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hi, one-time Civil War semi-scholar, hard confirm https://twitter.com/PopeNicholasVI/status/1278384324967006209
one chapter of my life has been on my mind, where I went from dismissing Confederate memorials and flag displays as just weird Southern goofiness and shrugging to recognizing it as a deep and twisted moral wound, and that was the time where my day job was as a Confederate soldier
The term of the art for the gig is "Historical Interpreter" - sometimes it's called "living history" - but I worked at a Civil War museum, and most of my days started with me in a locker room putting on the full uniform of a Confederate enlisted infantryman
You know these folks, places like Colonial Williamsburg, and the people that thrive in these jobs are folks that, like I was, had been teachers and wanted to just do it in a different way. The idea is you help animate things that are hard to explain by being a living being
By being an expert on what life would have been like for somebody, you can field questions to people in a way that helps them genuinely engage with the matter at hand, and largely, that's how it works. I loved talking to school groups and firing off my Springfield for them!
But what I didn't expect at all, and shocked me the first time, shocked me less the second time, and came to make me uneasy it could happen any time I had a majority white student group, was that sometimes, some of the adults - never the kids- would think you were "taking a side"
By that I mean, some adults would figure that, since I was out there, with a Confederate enlisted uniform on, talking about the life of a Confederate grunt, that I had deep, and specific, personal sympathies with the "Confederate Cause," and it emboldened them to say things to me
Parental chaperones would try and whisper racist jokes about my colleagues in my ear, they'd say them out loud in front of the group even sometimes expecting a laugh, they'd lean over and say *fucked up* things to their kids when they thought nobody was paying attention.
The worst part of every school trip was the visit to the gift shop, but with the groups with lots of white students and chaperones, I would do anything I could to try and "oops" it off their schedule because I know what kind of shit the parents wanted to buy (Confederate flags).
But here's the rub: the site I worked at was notable, as a war event, for the total, absolute humiliation of the Confederate forces. They were obscenely miscommanded there. There were hugely excess fatalities. Their army was starving them. It was anything but a place of honor.
The factual story I was telling throughout the day was one of extreme Confederate defeat at the end of a heinously prolonged siege of Petersburg.
And in the face of all that, the white chaperones were still actively rooting for the Confederates.
It was not about battle prowess.
And in the face of all that, the white chaperones were still actively rooting for the Confederates.
It was not about battle prowess.
It was not reverence for sacrifice of the Confederate army that caused parents to try and summon up cheers on a hinge in the narrative that led to a slight improvement in their fortunes, because they would also boo when inevitably the tide turned and the Union forces smashed them
I had largely been in a Confederate kit most days because I was one of the smaller interpreters and there was one trouser and jacket set that fit me just about perfectly more than anything else, but when another dude left, I started wearing his kit.
The Confederate uniform in the Civil War was, I'll say this, much more practical than the ones most Union soldiers wore, and the other dude's trousers were way too long so I had to kinda wear my long johns like bloomers to make it work, but I did because I found out real fast:
The uniform was the *entire* difference. Once I was drilling out there in Union garb, suddenly I didn't hear that shit from the chaperones. Suddenly they didn't have so many pro-Confederate "opinions."
The Confederate uniform gave them permission they craved to be racist aloud.
The Confederate uniform gave them permission they craved to be racist aloud.
So, in short, no symbol or sign or mark that venerates or celebrates the despicable, morally bankrupt cause the Confederate States of America stood for can be taken as value neutral. It isn't. Ever.
One scrap gives permission. That's permission we can not, as a society, grant.
One scrap gives permission. That's permission we can not, as a society, grant.
The Confederate Cause was the preservation of chattel slavery maintained through state white supremacy. Nothing more. It is that craven, that insidious, and that indefensible, and those that advanced it can only be remembered as executors of crimes against humanity itself.
