A Proper Memory.

How should we remember the Confederates and the Confederacy?

We are celebrating the 150^th Anniversary of the start of the Civil War this year.

I just want to start off by stating that I think secession was illegal and that South Carolina was a sore loser in 1860 and exaggerated the threat of Abraham Lincoln. I do not believe in all this southern revisionism that makes Lincoln an aggressor and puts the south as the innocent defenders of their rights. The Confederate States of America took up arms against the government and refused a peaceful resolution to the Fort Sumter crises. There were many Northerners willing to make compromises on slavery. Lincoln said in his First Inaugural and before that he respected slavery in the territories it was in and that he could not constitutionally do anything about it. The South fired on Fort Sumter; Lincoln had the right to call for troops to quell the rebellion.

With that said, and believing that the south had basically committed treason, how do we look at these people? These people were Americans. They were fighting against something they thought was a legitimate threat; a large, overbearing government trying to usurp power and destroy state’s rights. With the Radical Republicans and Reconstruction after the war, their fears were pretty much spot on. But was bloodshed the answer? What about voting and participation? The election of 1860 showed that a President did not need the south to win. Every state from Massachusetts to Illinois was a solid Republican state and they were the largest by population, meaning they had more Electoral Votes. The House of Representatives was overwhelmingly Northern and the Senate, which was once the last hope of maintaining balance, lost out after the Compromise of 1850 and the Free states outnumbered the Slave states. They felt as if their voices would not be heard.

So, did they overreact? Is it enough to claim to die for a just cause? Terrorists claim to be dying for a just cause. I can’t excuse their actions because they think they are right. Of course, there is a big difference between terrorists and the Confederates. The south could at least give some legal and historical reasons for their actions. Small Government versus Big Government is a legitimate debate with no answer. How big or how small should the government be? The south wanted smaller government while the north wanted bigger government.

Terrorists are just dicks.

But was secession the right answer to this problem? What is the point of having any kind of central government if states can freely leave when something doesn’t go their way? Is it right to work with someone when things are good but abandon them when things go sour? What is the point of having a central authority if it can just be overridden at will? That was the government under the Articles of Confederation, and our Founders knew that we needed a stronger federal government in order to function. The states give up some of their autonomy to receive the protection of the federal government and the whole United States. I don’t believe that under the Constitution the argument that “we willingly joined, we can also willingly leave” applies. That would have been true under the Articles of Confederation (and maybe just to the original 13 states, just maybe), but under the Constitution, states are administrative districts of a much larger nation.

Another thing, these people were Americans, not some foreign force. After the war, they became Americans again. How do we remember their sacrifice? Like I said, I feel that they committed treason, but did so for a cause they thought was right according to their interpretation of our Founding Fathers (it would help if the FF’s weren’t so vague). Overreacting or stopping a threat?

Portraying the south purely as traitors would have to make us rethink the Revolutionary War. Those men took up arms against what was seen as an unjust government trying to rob us of our rights. They were also viewed as traitors and would have hanged as traitors. What is the difference between the colonials of 1775 and the southerners of 1861? The former won and the latter lost? Winning makes you right and losing makes you wrong?

(I don’t want to bring in all that slavery and racism crap. Don’t paint the North as anti-racist and the South pro-racist. Very, very few people took up arms with the sole purpose of destroying or preserving  slavery.)

So once more; how should we remember the Confederates and the Confederacy? Traitors? Heroes? Or some combination of both?

I don’t believe they are villains, but I don’t believe they are heroes either.