That post of mine, below – one theme of which is that groupishness is next to underdogliness, in potentially problematic ways – is too long. For the less literate CT reader, then, the present post provides an opportunity to track attitudes towards patently superfluous Confederate statuary, going back. It’s interesting that the joke is: we are perversely proud of failure, including moral failure. (But it would be indelicate to indicate the actual, main moral failure of the Confederacy in such a connection.) In general (no pun intended), it’s hard to pin down how much the romance of the Lost Cause has always been not just an attempt to sublimate the stain of slavery into a nimbus of state’s rights, but a kind of romantic antiheroism. Who doesn’t love a good antihero, after all?
{ 29 comments }
Phil 08.20.17 at 8:51 am
The song “The night they drove old Dixie down” is an interesting illustration of this. I’ve spent a lot of time in folk clubs, but only heard that song once – and on that occasion I was out of the door before the end of the first chorus (and halfway to the door before I realised I’d got up). Celebrating that particular lost cause just seems toxic – and it’s not as if it’s hard to find reasons why it should seem that way. But in 1968(?) when Robbie Robertson read up on Stoneman’s cavalry and wrote the song – and in 1974 when Greil Marcus was writing his appreciation of the Band – most listeners had no problem identifiying with poor old Virgil Caine and his people. Wikipedia tells me that Robbie Robertson was influenced by the “Dunning School” wrt Reconstruction, but that doesn’t answer the question so much as rephrase it – why did the veiled and semi-veiled racism of the Lost Cause go down so easily, 50 years ago and less? This page is interesting on all of this.
Wendy 08.20.17 at 2:14 pm
I wonder how Joss Whedon’s Firefly fits in here, as well. The “Lost Cause” subtext is… well not really sub. Hell, there’s a character named Jubal Early.
nastywoman 08.20.17 at 2:35 pm
@
‘It’s interesting that the joke is: we are perversely proud of failure, including moral failure.’
That’s why I think we should put up statues of Robert E. Lee everywhere in the US to remind the American people what failure racism and fascism truly is – and if every year
such a wonderful Jubilation of E. Lee would be performed in front of everyone of these statues it could move the good people of America just like it ‘moved’ the good people of Dogpatch.
nastywoman 08.20.17 at 3:13 pm
– and just having watched the interview Jerry Falwell gave on ”This Week” I know we got it all right.
Our beloved President just wants to have all these these wonderful statues of all these ‘wonderful southern gentlemen’ preserved to show the world what losers they were – and to remind us all to NEVER EVER be like them.
And perhaps the Germans should change the holocaust memorial in Berlin – which is kind of an ‘impersonal’ and kind of abstract maze of grey concrete blocks just into a more contemporary maze of all the (in)famous racists and racists of this world -(including an American ‘Evangelist’ like Farell and our beloved President F…face) – and then the people can relate to the horror in a much… dare I say… ‘personal’ way?
Dr. Hilarius 08.20.17 at 4:34 pm
A possibly related attitude is pride in being able to endure injustice without complaint. A common boast in US coal country is the ability to survive poverty, poor health, absent infrastructure, and isolation. “We can take more shit longer than any of you can and keep smiling” without any irony. I understand pride in endurance but this is more like pride in being victimized.
BruceJ 08.20.17 at 5:09 pm
A couple of points:
I would point out that it’s not entirely clear that the Lost Causists view slavery as a ‘stain’.
@nastywoman
And if the point of having all these statures of Lee, Forrest and Davis are there to ‘remind us of the failures of racism and fascism’ where are all the statues of Tojo and Hitler? The plaques extolling the bravery of the Wehrmacht? The schools named for Benedict Arnold and highways named for Howe and Gage?
I think Lee and the rest should be commemorated thusly.
BruceJ 08.20.17 at 5:11 pm
Hmmm, in the second quote I left off my source, sorry! It was at Mother Jones .
Phil 08.20.17 at 6:11 pm
A friend of mine is perhaps a generation and a half away from tarpaper-shack poverty. We don’t talk about politics by mutual agreement, but I know he’s a rock-solid Republican; I remember him telling me once that he makes a point of crossing any picket-line he can, precisely because his own family had been dirt-poor (and had got whatever they had by the sweat of their brows). Beats the hell out of me.
As for Firefly, it’s true, the echoes are hard to miss. In Whedon’s defence, the ship is a mixed-sex, mixed-race collective whose captain has a particular hatred of slavery, so if it is the latest fictionalised detoxification of the Lost Cause at least it’s a thorough one.
bekabot 08.20.17 at 9:08 pm
Fey Folk × Energizer Bunn(ies) = citizens of Dogpatch.
Yankee 08.20.17 at 11:13 pm
Personally, I think it’s too bad that the notion of states’ rights has been stained by the [genuinely evil] nimbus of slavery. Instead we have the iron law of pre-emption, which more or less guarantees that we end up with some one person in charge. Too bad if you don’t like him.
Now on to the long post.
J-D 08.21.17 at 12:54 am
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_(TV_series)
Belle Waring 08.21.17 at 1:14 am
Yankee: no.
Suzanne 08.21.17 at 4:27 am
@1: Couldn’t even tolerate listening to the song? I’m impressed. Also by your lack of empathy for Virgil and his hungry family of dumb cracker racists. I don’t see the song as a celebration of the Lost Cause. It’s a song about loss and defeat. Also Robertson honoring the musical heritage of his bandmate, the only American in the band.
John Quiggin 08.21.17 at 4:40 am
@10 “States rights” is a particularly inept way of defending a notion of self-determination against centralised power. It’s bizarre to see it embraced by people who would otherwise be reflexively opposed to state power.
Anything useful in the idea can be better expressed by “subsidiarity”, that is, the notion that democratic decisions should best be made by the smallest unit that encompasses those affected by the decision in question. There’s plenty of indeterminacy there, but at least you aren’t attributing rights to an embodiment of power that may or may not have any inherent legitimacy (as, clearly, the slave states did not).
nastywoman 08.21.17 at 7:12 am
@6
”I think Lee and the rest should be commemorated thusly.”
Well – as there seems to be some… trouble doing it and it seems to be quite a… lengthy process couldn’t we – then – just for the meantime give all the statues the honest Jubilation T Cornpone Treatment?
Like suggested – celebrate in front of them the wonderful fail of these racists and fascists?
and perhaps pick up your suggestion and erect everywhere additional ‘monuments of monumental failure with funny portraits of our President hugging Hitler?
nastywoman 08.21.17 at 7:57 am
– and would it be possible to point – additionally- to the amazing awesome visionary quality of this Jubilation T Cornporne Clip.
To understand in 1959 that the best way to deal with a F…face should be:
Joyously celebrating all his disastrous failures is as… as… ‘visionary’? as any ‘Celebration’ of Trump for saving (at least) Europe from contemporary Fascists and Racists.
As in the 21th century the most important new rule seems to be – that (ultimate) ‘failure’ or ‘fail’ is NOT defined anymore as a ‘backlash’ to some straightforward and old-fashioned concept or simple construct of ‘winning’ –
BUT a much more sophisticated ‘backlash-system’ – which has become as ‘sophisticated’ and joyous as the names of Cornpones most famous battles:
”Trumps Disaster”
”Trumps Catastrophy”
AND
”Cornpones Humiliation”!
And so when the people -(like in this clip) ask: ‘Was he brave’?
The best answer always will be:
Why – he didn’t know the meaning of the word: ‘fear’ –
TERROR – Yes! –
but ‘Fear’ – NEVER!
Belle Waring 08.21.17 at 8:03 am
Also, what do you see it most used for, after slavery? “Right to Work” states, which represent a continuation of rapacious labor exploitation. I’m all for California’s being able to set emissions standards but “States Rights” is not a concept worth interpretative charity.
TM 08.21.17 at 9:26 am
JQ 14: I have often tried to point out the inconsistency of arguing that in order to “limit government”, one should give more power to the state, but it is usually lost on the people who make this argument. An analogous argument is common in the anti-EU discourse. While many member states (incl. France, the UK and Spain) have a history of strict centralism and at times active suppression of regional diversity, the EU takes most decisions consensually, subscribes to the principle of subsidiarity, and is taking steps to strengthen regional communities, protect minorities and their languages (the ECRML), and support the economic development of peripheral regions. Yet it is argued that the EU is “too centralistic” and somehow the remedy is to empower e. g. the UK central government (which is subject to no constitutional limits on its power whatsoever) to do as it pleases, while denying the UK’s regional constituents participation in political decisions of national import. All in the name of “bringing government closer to the people”.
TM 08.21.17 at 10:46 am
Btw (Re 17) in the US context it’s striking how often state power is used to explicitly take away local control. The NC bathroom bill is about that too: red states giving the finger to blue cities. Needless to say the “states’ rights” crowd don’t see a contradiction anywhere.
Katsue 08.21.17 at 1:10 pm
@13
Ok, but why focus on that particular group of people who lost and were defeated? Why not write a song about, say, the equally American people abandoned to white supremacist terror by the Compromise of 1877?
Phil 08.21.17 at 3:35 pm
@20 – zackly. I reacted the same way (or my legs did) when somebody started on a self-composed song about the sufferings of the White farmers of Zimbabwe. Ask me my opinion and I’ll readily agree that the White farmers of Zimbabwe are having a rough old time and that I wouldn’t want to be them, but I won’t go much further than that. We ration our sympathy all the time, and there are people who deserve it much more than settlers in Zimbabwe or the losing side in the ACW.
Besides, there’s a difference between sympathy and celebration, and for me that song fell the wrong side of the line (as does TNTDODD). The problem is, it’s really hard to write a song for the purpose of expressing sympathy with X without it ending up as celebration of X. It can be avoided – Harvey Andrews’ song Hello Hans shows how – but few people manage it, and I’m not sure Robbie Robertson even tried (“they never should have taken the very best”?).
Suzanne 08.21.17 at 7:43 pm
@20: Robertson’s bandmate Levon Helm was born in Arkansas and a source of much of Robertson’s material about American lore. It seems a little weird to wonder why Robertson wrote X instead of Y, but in the context of the album “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down†fits perfectly and provides Helm with the opportunity for one of his most memorable vocals. I see no racism, veiled or otherwise, in it, unless the act of giving such a man as Virgil any voice at all is racist.
Otherwise I can easily imagine Robertson writing such a song as you mention, since he has always had a interest in marginalized peoples – he himself is part Mohawk, part Jewish.
parse 08.21.17 at 7:57 pm
Also, what do you see it most used for, after slavery? “Right to Work†states, which represent a continuation of rapacious labor exploitation. I’m all for California’s being able to set emissions standards but “States Rights†is not a concept worth interpretative charity.
I think the concept of state’s rights got some current popularity from the state-by-state decriminalization/legalization of marijuana, and the question of whether Federal authorities should interfere.
But since disproportionate representation of slave-holding states was baked into U.S. Federalism by way of the 3/5 compromise, I’m typically wary of appeals to states rights generally.
Yankee 08.22.17 at 1:36 am
@ JQ
I gladly note “subsidiarity†as a more precise generic term, but the point is actual history and our specific form of government and how to deal with a massively overpowered (imo) central authority. If you can’t fix Rhode Island, how are you going to fix Washington? Considering that the states and state parties control election to Congress.
… why would you say that the antebellum slave states were less legitimate than, say, Massachusetts which exists only by dint of exterminating the Pequot and others? The question of the right to secede was settled precisely by the Civil War and the force of arms. “Setting the captives free†is certainly one of the basics, but the big problem with the war … aside from tremendous loss of life and general destruction … is that it didn’t work. In general, war doesn’t. The South _has_ risen again. The captives aren’t chattel slaves, which is good, but they ain’t _free_. They ain’t chattel slaves in other parts of the world that didn’t have a war, either. Maybe Reconstruction could have worked, but in fact the Washington government collectively didn’t care enough to get the nation-building work done. Maybe wasn’t even collectively morally capable of investing in real nation building any more than in Iraq. (Well, we did good in Germany.)
@ Belle
That’s what I said, “I think it’s too bad that … “ you can’t talk about the need to empower/reform democracy in the states, whatever you call it, without being tarred as a slaver apologist. More subsidiarity, all right? BOATLOADS more subsidiarity.
J-D 08.22.17 at 4:18 am
Yankee
If the point is actual history, then surely part of the point is how the slogan ‘States rights’ has actually been used in that actual history?
I suspect that if you talk about reforming democracy in the States, you won’t be tarred as a slaver apologist; but then, I suspect people who talk about reforming democracy in the States don’t use the slogan ‘States rights’, and that the people who do actually use the slogan ‘States rights’ (that history again) aren’t particularly interested in democratic reform.
Yankee 08.22.17 at 5:20 pm
JD:
I would like to talk about reforming democracy in the national government, if you don’t mind.
F. Foundling 08.23.17 at 2:14 am
@24
>the big problem with the war … aside from tremendous loss of life and general destruction … is that it didn’t work. … The captives aren’t chattel slaves, which is good, but they ain’t _free_.
So because abolishing ownership of human beings hasn’t resulted in a classless and racially egalitarian utopia, abolishing ownership of human beings doesn’t count as a positive achievement at all – it ‘didn’t work’. Interesting. Marx, for instance, did consider it to be very much a step in the right direction and was highly invested in the Northern cause, but perhaps he wasn’t enough of a radical thinker and couldn’t quite grasp the limits of formal freedom in a bourgeois democracy.
>they ain’t chattel slaves in other parts of the world that didn’t have a war, either.
Well, yes, other parts of the world didn’t seem to have such a rabid slaver ruling class prepared to do anything to maintain, and indeed territorially expand, its barbaric social system. The utter shamelessness and extremism of the Southerners in antebellum US politics – and the extent to which they usually managed to have their way – were quite incredible; in retrospect, they seem similar to those of modern-day US ‘conservatives’. They were the main reason why the slaver system in the US went down in the violent way it did. I suppose that ‘you’re on the wrong side of history’ is less impressive to reactionaries in a country convinced that it is the one determining what the course of history will be.
>why would you say that the antebellum slave states were less legitimate than, say, Massachusetts which exists only by dint of exterminating the Pequot and others?
The extermination of the Pequot etc. was an injustice that was already in the past, not a structural characteristic of Massachusetts society in the (then-)present. The slave states were societies based on a continuing injustice in the (then-)present.
Going back to the topical issue – for all my dislike of divisive controversies about symbolic issues, this is one case in which I totally support the removal of statues. This wasn’t some sort of romantic War of the Roses, this was a war specifically, explicitly about f***ing *slavery*, FGS. It just doesn’t get more simple than that. These aren’t some quaint statues of William the Conqueror or Henry VIII from messy unenlightened times when people generally ‘didn’t know better’, this was a conflict that took place when people were very much able to know better, many did indeed know better roughly in the same way as we do, while some – namely one side in the war – just flatly refused to know better, hence the war. If you don’t want slavery or anything like it in the present and the future, it makes sense that you should remove any statues glorifying the side that fought to preserve and expand it. The continued toleration of CSA symbols is one part of American culture that has always struck me as extremely bizarre and wrong, both morally and politically; if it ends, that will be a good thing from my perspective.
J-D 08.23.17 at 3:59 am
Yankee
I was not aware that I was obstructing you.
Yankee 08.23.17 at 4:12 pm
Right. There aren’t any Pequot in Mass. these days. Mission Accomplished! … freeing up folks to abandon their farms, which are still mostly abandoned, and head out west for not-used-up-yet ground in Indiana and exterminate the indigenes there. Subsequently moving on to the Dakotas, where there was also mineral wealth that could be usurped.
rabid slaver ruling class … not structural
Nothing to see here
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