Click here for an earlier post on this subject.
SCV Not Happy With North Carolina Sesquicentennial Website
August 19, 2010 By 74 Comments
If the SCV really wants to be taken seriously during the upcoming Civil War Sesquicentennial than they are going to have to do better than what Walter L. Adams Jr. offers as a critique of North Carolina’s sesquicentennial website. Adams is the heritage defense officer for Pettigrew’s Partisans, Camp 2110 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. That’s right, he is the heritage defense officer. First, check out the website, which I think is an incredible resource and reflects a strong commitment on the part of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources to commemorate the war in an inclusive and educational manner. What’s he upset about?
- The views of conservative columnist such as Walter Williams, economist Thomas J. DiLorenzo, and Professor Ludwell H. Johnson have been left out.
- “The National Park Service deliberately ignores other factors such as high tariffs, adherence to constitutional principles, or fears of political and economic domination by the North that make for a considerably more complex situation.”
- “No mention is made of the fact that before the war, Abraham Lincoln supported the original 13th Amendment that would have barred the federal government from ever interfering with that institution.” — Not sure what this has to do with North Carolina.
- “No mention was made of so-called Black Codes that Northern and Midwestern states adopted to discriminate against blacks before such codes were adopted in the South.” — Not sure what this has to do with North Carolina.
- “The role of black North Carolinians and other black Southerners who wore the gray was completely ignored.” And, of course they are upset that no mention is made of the “estimated 19,000 African-Americans…who bore arms in the Confederate armed forces.”
How can I become a heritage defense minister?
Another Black Confederate Bites the Dust
July 25, 2010 By 16 Comments
The outrageous claims made by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and others about so-called “black Confederates” would hold up just fine if it weren’t for that little thing called evidence. Thanks to David Woodbury for bringing this story to my attention. He suggests that once we have finished counting we may find 7 or 8 black Confederate soldiers. I think that is much too generous. 
My guess is that at the end of the day we may find 4 or 5 legitimate black Confederate soldiers and their stories will tell us much more about how they managed to evade identification rather than as examples of some ludicrous notion of Confederate civil rights. In this case a little bit of digging into the available primary sources revealed that Scott Brown was, in fact, a soldier in 137th Colored Infantry and not, as previously indicated on his head stone, in the “Confederate States Army.”
[See Dead Confederates for a follow-up post.]
A Study in Irony
July 23, 2010 By 49 Comments
The 2010 annual reunion of the Sons of Confederate Veterans opens in Abbeville, SC with a welcome address by Mayor Terence Roberts.
A Few More Black Confederate References
July 9, 2010 By 3 Comments
Unfortunately, I had to postpone my documentary interview on black Confederates until mid-August. In lieu of that I thought I might pass on a few more little gems in this department. I know some of you are probably sick of hearing about this, but keep in mind that I am collecting various sources for the upcoming book project as I bring my Crater manuscript to a close.
The first example comes from a recent Confederate Day celebration in Dixie County, Florida, which was hosted by the SCV Dixie Defender Camp 2086. The speaker is Al Mccray, who hosts a radio/talk show in the Tampa Bay area. This is a wonderful example of why the black Confederate argument has proven to be attractive to a certain number of African Americans. Listen to Mccray’s understanding of Lincoln’s emancipation policy. Behind the vague references to his position on colonization and his famous response to Horace Greeley in the spring of 1862 there is disillusionment with the mythology attached to the mythology/narrative of the “Great Emancipator.” It’s that same narrative that drove Lerone Bennett to write his famous essay for Ebony magazine and later, Forced Into Glory. The problem, of course, is that Mccray substitutes an incredibly vague account for this mythology.
More interesting, however, is the way in which this argument morphs into commentary about what Mccray and the SCV perceive as our present political situation. Mccray bounces back between history and politics with ease. In referring to slavery, Mccray suggests that “pretty soon we all will be slaves to the Washington administration” and later notes that the “Army of the Potomac is still around.” Finally, Mccray argues that we are losing more and more rights at the hands of a corrupt government. I suspect that both H.K. Edgerton and the economist, Walter Williams, also fit into this camp. All of them operate on the flawed assumption that while the Civil War led to a larger and more intrusive government in Washington, D.C. the Confederate government preserved a stricter state sovereignty and states rights. This is simply not true. In fact, most slaveowners viewed the continued attempt by the Confederate government to impress and later recruit slaves for military purposes as a violation of their sovereignty.
From Florida we travel to of all places, “30 Rock.” That’s right, thanks to one of my readers I learned that there is a reference to black Confederates in the episode “Fireworks” [season 1, episode 18]. The plot, involving Tracy Morgan, runs as follows:
“Tracy is served with paternity papers and insists that the child is not his. After the DNA test, Tracy learns that the child is not his but that he is a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson. The news angers Tracy and he talks to Toofer and Frank about it. Toofer learns that he is a direct descendant of Tobias Spurlock, a black Confederate soldier. Tracy and Toofer are upset about the news until Tracy has a dream in which Thomas Jefferson (portrayed by Jack Donaghy) appears to him on The Maury Povich Show. In the dream, Jefferson takes credit for “inventing” America and tells Tracy to forget his past. Tracy decides that he wants Toofer to write a movie about their experiences and Thomas Jefferson’s life. Tracy intends to play all of the parts in the movie, except he intends for the film to be a drama.”
Toofer is terribly distraught to learn that his ancestor Tobias Spurlock was a Black Confederate officer who is known by Civil War scholars as the “Confederate Monster”, who harbored the fugitive John Wilkes Booth following his assassination of Lincoln, and who personally knew Robert E. Lee, rather than a Union officer who knew Ulysses S. Grant as Toofer had always believed.
Unfortunately, I can’t find a clip of this particular segment. This is the first reference to black Confederates that I’ve seen in mainstream culture.
Summer Camp With the Sons of Confederate Veterans
June 21, 2010 By 39 Comments
What do you do for your child after a full year of indoctrination in the public school system where they are taught that the Confederacy was evil and the war was about slavery? You send them to Summer Camp with the SCV for a “true” history of the war. According to an advertisement:
There is no question that the youth of today must run a terrible gantlet, and that many are struck down along the way by one or more of the politically correct influences which flourish in our schools…. Sometimes these youth are from the best homes with strong families and religious training. With even the most conscientious parenting, though, oftentimes (sic) in high school or college, even these best and brightest finally succumb to the liberal, politically correct view of history. This summer you can help turn the tide.
In addition to learning how to fire a cannon and parade/dance in period dress, campers learn lessons in the “Theology of the South During the War.” Unfortunately, I don’t think the kids will be reading Eugene Genovese’s The Mind of the Master Class or Michael OBrien’s Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860. Rather, it looks like much of the time will be spent undoing the damage of being taught that slavery was somehow central to understanding what the war was about. Perhaps the course will be taught by none other than H.K. Edgerton.
Specifically, the teens are exposed to the group’s contention that the Civil War was not about slavery, James said. Too many people have bought into that notion, he said, and wrongly exalt then-President Abraham Lincoln as wanting to end slavery. Lincoln was “a bigger racist than I ever knew,” James said. The truth is that the South was fighting for independence and the North was fighting to preserve the Union, James said. Slavery played into the tensions, he said, calling the practice “morally unacceptable.” But painting the war as being primarily about slavery falsely gives the North the “moral high ground” and makes it seem as if Confederate soldiers were fighting to maintain slavery, James said. He said slavery eventually would have ended on its own, as it has in other countries. “To attribute the war to something that wasn’t the cause isn’t right,” James said. “We try to tell it like it is.”
Rather than offer summer camp, I would suggest that the SCV organize their own schools. This way children will be completely removed from the dangers posed by our public schools.
Let’s see, what would that curriculum look like? For starters, Biology would be replaced with the course Stonewall Jackson taught at VMI.
