A New Hearing for the Lost Cause?

Furl that Banner! True, ’tis gory,
Yet ’tis wreathed around with glory,
And ’twill live in song and story,
Though its folds are in the dust;
For its fame on brightest pages,
Penned by poets and by sages,
Shall go sounding down the ages—
Furl its folds though now we must.
Furl that banner, softly, slowly!
Treat it gently—it is holy—
For it droops above the dead.
Touch it not—unfold it never,
Let it droop there, furled forever,
For its people’s hopes are dead!
—Fr. Abram Ryan, “The Conquered Banner”

As the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches, more and more considerations of what it is to be an American and what the country is all about are being offered. This is in contrast to the relative quiet of the celebrations heretofore, in comparison to those of the Bicentennial 50 years ago (which this elderly writer remembers well). But despite the relative lack of hoopla, there is some worthwhile questioning going on.

Despite all the razzmatazz around the Declaration of Independence, the first permanent English-speaking settlement in the country was founded in 1607; as they were directly involved with the start of 12 of the 13 colonies, perhaps Kings James I, Charles I, Charles II, and James II have a claim to be founding fathers—and that leaves out St. Augustine and Sault Ste. Marie. Perhaps the relevant French and Spanish Bourbons and Habsburgs ought to be added to that number. For that matter, given John Adams’ claim that only a third of the population wanted independence, perhaps the conflict should be called our first civil war.

The second one certainly looms large in the national consciousness—as well it might, given that more Americans died in that war than all of our others combined. From that war emerged two realities: one that should be an enduring source of pride and the other that has been and continues to be one of shame. The first is the amazingly rapid way in which reconciliation was achieved after a conflict that in most countries would have remained a bleeding wound, as in Ulster or Bosnia. The other is the ongoing racial issue.

Of the first, May’s great secular American feast of Memorial Day is an enduring reminder. Several Southern towns claim to be the source of its origin in 1866 and 1867; my suspicion is that all the claimants are correct, since it is the kind of thing that would occur to people quite independently of each other. In a nutshell, each story is similar. A group of widows and bereaved mothers in a Southern town were decorating the graves of their dead husbands and sons when they realized that there were none for those of the Union soldiers buried nearby. Moved by pity, they decorated those graves as well—and so originated Decoration Day, as Memorial Day would be called before World War I.

It spread quickly across the country, and the sentiments quoted approvingly by Robert Haven Schauffler in his book on the day are worth quoting in their entirety:

This festival, says an unknown writer in the Illustrated American for June 21, 1890, “is not merely a holiday in the modern acceptation of the word, it realizes its etymological significance as a holy day. It is our All Saints’ Day, sacred to the memory of the glorified dead who consecrated themselves to their country, were baptized in blood, were beatified and canonized as martyrs for the right. It is well that, in the hurry and press of our times, when the higher soul within us is choked and stifled by the more sordid cares of the hour, by the selfish struggle for place and pelf, we should pause for a period to dwell upon the memory of the illustrious dead who gave their lives for their country, and who typify that higher and truer Americanism which lies within us still, dormant and latent indeed, yet ready to spring again to the surface whenever the needs of the country issue a new call to arms. It is well that we should do them honor which honors ourselves in the doing. But it is well, also, that we should remember what was their true mission and their higher success: that they fought not through enmity to a gallant and mistaken foe, but through love for the Union, which recognized no North and no South. That Union they have restored, and union means peace, harmony, and mutual good will. If they had merely pinned together with bayonets the two divided sections of the country, they had fought and bled and fallen in vain. Northern hatred for the South, Southern hatred for the North, is disloyalty, is treason indeed to the Union which they re-established. A few political ‘leaders’—‘leaders’ who are far in the rear of public sentiment—have sought to make political capital out of the fact that Southerners cherish the memory of the heroes who fought on their side, and have raised statues to commemorate them. But we who remember with pride the achievements of our soldiers are proud to acknowledge that they had foemen worthy of their steel, and that a common country gave birth to both. The arbitrament of the sword has settled forever the questions over which no other tribunal had jurisdiction, and the nation went through the throes of a civil war for the benefit of North and South alike.”

It was that spirit of reconciliation that allowed actual veterans of the bloody conflict at Gettysburg to gather at that spot 50 years later: the elder Rebels reenacted Pickett’s Charge, racing down not to the gunfire but the literally open arms of their enemies of a half century before. Those who witnessed the warm embraces of those old soldiers for each other never forgot the sight. It is a desecration of their memory to make war upon the Confederate Monuments, as has been all the rage for the past two decades.

The racial issue, by contrast, is never allowed to rest. That being the case, let us look at it as well. In the words of Bernard Lugan,

The historical reality is that one part of Africa grew wealthy by selling the other part. The captives did not appear by enchantment on the trading sites; they were indeed captured, transported, corralled, and sold by Black slave traders. This led the African bishops to say: “Let us therefore begin by acknowledging our share of responsibility in the sale and purchase of the Black man…Our fathers took part in the ignominious history that was that of the Black slave trade. They were sellers in the ignoble Atlantic and trans-Saharan trade” (Declaration of the African bishops gathered at Gorée in October 2003). 

Zora Neale Hurston, in her autobiographical Dust Tracks on a Road, described this historical reality by saying, “I must live with the fact that my own race sold me into slavery.”

That truth aside, there is another. All of the other Western Nations that held slaves ended the practice by Imperial or Royal fiat, or Act of Parliament (in the case of the British Empire). It even cost the Emperor of Brazil his Crown—but there were no bloody civil wars. It may well be that our republican establishment made the horrible war inevitable, given that there was no higher power to appeal to. Nor should it escape our notice that there are demands upon the Arabs for reparations for the East African Slave Trade, which lingered until the European Powers ended it. For that matter, we hear calls for the end of Slavery in North Africa today—presumably because the Slavers would quickly settle the hash of anyone who went there to peacefully protest.

Regardless of that, Reconstruction of the South, with its deprivation of most of the white male Southern population of their Civil Rights, led directly to the imposition of Jim Crow when the generation that had made the gentlemen’s agreement ending Reconstruction died off. It is a testament to the Francophone Catholics of Louisiana that one of their number, Homer Plessy, was the first to challenge the system—alas, unsuccessfully. Nor should we forget the efforts of Confederate Generals Gustave Beauregard and Nathan Bedford Forrest to bring about racial reconciliation in their time.

During that era, the black community showed what it was made of, constructing a network of educational and economic organizations any group could be proud of. I myself am a proud member of the Knights of Peter Claver, formed by black Catholics in Mobile, Alabama, who were denied entry into the Knights of Columbus (of which I am also a member). This was no small achievement.

Then came the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. In itself, the ending of legally enforced racial segregation was certainly a good thing, as was the restoration of black voting rights. But in its wake came also the collapse of many of those selfsame institutions—and, more importantly, the black family. A culture of dependence grew up in the black community. Without going into the grisly details, suffice it to say that any public figure who natters on about white privilege and reparations for slavery but will not address the fact the largest cause of death among young black males is other young black males is himself guilty of the worst kind of racism. Eugenics is alive and well, for all that Planned Parenthood veils its preferential option for aborting the poor in pretty words.

But in the midst of all of this have come two news items which offer slivers of hope in a dark time. One is the passage of Bill 215 by the Louisiana House of Representatives. This would put all the Confederate Monuments in public ownership removed before, after, and especially during the hot summer of burning love in 2020 into the hands of the State Parks Department, who would in turn display them at various of their properties—but not in the Civil Parish in which they originally sat. It is at least a beginning, if it passes the State Senate. Perhaps the tide is turning against the madness.

Even more pleasant, one Brian Summers was just unanimously elected the new Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) Ramseur/Campbell Camp 387 Commander in Statesville, North Carolina. In his previous life, Mr. Summers was Deputy Chief of Staff for the U.S. House of Representatives office for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District in 2019; he worked in the White House during the George W. Bush administration and on the board of directors for the Jesse Helms Center. Now he runs a local radio show. All of this seems straightforward enough; SCV Camp Commanders usually have distinguished careers of one kind or another. What makes Mr. Summers unusual is that he is black.

For me, this latter is a milestone. Despite all the abuse he shall undoubtedly encounter from media, academics, and other uneducated people, there were indeed black Confederates. This may run counter to the approved narrative. But the truth remains that by claiming his role, Mr. Summers opens a new era in the organization and perhaps in society.

When the time comes that black descendants of Confederate soldiers join the SCV as a matter of course, and when Confederate monuments are respected as memorials of a brave if losing side in a tragic chapter of our history, then these United States may well be on our way to real national maturity. What has to be remembered in this 250th year since the Declaration of Independence is that whatever the rights and wrongs of either of our civil wars, regardless of whom you or I might think was in the right in either or both conflicts, we are where we are in the here and now.

Since 1567, the nation we now live in has—as with any other country—been building a history of mixed glory and shame, to which those of us who are living today are heirs. To merit our love, our country does not have to be perfect—only our country. If we are Catholic, then trying to convert her and our fellow citizens is the truest patriotism we can have.