Much is being said about the removal of the statues, portraits, and flags of the Confederacy. The one that strikes me most odd is when someone says that the removing these things from public display is an attempt to erase or rewrite history.
Really?
For over two thousand years the world has known the name Judas Iscariot. They’ve known it so well that his name has become synonymous with the act he is so well known for. With eleven other men he spent several years at Jesus’ side, serving and ministering with Peter, John, Thomas, and Andrew. And until that night in Jerusalem there are no accounts of him being any more flawed or less admirable than any of the other disciples – men who trusted him enough to allow him to hold the group’s money. Yet as believers go to church each Sunday to worship Jesus Christ not one of them does so at The Parish of Saint Judas. But they surely know who Judas was.
The Confederate States of America seceded from the United States of America for a single reason, so that they might keep slaves. Now in the 159 years since this event a lot of mythology has formed around just why the South fought the “War for States’ Rights”, but it’s simply a literal white-washing of history. For on March 21, 1861, A.H. Stephens, the Vice President of the CSA, stood in Savannah, GA and gave a speech just weeks before the war began. In what has become known as The Cornerstone Speech he states the following:
But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other — though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
Did you read that? The cornerstone of the new nation is that a black man’s natural and normal condition is to be not just inferior but enslaved to the white man. This is the history and heritage of the Confederacy, that the founding principle laid bare in our Declaration of Independence that “All men are created equal” is anathema to the white man.
It is said that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it, but it seems that while we have accepted surrender from the Confederacy, and have outlawed the institution of slavery, we have yet to uproot from our shores the evil that allowed the South’s insurrection in the first place. It is high time for us to start putting the history and heritage of the South in proper perspective instead of up on a pedestal. For that heritage is the pot in which the stew of racism has simmered for over 400 years. By tearing down these monuments we are finally saying, after 155 years, that the war for the equality of the Black race and the soul of the Black community is finally over, and we will not allow these symbols to be used to menace and intimidate those for whom we continue to fight.
We are not erasing the names of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Braxton Bragg, Stonewall Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, John Bell Hood, and others from history, just as we have not forgotten nor forgiven Thomas Jefferson and those founders who still kept slaves while knowing “that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically”. We are simply relegating them to the same place as Judas Iscariot, a man who was once a close friend and brother – until he betrayed those he’d promised to serve.