Bury My Heart at Appomattox.
The War Between the States is an ugly piece of history. I am not a Southern Apologist, except sometimes. Certainly not a confederate apologist. The Old South was rotten in many ways, and not just slavery. I believe it was in ways a rigid system that stifled enterprise and progress.
That said, the fighting and bleeding in the war was not done by the perfumed aristocrats on their well-staffed plantations. It was done mostly by farmers and sharecroppers, who fought a Northern invasion. I do not wish to pass over the jingoism present on both sides in the days leading up to the war. Both sides were asking for it. And both sides paid for it. I don't think I even need to mention in this group that white supremacy was stock in trade on both sides of the Potomac in 1861.
Which brings us to the reason the Battle Flag still flies on the South Carolina Confederate War Memorial, and why the South has such a deep and abiding cultural memory of the War.
22.6 percent of Southern men who were between the ages of 20 and 24 in 1860 lost their lives because of the war. (direct quote from History.com)
If you pile on top of that sheer and catastrophic loss of life caused by the total war waged by Sherman, Sheridan, and Grant (which was never visited upon the North, even when Lee marched into PA), as well as the total economic losses in livestock, cotton, and other goods, and even in addition to that, the real and perceived injustices of Reconstruction--
You have a very ugly soup, which has manifested itself in the last 50 years mostly as harmless, outsized, cultural pride and not a small sensitivity to redneck jokes. And the flying of the Battle Flag.
Factor in also the near-total lack of these experiences in the North, especially the Northeast, where many families have not even been in the country for more than 4 generations, tops. It's no wonder my northern friends don't get it, and Facebook is awash with posts telling me to "Get over it" and that one caller to Mike Gallagher this morning said the South needed to "submit" to the North. *spit*
It is a damnable shame that the War occurred and that people died under the flags of the confederacy. It is a somewhat less damnable shame, in my opinion, that the flag was used as a minor accessory, for a short period of time, to repress people of color.
If the South, as a cultural unit, has made mistakes, most of us have owned it. We paid for our sins up to and after 1865 in blood. I think South Carolina has earned the right to put the Battle Flag, or any other flag it desires, on the War Memorial.
I refuse to apologize for the despicable turd who murdered those poor people. I refuse to be associated with him. I will tell the rest of the world to go to hell before I allow them to tell me what that flag does and does not stand for.
The greatest tragedy, is how fast the cultural Left was able to leverage a long-dormant issue, chiefly with the use of social media, into a defining moment for a State that really just wants to mind its own business and be left alone. And I resent that capability and its implications much more than I resent the possibility of the Flag being taken down. Because that is going to have ever-increasing ramifications down the line. Think of it--a Governor calls a press conference over a nearly-dead issue in the space of 48 hours. All because some ignorant *expletive deleted*ck decided to be outraged that the Battle Flag wasn't at half mast on Thursday.
That's real power.
Lincoln would have loved that *expletive deleted*it.
*expletive deleted*ck me, I'm done. Bury my heart at Appomattox. You can have the goddamned flag, and the rest of the country.
