Neo-Confederates
Neo-Confederates are groups and individuals who portray the Confederate States of America and its actions during the American Civil War in a positive light. The League of the South, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and other neo-Confederate organizations continue to defend the secession of the 11 Confederate States.
Etymology
Historian James M. McPherson used the term "neo-Confederate historical committees" in his description of the efforts which were undertaken from 1890 to 1930 to have history textbooks present a version of the American Civil War in which secession was not rebellion, the Confederacy did not fight for slavery, and the Confederate soldier was defeated by overwhelming numbers and resources. Historian Nancy MacLean used the term "neo-Confederacy" in reference to groups, such as the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, that formed in the 1950s to oppose the Supreme Court of the United States rulings demanding racial integration, in particular Brown v. Board of Education. Former Southern Partisan editor and co-owner Richard Quinn used the term when he referred to Richard T. Hines, former Southern Partisan contributor and Ronald Reagan administration staffer, as being "among the first neo-Confederates to resist efforts by the infidels to take down the Confederate flag."An early use of the term came in 1954. In a book review, Leonard W. Levy wrote: "Similar blindness to the moral issue of slavery, plus a resentment against the rise of the Negro and modern industrialism, resulted in the neo-Confederate interpretation of Phillips, Ramsdell and Owsley."
Historian Gary W. Gallagher stated in an interview that neo-Confederates do not want to hear him when he talks "about how important maintaining racial control, white supremacy, was to the white South." He warns, however, that the term neo-Confederate can be overused, writing, "Any historian who argues that the Confederate people demonstrated robust devotion to their slave-based republic, possessed feelings of national community, and sacrificed more than any other segment of white society in United States history runs the risk of being labeled a neo-Confederate."
History
Origins of the "Lost Cause" movement
The "Lost Cause" is the name which is commonly given to a movement that seeks to reconcile the existence of the traditional society of the Southern United States with the defeat of the Confederate States of America at the end of the American Civil War of 1861–1865. Those who contribute to the movement tend to portray the Confederacy's cause as noble and they also tend to portray most of the Confederacy's leaders as exemplars of old-fashioned chivalry who were defeated by the Union's armies because the Union's armies used overwhelming force rather than superior military skills. They believe that the history of the Civil War which is commonly portrayed is a "false history". They also tend to condemn Reconstruction, the era when African Americans were first allowed to vote.On its main website, the Sons of Confederate Veterans speaks of "ensuring that a true history of the 1861–1865 period is preserved", claiming that "he preservation of liberty and freedom was the motivating factor in the South's decision to fight the Second American Revolution."
James M. McPherson has written the following about the origins in 1894 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy : "A principal motive of the UDC's founding was to counter this 'false history' which taught Southern children 'that their fathers were not only rebels but guilty of almost every crime enumerated in the Decalogue. Much of what the UDC called "false history" centered on the relationship between slavery and secession and the war. The chaplain of the United Confederate Veterans, forerunner of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, wrote in 1898 that history books as written could lead Southern children to "think that we fought for slavery" and would "fasten upon the South the stigma of slavery and that we fought for it... The Southern soldier will go down in history dishonored". Referring to a 1932 call by the Sons of Confederate Veterans to restore "the purity of our history", McPherson notes that the "quest for purity remains vital today, as any historian working in the field can testify."
20th century
In the 1910s, Mildred Rutherford, the historian general of the UDC, spearheaded the attack on schoolbooks that did not present the Lost Cause version of history. Rutherford assembled a "massive collection" which included "essay contests on the glory of the Ku Klux Klan and personal tributes to faithful slaves". Historian David Blight concluded: "All UDC members and leaders were not as virulently racist as Rutherford, but all, in the name of a reconciled nation, participated in an enterprise that deeply influenced the white supremacist vision of Civil war memory."In the 1930s, Seward Collins, a self-described "fascist publisher", provided an avenue for white supremacists and neo-Confederates to advance their ideology in The American Review, a literary journal openly sympathetic to European fascism. The connections and overlap between white supremacist, fascist, far-right, and neo-Confederate ideologies persisted, and remain in place in the present day.
Historian Alan T. Nolan refers to the Lost Cause as "a rationalization, a cover-up". After describing the devastation that was the consequence of the war for the South, Nolan states:
Leaders of such a catastrophe must account for themselves. Justification is necessary. Those who followed their leaders into the catastrophe required similar rationalization. Clement A. Evans, a Georgia veteran who at one time commanded the United Confederate Veterans organization, said this: "If we cannot justify the South in the act of Secession, we will go down in History solely as a brave, impulsive but rash people who attempted in an illegal manner to overthrow the Union of our Country."
Nolan further states his opinion of the racial basis of Lost Cause mythology:
The Lost Cause version of the war is a caricature, possible, among other reasons, because of the false treatment of slavery and the black people. This false treatment struck at the core of the truth of the war, unhinging cause and effect, depriving the United States of any high purpose, and removing African Americans from their true role as the issue of the war and participants in the war, and characterizing them as historically irrelevant.
In the 1930s and 1940s, supporters of Nazi Germany sought cross appeal with American neo-confederates. Despite a shared commitment to white supremacy and antipathy towards American Liberalism, the Nazis found few sympathizers amongst white southerners, even the KKK itself. Starting in the 1970s, neo-confederate ideals and organizations became increasingly associated with the emerging neo-Nazi movement. Critics often associate Neo-Confederates with fascism in the United States.
Contemporary evaluations
Historian David Goldfield observes:If history has defined the South, it has also trapped white southerners into sometimes defending the indefensible, holding onto views generally discredited in the rest of the civilized world and holding on the fiercer because of that. The extreme sensitivity of some Southerners toward criticism of their past reflects not only their deep attachment to their perception of history but also to their misgivings, a feeling that maybe they've fouled up somewhere and maybe the critics have something.
When asked about purported "neo-Confederate revisionism" and the people behind it, Arizona State University professor and Civil War historian Brooks D. Simpson said:
This is an active attempt to reshape historical memory, an effort by white Southerners to find historical justifications for present-day actions. The neo-Confederate movement's ideologues have grasped that if they control how people remember the past, they'll control how people approach the present and the future. Ultimately, this is a very conscious war for memory and heritage. It's a quest for legitimacy, the eternal quest for justification.
Tenets and core beliefs
Historical revisionism
Neo-Confederates often hold iconoclastic views about the American Civil War and the Confederate States of America. Neo-Confederates are openly critical of the presidency of Abraham Lincoln to varying degrees and they are also critical of the history of Reconstruction. Various authors have written critiques of Lincoln and the Union. Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea is singled out for purported atrocities like the burning of Atlanta which neo-Confederates believe were committed against Southern civilians, in contrast to the mainstream historical perspective which argues that Sherman targeted Southern infrastructure and curtailed killing rather than expand it. Slavery is rarely mentioned—when it is, it is usually not defended and is denied as a primary cause of the Confederacy's starting of the American Civil War. Critics often accuse neo-Confederates of engaging in "historical revisionism" and acting as "apologists".Neo-Confederates have been accused of downplaying the role of slavery in triggering the Civil War and misrepresenting African-American support for the Confederacy. The book The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader says that toward the end of the 20th century—in order to support the idea that the Civil War was not about slavery—neo-Confederates began to claim that "thousands of African Americans had served in the Confederate army". A neo-Confederate publication, Confederate Veteran, published by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Military Order of the Stars and Bars, said in 1992 that "the overwhelming majority of blacks during the War Between the States supported and defended, with armed resistance, the Cause of Southern Independence". Historian Bruce Levine says that "their insistent celebration these days of 'Black Confederates'... seeks to legitimize the claim" that the war "had never been fought on behalf of slavery; loyalty to the South, Southern self-government, Southern culture, or states' rights — rather than slavery and white supremacy — fueled the Southern war effort".
The honor of the Confederacy and its veterans is another controversial feature of neo-Confederate dogma. The neo-Confederate movement is concerned about giving honor to the Confederacy itself, to the veterans of the Confederacy and Confederate veterans' cemeteries, to the various flags of the Confederacy and Southern cultural identity.