, 1954, reversed what had been the Supreme Law of the land for 75 years and declared unconstitutional the laws of 17 states under which segregated school systems were established, the thinking people have been aroused from their lethargy in respect to State's Rights. While the decisions of the Supreme Court must be accepted by the Courts of the United States and by the States, they need not necessarily be accepted by the Court of public opinion. ...
There are ways of appreciating the history of the Civil War and even of honoring the Confederate dead without pandering to the slavery and white supremacy for which is stood, and without trying to justify of prettify the reality of segregation in the past or racial discrimination and prejudice today.
I added a comment to a thoughtful and interesting post on this topic at AOL Journal Patrick's Place. Check out his post. Feel free to ignore my comment, but do check out his post.
But that is not how the Confederate "heritage" groups have approached it. Even before the latest trendof hardcore rightwing ideologues adopting Confederate imagery and trying to take over the "heritage" scam. It would be an interesting exercise to see if there is any evidence at all of Confederate "heritage" groups criticizing segregation or Jim Crow laws, much less actively opposing them.
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