Removing all references to the confederacy in the south may be unrealistic

But the names of some personalities obviously need to go—such as Nathan B. Forrest

By Steve Otto

 Some arguments just don't die easy. One of those is the fact that many things in the South are named after confederates. They maybe generals or some kind of confederate politicians. But those names still persist. For me personally, I believe trying to remove every singe person, who served in the confederacy from names and statues may be a hopeless project. Some famous southerners may have spent some time in the military and then went on to do other things. Being a confederate soldier may have been a small part of their life. 

 

According to Yahoo News:

 

"In the debate over so-called cancel culture, conservatives like Fox News host Tucker Carlson warn that if monuments to Confederate soldiers are taken down, or schools named after those historical figures who participated in the institution of slavery are given new ones, the entire history of the country will be subject to erasure."

 

He may have some actual points here. I hate to agree with him at all, but rewriting the history of the south may not be the best thing for us to do. However, there are some Southern historical figures whose names do not belong anywhere and that includes any high schools.

As the Yahoo News story continues:

 

"While many Americans agree with that slippery slope argument, and school boards in cities like San Francisco have reconsidered plans to rename schools following a public backlash, memorials to questionable historical figures continue to fall, especially across the South. One such recent case, the renaming of Nathan B. Forrest High School in Jacksonville, Fla., continues to resonate."

 

And just who is Nathan B. Forrest? Here is a short bit of biography of his:

 

"Nathan B. Forrest was a prominent Confederate Army general during the US Civil War and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from 1867 to 1869. Before the war, Forrest amassed substantial wealth as a cotton plantation owner, horse and cattle trader, real estate broker and slave trader. If there is one man who should never have his name on any building in the US it is him. He was a racist and a founder of one of the worst terrorist groups in US History."

 

So I agree with those who believe Forrest was an abomination of a human being and belongs on no monuments and his name belongs in no place of honor. He is no more honorable than Adolf Hitler.

 

On the other hand, there were the common foot soldiers of the confederacy and they are a different story.

I think a lot of progressive people over look a few things about the confederacy. Almost none of the non-officers of the confederacy owned any slaves. There was a law that stated that anyone who owned more than 3 slaves was exempt from military service. That law was designed to make sure slave owners could stay home and make sure that their slaves didn't escape. So who did fight? The army was made largely of poor working class people who could not avoid being drafted.[1] So not only were these people not slave owners, some didn't want to fight in the first place. Also, very few slave owners had fewer than 3 slaves. Some wealthy people had a crew of five slaves to run their house. They needed a cook, a maid and a butler to clean up. If they had children, the needed a slave or two to take care of the kids. They almost never had fewer than 3 slaves.

As Malcolm X once explained: "You had the house slaves" and worse off than that were the plantation slaves. There were a lot of those slaves and they had to be beaten and tortured to be kept in place. That's were a lot of slave owners had to be home to keep these people from running away. 

Malcolm X described the difference between the "house Negro" and the "field Negro:"

From Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan. 23 January 1963:

Transcribed text from audio excerpt. [read entire speech]

So you have two types of Negro. The old type and the new type. Most of you know the old type. When you read about him in history during slavery he was called "Uncle Tom." He was the house Negro. And during slavery you had two Negroes. You had the house Negro and the field Negro.

The house Negro usually lived close to his master. He dressed like his master. He wore his master's second-hand clothes. He ate food that his master left on the table. And he lived in his master's house--probably in the basement or the attic--but he still lived in the master's house.

So whenever that house Negro identified himself, he always identified himself in the same sense that his master identified himself. When his master said, "We have good food," the house Negro would say, "Yes, we have plenty of good food." "We" have plenty of good food. When the master said that "we have a fine home here," the house Negro said, "Yes, we have a fine home here." When the master would be sick, the house Negro identified himself so much with his master he'd say, "What's the matter boss, we sick?" His master's pain was his pain. And it hurt him more for his master to be sick than for him to be sick himself. When the house started burning down, that type of Negro would fight harder to put the master's house out than the master himself would.

But then you had another Negro out in the field. The house Negro was in the minority. The masses--the field Negroes were the masses. They were in the majority. When the master got sick, they prayed that he'd die. [Laughter] If his house caught on fire, they'd pray for a wind to come along and fan the breeze.

If someone came to the house Negro and said, "Let's go, let's separate," naturally that Uncle Tom would say, "Go where? What could I do without boss? Where would I live? How would I dress? Who would look out for me?" That's the house Negro. But if you went to the field Negro and said, "Let's go, let's separate," he wouldn't even ask you where or how. He'd say, "Yes, let's go." And that one ended right there.

So now you have a twentieth-century-type of house Negro. A twentieth-century Uncle Tom. He's just as much an Uncle Tom today as Uncle Tom was 100 and 200 years ago. Only he's a modern Uncle Tom. That Uncle Tom wore a handkerchief around his head. This Uncle Tom wears a top hat. He's sharp. He dresses just like you do. He speaks the same phraseology, the same language. He tries to speak it better than you do. He speaks with the same accents, same diction. And when you say, "your army," he says, "our army." He hasn't got anybody to defend him, but anytime you say "we" he says "we." "Our president," "our government," "our Senate," "our congressmen," "our this and our that." And he hasn't even got a seat in that "our" even at the end of the line. So this is the twentieth-century Negro. Whenever you say "you," the personal pronoun in the singular or in the plural, he uses it right along with you. When you say you're in trouble, he says, "Yes, we're in trouble."

So when it comes to monuments that commemorate the foot soldiers who gave their lives for the rotten system they were forced to defend, in the old South, I personally have nothing against most of those soldiers. As far as I am concerned they were not the architects of the South as we knew it. Despite their cause, I don't have anything against those soldiers. To me it is no worse than the soldiers today who have taken over the sovereign countries of Iraq and Afghanistan. They may see themselves as heroes and they may believe the are defending our "freedom" and "our way of life," but as far as I am concerned today's army is defending a great big empire. The imperialists of today are just as bad as the old South. If we are going to allow monuments to one kind of rotten system, we might as well allow monuments to the other soldiers and their defense of a rotten system.

 

Joan Baez - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

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[1] The Confederate Conscription Acts, 1862 to 1864, were a series of measures taken by the Confederate government to produce the manpower to fight the American Civil War.

The First Conscription Act, passed April 26, 1862, made any white male between 18 to 35 years old liable to three years of military service. On September 27, 1862, the Second extended the age limit to 45 years; the Third, passed February 17, 1864, changed this to 17 to 50 years old, for service of an unlimited period.