I GUESS I’M SUPPOSED to be upset that this weekend the Sons of Confederate Veterans will hold a
“Secession Ball” in Charleston — complete with hoop skirts and a band playing “Dixie” — to celebrate the 150th anniversary of South Carolina’s secession from the Union, and hence the first irrevocable step towards the Civil War.

I’ve read that it’s offensive to celebrate such a thing, and that such a gala is an affront to decent people everywhere, a relic of a shameful and bygone era.

Maybe so, but I’m still not feelin’ it.

At the most basic level, one of the institutions upheld as a result of the Civil War was the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, allowing both freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. You don’t have to agree with the purpose of the Secession Ball in order for it to go on.

The NAACP is staging a protest of the event, which is also their right. In reference to the Secession Ball, an NAACP spokesman called slavery the “American Holocaust.”

Since someone else brought it up, I’ll just get down to brass tacks here: Germany, which at one point performed the actual Holocaust, is now one of America’s staunchest allies and most important trading partners.

But we can’t tolerate a silly cocktail party within our own country because of something the host state did over a century ago? Really?

Of course, there’s little doubt that the Secession Ball organizers are guilty of some historical revisionism of their own. I suspect — in fact I’m quite sure of it — that many of them would fall back on the old trope of insisting the South didn’t secede because of slavery, but because of state’s rights.

Which is certainly true — except the right they most strenuously advocated for was the right of states to have slavery, a fact the state’s rights crowd conveniently leaves out of the mix.

Still, the Sons of Confederate Veterans clearly aren’t advocating for slavery today, or even for segregation. Therefore we really have little choice but to take them at their word that the event is a celebration of Southern heritage and the sacrifice of the Confederate fighting man.

After the Civil War, by the way, the South’s martial tradition would sustain and drive the American war effort in any number of subsequent conflicts, with Southern Medal of Honor recipients far outstripping the South’s actual percentage of the population.

Is it not remarkable that the region that seceded from the Union is now that Union’s most patriotic defender? Is that not worthy of celebration? It’s quite unique, isn’t it?

In that vein, it certainly might be smart for the organizers of the Secession Ball to update the event in some way, to “rebrand” it in modern parlance, perhaps with a nod to racial unity and the strides the South has made, etc.

(At which point the question begs itself: When can we expect the NAACP, an organization which still features the phrase “colored people” in its name, to rebrand? Eh?)

But do we really want people to pretend to be something they’re not? What does that accomplish?

There’s plenty of mendacity in the world already. Why force someone to make a cynical marketing move — essentially, to lie — in order to garner political correctness points?

What core American value would that uphold? Which soldiers died for that cause in the Civil War?

If the Secession Ball should be vilified — and perhaps it should — can’t we, however begrudgingly, commend it for at least being sincere in what it really is?

After all, that’s the essential value the gala celebrates: the willingness to sacrifice everything for a sincere and deeply held belief and sense of identity in the face of adversity.

Is that not the central and all–encompassing romance that encapsulates all that is glorious, all that is maddening, all that is so perennially interesting to so many people all over the world about the American South?

And someone wants us to just get rid of all that? Well, bless their heart…

I’ve come to my own separate peace with the South. As a native Southerner who has rarely been in the Southern mainstream, I struggled for years with my homeland’s more frustrating characteristics: the stubbornly proud anti–intellectualism, the xenophobic distrust of other cultures, the conflation of personal religious belief with serious public policy, and of course the ever–present and ever–stressful racial tension constantly simmering under the surface.

So why do I stay? Simple.

In my travels over the years, the nicest, most mannered, most generous people I’ve met turned out to be right here at home. For all their many faults, the people of the South make everyday life easier to lead because of their innate grace, ever–present sense of humor, and remarkable creativity.

For me, the real face of the South is in the fine piece this issue by Patrick Rodgers about white and black residents of Pin Point coming together to preserve that community’s rich multicultural heritage.

It’s everything that is of real value and merit about the South: tradition, creativity, generosity, looking out for your neighbor.

The South, like history, is what it is. And also like history, we can’t always deal with it strictly on our own terms.

This article appears in Dec 15-21, 2010.

11 replies on “Secession impressions”

  3. “except the right they most strenuously advocated for was the right of states to have slavery” You may want to read “When in the course of human events” by Charles Adams. It’s annotated, and footnoted throughout and proves your point is the farthest from the truth. The bottom line is the war started over taxation. Over 87% of taxes collected were from the Southern States and over 90% of those were spent in Northern States. The South felt the only way to survive was to leave the union. I am no advocate for any sort of slavery, just want to make sure that history is presented honestly. It is important however, to understand that due to economic reasons, slavery would have ended anyhow whether the war was fought or not. The whitewashed history taught in schools today have Lincoln portrayed as the “Great Emancipator” when in fact he had guaranteed in his first inaugural address that slavery would continue in the South. Lincoln stated emphatically that he had “…no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” Lincoln was the 19th century equivalent to the modern day G. W. Bush, an imperialist with a dictatorial abuse of civil rights.

  4. “The bottom line is the war started over taxation.”

    Yes, but it’s not that quite simple.

    The import taxes were high on southern states and South Carolina in particular, which was making noises about succeeding as early as the 1830s. But they were the only state doing so and after a compromise was reached between President Andrew Jackson and Vice President John Calhoun, the latter realized some form of Southern Solidarity was needed, because the tariff/tax problem would come up again. So he promoted the idea that the right to own slaves was part and parcel of the Southern states and that important economic factor was under threat from the Federal government.

    So yes, taxes and tariffs may be the real underlying cause, but make no mistake, slavery and a state’s right to allow slavery, were strongly mixed in there.

  5. The War of 1861-1865 was not fought over slavery.

    That war was a war for independence, the same as the War of 1776-1781.

    The War of 1861-1865 was fought because the United States invaded the seceded States. The secessions were triggered by an overweening, unresponsive central government — the same dissatisfactions that triggered the secession of thirteen States from Britain in 1776, the secession of Mexico from the Spanish Empire in 1818, and the secession of Texas from Mexico in 1836.

    If the seceded States had wished to preserve slavery, they had only to re-join the Union and ratify the Corwin Amendment, which read: “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”

  7. First of all, thanks for reading and commenting. Secondly, I’ll just quote without further comment from a famous speech Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens made here in Savannah in 1861: “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner–stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition.”

  8. You nailed it, Jim. All one has to do is read the declarations of the separate states on why they wanted to secede. Yes, they had other economic beefs with the U.S. government, but the one that was going to kill the South was the ending of slavery. Some of us believe that they had a perfect right to secede. The Union was not working out for them in the way they’d intended when they joined. The war could have been avoided if the U.S. had accepted their removal and ceded the fort back to South Carolina. That would have preserved the spirit of the Constitution, unlike forcing a section which wanted to leave to stay. We’re still living with the effects of that, also.

  10. Good arguments all!

    First let me say I am from NC, as my ancestors have for the last 300 year. That my ancestors were at battles like the Cow Pens, and Guilford Court House with Greene and the colonial miltia.

    In the second American Revolution my ancestors marched with Jackson in the valley and my great grandfather was captured at Spotsylvannia Courthouse. I have no greater respect than for the men and leaders of the Army of Northern Virgina. The last true patriots to the Republic.

    On the causes of the War of North Agression, most of it breaks down to Power and Money.

    Power from the standpoint of the growing influx of immigrants in the North that ballooned the population, which in turned increased the number of Northern Congressmen who would vote for increasing import and export tariffs on raw material-cotton leaving the US and finested good coming in from abroad. Northern industrialist did not want to pay a world market price for cotton. Nor did they want to compete with Europe and be a low cost provider of manufactured goods. They wanted a captive market.

    In the modern context this is called protectionism when it is to the disadvantage of the modern US business interest and job protection and industrial policy when to the advantage of the US unions.

    At that time the only protection from this growth of power against the South interest
    (which was the produciton of raw material- cotton) was the Senate. The whole reason for having a slave state and a free state join the union at the same time. So that there would be a balance of power in the Senate to minimize the effect of the growing Congressional power from the industrial Northern states.

    Was the split between North and South unavoidable. Probably so, the North was modernizing and industrializing. The North wanted to keep the South plantation system intact as long as that system served to feed Northern mills with cheap cotton. The South was based on agriculture, with poor geography for industrialization at that time.

    Anyway. we have a similar political discussion going on today, illegal aliens. The business interest clandstinely use those who are fighting for the legalization of these illegals because it drives down the cost of labor without driving down retail prices. The people fighting to enforce immigration laws are trying to protect the price of labor and the working class. Also you hear terms like open borders and open markets. New phrases for “your jobs go somewhere if you can’t work cheap enough”

    Oops sorry about getting off on a rant!!!!!

  11. Continued Rant from AP Hill

    The individual soldiers and military leaders had there reasons to fight based on a perceived threat to their liberty. This is why Southerners in particular celebrate the individual soldiers and the military leaders and maybe Jefferson Davis.

    For the politicians it was about a threat to their power. Thats why North and South no one celebrates the political leaders except for Lincoln and Davis. The rest of them are selfish bastards.

    For the Northern industrialist and the Sothern plantation owners it was about their money. Thats why none of these selfish bastards are celebrated unless they actually served in the military during the war.

    Don’t forget Power and Money flow that trial and you will always find out whose is responsible for any war or government policy here or abroad.

    Oh one other thing to think about just as the average man got screwed over back then. You are getting screwed over now.

    We are all on the plantation now jumping to the demands of the new slave masters in the two big white plantation mansions in DC, the White House and the Capitol Building. Even those slave master have masters who pull their strings.

    Sic Semper Tyrantus!!!!!!!!

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