Our Civil War

Michael:
Our trip through the South, thus far Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and southern Tennessee, has been defined by the notion of owning history. Confederate flags are ubiquitous and laden with so many meanings, some of them honorable (remembrance of your ancestors who fought in the Civil War) and some despicable (symbolic of the 50’s and 60’s movement to suppress voting rights).

Either way, the Stars and Bars are a constant reminder of the battle for ownership of the past and in every way the present and the future.

“Well, you know, they (Selma, Alabama’s old white southern establishment) had to let us and our (Voting Rights) Museum in. They knew they were on the wrong side of history.”

Was our guide at Selma’s Voting Rights Museum correct? Had the Civil Rights Workers really triumphed in the end? Did they own history?

The same mayor who presided over the beatings on Bloody Sunday in 1965 served until the year 2000, when an African American defeated him. The mayor’s response to his loss was “I was on the wrong side of history.”

The day before we visited Selma, we toured the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library. The lone Confederate President’s story was told in a way I had never seen in my school textbooks. The Confederates were State’s Rights heroes fighting for the Constitution and the lifeblood of the Union. They were the true Patriots when faced with the invasion, the Northern incursion, led by the diabolical Abraham Lincoln.

My textbooks and teachings always portrayed Southerners as defiant aristocrats who preferred trading and enslaving Africans to work. The Southern economy was an outdated feudal system that was bringing down the precious Union. We fought the War to save them from themselves.

The truth is always somewhere in the middle.

I did not know that 90% of Confederate soldiers were not slave owners and were not fighting for that system. If I had, perhaps my prejudice against Southerners would not have been so strong. Perhaps I would have feared our trip to the Deep South less. When I thought of the South, I thought of gentried Gone With the Wind landowners, Peter Fonda getting shot at the end of Easy Rider and the vicious Alabama State Troopers beating people on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. Who defined that history?

As we moved from National Park Historical Site to Historic Site, I began to realize that we Northerners were also making a strong claim on the South’s history. The southern National Park Battlefields - Fort Pulaski, Kennesaw Mountain (the NPS presents it as the Battle for Atlanta), Chickamauga and Chattanooga (again presented as one), Stones River, Fort Donelson, Shiloh, and Vicksburg – all represent Northern victories.

Most of these Battlefields are littered with monuments, most of them honoring the North. We came, we saw, we conquered.

Only Tupelo NB and Brices Cross Roads NBS show Confederate gain. The Federal government affords those sites only an acre apiece. No Visitor Center and little mention of Nathan Bedford Forrest, famed Confederate General and early leader of the KKK. In response, Mississippi residents have started their own private Museum to remember Brices Cross Roads and cavalry hero Forrest.

I was afraid when Gab asked Brices Cross Roads private curator why they consider the Battle a Southern victory when it resulted in no land gain or a significant loss of northern troops. And even more afraid when we purchased a book titled Confederates in the Attic. Thankfully, the Museum guide was polite and did not respond as if insulted. She knew we were from the North.

Southerners assume that we do not understand the way of life down here. For the most part, they are right. Social cues are different. We are clearly outsiders. It is not especially comfortable. It is not a coincidence that our best time in the South was spent with football fans from Montana.

Nearly every Southerner we have met has greeted us with a friendly sense of defiance. Their sweet drawls has without fail offered us the same two welcomes, “you’re not from around here, are you?” and “Oh, Pennsylvania, you’re a long way from home.” We have been called Yankees, Northerners and carpetbaggers.

The carpetbagger comment is difficult to understand. We are just traveling through. Our fellow central Pennsylvanian, Newt Gingrich, is not afforded the same comment. Maybe his affected drawl changes things. Still, parkgoers reverentially refer to him and his Civil War “What If?” books in the lavish Park Site bookstores. His books stake claim to a different history, a re-imagined past where the South is triumphant.

But is Newt’s history incorrect? Did the South actually win the Civil War? Did the Selma protestors march in vain? Has the South risen again through its Presidential electoral power and it economic prowess? The South has chosen Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II and Clinton is a native son. The South created and controls corporations that shape the image modern America: Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Clear Channel, Coca Cola, NASCAR.

The so-called cultural war and battle for America’s morality is seen by both sides as a fight between the North and South. We both harbor distinct and clouded opinions of each other based on mistaken notions of the past and self-superiority.

The two months we spent traveling in the South was not the happiest portion of our trip. Every stop reminds you that you are an outsider. Mississippi’s state visitor’s slogan is “It Feels Like Home.” For us, nothing could be further from the truth. We felt guarded courtesy and no acceptance.

We never stopped talking and thinking about the Civil War. With every Confederate flag seen, the War seeps further and further into your blood until it defines every tree, every building and every person.

Even us.

Only we Northerners do not own history, the present or the future as much as we think we do. Not everyone has the same idea of what America is.