I must be an odd Yankee. The onslaught of stories about the War on the Confederate Flag continue to bug me. While other stories relating to the honored/enraging Southern symbol have mainly affected its use on the local or state level, the latest one could affect the use of the flag nationwide. Soon, history may reflect that…there was only one side in the Civil War, at least when it comes to acknowledging the deceased who fought in it and are buried on federal grounds.
The U.S. House of Representatives has now jumped on the “see no evil flag” bandwagon.
By way of the Hill:
After just two minutes of floor debate late Tuesday evening, the House passed a measure to prohibit the display of Confederate flags on graves in federal cemeteries.
Despite the lack of fanfare, the vote marked the House’s first entry into the debate over removing the Confederate flag from federal property that went beyond codifying already established policies.
Rep. Jared Huffman’s (D-Calif.) amendment to the 2016 Interior Department spending bill seeks to end a policy that allows a temporary display of the flag in cemeteries under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. It sailed through on a voice vote after minimal discussion on the House floor that encountered no opposition.
The final vote on the Interior bill is expected on Thursday.
This wasn’t the only measure aimed at shunning Confederate battle flag imagery that the House passed.
Earlier Tuesday, the House adopted another amendment authored by Huffman to codify a new National Park Service policy by prohibiting new contracts to sell items in gift stores featuring the Confederate flag.
The National Park Service announced the policy days after the June 17 shooting to prevent the sale of standalone items with the Confederate flag in gift shops or bookstores. However, it would still allow stores operated by the National Park Service to sell educational items like books or films that include images of the Confederate symbol.
A third amendment to the Interior Department spending bill, offered by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), bans the National Park Service from buying or displaying Confederate flags unless they are used to provide historical context. As with the two other amendments, it passed on a voice vote.
As noted in the article, the National Park Service Director issued an order in 2010 that restricted the display of Confederate flags in national cemeteries to small decorative versions next to the graves of Confederate vets, and only to mark Confederate Memorial Day:
In national cemeteries located in States which officially set aside a specific date as Confederate Memorial Day, the superintendent may permit a sponsoring group to decorate the graves of Confederate veterans with small Confederate flags. These flags will be removed from the graves as soon as possible following the designated Confederate Memorial Day. The acquisition and placement of these flags will be at no cost to the National Park Service. Confederate Flags will not be flown on any cemetery flagpole.
But if the bill passes with these amendments intact, practically all signs of the Army of Northern Virginia’s battle flag (not the “Stars and Bars,” as some media outlets are incorrectly calling it) would disappear from national parks and cemeteries. The sponsor of the amendment seems to think that marking the graves of Confederate soldiers with a designation of the side they took is celebratory.
“We can honor that history without celebrating the Confederate flag and all of the dreadful things that it symbolizes,” Huffman said.
All of the dreadful things, so says a California Democrat. Seeing as his amendment received no opposing opinion, it appears as though the majority party has no interest in trying to fight it. Big surprise. Even Republicans have bowed to the pressure of the hatemongers and dividers.
But what does the battle flag really mean to Southerners? It pays to look back at the words of those who who fought and died in honor of that symbol.
These are the words of John Brown Gordon, Confederate General. In Reminiscences of the Civil War (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1904), this is how he described the emotional surrender to Union forces in April of 1865:
When the proud and sensitive sons of Dixie came to a full realization of the truth that the Confederacy was overthrown and their leader had been compelled to surrender his once invincible army, they could no longer control their emotions, and tears ran like water down their shrunken faces. The flags which they still carried were objects of undisguised affection. These Southern banners had gone down before overwhelming numbers; and torn by shells, riddled by bullets, and laden with the powder and smoke of battle, they aroused intense emotion in the men who had so often followed them to victory. Yielding to overpowering sentiment, these high-mettled men began to tear the flags from the staffs and hide them in their bosoms, as they wet them with burning tears.
The Confederate officers faithfully endeavored to check this exhibition of loyalty and love for the old flags. A great majority of them were duly surrendered; but many were secretly carried by devoted veterans to their homes, and will be cherished forever as honored heirlooms.
There was nothing unnatural or censurable in all this. The Confederates who clung to those pieces of battered bunting knew they would never again wave as martial ensigns above embattled hosts; but they wanted to keep them, just as they wanted to keep the old canteen with a bullet-hole through it, or the rusty gray jacket that had been torn by canister. They loved those flags, and will love them forever, as mementoes of the unparalleled struggle. They cherish them because they represent the consecration and courage not only of Lee’s army but of all the Southern armies, because they symbolize the bloodshed and the glory of nearly a thousand battles.
Some narrow but very good and patriotic people object to this expression of Southern sentiment. It was not so, however, with William McKinley, that typical American, who, while living and while dying, exhibited in their fulness and strength the virtues of a true and lofty manhood. That chivalric Union soldier, far-seeing statesman, and truly great President saw in this Southern fidelity to past memories the surest pledge of loyalty to future duties. William McKinley fought as bravely as the bravest on the Union side; but he was broad enough to recognize in his Southern countrymen a loyal adherence to the great fundamental truths to which both sides were devoted. He was too wise and too just to doubt the South’s fealty to the Constitution or to the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence; for Madison was father of the one and Jefferson of the other. He was great enough to trust implicitly the South’s renewed allegiance to the Union and its flag; for hers was the most liberal hand in studding its field with stars. He did not hesitate to trust Southern pluck and patriotism to uphold the honor of the country and give liberty to Cuba; for he remembered Washington and his rebels in the Revolution, Jackson and his Southern volunteers at New Orleans; Zachary Taylor and his Louisianians, Clay and his Kentuckians, Butler and his South Carolinians, and Davis and his Mississippians in Mexico.
The heartstrings of the mother, woven around the grave of her lost child, will never be severed while she lives; but does that hinder the continued flow of maternal devotion to those who are left her? The South’s affections are bound, with links that cannot be broken, around the graves of her sons who fell in her defence, and to the mementoes and memories of the great struggle; but does that fact lessen her loyalty to the proud emblem of a reunited country? Does her unparalleled defence of the now dead Confederacy argue less readiness to battle for this ever-living Republic, in the making and the administering of which she bore so conspicuous a part?
If those unhappy patriots who find a scarecrow in every faded, riddled Confederate flag would delve deeper into the philosophy of human nature, or rise higher,–say to the plane on which McKinley stood,–they would be better satisfied with their Southern countrymen, with Southern sentiment, with the breadth and strength of the unobtrusive but sincere Southern patriotism. They would see that man is so constituted–the immutable laws of our being are such–that to stifle the sentiment and extinguish the hallowed memories of a people is to destroy their manhood.
Some will note that Gen. Gordon had unclear connections to the Ku Klux Klan following the war and leaned toward the belief that whites were superior. But it was a much different time back then. A great deal of Northerners held such beliefs, too. What the cited passage explains is that even though the South held values that differed from the North, they had a love for the United States that was just as passionate. To discount that and eliminate which side of the war they stood on during that fiercely troubled time is something I would imagine that many Southerners today would resent.
Yes, slavery was a dreadful part of our nation’s past, but those who hail from the South by and large do not dwell on the negative aspects of the past. They are diverse people with diverse views, just like people you find anywhere. And they will not disown their ancestors just because some “enlightened” outsiders tell them they must. If the Industry of the Perpetually Offended acted consistent, its members would demand that just about every person on this planet disown their brutal ancestry, as well, if one were to give the matter a serious degree of thought and research.
People who want to scribble out entire swaths of history because one aspect within still bothers them need to get over it and move on. An entire section of our nation is being forced to concede on an issue they had nothing to do with. They don’t spend every moment consumed with the idea of white supremacy. The self-righteous do-gooders are the ones who can’t stop thinking in terms of black and white, of white versus black. Because one disturbed and murderous young man posed in a photo with a flag that a small minority of which he is a part uses to flaunt their hate, the mob is forcing the much larger section who regard the flag as a general symbol of sacrifice and pride to abandon it.
Symbolically, it’s that sort of compulsion which makes America look ugly.
