Well, the reaction to the History Detectives show on “the Chandler Boys” continues, and I must say that many of the proponents of the myth that a significant number of blacks willingly served the Confederate cause have started showing their true colors. Take, for example, Kirk David Lyons, co-founder of the Southern Legal Resource Center, who now declares:
And I say for the 18,000th time, if he was slave or free, in the South and did his job, whatever it was during the war, you can call him Confederate – it doesn’t matter whether or not he had a gun or wore a uniform – any loyal Black is a Confederate! – Got it?
How one determines loyalty when one is enslaved is an interesting question.
And then there’s Ann DeWitt, who, having declared that various (unnamed) bloggers have divided the descendants of Andrew and Silas Chandler for their own professional gain, now offers the following suggestion:
Why not highlight how the Chandler Tintype has brought these two men, a descendant of a slaveholder and a descendant of a slave, together? You know. Focus on the positive in the story; and bring people together in peace and harmony. I sure will!
I’m sure you will, Ms. DeWitt. And doubtless you’ll explain how they did this despite the relentless efforts of unnamed bloggers to create rifts for their own gain through a television show that brought these men together in an act you celebrate.
Of course, what I find interesting about this image is how the two poses (photograph and tintype) seem quite similar … and I also note that only one of the men is smiling. I wonder why that is.
I guess Ms. DeWitt will no longer claim Silas Chandler was a black Confederate soldier. That leaves us with when she’ll address that regiment of black cooks that she was so proud to tell us about.
But, as usual, pride of place might as well go to good old Connie Chastain, because, after all, Michael Hill of the League of the South says:
Connie, I just love readin’ your stuff–it makes sense (unlike most of what’s out there).
I’m sure Dr. Hill will get a kick out of what Connie told Kevin Levin over at Civil War Memory:
I’m more focused on the motives and activities of critics of the Confederacy and the South, such as yourself, than on the war itself.
Trust me when I say that you can find plenty of evidence for that claim at Connie’s own blog, which exists in part to remind me of just what an appreciative audience I must have for someone to spend so much time on me, although I admit it pales in comparison to the attention Connie lavishes on Kevin. You ain’t nothing until Connie trashes you. For a while that stopped when she had computer trouble … although she wondered if her machine was simply the victim of Yankee treachery.
Trust me, it wasn’t. I want to keep the laughs coming. And now that I know that Michael Hill likes her work, well, isn’t that special?
Again, it’s heritage, not history, for these folks. And it’s a heritage constructed to fit their own needs, wants, desires, and fantasies, not to honor the past, let alone understand it.
Crossroads 