There are eight points to this reply after the enitial introduction. Some may only be interested in the main intorduction down to the first point and choose to not read the eight points of why I beileve as I do especially since I am a Southerner whose families go back generations ehre in the South.
Each point as a stand alone would not be a short reply. I chose to keep all eight together as they go together. A reader might agree with one point but disagree with a different point.
Main Synopis and Introduction.
The display of Confederate flags at the NRA, white supremacists, and right-wing rallies and events disgusts me greatly.
The Confederate battle flag belongs in history books, museums, and other situations where historical content is paramount.
This retired history teacher is giving his belief that to display the confederate battle flag today by white supremacists groups is to dishonor the dead of the South who really believed they were morally right and that the US Constitution did allow for states to leave the Union if conventions were held by delegates elected by the people and the decision for a state to withdraw from the Union was ratified by the state legislature.
First.
Consider the moral issues of slavery then and for all practical purposes, slavery still practiced in 2020.
Historically, it is tricky putting modern-day moral values on earlier generations who held different moral values:
1. Abraham planning to kill his son to use as an offering to God.
2. Saint Paul who in his Biblical writings giving moral support to slavery in the Roman Empire.
3. The belief that black Africans were a different species than white Europeans. The belief that all the Bible was literal and that Black Africans were not descended from Adam and Eve, I've met a few people living today that still believe this. Humans are one of the most interrelated mammal species in the world.
Today, there is a significant number of Americans who believe that the rights of people in the US Constitution should only apply to American citizens. This group of Americans could not care less about the rights and living conditions of people who are not Americans. If they can buy a shirt at Wal Mart for $5 because slaves in some other nation made that shirt than they have absolutely no guilt in buying that $5 shirt.
American corporations have moved jobs from the US to China. We know that many of the workers are all but in name slaves who work in slave conditions and have absolutely no freedom to work anywhere else.
Add to this, many of us have retirement plans and our retirement plants own stock in these American corporations.
Let's put it bluntly. Some American corporations have slaves working in their factories in China, Vietnam, and other nations.
In 150 years how will the people living then judge our generation? Will the judgment of 2020 Americans be any less harsh for us than our the judgment of US slavery in 1860?
Second.
The South interpreted the US Constitution to give states the right to taking legal action to withdraw from the federal union. The EU does give nations the right to withdraw of the EU. The United Kingdom has just voted to and will completely be out of the EU on January 1, 2021. Southerners believed they had that same right under the US Constitution.
In 1860, many Americans believed that states had the constitutional right to leave the union. The Supreme Court did not rule on this question until 1867. The Supreme Court held that the union is forever and no state can vote to leave the union.
Southern states succeeded from the union following votes in state legislatures sometimes following an elected state convention to decide the issue. Consider the fact that less than two % of Southerners owned slaves. Slaves were too expensive for anyone to buy except the very rich.
For the first two years of the Civil War, the goal was bringing the southern states back into the US federal union. The movement to outlaw slavery in the states still in the federal union did not begin until the third year of the civil war.
Three.
Will history judge us to be any better morally than history is judging the South in 1860.
In today's world, we buy clothes and other stuff from Bangladesh and Ethiopia. These products are made in slavery type situations. The workers have no choice but to work where they work. The workers work 12 or more hours at a time with no real breaks with restroom breaks severely limited or not given at all and for only pennies salary per hour of work.
It is humiliating to be forced to work in the factory line while vomiting in a waste can or soiling clothes because no restroom breaks are aloud for long periods of time. The working environment is just as bad today in these slave factories as the working conditions that slaves in the South faced every day.
As a nation, we gobble up these products because they are cheap not caring they were made with slave labor in foreign nations.
Four.
The South feared economic ruin if slavery were abolished.
The people of the South believed that the entire economic system of the South would go under and everyone would become dirt poor. We now know that this is not true. The South did recover without having a legal system of slavery.
To understand what the people in the South believed in 1860, one needs to understand what the people believed would happen; that is if slavery was made illegal, the entire Southern economy would collapse.
So the large majority of Southerners supported the Confederacy based on this belief that the Southern economy would fail in time if the South stayed in the federal union.
Five.
The Confederacy collapsed rather than was destroyed in battle. Lee played a major part.
The Confederacy collapsed more than it was militarily defeated. Large parts of the Carolinas, Florida, and all of Texas were in Confederate hands when Lee and Grant agreed to peace terms. Parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas were still in Confederate hands. There were thousands of troops under Confederate control when Lee and Grant ended the war.
Lee is a national hero because while he stood with the Lee families' loyalty to Virginia first and the US second which was common in 1860 in Virginia, Lee also set the standard for the South to lay down arms, declare their loyalty to the US and spend the rest of their lives living peacefully and in support of the US and not have lingering desires to restart the Confederacy.
This was major in US history. Had Lee not lead Southerns back into the Union, some kind of revolution could have continued with bands from mountain regions swooping down at night. There might be a significant and open rebellion on the parts of many Southerns still today.
The last thing we should allow is the development of these white supremacist bands to organize. The Confederate battle flag which is the Confederate flag used needs to stay where it belongs: In history books and in museums and other historical settings.
Consider the peace terms that Lee and Grant agreed to. The Confederate armies were to disband take their horses, guns, and anything else they owned with them, and return home to plant crops for the next year.
This is a reason that Grant and Lee are so pronounced in pictures and stories together. These two men whose father-in-laws owned slaves agreed to generous peace terms. Lee was, nor any of his troops were taken prisoner after Lee surrendered.
The people of the South supported leaving the union using the accepted legal means at that time as they understood them to be.
The people of the South accepted Lee's peace terms with Grant. All the troops under Confederate control gave up with no military fight and that included some Texan Confederate units a year after Appomattox Courthouse peace agreement. There were no major battles fought. No prisoners were taken.
Most Southerners were then and are now decent people. In April 1865, the people of the South abandoned the Confederacy as a dream. Lee played a major role in this happening in the spring of 1865.
One of my ancestors who owned no slaves died as a result of the Civil War.
Six.
The fact that Southerners then who not only left the Union but then came back voluntarily is a feat not seen matched in history often. Scotland and England united some 400 years ago. Yet, 45 % of the people in Scotland voted to leave that union just a few years ago. Such a vote if it were legal to restore the Confederacy would not come close to 45 % here in the South.
Our ancestors here in the South gave up a dream for the Confederacy and retook their vows of loyalty to the United States of America. This has rarely happened throughout history. The War of the Roses in England is another example of a nation reuniting.
It is a desecration on their honor to go around sporting Confederate flags especially at events that are so un-American and so disloyal to the American dream. Those living then held what they believed to be lawful conventions to decide whether to stay in the Union or leave. The state legislatures who were duly elected ratified the decision to succeed.
Seven.
Lincoln's goal for the first two years of the Civil War was not to end slavery, but to reunite the nation.
There was not a band of rebels who marched on state capitals and defeated the state governments in a military confrontation. The Southerners really believed that leaving the union was legal and their right to do so.
Lincoln believed differently and so for the first two years of the Civil War, Lincoln's goal was to bring the South.
I witnessed older generations weep driving through Gettysburg and Vicksburg. . This history teacher had to know why. The tears were for the soldiers that died needless deaths for a cause they misunderstood.
Our nation is blessed with being united as one nation. These Confederate flag carriers are desecrating the South as it was in 1860 to some degree and to a very strong degree, the South chose to follow in 1865 in returning to the Union.
Eight.
Had Jefferson Davis succeeded and Lee failed, the consequences would have been horrific for the South.
This is why I separate Lee from other Confederate generals. Had Lee not sued for peace terms, the war might have gone on another year or two. Lee became a legend in the South for ending that horrible war, not so much for being a Confederate general. Lee was a general in the army of the Commonwealth of Virginia, not the Confederate government until just weeks before Lee sued for peace with General Grant.
Most people living today are not aware that there was a little anti-Lee feeling among some Southerners after the war because Lee ended the wear they thought they could still win.
There is no such thing as a perfect human being. Our national heroes become heroes for what they did well for our nation. Lee and Grant are national heroes for ending that horrible war and directing our nation to the goal of becoming one united nation.
It is horrifying to consider what the result would have been if Jefferson Davis had succeeded in establishing a new Confederate capital in Texas. The president of the Confederacy did not accept Lee's peace terms. Davis was on a mission to keep the Confederacy alive. Davis was captured while heading to Texas to continue the Civil War.
Fortunately for America, Southerners chose Lee's vision for the future over Davis' vision for the future of our nation.
Thousands of people died fighting for what they beieved was right in the US Civil War. Some fought for the Union and some fought for the Confederacy. It is morally wrong to descecrate their memories by parading around with the battle flag of the Confederacy.
I have uncles who died in the US Civl War. They had no children as they were young men who died fighting old men's war. I am very offended that their memory is descecrated by a bunch of white suprmamcists who have no respect for the rest of the US.
Let the Confederate battle flag lie in peace with all Americans who died in that horrific war.
America's future lies in the years to come, not looking back 160 years ago. The Confederacy is dead and needs to stay in its tomb.
