Modern Confederates Trying to Secede Again

Getty

Letter From Texas

Where the Confederacy Is Rising Again

In east Texas, a grouping of true believers is helping build the largest Amalgamated monument in a century. Is the country itself helping go on the memory alive?

Continue to commodity content

In July 2015, with national controversy over displays of the Amalgamated flag at a ferocious peak, 5 Texas Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to the land'due south top elected officials arguing that some of the dozen Confederate memorials at the Texas state Capitol "espouse a whitewashed version of history." The letter came a month afterward a 19-yr-old white supremacist murdered nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, a hate offense that spring-started a national chat about the meaning of Confederate symbols.

The letter of the alphabet was sent to Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and House Speaker Joe Straus. Only Straus responded. In November, he ordered a House commission to review the "historical intent and significance" of the monuments and make recommendations to the State Preservation Board. When the review finally takes identify, likely in the few months right before the November elections, Texas lawmakers will find themselves in a tough spot: They volition be forced to either deny historical truths about the Confederacy, or potentially confront the wrath of a devoted, active and organized subset of bourgeois Texans. Monument supporters and protesters alike are broken-hearted they will be on the losing end of the committee'south recommendations.

Nowhere has the national re-test of Amalgamated emblems been more riven with controversy than the Lone Star State. In cities across Texas, monuments have been vandalized, and sharp-edged arguments accept erupted over the renaming of schools dedicated to Confederate icons. Last summer, in the northward Texas town of Denton, a 22-yr-onetime homo conveying a loaded AR-15 confronted a 69-year-old black man protesting a Confederate monument in the town square. In May 2015, at the University of Texas at Austin, vandals spray-painted "Emancipate UT" on a larger-than-life bronze statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. (Afterward heated debate over what to do with the statue, the Academy emancipated the Amalgamated icon from his prominent public location.) And in the past few months, the Houston Independent School District voted to rechristen 8 public schools that had been named afterward Amalgamated heroes, a movement that has sparked a lawsuit.

Throughout this storm, the Texas chapter of the Sons of Amalgamated Veterans, an crumbling ground forces of deeply religious, federal government distrusting, neo-Confederate true believers, has emerged as a steadfast defender of Amalgamated iconography. The Texas SCV only claims virtually 5,000 members, merely their ideology carries significant weight in the country. SCV members sued the University of Texas in an attempt to stop the removal of the Jefferson Davis statue. They distributed more i,000 Confederate flags in Fort Worth later the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo banned the Confederate battle flag. Wherever someone wants to rename a school or remove a statue that honors the Confederacy, the SCV'due south members soon follow.

For the Sons of Amalgamated veterans, this battle is non merely about protecting heritage, it'southward virtually resurrecting information technology.

But the Texas SCV is non but fighting against the disappearance of Confederate symbolism, they are behind the structure of what is likely the largest Confederate memorial congenital in a century—a multi-ton shrine nearing completion in an e Texas town near the Louisiana edge. For the SCV, this boxing is not only nigh protecting a Confederate heritage, information technology's nigh resurrecting it, restoring that heritage so that they will continue to have something to protect.

With tempers flaring across Texas and with lawmakers ready to contend the historical accuracy of the Capitol'due south Amalgamated memorials in the waning months of the 2016 election, the men of the SCV say they're misunderstood. And while they acknowledge the contempo success of their opponents in other states, they insist that in Texas, the Confederacy will prevail.

***

The first time I called Jim Toungate, the adjutant of the Williamson County chapter of the Texas SCV, he invited me to his home in Georgetown, a fundamental Texas community well-nigh 30 miles northward of Austin.

When I arrived, it took Toungate, a wide, mustachioed 72-twelvemonth-old, several minutes to open the door of his limestone-veneered ranch firm. He had stubbed his toe, he said subsequently letting me in, and "it was bleeding similar a stuck hog—real ugly."

Toungate offered me a cup of coffee, and hobbled to the kitchen to brew it, passing a apartment-screen television tuned to Fox News. Above the TV fix, a shelf was lined with Minié assurance, cannonballs and books with titles such as The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War and Unwavering Duty: Jefferson Davis. Toungate said he was a student of history—had been his whole life—merely has really "kicked it up a notch" since he retired seven years ago after four decades working for the railroads.

"People don't realize the true history of the South," Toungate calmly said every bit he spooned the footing beans into a coffeemaker. "It's really a crying shame."

We sat downwardly at his kitchen table, which was covered with maps of State of israel. In Jan 2016, Toungate took a 12-day trip to the nation and was "re-baptized in the Hashemite kingdom of jordan River," he said. Toungate says that he faithfully listens to sermons on CD from Endtime Ministries, a Plano-based ministry building that preaches that Armageddon is nigh.

I told Toungate that equally a 41-twelvemonth-old white homo who grew up in Northward Carolina, I spent my determinative years surrounded by gauzy renderings of the Old South. I remember learning nearly the chivalry of Southern soldiers from my Cub Scout leader and taking plantation tours that all but omitted slavery. Only I also learned—I don't call back exactly where—that slavery underpinned the Confederacy. I asked Toungate how he could square his Christianity with this difficult truth.

"I had five grandfathers who fought for the Confederacy, and they were religious people who didn't treat black people badly," Toungate said, earnestly, his Southern drawl growing thicker as he spoke. "They were fighting for states' rights, non slavery." Co-ordinate to Toungate, before secession, the federal regime mistreated Southern states past issuing unfair tariffs. "Thirty thousand blacks fought for the Confederacy because they loved their masters," Toungate argued, offering the fact as proof that "slavery could not have caused the war."

After pouring the coffee, Toungate took me to his report. Flags covered the walls: a Gadsden flag, a Texas flag, a "Come and Accept Information technology" flag, and several large Confederate battle flags. "This is the history of my family. We fought in the State of war Between the States, the War of 1812, and the Revolutionary War," he said, pointing to the flags.

The KKK as well uses the U.S. flag," Toungate said. "No ane'southward saying we should stop flying that."

But the Ku Klux Klan uses the Confederate flag—isn't it a symbol of white supremacy? "The KKK as well uses the U.S. flag," Toungate said. "No ane'southward saying we should terminate flying that."

Toungate led me into a walk-in cupboard filled with Confederate uniforms. He opened a shiny black gun safe and handed me a blackness-powder burglarize and six-shooter. "The weapons are replicas of guns made around the fourth dimension of the War Between usa," he explained.

Toungate collects the flags and guns because they connect him to his ancestors. "Information technology's my family's heritage," he said. "It's important to me."

***

Despite the sincerely held historical views of Toungate and his ilk, almost all professional historians agree on the crusade of the Ceremonious War. "The Confederacy's agenda was nigh expanding slavery," says Kevin Levin, founder of the popular weblog Ceremonious War Retentivity and author of the forthcoming book, Searching for Black Amalgamated Soldiers: The Civil War'southward Most Persistent Myth.

As I related the arguments that Toungate had told me—the claim that Southern states seceded to protect their rights from a tariff-imposing federal government, for instance—Levin exhaled a knowing sigh. He often hears this merits from SCV members, he said, and information technology is simply not true. What about the 30,000 African-Americans fighting for the Confederacy? "Another myth," Levin says.

Levin pointed to the words of Confederates themselves, peculiarly Texas' Ordinance of Secession. The document, which officially separated Texas from the Union in 1861, declared that African-Americans were "rightfully held and regarded equally an inferior and dependent race." It says that Texas seceded because non-slave-holding states "demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the Confederacy." The certificate does not mention tariffs or any land right other than the right to own black people.

Toungate waved off the certificate when I showed it to him after. "People have a distorted view of the Confederacy because liberal Northern historians wrote the history books," he insisted. But these are chief sources, I noted, the words of the Confederates themselves. Toungate went silent for a beat, and so changed the bailiwick. "I'k sick of the federal government wasting money," he said, and "people living off welfare."

Levin understands why some people cling to a Southern-fried agreement of the Confederacy in the face up of contradictory chief show. "A lot of these people take ancestors that fought for the Confederacy and that personal connexion, of course, colors how they view the event," he said. Slavery, after all, was abhorrent. Who wants to admit that their family members fought to preserve it?

The SCV's rejection of unequivocal historical fact, tin, in part, be attributed to what psychologists call "motivated reasoning," says Sander van der Linden, a Princeton University psychologist and director of the school's Social and Environmental Determination-Making Lab. When people are emotionally invested in a belief, says van der Linden, they are inclined to accept information that confirms pre-existing beliefs and to dismiss conflicting evidence. It helps explicate climate change denial, Immature World creationism, the anti-vaccine movement, and the belief that Obama is a cupboard Muslim (which, incidentally, Toungate too believes).

Neo-Confederate adamancy is as much nearly reactionary politics and identity as it is about history. Information technology's a announcement of values, a way of seeing the world, and its prevalence divides along political lines. Polls bear witness that Democrats tend to view Confederate symbols, such as the battle flag, as emblems of racism, while Republicans more often see them as representations of Southern heritage.

And in Texas—the epicenter of anti-government angst, the home of the concluding two Republicans elected president, where Democrats haven't won a statewide ballot in 22 years—conservatism and Confederate mythology continue to boss.

***

To empathize how neo-Amalgamated "Lost Cause" mythology continues to pervade modern Texas, I met with a former colleague who now teaches social studies in the same canton where Toungate lives. A gray-haired Ground forces veteran, he greeted me in a Starbucks parking lot, carrying a plastic bag full of land-canonical history textbooks. Ane book published by McGraw-Hill Pedagogy, features a section titled, "The South Secedes," which states that "the majority of Southerners viewed secession every bit ... a necessary course of action to uphold people'due south rights." The department does not listing specific rights.

Asked nearly the oddity of casting private freedom as the Confederates' master belief, the teacher, who requested anonymity out of fear for his task, pointed to Texas' country curriculum standards on the Civil War: "Students are expected to identify the causes of the Civil State of war, including sectionalism, states' rights, and slavery." At the time of their adoption in 2010, a member of the country board of didactics said that the standards listed slavery third because it was a "side outcome to the Ceremonious State of war."

The Texas Education Knowledge and Skills guidelines for educational activity the Ceremonious War offer a crystal-clear example of how the state curriculum politicizes history, says Mary Helen Berlanga, a Democrat who served on the Land Board of Didactics from 1984 to 2012. The history standards, she told me, "whitewash slavery." In a 2011 report, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative call up tank focused on education policy, echoed that stance, calling the TEKS social studies standards a "politicized distortion of history." "Slavery … is largely missing," the written report reads. "Sectionalism and states' rights are listed before slavery equally causes of the Civil War, while the consequence of slavery in the territories—the bodily trigger for the [Civil War]—is never mentioned at all. During and afterwards Reconstruction, there is no mention of the Blackness Codes, the Ku Klux Klan, or sharecropping; the term 'Jim Crow' never appears. Incredibly, racial segregation is only mentioned in a passing reference to the 1948 integration of the armed services."

Don McElroy, the conservative Republican who chaired the State Board of Education in 2010 when the Civil War standards were adopted, vehemently disagrees with the Fordham Institute's view. "We wanted to remove the liberal bias from the standards and restore the biblical foundations of our country," he told me via phone. "I remember nosotros did that, I actually do."

In his book, Race and Reunion, Yale historian David Blight argues that after the Civil State of war, Southern whites coped with crushing defeat past justifying why they had seceded. Reluctant to admit the Civil War was fought over slavery—a moral anachronism in much of the globe at the fourth dimension—many Southerners framed the war as a fight for states' rights. Bane argues that Southern whites worked, through memorials and monuments, to compose the false narrative in the nation's collective retentivity.

Giving Amalgamated monuments places of pride in town squares and in front of government buildings proved an enduring way of shaping public memory. Across Texas, at least 178 publicly sponsored symbols honoring the Confederacy occupy prominent positions, including monuments, schools and roads dedicated to Confederate icons. Nearly were erected at the plough of the 20th century, equally Amalgamated veterans were kickoff to die of former age, and a 2d wave of dedications came during the 1950s and 1960s, presumably in response to African-Americans' fight for civil rights.

Just in 2016, Texans haven't stopped erecting new memorials to the Confederacy.

It's 2016, and Texans oasis't stopped erecting new memorials to the Confederacy.

In Orangish, a pocket-sized eastward Texas city on the Louisiana border, the privately funded Amalgamated Memorial of the Wind is nearing completion. With thirteen large Greek columns and 26–32 Amalgamated flags, it will exist the largest Confederate monument congenital in a century, according to the SCV.

Granvel Block, former Texas SCV Commander and the mind behind the monument, says that surging public sentiment in favor of removing Confederate memorials has galvanized the neo-Confederates into action. Despite the opposition of many of Orange's residents, the SCV is determined to cease the Confederate Memorial of the Current of air.

Once completed, their monument volition stand at the intersection of Intestate 10 and Martin Luther Male monarch Jr Drive.

***

No place more than clearly reaffirms Texas' continued back up of Amalgamated mythologizing more than the Land Capitol and its grounds in Austin, which feature at least a dozen memorials, statues and other nods to the Confederacy. Perhaps the nearly prominent, the Confederate Soldiers Monument, dominates the southern entrance to the Capitol grounds. It is impossible to miss: an 8-foot statue of Jefferson Davis atop a 23-foot-tall granite base with 4 7-foot bronze Confederate soldiers standing at his feet. The inscription etched into the memorial'south base dedicates the sculpture to Confederate soldiers who "Died for land rights guaranteed nether the Constitution." "The people of the South blithe by the spirit of 1776," it continues, "to preserve their rights, withdrew from the federal meaty in 1861. The Due north resorted to coercion."

Other memorials at the Capitol include an well-nigh 50-pes-alpine monument honoring a Texas Amalgamated brigade; a Amalgamated seal on the floor of the Capitol; several portraits of Confederate heroes, including a painting of Jefferson Davis in the state Senate chamber; and a plaque erected by the Texas Division of the Children of the Confederacy in 1959. The plaque reads, in part: "the War Between the States was not a rebellion, nor was its underlying crusade to sustain slavery."

The July 2015 letter in which Autonomous lawmakers asked for a review of the Capitol's pro-Confederate monuments calls out that plaque'due south statement as an "outright falsehood." In an email to me, land Sen. Rodney Ellis, one of the letter's signatories, said that information technology is undeniable that the memorials are "office of an effort to rewrite history." "The Texas Capitol — the face of our land government," said Ellis, "ought not to gloat individuals whose notoriety stems from their service in defence force of human being slavery."

But Toungate and the other Texas SCV members I spoke with vow that removing or altering the memorials would mean surrendering to politically right, liberal distortion.

During my concluding visit to Toungate's dwelling, his television set was again tuned to Fox News, and ii pundits were discussing the rise of Donald Trump. (Almost of the neo-Confederates I spoke with said they support Trump.) During a commercial, I told Toungate that I understood the dear he had for his ancestors, but it seemed unequivocal that the Confederacy fought for slavery, and by extension, white supremacy.

"You've been listening to Northerners who take moved downward here and are raising Cain about Texas being racist," Toungate said. "Confederate men were good Christians, and they don't deserve to be treated like dirt."

caldwellassitiony.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/texas-confederacy-rising-again-214159

Share this post