Trump’s Civil War Battle

In military terms, President Trump walked into an ambush yesterday when his Administration announced that it will “not even consider” renaming military bases that were named in honor of Confederate soldiers from the Civil War or, as we sometimes call it in the South, “the War Against Northern Aggression” or the “War Between the States.” The move will be popular among many in Trump’s base but there is a definite downside as well.

In a series of tweets, the president noted that bases such as Fort Benning, Fort Hood, and Fort Bragg have a long and distinguished history as the launching points for armies that helped to win two world wars. In his concluding tweet, Trump said, “Our history as the Greatest Nation in the World will not be tampered with. Respect our Military!”

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

 · Jun 10, 2020

It has been suggested that we should rename as many as 10 of our Legendary Military Bases, such as Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Benning in Georgia, etc. These Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage, and a...

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

...history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom. The United States of America trained and deployed our HEROES on these Hallowed Grounds, and won two World Wars. Therefore, my Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations...

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That’s a reasonable argument that appeals to a lot of people, particularly those with a nostalgia for Civil War and WWII history. That’s a group that includes me.

As I’ve written before, I come from a family that has been in the South since at least the early 1800s and I had several ancestors who fought for the Confederacy. My great-grandfather was a prisoner of the federal government at the notorious POW camp in Elmira, New York after the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was among the first integrated elementary school classes in my county in the early 1970s. When I attended the University of Georgia, I frequently drove past a historical marker near Athens memorializing the murder of Col. Lemuel Penn, a black army officer, by local Ku Klux Klan members in 1964. I currently live only a few miles away from Fort Benning.

When Gov. Zell Miller removed the Confederate emblem from the Georgia flag in 2001, I was against the move. At the time, I thought that it was mere historical reminder. Since then, I’ve changed my mind.

The flag that Miller changed in 2001 only dated back to 1956. The Confederate emblem was added that year to protest the sweeping civil rights advances. Rather than a nod to state history, the 1956 flag was a spiteful insult to a large share of Georgia’s population. As it turns out, a lot of the Confederate memorials date back to the Civil Rights era.

I still respect and admire many Confederates, imperfect as they were. Some were good men but they made the decision to support a cause that was evil. Although many argue that the war was about state’s rights, reading the Declarations of Causes for secession by the Southern states makes it apparent very quickly that the state right in question was “the subject of African slavery” as the document passed by Georgia stated.

What changed my mind on the issue was putting myself in the shoes of people on the other side of the argument. Not only is it understandable that black citizens would object to Confederate emblems and memorials, but a lot of whites do as well. There has been a lot of population shifting since 1865 or even 1956. A great many white residents of Southern states are just as offended by Confederate tributes as minorities are. My remembrance of my Southern heritage is not as important as national racial unity.

Enter Donald Trump.

President Trump’s tweets were in response to a statement by an army spokesman earlier this week that “The secretary of Defense and secretary of the Army are open to a bipartisan discussion on the topic.” In other words, no one was forcing the army to rename its bases. The army was voluntarily offering to do so. That is almost certainly a hint that the army prefers to change the names.

A better move by President Trump would have been to take a big swing at the fat, lazy curveball that the army pitched right across the center of the plate, by saying something along the lines of, “I call on Congress to rename bases that are named in the memory of Confederate soldiers. In light of our changing national culture on race, I feel that it is appropriate to rededicate these facilities to the memory of our great military leaders who helped lead our nation to victory in more recent wars.”

Instead the president whiffed at the pitch and got a strike.

While there are many passengers on the Trump train who will be elated to see that the base names will remain unchanged, Trump’s stance won’t endear him to black voters, moderates, or swing state voters outside the South. The move won’t even necessarily help a lot in Southern states where many white Republicans and conservatives are embarrassed by our Confederate history.

Trump already has the Southern states (minus Florida) locked up. Defending Confederate names won’t help him there but a Nixon-goes-to-China moment in which President Trump called for respectfully setting aside Confederate emblems would have been a boon outside of the deep-red states.

Instead, the president chose to deepen the racial divide. A great many Americans already view the Republican Party as racist and defending the honor of long dead Confederates is going to confirm that stereotype.

Likewise, the army had several good reasons for its readiness to change the names. For one thing, many soldiers serving on those bases are minorities and may have ancestors that people like Henry Benning, Braxton Bragg, and John Bell Hood fought to keep enslaved. Black soldiers make up 21 percent of army personnel, even though only 13 percent of the US population is black. It is not unreasonable that the army wants minority recruits to feel welcome.

Further, while the president notes that our military heritage is one of winning, the Confederates did not win. That was bad news for my ancestors who lived the war and then the post-war era, but it’s good news for me. I would not want to live in a Confederate States of America where, if slavery didn’t still exist, something along the lines of Jim Crow or Apartheid probably would. People who say that Confederate memorials are participation trophies are not totally wrong.

Finally, it is ironic that so many big military bases are named for people who became famous as rebels who tried to rip the United States apart. People who say that the United States is the only country that celebrates people who unsuccessfully committed treason are also not wrong.

So what to do about the situation? In my opinion, the fate of local memorials should be decided locally. Let people vote on whether to remove them. Some will go and some will stay, but honor the wishes of the local citizens.

National military bases are a different problem. Military bases in the South are not the property of the states in which they exist. They are the property of American citizens from all over the country. These bases represent the country as a whole and really should be renamed.

There is no shortage of victorious heroes to name them after. Fort Benning could be renamed after George S. Patton, the famous (and infamous) armor general of WWII. Patton actually lived on Fort Benning in 1941 and 1942 while he commanded the 2nd Armored Division there. A good namesake for Fort Bragg, a special operations mecca and home of the 82nd Airborne Division, would be Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, who led the 82nd in the first large-scale airborne assault in US Army history, the 1943 invasion of Sicily.

Renaming the bases could have been a moment when Trump called the country to national unity in putting aside the vestiges of a time when we were even more divided as a nation than we are today. Trump’s intransigence means a deeper racial divide, however, as the president forsakes the opinions of a majority of Americans to pander after the votes of a shrinking number of Confederate-Americans.

Originally published on The Resurgent 

Unbelievable! Trump Surrogate Calls Slavery and Civil War 'Good History'

You might think that racial controversy could finally be dying down after President Trump’s statements last night that “love for America requires love for all of its people” and that “there is no room for prejudice, no place for bigotry, and no tolerance for hate.” If so, you would be wrong. This time the blame doesn’t lie with the president, however, but with a Trump surrogate who seems to think that slavery was a good thing.

The Trump supporter in question is Katrina Pierson who was the national spokesperson for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Pierson appeared on a Fox & Friends segment with Ainsley Earhardt and Wendy Osefo, a “social justice” activist. Two minutes into the discussion on the removal of Confederate monuments, Pierson went off the rails.

Osefo: This is not a symbol of patriotism. This is a symbol of hatred and division and, while it is a piece of American history, it is not necessarily the good part of American history. It is nefarious. So it doesn’t deserve a place on state grounds. It deserves a place in museums and that’s where they need to be.

Pierson: It absolutely deserves a place because bad history is still good history for this country.

Osefo: Slavery is good history?

Pierson: Where we are today, where we are today, absolutely!

Osefo (still more incredulously): Slavery is good history? Absolutely?

Pierson: During those times, during those times, think about this for a second: Where would we be today if not for that Civil War?

Osefo (still more incredulously): Where would we be without slavery? Are you even serious?

Pierson: Would our children even know how special and wonderful this country even is?

At that point, the exchange became unintelligible with both women talking at the same time.

Since the Trump Administration seems to be having problems in the area of race relations, I will offer them some advice to help prevent further missteps:

• ·         When someone asks about Nazis, your answer should be, “They are bad. We don’t support them and we don’t want their support.” That is guaranteed to be a slam dunk with no potential for blowback.
• ·         If someone asks you about the Ku Klux Klan, the same answer will work equally well.
•        If someone asks about slavery, the answer should be, “It was morally wrong, bad for the country and we are glad it was ended.”
• ·         Don’t try to justify it.
• ·     Don’t try to sugarcoat it.
•       Repeat as necessary.
•  

What of Katrina Pierson’s question about where America would be without slavery and the Civil War? For starters, 620,000 American soldiers, more than all other wars combined until Vietnam, would not have been killed. Without slavery, almost 13 million Africans would not have been ripped from their families and shipped to the New World with about two million dying enroute. Without slavery and the Civil War, the US would not have the enduring racial divide and the animosity between North and South that has lasted 150 years. The South would not have been razed by Federal armies and that destruction would not have impoverished the region for the next 100 years.

If slavery and the Civil War had never happened, America would be even more special and wonderful than it already is. Our children, black and white, would have even more reason to love her and be proud of her.  

Slavery and the Civil War represent one of the darkest aspects of American history and Katrina Pierson’s comments are likely to be one of the dumbest things you will hear this week. It’s only Tuesday though. Who knows what the rest of the week will bring? 

Originally published on The Resurgent

It's time to lower Confederate flag

In the wake of last week’s mass murder in Charleston, SC, amid the usual calls for gun control has come a secondary demand that South Carolina remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds in Columbia. For perhaps the first time, conservative Republicans such as South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Senator Lindsey Graham have joined the calls to remove the flag. As a lifelong Southerner and staunch conservative, I agree that the time has come to lower the Confederate flag.

I grew up respecting the heroes of the Confederacy. As a native Georgian, I learned family lore about my ancestors who had fought for the South, including one great-great-grandfather who was captured at the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864 and then interned at the notorious federal prison camp in Elmira, NY. I still hold a great deal of respect for Confederate leaders such as Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.  

There is disagreement even on the nature of the flag in question. Some defenders of the South Carolina flag point out that it was not the national flag of the Confederacy. In reality, the rectangular “Southern Cross” was the Confederate navy jack and was similar to the Confederate battle flag. The flags of the Confederacy can be seen on USflag.org. Both the battle flag and the navy jack were a Confederate flags and, in the minds of most Americans have come to be the Confederate flag.  Photos of the South Carolina flag appear to be the Confederate battle flag, a square version of the Southern Cross carried by the Confederate army. In the end, the exact version of the flag is irrelevant.

Confederate apologists have long made the claim that the Civil War (which should more properly be called the War of Secession) was about state’s rights, not slavery. There is some truth to this argument. The rub is that the state right in question was the right to keep slavery, the South’s “peculiar institution,” legal. This is made abundantly clear in the declarations of causes passed by the seceding states. These declarations are available for review on CivilWar.org.

South Carolina, the first state to secede, cited “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery” as their reason for leaving the Union. More specifically, the Carolinians charged that “non-slaveholding States… assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.”

In Georgia’s declaration, its delegates cite slavery as the reason for secession in the document’s second sentence: “For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.”

One must conclude not only that secessionists were leaving the Union to protect slavery, but that they were proud of their pro-slavery stance. Given that the Confederacy was born to protect slavery, it is also a given that the Confederacy was a racist institution. Therefore, the Confederate flag must be a racist symbol.

Proponents of the flag also argue that the United States flag must also be a racist symbol because Old Glory flew over legal slavery for longer than the Southern Cross. This statement is in error for several important reasons. First, slavery was never a federal matter. It was always subject to the individual states. A timeline of slavery by Mount Holyoke College shows that Vermont banned slavery with a constitutional amendment in 1777, one year after the Declaration of Independence. Other northern states had banned the practice by 1804.

Additionally, the Constitution itself reflects American uneasiness about slavery. The Three-Fifths Compromise is often incorrectly interpreted to mean that the Constitution considered slaves to be three-fifths of a man. In reality, the Three-Fifths Compromise laid the foundation for the eventual abolition of slavery by providing a check to the power of the Southern slave states.

Likewise, the Constitution granted Congress the power to prohibit the importation of slaves after 20 years, an action that Congress took in 1807 when it passed the Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves. In the South, even though slaves were no longer imported, the slave trade persisted as children of domestic slaves were separated from their families and sold to new owners. After the slave trade was declared to be piracy by Congress in 1819, the US Navy took an active role alongside the Royal Navy in bringing slave smugglers to justice and ending the slave trade in the Atlantic Ocean.

In contrast with the Confederacy, the United States took strong action to hasten the end of slavery. Even though the American flag flew over slavery for almost 100 years, slavery was never the official policy of the United States. In the end, secession hastened the end of American slavery. The 13^th amendment, which abolished slavery, was ratified on December 6, 1865, much earlier than it is likely to have been passed without the war.  

The racist association of the Confederate flag did not end with the war. The flag was raised above the South Carolina statehouse in 1961 to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the Civil War according to Daniel Hollis, the last surviving member of the centennial commission. Hollis doesn’t recall a racial motive behind the raising of the flag, but South Carolina politicians, mostly Democrats, were fighting against desegregation at the time. In fact, South Carolina’s delegates seceded from the national Centennial Commission to protest President Kennedy’s decision to move the ceremonies to Charleston’s navy base rather than exclude black delegates who had been refused entrance to the segregated Francis Marion Hotel. The brouhaha was referred to as the Second Battle of Fort Sumter.

The South Carolina statehouse flag may not have been explicitly associated with segregation, but elsewhere the Confederate flag was adopted by anti-civil rights activists. The Georgia Encyclopedia notes that the inclusion of the Southern Cross on the Georgia state flag in 1956 was prompted by the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decisions in 1954 and 1955. Rep. Denmark Groover said, after the new Georgia flag was adopted, that it “will show that we in Georgia intend to uphold what we stood for, will stand for and will fight for,” a reference to preserving segregation.

The South Carolina flag was moved from the top of the statehouse to a different site on the statehouse grounds as part of a compromise in 2000. The Georgia flag was changed in 2001.

The best argument for keeping the Confederate flag is as a memorial for Confederate soldiers. An estimated 260,000 Confederate soldiers died in the war. This was almost five percent of the total non-slave population of the Confederacy. Another 194,000 were wounded and 31,000 taken prisoner. It is appropriate to fly Confederate flags at war memorials. It is not appropriate to give the flag a place of prominence on the state capitol grounds or on a state flag.

The bitter truth is that Confederate soldiers, even the majority who did not own slaves, fought to preserve a racist system, even as they were protecting their homes. After the fall of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, the flag became the symbol of racial segregation in the form of “Jim Crow” laws and “separate-but-equal” treatment of blacks. As such a racist symbol, the Confederate flag has no place in a modern American government.

This is not to say that the Confederate flag should be banned. Freedom of speech dictates that people should have the right to fly the flag on private property, wear it on their clothes or paint it on their cars a la “Dukes of Hazzard.” It would also be improper to attempt to erase all vestiges of the South’s Confederate history from society. Slavery, the Confederacy and the Civil War happened and that history should be openly acknowledged and discussed.

There is a vast difference, however, between a state government endorsing the Confederate ideals by prominent placement of the flag and flying the flag at a memorial or displaying it at a museum. By keeping such a divisive symbol, states marginalize 30-40 percent of their populations. If the flag keeps alive the memory of Confederate soldiers, it is fair to say that it also keeps alive the memory of slavery and Jim Crow for black Southerners. It hearkens back to the 1960s when Klansmen could murder a black army officer, as they did not far from where I grew up, and all-white juries would unanimously acquit the killers. Bringing down the Confederate flag would be an important step in putting this racist part of our past behind us.

An addition to being good for country, lowering the Confederate flag would be a good thing for conservatives. Democrats never miss a chance to imply (or state outright) that Republicans are racist. Quite often, conservatives step right into these liberal traps.

To many minority voters, defending the flag of a 150-year-old failed racist nation makes conservatives seem like racists themselves. Conversely, hauling down the flag would remove a roadblock to increased minority participation in the GOP. If Republicans want to win future elections, they must find ways to reach out to minority voters rather than alienating them over trivial issues. In 2015, the Republican Party can either spend political capital trying to rehabilitate the Confederate flag, a lost cause in itself, or wooing minority voters. It cannot do both effectively.

Opposition to the Confederate flag spreads across racial lines. Rasmussen found that by a three to one margin, voters oppose having the Confederate flag continue to fly in front of the South Carolina statehouse. Outside of white Southerners, themselves a minority, support for the Confederate flag is thin.

South Carolina’s Confederate flag will come down, whether now or in the not-too-distant future. If the flag, hoisted by Democrats in both 1861 and 1961, is taken down now, under the effort led by Governor Nikki Haley, a woman who is herself a member of an ethnic minority, today’s Republicans will be completing the job that was started by Republican Abraham Lincoln more than 150 years ago. The irony will be delicious. 

Read the full article on Examiner.com

Photo credit: eyeliam/flickr

Jefferson Davis capture site park threatened by funding catch-22

In early May 1865, the Confederacy was in its last throes. Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia a month earlier. According to the History of Irwin County, Confederate president Jefferson Davis, along with his family and a party of escorts, held the Confederacy’s last cabinet meeting at the home of Robert Toombs in Washington, Ga. It was decided that Davis and his family should make for a port where they could sail for safety in England. From Washington, the group moved southwest, eventually making camp just north of Irwinville, Ga.

Unbeknownst to the Davis and his party, the group was being trailed by members of the First Wisconsin and Fourth Michigan cavalry regiments of the Union army. The Yankees split into two groups, one reaching Irwinville ahead of Davis and doubling back while the other followed the Confederates.

According to the New Georgia Encylopedia, the Union soldiers found Davis’ camp in the early morning hours of May 10, 1865. In the darkness, the two groups of Yankees fought a brief battle with themselves in which two soldiers were killed. In the end, Jefferson Davis was captured after throwing on the cape to man’s overcoat, which later led to rumors that he was disguised in women’s clothing.

The site of the skirmish and Davis’ capture was purchased by Reuben Clements in 1865 and his son, Honorable J.B. Clements deeded the land to the State of Georgia in 1920 for the creation of a park. In 1939, a monument was erected to mark the spot where Davis was captured and a museum was built by FDR’s Works Progress Administration. According to GPB, the site was officially established as a state park in 1997, which eventually included a walking trail, picnic tables and shelters, a playground and a gift shop.

After the onset of the Great Recession in 2008, state budget cuts threatened the closure of a number of parks around the state. Several of these parks were transferred from the state to local governments according to a report from Yahoo at the time. In June 2009, the Jefferson Davis Memorial Historic Site was transferred to Irwin County.

John Hughes, the site manager for Irwin County, says that a catch-22 in the transfer was that the state owed money on several bonds that used the Davis park as collateral. Hughes told Examiner that the deed could not be transferred to Irwin County until the liens were removed from the property. Due to the fact that Irwin County does not own the park, county bylaws prohibit the local government from spending money on the park’s structures.

Hughes said that the park and its facilities were in good condition when the park’s operations were transferred from the state, but, almost immediately, problems started to mount. One of the first problems was a lightning strike to the park’s well. After five years, normal wear and tear has led to the need for costly repairs to the park’s septic system and the museum’s roof needs to be replaced.

Cuts have already deeply impacted the park. When the state operated the park, there were four employees and an annual budget of $139,000 according to Hughes, who has worked at the park for ten years. After Irwin County assumed control, three employees were laid off, leaving only Hughes. The park’s budget is now $36,000. Hughes was told that the state had signed a five year contract with the county that will be up in June 2014. Hughes said that he was told that the bonds originally had a balance of $200,000 in 2009, but that the balance to be paid was now at $400,000, making it seem that Irwin County was further than ever from taking full possession of the land that makes up the park.

Kim Hatcher, Public Affairs Coordinator of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, confirmed that the park property is still owned by the DNR and that there is agreement with Irwin County to operate the park. Hatcher stated that there are three bonds that are tied to the Jefferson Davis Memorial Site with a total of $400,000 owed, but says that the amount due has not increased. The bonds will mature in 2020 at which point the title to the park can be transferred from the state to Irwin County.

In December 2013, the funding problems almost led to the closure of the park. Albany’s WALB reported that the park cost about $50,000 annually to operate, but was only generating about $10,000 in revenues.

Supporters rallied to save the park a few days later. Private contributors donated money and the Sons of Confederate Veterans pledged $25,000 per year according to WALB. Supporters also restarted the Friends of the Park group and planned to seek state grants for further repairs.

For the time being the crisis at the Jefferson Davis Memorial Historic site has been averted, by volunteer groups and charitable donations, but the underlying problem of ownership has not been resolved. It will be years before Irwin County is able to take full ownership of the park. Until the Georgia state bonds are paid, a permanent solution and funding will not be available.

 

Originally published on Atlanta Conservative Examiner