The Civil War’s Final Remnant
By Rob Huckins
Dwight Yoakam was a few songs into his set at the Indian Ranch Campground in Webster, MA on a brisk Sunday afternoon in late June when it happened. A Confederate flag, held up in full view by a guy making a pass in front of the audience in a brief moment of exhuberance, maybe to get some affirmation after a week which saw the political right take a few significant kicks to the collective groin. Obamacare survived (again). Same sex marriage held up in all fifty states. And across key locations in the South, the first steps toward the death knell of one of its most treasured symbols were taken, softly, quietly, with trepidation until more assertive moves happened withing what seemed like hours. South Carolina and Alabama were first to remove the Stars and Bars from their capitol buildings. More followed as social media became awash with posts and tweets of rainbow flags, Obamacare memes, the unintentional hilarity of Justic Scalia and the debate over just what constitutes hertiage in the United States. The guy with the flag paraded by, briskly, playfully even, in front of Yoakam and his band as they ended a hillbilly stomper of a number, and was greeted intially by a sprinkling of oddly halfhearted claps before being showered with a sharp wave of loud boos that felt longer than the few seconds it lasted. The flag was quickly retracted and the man disappeared into the crowd while Yoakam–who clearly had to have detected the ruckus in the small venue–ramped up the music again. To be clear, this intense reaction happened in western Massachusetts, not Alabama or South Carolina. To suggest this represented some sort of national mood shift in the view of the Confederate flag would be an overstatement. It might have been just New England pride, like booing someone wearing a Yankees hat. But it still felt different, in a way which hinted that something had changed, even if it was for a few moments in a rural, more traditional part of a relatively blue state, at a country music event with plenty of cowboy boots, hats, American flags and Harley Davidson shirts galore. There were a couple of t-shirts with facsimiles of Confederate flags and related montages spotted in the audience, but nothing came of those. The flag was another, more pointed, matter. As American flags hung off of campers, appeared on clothing, were hoisted up in back of the band and in other places across the grounds, it was hard to miss the wordless message: this is our flag, take that other one back where you came from.
The Confederate flag, of course, is held up as a symbol of heritage for many, particularly (but not exclusively) in the South, where reminders of the Civil War litter the landscape in the form of statues, battlefield markers, reinactments and museums. One can travel throughout the Northeast and scarcely be reminded such a war ever took place. One can easily imagine a foreign traveler never even learning about the war if he or she avoided the South altogether. Even in Florida (a geographically, but not culturally for the most part, southern destination), the war barely gets any attention over amusement parks, new housing and an ever expanding population of people who are not even from the state to begin with (akin to the saying “most everyone in Florida isn’t even from Florida”). But the flag endures. From country rock bands to white supremacist groups, the bizarre range of people who hold the flag dear is staggering, to the point where it would be shortsighted to paint all these enclaves of the stars and bars with the same brush. But the flag represents a lot of things to a lot of people. State sovereignty. Southern heritage. Independence. Soldiers’ sacrifice. Nobility. It also represents far more sinister and ugly elements from our past, too. Slavery. Racial discrimination. White supremacy. Opposition of civil rights. Treason. The latter group is virtually impossible to realistically support no matter where one falls on the political spectrum these days. It’s also hard to ignore just how deep this flag instills unease and resentment in so many Americans across a wide swath of the population.
To be fair, the South has no patent on racism, latent or otherwise, and plenty of cities (Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia to name a few) have their own ugly pasts when it comes to race relations and tolerance of cultural diversity. There is no questioning this fact and to argue otherwise risks exposing oneself as ignorant of American history and all its complexity. But the South lost the Civil War and in many ways, has never collectively gotten over it. The heritage of the war and its deep meaning and symbolism to the more traditional parts of the region is unmistakeable; highways, schools, colleges, universities, museums and other public venues are adorned with names and tributes to those men who fought for Southern independence. It’s true most Southerners never owned slaves and those who fought for the Confederacy were just as brave and sacrificed as much (maybe more since it was fought on mostly Southern soil) as their Northern enemies, there is no mistaking the root cause for Southern resistance was the preservation of a society squarely entrenched in slavery. Many will quibble and parse words in debating this but no matter what “cause” one brings up for discussion, the road eventually takes the argument back to slavery. To ignore this is to either prove one’s ignorance or a foolish commitment to an outdated “Gone With The Wind” style of revisionist history. When viewed in this light, it is hard to see how the Confederate flag can be viewed as anything but representative of all the ugly things its detractors accuse it of representing. In many ways, the adherence to the flag is more than shortsighted; it is sad and somewhat pathetic. In no other country has the losing side of a horribly costly and deadly insurrection, one bent on preserving a state based upon racial slavery, been allowed to fly its flag after said rebellion was finished, much less revel in it. The South has gotten a free pass on waving a treasonous flag for the last 150 years, an entitlement stretching far beyond any act of free speech, an act steeped in arrogance, a hubris preserved only in a nation which protects the right for such expressions. While many decry the removal of the Confederate flag at various public venues and buildings as a breakdown of these free speech rights, it is important to remember this: nobody’s taking away anyone’s free speech. There is no law against Confederate flags. In fact, the flag should be prominently displayed–in a museum. As we move further into the 21st century and an increasingly blended culture and interconnected populace, it just seems time to move on, from the Civil War, from slavery, from all the supposed reasons why the flag is deemed “OK” by its supporters, all of it. As with any free speech, just because one can doesn’t mean one should. Keep your Confederate flag. Wave it proudly. It’s your right. Put it on your hat. Wear it on your shirt. Put it up on your property. Keep it aloft over your state’s most important buildings if you want. But just know you are increasingly on the wrong side of history. American history, not that of the failed Confederacy. And it’s a history that should unify us all with its complexity, ugliness and beauty, a narrative of intermitten failure and success, of going for big things at the most inconvenient of times, of being the most unique and influential nation in modern world history. That should be enough for all of us, just as one flag should be enough.