LEGACY OF THE CIVIL WAR and RECONSTRUCTION FISHBOWL
GROUP 1: CIVIL WAR LEGACY (20 minutes)
1. To what extent are the Confederate flag and statues of Confederate Generals symbols of white supremacy? 2. Should Confederate statues and monuments be removed from public places?
3. Considering the totality of its effects, including the extent of death and atrocities, how should we as a nation remember the Civil War?
GROUP 2: RECONSTRUCTION LEGACY (20 minutes)
1. What is the Cult or Myth of the “Lost Cause” and how has it impacted how Americans view the Civil War and Reconstruction?
2. How are the protests in Charlottesville connected with the rise of the Ku Klux Klan andthe legacy of Reconstruction?
3. Should we ultimately view the Reconstruction Period as more of a success or a failure?
Closing Whole-Group discussion (10 minutes)
Recently, President Trump’s Chief of Staff, John Kelly, said that the Civil War happened because of the lack of an ability to compromise. He faced immediate backlash because of this statement. What did he get wrong? How does this and President Trump’s statements on the Civil War reinforce the importance of remembering our past?
Resources to prepare include Chapters 14 & 15 of the textbook and the following documents and links to articles and videos – Read the sources and examine the resources for BOTH groups:
Civil War Events and Atrocities to Examine:
1. The extent of war casualties including Battle of Antietam and Gettysburg
2. The New York Draft Riots
3. The Fort Pillow Massacre
4. POW Camps: Fort Sumter in Andersonville, GA (Confederate), and Point Lookout, Maryland (Union)
5. Sherman’s March to the Sea
1: Historical Interpretation: The Confederate Flag
- This afternoon, in announcing her support for removing the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley asserted that killer Dylann Roof had “a sick and twisted view of the flag” which did not reflect “the people in our state who respect and in many ways revere it.” If the governor meant that very few of the flag’s supporters believe in mass murder, she is surely right. But on the question of whose view of the Confederate Flag is more twisted, she is almost certainly wrong. Roof’s belief that black life had no purpose beyond subjugation is “sick and twisted” in the exact same manner as the beliefs of those who created the Confederate flag were “sick and twisted.” The Confederate flag is directly tied to the Confederate cause, and the Confederate cause was white supremacy. This claim is not the result of revisionism. It does not require reading between the lines. It is the plain meaning of the words of those who bore the Confederate flag across history. These words must never be forgotten. Over the next few months the word “heritage” will be repeatedly invoked. It would be derelict to not examine the exact contents of that heritage. - By Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic Monthly,June 22, 2015
- I remember my own father and uncle returning from World War II with stories of how southerners, particularly rural and working-class ones, were denigrated and ridiculed by conscripted urbanites for their speech, manners, and attitudes. There was a general attack at the time on “hillbillies.” This was the beginning of their sectional consciousness I am sure, which had hardly existed before, as it was of mine. It was after this that we began to display the Confederate battle flag at times from the front porch. It was ten years before Brown vs. Board of Education (landmark Supreme Court case that desegregated public schools) and had nothing to do with the Dixiecrat movement (pro-segregation southerners) or with football… In recent years, I have spoken often to meetings of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, United Daughters of the Confederacy, Civil War roundtables, various heritage groups, places full of defenders and displayers of the battle flag. My impression is that for most of these good Americans, the flag is a symbol not of white supremacy, but of identification with their own ancestors and heritage and an affirmation of their own identity. –By Clyde N. Wilson, The Confederate Battle Flag: A Symbol of Southern Heritage and Identity 1996
2. President Donald Trump’s quotes and tweets regarding the Civil War and the Charlottesville protests and the removing of Civil War monuments. – Commentary from Business InsiderAug 18. 2017
"People don't realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why?" Trump said. "People don't ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?"
Those comments came after Trump went on a lengthy riff about former President Andrew Jackson, to whom the current president has often compared himself.
"I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn't have had the Civil War," Trump said of the slave-owning president. "He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said there's no reason for this."
Jackson, who was president from 1829 to 1837, died in 1845, 16 years before the Civil War started…
Trump followed that up with the following tweet:
President Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the Civil War started, saw it coming and was angry. Would never have let it happen!4:55 PM - May 1, 2017
The morning after Trump's comments were made public, famed presidential historian Jon Meacham told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that Trump told him during the presidential campaign "that he could've done a deal to avert the war."
But perhaps the most head-scratching connection between Trump and the Civil War involves his Sterling, Virginia golf club.
Between the 14th and 15th holes on one of the club's two courses, Trump installed a plaque that designated that segment of the Potomac River as "The River of Blood," The New York Times reported in 2015.
"Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot," the plaque read. "The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as 'The River of Blood.'"It concludes by stating, "It is my great honor to have preserved this important section of the Potomac River!"There was one problem: Multiple local historians told The Times that "nothing like that ever happened there.""How would they know that?" Trump asked when the Times presented him with the quotes from the historians. "Were they there?"Trump told the Times repeatedly that "numerous historians" said the site was known as 'The River of Blood.'" He was unable to provide the Times with the names of the historians.
Much later in the campaign, as his battle with then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was reaching its final days, Trump decided to hold his closing pitch to voters in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania — offering up his own "Gettysburg Address" in the same spot where President Abraham Lincoln gavehis famous speech following the Civil War's most famous battle more than 150 years earlier."It's my privilege to be here in Gettysburg, hallowed ground where so many lives were given," Trump said as he presented his "Contract With the American Voter."He made sure to draw a parallel between the state of the nation in the present day and the country Lincoln addressed in 1863 at the height of the war."President Lincoln served at a time of division like we've never seen before," he said. "It is my hope that we can look at his example to heal the divisions we are living through right now."
Nearly a year later, Trump, now president, found himself putting the likes of Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson in the same breath as Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.During his Tuesday press conference at Trump Tower, as Trump defended the "very fine people" who were among the white nationalists and neo-Nazis who gathered to protest the removal of a statue of Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump presented a slippery slope argument. He speculated that once statuesof Lee and Jackson are removed, statues Washington and Jefferson could be next."So this week it's Robert E. Lee," he said. "I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name," he continued.
When a reporter said thatLee and Washington "are not the same," Trump drew comparisons.
"George Washington was a slave owner," he said. "Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down ... statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him? ... Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue? So you know what, it's fine. You're changing history. You're changing culture."
That led tohis three-tweet defense of the monuments Thursday morning.
Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You.....6:07 AM - Aug 17, 2017
...can't change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson - who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also...6:15 AM - Aug 17, 2017
...the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced! 6:21 AM - Aug 17, 2017
Interestingly, the apparent oldest Confederate-related comment on Trump's Twitter feed also involved Lee, but it had nothing to do with statues.As news broke in late August 2013 that President Barack Obama was preparing to conduct a limited air strike in Syria, Trump asked what certain "great generals" would've thought of the "stupid broadcasting of an attack."
"I wonder what the great generals like Patton, the big M, or Robert E. LEE would have thought about our stupid broadcasting of an attack?"he wrote.
3. Mitch Landrieu, Mayor of New Orleans – Speech on May 24, 2017
“New Orleans is truly a city of many nations, a melting pot, a bubbling cauldron of many cultures. There is no other place quite like it in the world that so eloquently exemplifies the uniquely American motto: e pluribus unum: out of many we are one. But there are also other truths about our city that we must confront. New Orleans was America's largest slave market, a port where hundreds of thousands of souls were bought, sold, and shipped up the Mississippi River to lives of forced labor, of misery, of rape, of torture.
America was the place where nearly 4,000 of our fellow citizens were lynched, 540 alone in Louisiana; where the courts enshrined "separate but equal"; where Freedom riders coming to New Orleans were beaten to a bloody pulp. So when people say to me that the monuments in question are history, well, what I just described is real history as well, and it is the searing truth.
And it immediately begs the questions; why there are no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks; nothing to remember this long chapter of our lives; the pain, the sacrifice, the shame... all of it happening on the soil of New Orleans.
So for those self-appointed defenders of history and the monuments, they are eerily silent on what amounts to this historical malfeasance, a lie by omission.
There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it.
For America and New Orleans, it has been a long, winding road, marked by great tragedy and great triumph. But we cannot be afraid of our truth.
The historical record is clear: The Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard statues were not erected just to honor these men, but as part of the movement which became known as The Cult of the Lost Cause. This "cult" had one goal — through monuments and through other means — to rewrite history to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity. The monuments that we took down were meant to rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of a defeated Confederacy. It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America. They fought against it. They may have been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots.
After the Civil War, these statues were a part of that terrorism as much as a burning cross on someone's lawn; they were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city.
I am not judging anybody, I am not judging people. We all take our own journey on race. I just hope people listen like I did when my dear friend Wynton Marsalis helped me see the truth. He asked me to think about all the people who have left New Orleans because of our exclusionary attitudes. Another friend asked me to consider these four monuments from the perspective of an African-American mother or father trying to explain to their fifth-grade daughter who Robert E. Lee is and why he stands atop of our beautiful city. Can you do it? Can you look into that young girl's eyes and convince her that Robert E. Lee is there to encourage her?
When you look into this child's eyes is the moment when the searing truth comes into focus for us. This is the moment when we know what is right and what we must do. We can't walk away from this truth. And I knew that taking down the monuments was going to be tough, but you elected me to do the right thing, not the easy thing and this is what that looks like.
We forget, we deny how much we really depend on each other, how much we need each other. … No more waiting. This is not just about statues, this is about our attitudes and behavior as well. If we take these statues down and don't change to become a more open and inclusive society this would have all been in vain.
Today it is more important than ever to hold fast to these values and together say a self-evident truth that out of many we are one. That is why today we reclaim these spaces for the United States of America. Because we are one nation, not two; indivisible with liberty and justice for all, not some.
The Confederacy was on the wrong side of history and humanity. It sought to tear apart our nation and subjugate our fellow Americans to slavery. This is the history we should never forget and one that we should never again put on a pedestal to be revered. As a community, we must recognize the significance of removing New Orleans' Confederate monuments. It is our acknowledgment that now is the time to take stock of, and then move past, a painful part of our history.
Anything less would render generations of courageous struggle and soul-searching a truly lost cause. Anything less would fall short of the immortal words of our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, who with an open heart and clarity of purpose calls on us today to unite as one people when he said, "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds … to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
Video of Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s entire speech:
“Right and Left on Removal of Confederate Statues” – Article in New York Times Aug. 17. 2017
GROUP 2 RESOURCES:
“The Lost Cause” - Video of the Daughters of the Confederacy and the rewriting of Civil War history
A Contested History – Video: Historians contrasting views of Reconstruction
The Legacies of Reconstruction – video Facing History
Article: “Regime Change in Charlottesville” from Politico on Civil War Statues and the KKK
Historians’ Interpretations of Reconstruction (separate handouts).