The Flag in My Drawer

• Publication year: 2023

The Flag in My Drawer

Patrick Dawson

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The Flag in My Drawer

Patrick Dawson^*

This is my personal "Confederacy essay." It is about my journey to understanding, and it was a long time coming. I write it for folks like me, namely those who have honestly not thought through this issue all that well. I write it also for my friends and anyone who cares. This essay's roots are in a past Facebook discussion about the state of America, which I still think is a great nation. A friend of mine, far less convinced than I, told me bluntly to "get your Confederate flag out of the drawer." I responded, truthfully, that I do not own one. But to be more honest and accurate, I used to own one many years ago, though I no longer have it. I never took it out of its box or displayed it. I wish I could say that I had burned or buried it, but the truth is that I simply lost it in one of my many household moves.

While I have long supported the removal of Confederate symbols from government use and public buildings, I had not taken a broader view about the symbols in general. However, my good friend's online comments, the 2020 George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests and accompanying reactions, the changes made to the Georgia state flag in 2001,¹ and my research for a 2015 article about the law of slavery² all led me to reexamine this issue and understand why Confederate flags, statues, memorials,³ and symbols must be removed from public display

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and veneration. And, hopefully, they will one day be removed from all private displays and personal drawers as well.

Why did I own a Confederate battle flag⁴ in the first place? Primarily, a lack of any deep thought about it. I focused narrowly, and to the exclusion of the real and critical issue, on the flag as but a small part of something else I liked all my life: history, and especially military history.⁵ The first hardback book⁶ I ever bought myself was one about the American Civil War. Along with so many others, no doubt, I saw the battle flag and military conduct in complete isolation from its intolerable origins. I disconnected the Confederate battle flag from the most important fact about it—that it was the battle flag carried into combat

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by the soldiers who fought a vicious civil war to keep other humans in chains, enslaved, ignorant, and perpetually poor.

I came of age, not fully but partly, in the South in the 1960s and 70s. Like many then, I bought into the "Glorious Lost Cause" mythology that I heard about the Confederate States of America (CSA) and the American Civil War. I listened to the respect given Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and a variety of other "noble Southern gentlemen" that fought in the cause for the underdog agrarian "states' rights" against an allegedly less-noble industrialized foe. I recall hearing about John Brown's violent but failed raid on Harper's Ferry.⁷ Then, he was the "villain" of that story. My narrow and superficial thoughts about John Brown and his men plainly ignored the reason for their fame: their battle against slavery. That "peculiar institution"⁸ morally debased the South, stifled its economy and economic growth,⁹ and eventually led to its ruin

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and the death or maiming of many Southern men, most of whom did not own slaves, but many of whom likely aspired to.

But these tales I heard during my youth were only impure myths. The "Lost Cause"¹⁰ was a bloody fight to keep other humans in chains, enslaved, ignorant, and poor. Its aim was to maintain and perpetuate the institution of slavery. There is no nobility there. John Brown, whose hanged body ended up "a-mouldering in the grave," as the Union marching song later went, was the actual hero whose "soul marched on."¹¹ He was the noble man. He was the good guy. He was the one who fought on the right side of honor, freedom, and history. His was the cause that was genuinely noble, but certainly lost at the outset. United States troops, led overall by then Colonel Robert E. Lee, suppressed Brown's small abolitionist rebellion. Yet, Brown fought and was hanged to end slavery. The rightness of his actions, unlawful at the time, is another one of those hard truths that both time and study reveal. We had it (and have it) all wrong about John Brown. In our ignorance, we switched the heroes and the villains. Brown died for the noble cause, not the Confederates.

The Confederate generals, most of whom owned slaves, used their substantial military talents—trained into them often by the United

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States at West Point—to fight for slavery. Despite all the words and endless arguments to the contrary, the "states' right" they fought for was slavery. That ignoble cause, devoid of morality and human decency, was lost at the start. The South thankfully, as historian Shelby Foote once said, never had a chance.¹² The North, slow initially to wake, was said to have "fought the war with one hand tied behind its back," given that it fed its strength and enormous resources into battle piecemeal.¹³ The North's slow beginning allowed the South some early notable victories, which became the legends of the Confederate underdog. "The South won the battles, but the North won the war," was part of the battle myth I heard constantly growing up. But the South was always going to lose because it deserved to lose. The South fought to enslave other human beings. To understand and move beyond the battle myths, simply repeat this statement: the South (namely, the CSA) fought to perpetuate slavery.¹⁴

Emotions aside, in a legal sense many Southern generals and soldiers were traitors to the United States from the moment they switched sides. Others signed up and became traitors. They were traitors to the American flag raised valiantly over Iwo Jima less than a century later. They rebelled. They foreswore their constitutional oaths to the United

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States Army and committed treason. They fought. They killed. All in the name of slavery. And they lost. Yet, because of a steadfast belief in battle myths, the symbols of that ugly era—the Rebel battle flags and Confederate memorabilia—are still revered and even honored. The Southern generals are still venerated. All that "hero worship" should end now. Those "heroes" were not heroes. Military prowess to enslave is vile. Battle skills and combat bravery to enslave are not heroic, they are vile. Lee's victory at Chancellorsville, although considered by many historians¹⁵ to be a military marvel, was fought to enslave. So too, all of the other Southern victories (and futile catastrophic losses) were fought to enslave.

Robert E. Lee has been especially venerated. He is often portrayed as the "true Southern gentleman" who led that Lost Cause. He has long been admired far above and compared more favorably to the loutish drunk Ulysses S. Grant, the alleged "butcher,"¹⁶ who fought the final and winning part of war for the North. But in reality, there is no comparison. Lee betrayed the United States. He fought for unquestionably vile ends. Alternatively, Grant remained loyal and fought for the freedom of men and women. Why then has Lee fared so well, and Grant less so? This is because of those undying Confederate battle myths and those ignoble lies that perpetuate them. That "noble Lost Cause" trope and its thoughtless myths perpetuated more thoughtlessness. Generations of it. And they obscured or replaced the focus on slavery with tales of dashing bravery: Jackson standing at Manassas like a stone wall, the elan of cavalryman Jeb Stuart, the singular successes of the quick-marching A.P. Hill, and the doomed futility of Pickett's life-wasting charge at Gettysburg. But the truth remains: Stuart's elan was for slavery. Hill's doggedness and winning tactical skills were for slavery. Pickett's charge, in addition to being blindly obedient to Lee and militarily foolish, was for slavery. Jackson's late-night death at the hands of his own men was not some noble friendly-fire sacrifice. It was one slaver being carelessly shot and killed by other slavers. There is no glory in that. There is no honor there. The Confederate generals and fighting men sacrificed their honor the moment they joined the Confederacy. Their suffering and deaths on

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behalf of slavery did not restore them. That reality—that there is no honor among those men—is stark, but it needs to be stark. The battle myths and veneration must end.

Our movie and entertainment industries have also profited from and pushed the "Lost Cause" lie. The 1939 movie Gone with the Wind won a then-record eight Academy Awards.¹⁷ In 1989, it somehow won the People's Choice All-Time Favorite Motion Picture and is still (when accounting for inflation) considered to be the highest grossing movie of all time.¹⁸ Who can honestly watch it now and stomach it? Every hero in the film was a Confederate. In other movies or stories, the ex-Confederate hero (and he is all too often an ex-Confederate roaming about in a bit of butternut grey) is scripted to have freed his slaves, or never owned any. If he fought for the Confederacy, however, then he fought for slavery. Never told in those stories is that some states, Georgia included, outlawed the freeing of slaves around 1801.¹⁹ In the movie Gettysburg, the South's General Longstreet is heard to say, "we should have freed the slaves and then fired on Fort Sumter."²⁰ Again, all of this is done expressly to insulate or distance the South's heroic figures from slavery. It is to perpetuate the big lie and battle myths that the Confederacy was about something other than slavery. Put simply, it is to get you to like the characters fighting for slavery. You cannot do that if you do not buy into the battle myths. You cannot do that, likewise, if you buy into the movie representations that depict slavery as anything other than a terrible and dehumanizing bondage. It does not matter that one owner or the other might have been somewhat "less harsh" or allegedly "treated...