With tensions high over the meaning of the impact of the confederate flag, you would suppose many of those advocating it be used in an expanded way might take the weekend off. You would be wrong.
Darrell Maples, pictures above, has long been an advocate of preserving the memories of the confederacy and providing markers to remember the battles. As someone who loves history, I too believe that we should make our best effort to remember the battles, to portray them as they were as a constant reminder of what happened.
At that point, we begin to differ. In a ceremony this weekend, Maples addressed those waiting in confederate garb in Rocheport. Bruno Vernaschi, a reporter for the Columbia Tribune covered the ceremony.
http://www.columbiatribune.com/...
“I think it’s important that we respect our history,” said Republican state Rep. Chuck Basye, who is Randy’s brother. “I know a lot of it isn’t pleasant. A lot of people did some pretty bad things at the time, but it’s history, and it shouldn’t be changed. We should respect it and learn from it.”
“Some people say it’s not fashionable today to honor Confederates,” Basye said. “I reject that view. Anybody that says we’re doing something wrong by honoring these Confederates, I’ve got a message for them — we don’t agree with you.”
“These men were fighting for their homes and … for their families,” Maples said. “Their families were the most important thing to them, as they are to us. And when they saw a way of life destroyed in many ways we cannot even begin to imagine, they fought back. It was very difficult for them to do, but I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same.”
While Republican Representative Basye tried to stick with the "we honor them for xyz" in a way he can try to backpedal, Darrell Maples wades right in to the heart of the issue:
"And when they saw their way of life destroyed in many ways we cannot even begin to imagine"
It is of course, very difficult for us to imagine a lifestyle that involved slavery or forced labor being stripped from us. I personally can't imagine it, I prefer not to imagine it, and I'm sure it was "very difficult" as he notes.
Darrell Maples has used this form of rhetoric over the years to back up his efforts to honor the dead confederates buried throughout Missouri.
http://america.aljazeera.com/...
“The men that are lying in that cemetery answered the call of their lawfully elected governors,” he said. “They did the patriotic thing and answered their governors’ call to defend their states. You can’t get more patriotic than that.”
When asked if he could understand why some might be upset about the flying the Confederate flag, Borron pointed to a nearby hand-made sign that read, “If 75,000 men of color fought for this flag, how can it be called racist?”
The Sons of the Confederacy have long contended that large numbers of persons of color fought for the south. They offer no direct proof of which - mostly assertions.
John Staufer, a controversial academic researched this matter and found something to these claims - there were African Americans and others who fought for the south.. but the reasoning isn't the answer the modern confederates want to hear:
http://news.harvard.edu/...
“His case can be seen as representative,” said Stauffer. “Masters put guns to (the heads of slaves) to make them shoot Yankees.”
Freedmen in the Confederacy faced re-enslavement in Virginia and elsewhere, said Stauffer, so they made displays of loyalty that were really gestures of self-protection — a “hope for better treatment, a hope not to be enslaved.”
Loyalty among the few black Confederates was at least ambiguous, said Stauffer. It was further undermined by the Confiscation Act of Aug. 6, 1861, which allowed Union forces to “confiscate” slaves and other “property” used to support the Confederacy.
That's right. Freed slaves and outright slaves fought in the south as opposed to being killed or in the case of freed men, being re-enslaved. Invoking them as a justification for the flag not being racist could be rephrased: remember the tens of thousands of African Americans who were offered a choice: die or be forced back into slavery OR fight for the south and maybe we won't kill you? That's proof the south wasn't racist.
Seems ridiculous, doesn't it?
While his message to people to fly the flag everywhere that a confederate is buried seems out of step with reality, the sad fact is nearly half of all Americans don't believe the civil war was about slavery.. at all.
http://www.salon.com/...
Popular opinion favors the latter theory. In the spring of 2011, in recognition of the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, pollsters at the Pew Research Center asked: “What is your impression of the main cause of the Civil War?” Thirty-eight percent of the respondents said the main cause was the South’s defense of an economic system based on slavery, while nearly half—48 percent—said the nation sacrificed some 650,000 of its fathers, sons, and brothers over a difference of interpretation in constitutional law.
Darrell Maples worries we are losing history and we should preserve it. I agree with him. And I hope many of these grave sites are preserved as a way to teach people what really happened, good and bad. It is important to remember all of the battles, and the causes.
The problem is one side would like to remember the civil war in a way that simply isn't real, to retroactively remember with starry eyes events that didn't happen, and the other is eager not to forget - but to remember with disdain the real causes in a chance to change our country for the better.