Confederate "Heritage" Month, April 28: Robert E. Lee as Lost Cause icon

Donald Trump has emphasized Robert E. Lee as a hero for his white nationalist movement.

One thing about about fanaticism is that its motivational claims don't have to be based on empirical reality. It's often said, for instance, that you don't need Jews to have anti-Semitism. If people in Poland, for instance, believe the world is controlled by a sinister Jewish conspriracy, the notion came become a big influence politically even though very few people in the country have any regular contact with actual Jews at all. In some ways, not having actual contact with a stigmatized group make be helpful in making a politics targeting them as the enemy earsier. Polls in Germany, Austria, and the US repeatedly show that areas with higher proportions of immigrants are less open to xenophobic appeals that areas with a much lower immigrant presence.

Neo-Confederate ideology also doesn't have to bear any close resemblance to actual history for it to serve as pseudohistorical ideology for present-day white supremacist politics.

But facts do matter, even in historical outlooks. I haven't seen any polls on the topic. But I think there is more awareness among Americans today than, say, 20 years ago that neo-Confederate/Lost Cause pseudohistory does play a role in current political ideology, and that it's based on shameless distortions of history.

Adam Serwer did a helpful article a couple of years ago addressing the scam version of Trump's hero Robert E. Lee, The Myth of the Kindly General Lee 06/04/2017:

The myth of Lee goes something like this: He was a brilliant strategist and devoted Christian man who abhorred slavery and labored tirelessly after the war to bring the country back together.

There is little truth in this. Lee was a devout Christian, and historians regard him as an accomplished tactician. But despite his ability to win individual battles, his decision to fight a conventional war against the more densely populated and industrialized North is considered by many historians to have been a fatal strategic error.

But even if one conceded Lee’s military prowess, he would still be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in defense of the South’s authority to own millions of human beings as property because they are black. Lee’s elevation is a key part of a 150-year-old propaganda campaign designed to erase slavery as the cause of the war and whitewash the Confederate cause as a noble one. That ideology is known as the Lost Cause, and as historian David Blight writes, it provided a “foundation on which Southerners built the Jim Crow system.” [my emphasis]

His article debunks Lee's postwar status as an advocate for racial moderation and political reconcilation in the South. The Lost Cause narrative served to facilitate a post-Reconstrution political reconciliation between white Northerners and white Southerners, very much at the expense of African-American rights, particularly but by no means exclusively in the former Confederate states.

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2019, April 27: Trump still thinks Robert E. Lee and his neo-Nazi fans are "very fine people"

Apparently Trump wants to be the star of Confederate "Heritage" Month, too: Katie Galioto, Trump says he answered Charlottesville questions 'perfectly' Politico 04/26/2019. He defended his notorious praise for neo-Nazis ("very fine people") at the murderous 2017 Charlottesville rally where demonstrators nominally supporting the retention of a Robert E. Lee statue chanted "Jews will not replace us!"

“If you look at what I said you will see that that question was answered perfectly,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn ahead of a trip to Indianapolis to speak at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting. “I was talking about people that went because they felt very strongly about the monument to Robert E. Lee, a great general.”

The president has received repeated criticism from those arguing he offered moral equivalence between the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who incited the rally and those who protested against them. In the days following the deadly protests, Trump did not denounce the marchers, instead condemning violence on both sides and calling for Americans to “come together.”

This is an illustration of how neo-Confederate/Lost Cause pseudohistory and ideology is very much a part of the worldview projected by today's Trumpified, white nationalist Republican Party.

Here is Trump, who probably couldn't tell you in what century Lee lived, Trump Defends His 2017 Charlottesville Response, Praises Robert E. Lee TicToc by Bloomberg 04/26/2019. The Charlottesville comment comes just after 2:30.

He comically claims just after 1:10, "I'm a student of history." He also claims "I'm a young, vibrant man."

The reporter that asked the Charlottesville question didn't directly mention Joe Biden's reference to Trump's comment about Charlottesville in his video Thursday formally announcing his Presidential campaign. But Biden - who has some shaky history on civil rights himself - did raise it in that video. And good for him for doing so. This is an MSNBC report with commentary on Trump's doubling-down on neo-Nazis being "very fine people", President Donald Trump Makes His Own Argument On Charlottesville Worse Deadline 04/26/2019:

It's worth noting here that in his last Presidential run, Biden couldn't resist a touch of neo-Confederate type talk himself (Xuan Thai and Ted Barrett, Biden's description of Obama draws scrutiny CNN 02/09/2007):

In a June 2006 appearance in New Hampshire, the senator [Biden] commented on the growth of the Indian-American population in Delaware by saying, "You cannot go into a 7-11 or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. Oh, I'm not joking."

Two months later, responding to a question in an August interview on Fox News Sunday, Biden was asked how a "Northeast liberal" could compete against more conservative southern candidates.

"Better than everybody else. You don't know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state is the eighth largest black population in the country. My state is anything from a northeast liberal state," Biden said.

He repeated the comment during a visit to South Carolina in December 2006 at an event before the Columbia Rotary Club, according to a story published in The State newspaper. The State reported that Biden referred to Delaware as a "slave state that fought beside the North. That's only because we couldn't figure out how to get to the South. There were a couple of states in the way." [my emphasis]

When pundits talk about Biden being gaffe-prone, this is what they mean. His glad-handing, respond-to-the-crowd-in-front-of-you style is appealing and makes him come across as likable.

But when he goes with the flow in that way, he sometimes lets out some blunders. I heard Biden speak live at the Netroots Nation conference in Detroit in 2014, and that likability aspect was very evident. VP Joe Biden speaks about Marriage Equality at Netroots Nation:

But just after 13:40, he begins an impassioned portion denouncing physical abuse of women, using the somewhat old-fashioned euphemism of a man raising his hand against a woman, i.e., calling it a "cardinal sin" and declaring. "No man has a right to raise his hand to a woman for whatever reason." He continued in a peroration, "No man has a right to raise a hand to a woman under any circumstances" and completed the sentence "except self-defense. Period."

It didn't come off though he was making excuses for domestic violence. On the contrary. But it also sounded really awkward and did distract from his attempt to unequivocally condemn it.

And I think his reliance on the metaphor (or I guess it's technically a synecdoche) of a man "raising his hand against a woman" was part of the problem. It probably occurred to him or his speechwriter that he needed to make the statement a bit more generic, because domestic violence happens in same-sex couples and involves not just spouses but children, as well. And, yes, men are sometimes also victims of violence initiated by a female spouse or partner, though the inverse is obviously far more often the case. If he had framed the speech in terms of "domestic violence" and violence against "partners," he could have avoided the awkward moment. And in a speech like that, he would have buried his point if he tried to put in all the variations I mention in this paragraph.

But that's Biden. I don't know if his Delaware-was-a-slave-state gaffe in 2006 was a similar case of his trying to duck the neo-Confederate issue by being humorous, or if it was a line he's been using for years to signal that he agreed with segregationists on some things like court-ordered busing for desegregating schools. Either way, it's a reminder of how broadly Lost Cause talking points have affected the US political vocabulary.

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2019, April 24: Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, neo-Confederacy, and Robert E. Lee

Mississippi's Republican Gov. Phil Bryant is one among all too many examples of Republican officeholders who support a neo-Confederate worldview. Ashton Pittman reports in Gov. Bryant Declares April 'Unity Month,' Not 'Confederate Heritage Month' Jackson Free Press 04/23/2019:

Bryant has longrunning ties with segregationist and neo-Confederate groups. In high school, he attended a segregation academy that the racist Citizens' Council, known colloquially as the "White Citizens Council," started.

He is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, an organization known for its efforts to revise history with false claims that the Civil War was fought over "state's rights," and not slavery. The group recently gave Bryant the John J. Pettus Heritage Award, named for Mississippi's virulently racist, slave-holding governor who led the state in secession.

The Jackson Free Press revealed in February 2016 that Bryant was quietly declaring April "Confederate Heritage Month" annually, but with no mention of slavery, the cause of the war. He did it again in 2017. [my emphasis]

Adam Ganucheau provides more information on Bryant's ties to the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Gov. Phil Bryant receives Sons of Confederate Veterans heritage award Mississippi Today 06/18/2018.

But people in Mississippi are also protesting against monuments glorifying the Confederacy. (Adam Gaucheau, Ole Miss leader agrees Confederate monument should be moved, but political boards in Jackson must sign off Mississippi Today 03/31/2019)

As the title on Pittman's article idicates, Bryant tried a twist this year by proclaiming April "Unity Month" in Mississippi instead of Confederate Heritage Month. He also reports, "Two days after the April 27 unity rally, Mississippi will celebrate Confederate Memorial Day - a holiday recognized by just a handful of southern states. Mississippi, Anderson pointed out in his statement, also celebrates Robert E. Lee Day every January on the same day as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day."

He goes on to refer to Lee as a slaveowner. There is apparently still some lack of clarity on whether Lee himself owned slaves in his own name. But his family did, and Lee had practical authority over his family's slaves. (Allen Guelzo, Robert E. Lee and Slavery Encyclopedia Virginia 02/13/2019) The advocates of Lost Cause pseudohistory like to claim that Lee himself was personally opposed to slavery, but that's nonsense.

Roy Blount, Jr., debunks the myth of Lee as anti-slavery in Making Sense of Robert E. Lee Smithsonian Magazine (July 2003).

But as late as 1994, the US Postal Service was putting Lee's image on a postage stamp, as part of a series equally divided between Union and Confederate figures:

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2019, April 19: Debunking the Lost Cause ideology

Carl Weinberg provided an example several years ago of using Virginia Confederate History Month proclamations to debunk the Lost Cause narrative behind them: The Strange Career of Confederate History Month OAH Magazine of History 25:2 April 2011. The "history" month was April, Confederate Heritage Month by another name.

This particular incident has to do with the 2010 proclamation. "Republican Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell issued a Confederate History Month proclamation that omitted any mention of slavery. Less than a week later and after many protests, McDonnell reissued a new text that prominently included slavery."

A key part of the neo-Confederate/Lost Cause pseudohistorical account is to deny or minimize the role of slavery as the cause of the war. The revised version of the 2010 proclamation, included as a sidebar in the article, opened with, "WHEREAS, April is the month in which the people of Virginia joined the Confederate States of America in a four year war between the states for independence that concluded at Appomattox Courthouse." Weinberg takes off from that passage to provide this helpful dose of real history:

For one thing, there were 500,000 enslaved "people" in Virginia at the time who were legally considered property and could not have taken part in this decision. Further, the [1861] Virginia Ordinance of Secession makes it plain - by reference to "the oppression of the Southern slaveholding states" - that slavery was, once again, the key.

But even if we acknowledge that the Virginia Secession Convention voted to leave the Union on April 17, 1861, the white "people" of Virginia were hardly of one mind on this point. When voting on delegates to that convention took place two months earlier on February 4-the very day that the new Confederate government was seated in Montgomery, Alabama-a majority voted for men known to be against secession. This sentiment was especially strong west of the Blue Ridge mountains, where it prevailed by a five-to-one margin. Once assembled in Richmond February 13, pro-secession delegates failed to win a majority. Meanwhile, western delegates denounced taxation policies (partial exemptions on slaves) and political representation policies (the state version of the 3/5 clause) that favored slaveholders, who were more numerous in the eastern Tidewater and Piedmont regions. Only the attack on Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers broke the two-month deadlock. Despite the outbreak of war, western Virginia leaders emerged from the convention determined to stay in the Union. At a convention in June in the western city of Wheeling, they renounced secession and formed a new rival state government. Two years later, after much maneuvering, and under the condition that the gradual abolition of slavery be included in its new constitution, the state of West Virginia was admitted to the Union. They had seceded from the secessionists. [my emphasis]

Another clause of the revised proclamation states that slavery was the cause of the war:

"WHEREAS, it is important for all Virginians to understand that the institution of slavery led to this war and was an evil and inhumane practice that deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights and all Vrrginians are thankful for its permanent eradication from our borders, and the study of this time period should reflect upon and learn from this painful part of our history ..."

But another clause picks up parts of the Lost Cause narrative:

WHEREAS, all Virginians can appreciate the fact that when ultimately overwhelmed by the insurmountable numbers and resources of the Union Army, the surviving, imprisoned and injured Confederate soldiers gave their word and allegiance to the United States of America, and returned to their homes and families to rebuild their communities in peace, following the instruction of General Robert E. Lee of Virginia, who wrote that, "... all should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war and to restore the blessings of peace."

It is a stock piece of the neo-Confederate case that the South lost because they were just crushed by the sheer numbers of the Union forces. This diverts attention from mistakes and problems of the Confederate generals and state governments, as well as from factors like the undermining of the Confederate economy by mass desertions of slaves from plantations after the Emancipatio Proclamation. It also frames the Confederate loss as an inevitable tragedy, rather than a disaster created by the fanaticism, greed, and treason of the planter class and their supporters in mounting a armed revolt against the Union.

That latter clause also perpetuates the unhistorical image of Robert E. Lee as a patriotic, benevolent figure after the war. Lee did urge reconcilation, which for conservative Southern whites meant reconcilation between Northern and Southrn white people at the expense of the freedom and well-being of black citizens.