Taking/tearing down Confederate Monuments
“If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all… Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” The Apostle Paul, Romans 12:18 & 21

Hopefully the verse above makes it clear that I am writing this to Bible – believing Christians.  If you have no respect for the Bible, I don’t have any thought that this article will impact you.

If you do, you might should check out my thoughts on the correct understanding of the biblical theology of race before diving into these applications.

I am not sure what order these thoughts should come in, and they may end up not in any order at all, but just in the order they came to my mind. I try to organize my thoughts well, but this topic has thoughts bouncing around in my head like a pinball game. I may not be competent to organize them well. Please excuse when I interrupt myself, I am sure it will be frequent.

I am committed to writing this stuff even if no one ever reads it. The new way of talking about serious aspects of life and culture with a Meme must be Screwtape’s dream come true. I refuse to engage in discussions of true significance without placing enough value on it to actually engage with it.

In the US today (and by the time this is published, this may be such old news that it is barely worth reading – but more on the “culture of crisis” at the end of this article) there is a cultural crisis about removing memorials and monuments that honor the Confederate leaders from the American Civil War.

I want you to know where I am coming from and so you can evaluate my own prejudices as you read this:

I am a “child of the South” – meaning “product of”. Though born in Michigan, where my father was in school, my family has a long heritage of being “Southern.” Though initiating in Scotland, most lines of my family were solidly in South Carolina or Alabama, etc. 150 years ago… what is called the “Deep South”.

I joke that I didn’t know that “Damn Yankee” was two words until I was in my 20’s. This isn’t true, since I never once heard the phrase “damn Yankee” except in the context of this joke. (Man, there are a lot of Southern things like this, there is a lot of jaw, jaw, jaw but I think the majority of modern Southerners just go about daily life with little consideration to any of what I am writing about until someone else brings it up.)

In my lineage is one “Wade Hampton” who was a confederate cavalry general. I was raised on stories of his heroism, kindness and generosity to his men and unsubstantiated accounts of his slaves defending his property against federal troops at some point (I have no idea of any accuracy in this; I know it happened sometimes, but is often pure myth).

In fact, I was told he was the only man to ever own more than 1000 slaves – the only man in America to do so; I also cannot verify if he was the largest slave owner.  This was not told with pride, but enough shame to ALWAYS be followed with the above story of his slaves defense of the property. It was also ALWAYS followed with a reference to that idea that he was kind to his slaves (no idea if this was true) and that he was known to be a violent man to other white men if he felt his honor was challenged (that he killed some number of white men in duels including beating one to death with an axe handle – again, no idea if any of this is true.) I do know that he was a Civil War Confederate Cavalry General.

I imagine part of why I have never researched him before is because I didn’t want to find out that none of the good aspects of this are true, or that worse was…

So, I Google-stalked Wade and uncovered that he had, as a legislator, opposed the division of the Union. He was wounded multiple times with saber, shot and shrapnel.  His fiery temper, at least toward other white men, seems accurate, since he apparently nearly got into a fight with a Union general when Hampton surrendered. Though he apparently gave “tacit” support to the KKK in his region, he was not known to have active involvement with them. It sounds like he did openly support and was supported by the “Red Shirts” – a murderous and violent group dedicating to suppressing the black vote in South Carolina.

I found nothing about his treatment of slaves or their role in Sherman burning his property. (my family hates Sherman, by the way). A lot about his valor in battle, brilliant battle-field work and leadership.
(Not to make light, but all I think of with “Red Shirts” is the poor guy who always transported to the surface of a planet with Kirk and Spock and always bought the farm when they did…sorry)

Side note – I think one of the challenges for someone from the South in all of this is, when you read Civil War history, the general honor that these men held each other, their opponents, is evident. They saw each other (with some obvious exceptions) as honorable men. I think it is a little sad that we cannot do the same anymore. We have lost the ability to see our own foes, even enemies, as honorable. I will have to give more thought to this in time.

Where did we lose that? It was still there in WWI mostly, I think. WWII, is that where we lost it – I know it was still there, but perhaps less evident or at least much less common. Maybe the degree and frequency of war atrocities in WWII are what cost us the generalized sense of holding our opponents in respect. Maybe we just became too pragmatic. This will be a good coffee conversation with my historian friends.

It turns out that the “Red Shirts” thankfully no longer exist – except as a branch of the “League of the South” – yet another ridiculous hate group made up of a few thousand people (7,678 likes on FB – Justin Bieber has 78,823,347 likes; Elmo has 5,663,499) who are dedicated to “free and independent Southern republic – which apparently would be a pretty small place. I am not going into it here, but I am annoyed by how much attention these hate groups get at times like these, when there are almost none of them left.

If there were 100,000 members of hate groups (3-8,000 KKK at the highest estimates **) they would represent .03% of our population (6,000 is .002%). I know we have to stand up against immoral hatred whenever we can, but these guys really should be allowed to vanish into history with a whimper and the pathetic neglect they deserve.

What is this thing called “The South?”
More about “The South” next
**http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article167261082.html
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan
** http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/07/us/klan-numbers/index.html