Well, well, well …
First, it appears that Connie Chastain has broken (yet again) with the League of the South.
This is amusing. Last week Chastain pretended she was just fine with the group, claiming that she’d communicated with Michael Hill and had been allowed back into the group. Hill said nothing about the communication but offered that if Chastain had rejoined, he did not know about it and had not approved it. One wonders where the truth is here. Either she’s in or she’s out. Either Hill supports her or he doesn’t.
Then again, you know how it is between these two …
As for Chastain’s claim that no one self-identifies with being a Rainbow Confederate, once more she’s mistaken. Indeed, she doesn’t even read her own discussion group …
That Mr. Walters seems utterly confused and misguided himself does not take away from his willingness to accept the term.
And over at the FB group Chastain deserted, those folks seem to have taken the news much better than she has …
Maybe Chastain lacks a sensahuma.
Chastain has finally returned to posting about this issue on her other blog, where she can’t help botching the whole issue and misleading folks yet again. What I like best is that she claims that people argue that there’s one of two extremes on this issue, admits that I’ve actually never argued either extreme (revealing her confusion … if you’re setting up a strawman argument, you would be wise not to admit it), and then struggles to clarify her position:
Someone explain to Chastain that she’s confused (perhaps we might agree that such an endeavor’s a waste of time). Seems I’m simply taking her at her word that she’s not a Rainbow Confederate and that she believes that somehow the Confederacy involved the preservation of white supremacy and the protection of slavery. I haven’t said she thinks it’s the only reason.
Even when I try to help Chastain she messes it up. Even when I agree with her she goes off on a rant.
She then proceeds to cripple her own argument concerning the reasons for secession. Mississippi’s secession ordinance complained that the North had deprived the South of more than half the territory obtained from France (the Louisiana Purchase), so, she says, it was also about territory. Try again. The reference is to the Missouri Compromise’s restriction, not upon the expansion of the South, but on the expansion of slavery westward. Apparently Chastain missed that fact in her study of southern history. So it’s not about territory, but what would go into that territory … slavery.
Then she points out that the Mississippi ordinance speaks about inciting insurrection. What could the mean? Why, might it not be abolitionists’ attacks upon slavery? Might it not be a fear of insurrection by slaves? Don’t both of those things have to do with the issue of protecting slavery in the South? Did Chastain tear out those pages from her book, too?
Then she points to language about invasion … but, of course, Mississippi seceded before war commenced, so there was no invasion by the North that caused secession in Mississippi. Better to say that the language is a reference to John Brown, whose plan was indeed to invade the South … and strike at … guess what? … slavery! Thus the very document she cites to say that it wasn’t just about slavery make the point that it is about slavery … its expansion as well as its protection. Why did white Mississippians say their security was imperiled? Why, because of what their slaves might do to them if they got the chance. Whites felt insecure about what balcks might do: to promote security was to protect slavery.
And, Chastain reminds us, white Mississippians argued that they were seceding to protect their economic and social system. Fair enough. What about both the economic and social system of Mississippi was supposedly threatened by those Yankees? Why, the agribusiness of plantation agriculture made possible by slavery as well as a social system of white supremacy made possible by slavery. I guess these facts eluded her.
In short, Chastain has once again proven that she struggles when it comes to understanding history in her effort to seek a basis to protect that ill-defined concept called heritage. At the same time, her approach is being repudiated by League of the South and its supporters, no matter how hard she works to show she’s no Rainbow Confederate and that the Confederacy was at least somewhat about the preservation of white supremacy and the protection of slavery, although her own other reasons for secession appear upon second look to be about those two things manifested in different ways. As others embrace the Rainbow label, not only does she reject it, but she claims no one else accepts it. The record does not support her.
Let’s put it this way: some people don’t like Chastain, and she doesn’t like just about everybody. But she has the ability to bring people from very different points of view together in agreement that she’s confused. Her implosion continues. Former allies will soon realize that she’s toxic.
So we’ll leave Chastain to stew in her own juices for the time being. Look at it this way: reading about Chastain on this blog brings a smile to the face of at least one academic historian … and in her own state of Florida, to boot!
Crossroads 
I seem to recall Mississippi stating somewhere that …
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery —the greatest material interest of the world.”
I also remember a lot of talk from Mississippi about how Lincoln was a Black Republican and how his election was an overt act that posed a threat to white supremacy:
“Our fathers made this a government for the white man, rejecting the negro, as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race, incapable of self-government, and not, therefore, entitled to be associated with the white man upon terms of civil, political, or social equality.
This new administration comes into power, under the solemn pledge to overturn and strike down this great feature of our Union, without which it would never have been formed, and to substitute in its stead their new theory of the universal equality of the black and white races.”
But, you see, this is a “false dichotomy” that leaves out the possibility of a third position … White Mississippians loved KITTENS, and bacon and eggs, and going to church on Sunday, and their children, and … MUST … BURY … HEAD … IN … SAND.
New term: Disingenuous Rainbow Confederate.
Chastain announces:
Brooks Simpson is a professor of history at a major state university who loves to denigrate other people’s intelligence.
It is far, far more correct to say that I don’t suffer fools and foolishness or stupidity gladly. Nor do I denigrate that which someone does not possess.
I just checked out the Backsass FB page for her response. What is so sad is that her comments section is filled with her own comments. Her story is a textbook example of what goes into painting yourself in your own corner. I almost feel sorry for her.
The key word is almost. She brought this upon herself. She wanted to be a player, and she just got played, largely due to her own actions. Now she’s sputtering away.
Bet she enjoys talking to herself. I found her newest outburst amusing. She appears to have a lot of anger and hatred bottled up inside her, and it looks as if she thinks everyone else must be wired the same way.
Her bitterness is breathtaking.
She isn’t quite observant …. she referred to me as “s/he” even though we’ve communicated before, and she should remember my gender from that. Unless it was meant as an insult, in which case I’m not childish enough to buy in …
The comments to which she’s replied indicated your gender. Perhaps she finds it hard to see straight when she’s angry. Perhaps she wanted you to understand what it was like to be falsely accused … she does that to me all the time. 🙂
The fact that I described women and feminists only in the third person plural should’ve been a MAJOR clue. Every line I wrote placed me clearly OUTSIDE the group I was defending. On the same side, absolutely, but not a member. An ally, if you will.
I quipped, “Oh, wait, they’re supposed to be sluts.” A woman would use the FIRST-PERSON pronoun and say “we.” It’s basic grammar from Elementary school.
….. But then again, certain Confederate bloggers do have a long history of misusing “we” in various contexts, don’t they?
(She also didn’t notice I was ironically paraphrasing her interview remarks, just swapping “Southern men” for “feminists”).