Bob McDonnell & the battle over REAL Confederate History

This week, Governor Bob McDonnell declared that his state would honor April as “Confederate History and Heritage Month.” Typical of a white southern Republican, he completely ignored slavery in his message. When pressed, McDonnell stated that, “there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.”

Slavery was not significant in Virginia? I wonder if the slaves believed that? Or their descendants today?

McDonell has taken a ton of flack for his stand. On Wednesday, he backtracked, apologizing for his omission of slavery in his original statement.

What of McDonnell’s claim? The Sons of the Confederate Veterans and other neo-Confederate groups always downplay slavery. In fact, black people rarely come up in their discussions of the Civil War, except for spurious claims about slaves who supposedly willingly fought for the Confederacy.

Rather, these white supremacist neo-Confederates claim that the “War of Northern Aggression” happened for any number of other reasons: states rights, Northern capitalism oppressing southern agrarianism, sectional conflicts over westward expansion, tariff policy, etc.

All of these conflicts came down to slavery. Discussions over states rights revolved around the right to own slaves. The difference in the region’s economic systems came down to a southern commitment to chattel slavery on large plantations.

In making these statements, the SCV and other groups repeat Southern propaganda that originates from just after the war. Beginning in 1866, mere months after the Civil War ended, Confederate leaders began spinning the war as about preserving Southern life from the onslaught of modern capitalism.

This rhetoric became normative in the South within years. As the North stopped caring about the welfare of ex-slaves in the 1870s, this narrative became part of national mythology.

People always say that the winners write the history. But for the first hundred years after the Civil War, the losers wrote the history.

In recent decades, historians have recovered the true story of the Civil War. The South left the union for the right to enslave black people. All you have to do is read what they wrote about secession before 1866.

The Confederate Constitution explicitly denied slave owners the right to free their slaves. Southern politicians encouraged their constituents to rally around ideas of white supremacy and the ability to own black people. No one in 1861 tried to hide that the South committed treason to defend slavery.

As the Civil War neared its end, the South became desperate. A few generals thought that giving slaves their freedom if they joined the Confederate military might help save the Confederacy. The reaction against this idea within the Confederate Congress was thunderous. The Richmond Examiner suggested that the idea was “opposite to all the sentiments and principles which have heretofore governed the Southern people.”

President Pro Tempore of the Confederate Senate Robert M.T. Hunter of Virginia put it best when he said, “What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property.” Tennessee’s Henry Foote said, “If this Government is to destroy slavery, why fight for it?”

The massive backlash to McDonnell’s proclamation honoring those who committed treason in defense of slavery has interesting political connotations. McDonnell has alienated Virginia moderates. Virginia is such a swing state now that this kind of racist culture war stuff might play to the base, but it is going to be a disaster in general elections.

Suburban Washington voters didn’t vote for McDonnell because they love the Confederacy. Rather, this foolishness will help Obama win Virginia in 2012 and doom Republicans in the state as demographics keep changing. Supporting a white supremacist view of the Civil War will always be popular in the rural southwestern area of the state. In the Washington, D.C. suburbs, not so much.

Moreover, McDonnell’s backtracking to include slavery in Confederate Heritage Month kills him with his state’s conservatives. McDonnell made the declaration as a cynical political maneuver.

His Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, has received much attention for his extremist actions. Cuccinelli has claimed that the state’s institutions of higher education couldn’t ban discrimination against gays and lesbians. Then he led the movement to sue the federal government over the health care bill.

With Cuccinelli getting all the wingnut love, McDonnell needed to reclaim control over the state Republican Party. McDonnell embracing the Confederacy appeals to the state’s white supremacist Republican base. That base sees McDonnell’s apology as a betrayal. He has become a national embarrassment, directing unwanted negative attention to his state at the same time that he has lost the trust of the base that supported his initial action.

This incident has had the unexpected benefit of serving as a national conversation on collective past. McDonnell clearly did not expect the backlash that he received. The condemnation of his actions, which has come not only from progressive politicians and writers but also from leading Civil War historians, demonstrates the extent to which the nation has overturned the old racist historical interpretation of the war.

But that McDonnell felt compelled to issue such a proclamation in the first place in order to appeal to his base shows the pull white supremacist interpretations of the Civil War has upon many Americans. The battle to tell an accurate version of America’s racial history is far from over.