Words matter. What words one uses carries implications once should consider carefully.
I still recall how a comment Reid Mitchell made in a 1992 essay on Civil War soldiers struck me as so obviously correct that I’ve come to practice it routinely. It appeared in a note: “Throughout this essay I have consciously avoided the habitual use of “the South” and “southern” as synonyms for the Confederacy.” The good sense in this observation was readily apparent: before long I was also careful to use “white southerner” or “southern white/s” over “southerner,” because many southerners were not white (some people who boast that they are “southerners” overlook this all the time). I’ve also come to see “Union”and “United States” as interchangeable, because, after all, Ulysses S. Grant commanded the armies of the United States: his commission does not say he held rank in the “Union army.” The boys in blue fought as United States volunteers or as United States Colored Troops.
Precision in language is important. A majority of white northerners may have harbored serious racial prejudices, but a majority of Republicans fought for equality before the law for African Americans during Reconstruction. It distorts our understanding of history to overlook the presence of northern Democrats, many of who harbored deeply-felt prejudices: that fact helps us to understand the course of American politics in the middle of the nineteenth century. Not all white southerners were Confederates: indeed, a rather significant number were not. And in my prose, I’ve pressed for the use of freedpeople over freedmen, although some copyeditors have swallowed hard.
With this in mind, I urge you to consider this blog post (hat tip to Bob Pollock). Over the last several years I’ve introduced “enslaved” into my discussion of slavery, although I still use “slave.” I note that when I use it some people notice it, and a few question it. That’s all to the good: anything that I can do to make people ponder slavery and the enslaved is too the good, especially when I note that other people still hold on for dear life to notions of happy and faithful slaves who somehow lost their way during Reconstruction before white supremacist terrorism and segregation restored the (white) order.
You doubt this? Read this and weep: “[S]egregation was clearly a reaction to Reconstruction abuses.” After all, as someone else tells us, “[N]ever forget that the KKK saved the white people of the South from extinction. Try reading Thomas Dixon, Jr.”
Of course.
So words matter. So does history. So long as there are people who defend Reconstruction terrorism or segregation, or who tell us about how slavery wasn’t so bad for the enslaved, there will be work to do. Frederick Douglass once called upon people to “Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!” We also need to educate, educate, educate.
Crossroads 
Southern heritage is very diverse. In my opinion there is no such thing as a singular southern heritage. The Confederacy and those connected to it are just one part . What is the heritage of the south and what is it made up of ? The Cherokee, Choctaw ,the Creek and Seminole history and cultures are a part of the south’s heritage. The French, Cajan and Creole cultures of Louisiana are a part of the south’s heritage. The Gullah people along the Atlantic coast are a part of the south’s culture. Appalachia and its history and culture are a part of the south and it’s heritage. When you look at a couple small examples as the New Orleans Vudu/Orisha practiced in Louisiana and New Orleans or the Roots practiced by the Gullah in South Carolina compared to the Protestant churches of the upper south as in Virgina you to start to see how diverse the south really is. The heritage of the south is extremely eclectic . I embrace all of it.
Yes, words matter. So does lying by omission.
Thanks for admitting that you lied when you omitted important information on one of your posts about Kevin. There’s still hope for you.
I didn’t admit to it, and I didn’t do it.
And I’m sure you’ll say the same thing the next time you do it.
Amen, Brooks…
The notion that using historically correct words to describe people who have been dead for around 100 yrs is somehow demeaning is one of the more ridiculous aspects of that great bugaboo, “political correctness.” It is, as many Southern romantics have claimed, a kind of “linguistic Stalinism.” As a mathematician, I yield to no one in my ability to be precise in my language (although even mathematicians can get sloppy).
“Try reading Thomas Dixon, Jr.”? The unabashed racist who wrote a piece of literary garbage entitled “The Clansman” (apparently altering the spelling to better cloak his poisonous mission) which was then turned into a piece of cinematic garbage entitled “Birth of a Nation”. Anybody who puts that on his or her reading list probably has “Mein Kampf” lined up next.
From the same discussion group: “When will the Federal Government apologize for the terriable things that were done to our ancestors during the war followed by Reconstruction?? A system of Vegenece that was also moraly wrong.”
So let’s see: we have here a group that includes people who urge reparations for slaveholders, celebrate the KKK and white supremacist terrorism as protecting home and hearth, and now want an apology for Reconstruction. No one dissented.
You can’t make this up.
Out of over a thousand members, how many urge reparations for slaveholders, celebrate the KKK and white supremacist terrorism as protecting home and hearth, and now want an apology for Reconstruction?
Perhaps you can take a poll on that issue on your blog. Here’s the question: did anyone object? Did you?
Skeered? What, have you been skeered into silence?
I’m keeping the skeer up, and it seems to be working, judging from your feeble blog posts.
Did anyone object? Hell if I know. I don’t even know which threads you’re talking about because you’re far more myopically focused on SHPG than I am. You tip-toe through it with a fine-toothed comb, looking for things to misconstrue in order to smear SHPG members specificaly and heritage preservation advocates in general. I, on the other hand, skim the threads looking for subjects I’m interested in and I skip those that don’t interest me, Reparations, for anyone, is not an interest of mine and if I skimmed the thread, it didn’t make an impression enough to stick with me.
As for the other stuff, I have noticed a unwillingness, on the part of some people, to distinguish between Southerners who, post-war, defended the safety of their homes and families in a time of lawlessness and those who deliberately perpetrated violence. Are you unable to tell the difference? Or just unwilling?
In view of this “skeer” post and some other of your statements in the past, maybe it’s time somebody explained something to you. You are not a scary man.
I’ve simply linked to what people on the SHPG have said. Nothing’s been misconstrued, and you clearly have no problem with what has been posted … because if you did, you would offer protests there, as you do here.
I simply reveal what some members of th SHPG think is “Southern” (read Confederate) heritage, including making excuses for slavery, white supremacist violence, and segregation. You haven’t offered a single word of objection to any of those positions, although you post there nearly daily. Even when I provide links to the comments, you remain silent. So one must conclude that either you are a coward or that you condone such views by your silence.
That’s scary.
I distinguish between those (black) southerners (and their white allies) who, post-war, defended the safety of their homes and families in a time of lawlessness and those who deliberately perpetrated violence … the people like the Klansmen you condone. You confuse them.
That’s also scary.
Now that is fabulous! An apology for Reconstruction from those who brought us 200+ years of slavery, the KKK and Jim Crow! I don’t know how many Confederate Romantics/apologists hold such positions, but I have engaged in conversation with a few who do.Many of them seem to be unable to discern the difference between Southern heritage and Confederate heritage, and take offense at the suggestion that there is a difference.
Mr. Ferguson, nobody at the SHPG “brought” you 200+ years of slavery. But don’t worry — hardly any Southern heritage advocates hold such a position, per my experience on and off-line, since becoming a heritage advocate in 1999 or so. To ease your mind, by my observation, very few of the 1,000+ members of the SHPG have even mentioned it. Also, never forget the anonymous nature of the internet.
(Actually I don’t think it would be out of line for a statement to be issued regretting that carpetbagger governments put Southern states so deeply in debt it took generations for an impoverished population to pay them off, leaving little financing for infrastructure, schools and such, setting it up for generations of nonSoutherners to ridicule Southerners for being “uneducated” and make fun of children with hookworm for going barefoot, when they were too poor to buy shoes, and of their parents, for being “lazy” and the whole region for being “crazy” (a symptom of pellagra, which was epidemic in the South, thanks again to the region’s poverty-related diet largely of corn). The primary reason it would be out of line to demand such a statement is that the people responsible are long since dead and thus unable to issue statements of regret, should they be so inclined, which I doubt.)
I’ve never taken offense at the suggestion that there’s a difference between Southern and Confederate heritage, but I don’t see the problem with using the two interchangably. Confederate heritage IS Southern (for the simple fact that the Confederacy was located in the South and made up almost exclusively of Southerners), but not all Southern heritage is Confederate. I just find it offensive to use one or two comments from one or two people to smear a group of over 1,000. That’s stereotyping, which is often the forerunner to, and sometimes a component of, bigotry.
From a source Ms. Chastain will understand:
A bigot is a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices, especially one exhibiting intolerance, and animosity toward those of differing beliefs.
That fits Ms. Chastain to a T.
However, she misuses the term “bigotry,” just as she misunderstood the term “satire.” That’s what happens when you are self-published: you do it because you refuse to benefit from editing, however evident it is that editing is necessary. That’s because Ms. Chastain’s “obstinately or intolerantly devoted to … her own opinions and prejudices …” and so on.
During the few months that I’ve read the posts on that discussion group I’ve also noticed the lack of dissent when comments such as this are made. We hear a lot about heritage not hate, but neither the hateful rhetoric nor the racist comments are ever addressed by anything but agreement. Perhaps it’s to avoid rancor among the group members, or to avoid the appearance of breaking ranks or calling someone out. I find it hard to believe that everyone over there is of like mind on some of this trash talk, but it’s certainly disheartening to see these comments go unchallenged.
Plus they can’t spell…
Why didn’t you bring over the entire post? Afraid your readers might get the actual message of the post rather than your interpretation?
“The U.S. Government has already apoligized for slavery but I don’t think thats exactly what they are after, is it? On moral grounds, I agree slavery was wrong, but it was not an illegal act to own slaves and I don’t think that decsendants of Southerners should or their ancestors should be veiwed as criminals and or the “Red-headed step child” of American history either. When will the Federal Government apologize for the terriable things that were done to our ancestors during the war followed by Reconstruction?? A system of Vegenece that was also moraly wrong.”
You glibly fling about the accusation of “lying” but note this: the original poster doesn’t “…want an apology for Reconstruction.” He specifically says “When will the Federal Government apologize for the TERRIBLE THINGS that were done to our ancestors DURING THE WAR…” (emphasis added) and then notes that Reconstruction, which followed the war, was a system of VENGENCE which he says is also morally wrong.” The “also” indicates comparison, and his earlier reference to a moral wrong was — slavery. (I can’t believe I’m having to explain something so simple to an academic.)
Thus, if “our ancestors” were viewed as criminals for THEIR moral wrong, then those who perpetrated vengeance (reconstruction) deserve the same designation for THEIR moral wrong. Maybe you don’t think vengeance is morally wrong, but the man who posted that does, which is certainly his prerogative. He’s not asking for an apology for reconstruction, but pointing out the government’s inconsistency for apologizing for one moral wrong and not the other. (I suspect the difference in whether apologies are offered is … who was wronged. Oh, and I note that most of the people subjected to the vengeance of reconstruction did not own slaves)
Something tells me this comment makes way too much sense to get posted on your blog… I’ll probably have to put it on my Censored Replies page…. I guess in the kneejerk south-bad, north-good view, thinking through the meaning of a comment is frowned upon.
Is this the best you can do? No wonder you refuse to submit your work to a real publisher.
Keep defending terrorism and racism, Ms. Chastain.
Mr. Foskett, I haven’t read “The Clansman” or seen “Birth of A Nation.” However, I have read your post, and I wonder if you are aware that, since the beginning of English literature, a great deal of it has been written by unabashed racists. You say “apparently” Dixon altered the spelling of clansman as a cloak. Apparent to whom? Do you know that’s why he did it? Then offer proof. Otherwise, I’m not interested in your perceptions. Also, your last sentence is another example of stereotyping. And your whole post leads me to wonder — have YOU read “The Clansman” or seen “Birth of a Nation”? If not, from whom did you get your information about them?
Gary Gallenger uses the term “United States Army” instead of “Union Army” for similar reasons.
Your discussion of language reminds of John Lukacs’ phrase: “Historians do not state facts, they describe them. The tools they use are words. And the choice of which words to use is a moral decision.”
During the period 1861-66, the armed forces of the United States were made up of the regulars of the Army and Navy (which included the Marine Corps and by assignment, the Revenue Cutter Service), volunteers for (various) set periods of enlistment (generally 3-year-terms in the vast majority of volunteer enlistements), conscipts, and state troops and militia. All of these organizations operated as such under the command and authority of the legitimate government of the United States of America, and were recognized and protected as such under the laws of war and the US legal code.
They opposed a collection of rebels, organized under the aegis of the so-called confederate states government, but which was never recognized as such by any nation state – although the rebels were recognized as belligerants, they never received diplomatic recognition, and so the rebel forces remained insurgents at best and criminals at worst. Their status, like almost everything else about the so-called confederacy, ultimately depended on the policy of the United States regarding treason.
The US Army and Navy (whether regulars or volunteers) were enlisted, assigned, raised, organized, paid, fed, ordered, deployed, etc as “US” troops, and never anything else -and the realities of rank and commissioning dates between the regulars (Army and Marines) and the USVs (whether with a state designation or a USV designation – the galvanized yankees – and the US Sharpshooters, the US Colored Troops, or the Indian Home Guard), were part and parcel of the day-to-day command realities of the armies in the field.
Indeed, the only time the American forces in the field during were anything but “US” were those occasions in which state troops or militia in state, not federal, service, went into action. Various Missouri state militia elements (there were no less than eight categories of such troops), which were organized by the state but armed and generally paid by the national government for local service, and which were subject to the orders of the commanders of US Forces in Missouri, were in a unique status.
The only accurate way, from a legal point of view, to refer to the American rebels of 1861-65 is as the “so-called Confederate XYZ” since the confederacy was never recognized as a nation state; they were rebels, pure and simple, and had as much or as little legal standing as the Patriotes in Quebec in 1837 or any one of the opposing factions to the central government in innumerable civil wars in Latin America in the Nineteenth Century.
Best,
By this measure, Washington’s army was a collection of rebels, until the Treaty of Paris, or at least until after Saratoga with the French alliance, regardless of the Declaration of Independence. The so-called Continental Army?
Because the Confederate cause was slavery, and they were unsuccessful, the awkward and sneering phrase “so-called Confederate Army?” It seems more like refighting the war, rather than describing the war.
Matt –
Well, from a diplomatic and legal history point of view, the Continental Congress government and the Continental army and navy were “rebels”…in the same way the Libyan TNG were until they were recognized.
I don’t see it as “sneering or awkward” – I see it as precision. As our host has said, words and language matter.
John’s point is worth considering, as well. The secessionist states had more political power, by orders of magnitude, in the US in 1861, than the colonies did in the British Empire 1775.
If you believe Clausewitz’ definition of war, then political representation within a polity is foundational to the spectrum of power relationships among combatants. The secessionists rebelled over a perceived loss of political power, pure and simple, but they had more political power then the American colonies ever did.
Best,
Purely as an aside, and following up on the precise definition of “rebel”, I’ve always wondered about the distinction between (1) a colony and (2) a state in an organized republic of states. For example, who were the MP’s from, say, Massachusetts or Virginia? ,