The Consequences of Our Ignorance
Over 160 years after the conclusion of the Civil War, Americans still disagree on the role that the North and South played in its cause. Many still refuse to acknowledge that the issue of human slavery lay at the core of the war and view the Confederacy and its “lost cause” in an honorable and noble light. Others choose to embrace the myth of the North as a morally righteous force with the central goal of freeing the enslaved. The proliferation of these false narratives has led to our failure in reckoning with our past and has stunted our growth towards true racial equity.
Americans’ perceptions of the Civil War are often shaped by their heritage, race and personal history. Many still hang on-to the shreds of the memories of the glorified “Old South'' and insist the war was about states’ rights in the face of Northern aggression. They claim to honor their ancestors’ bravery and carry on their legacy while toting Confederate battle flags, choosing to ignore that their ancestors went to war against their own country for the continued subjugation of African Americans and dominance of white supremacy. In this way, the Confederate flag represents both heritage and hate.
Contrarily, President Abraham Lincoln’s legacy has been solidified as the Great Emancipator, the liberator of African Americans and the savior of their cause. In many parts of the country, history is taught in a way that hails the North as the proverbial hand of justice in the face of a perverted enemy. This perception of history also fails to acknowledge the full story, but remains a comfortable, simplistic narrative that white Americans often adopt in order to ignore the racism of the North. African Americans are effectively relegated to the position of “side characters” in an otherwise white-dominated story.
Much of the country has conveniently forgotten that the North went to the war primarily to save the Union, not to free the enslaved. Abraham Lincoln said in 1858, “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the [W]hite and [B]lack races.” On another occasion, Lincoln said to Black leaders visiting the White House, “Even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race…It is better for us both...to be separated.”
In fact, the U.S. government was fully prepared to retain slavery in the South if it meant an end to the war and dissolution of the Confederacy. Only the stubbornness of the Southern rebels’ vile racism convinced them of the necessity for slavery’s abolition. Emancipation, in effect, was a wartime necessity, not an idyllic goal born of virtue and morality. Our failure as Americans to challenge these simplified, generational narratives is dangerous to the state of race relations in our country today.
The North may in retrospect appear as the “good guy” of the war—not a particularly difficult achievement when fighting against an insurrection of slaveholders—but in many ways the benevolence ended there. African Americans, other than earning their loosely defined “freedom,” continued to be mistreated, discriminated against, and brutalized by white society in both the North and the South.
Ultimately, even in the aftermath of a war that freed the enslaved, the North failed to implement any real change in race relations other than sounding the death knell for the formal institution of slavery as it had existed in the South. A system of industrial torture, not to mention the denial of the basic humanity of an entire race, became deeply integrated into the South’s economic, political, and social systems. The U.S. government made little effort to address the intense inequality that newly freed African Americans faced as they integrated into so-called “free” society.
I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, the former capital of the Confederacy. My paternal family has lived in and around Richmond for generations, and our ancestors were enlisted in the Confederate Army. As proud Richmond natives, my family has always been interested in Civil War history. But the perspective I hold of the war differs greatly from some of my family members who still consider the Confederate cause as one of honor and bravery.
After the end of the Civil War in 1865, a quarter of Richmond had been burned to the ground by the Union army, and Southerners had suffered a much larger casualty ratio than their northern counterparts. Having to build the city from the ground up, Richmond experienced an economic and industrial boom as White, Black, and immigrant workers moved into the city. Several Black Richmonders began to run for political office and served as elected officials, working together with working-class Democrats to pass laws increasing educational opportunities for Black and white students and ending laws that disenfranchised Black voters.
This new era of an integrating, interracial and modernized Richmond threatened Confederate veterans and conservative white Democrats set on maintaining a white supremacist way-of-life and refused to go down in history as, quite frankly, losers. It was at this time in 1885 that Fitzhugh Lee, nephew of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, was elected as governor of Virginia. In seeking to solidify history’s view of the Confederate cause as a noble one—and cement Virginia as a white supremacist state—Lee erected the statue of his uncle, Robert E. Lee, that still stands on Monument Avenue in Richmond, now barricaded from the public and covered in graffiti reading “Black Lives Matter.”
Governor Lee and the then-Democratic majority had successfully ushered in an era of refreshed white supremacy. Segregation and disenfranchisement laws were passed and predominantly Black neighborhoods were gerrymandered, effectively stamping out the ability for African Americans to hold elected office and maintain any political power.
Many white Americans today believe that African Americans need to “do more” for themselves, suggesting they should get jobs instead of relying on the government for “hand-outs”; In their view, these citizens should not resist arrest or risk getting shot by the police. The real problem in America for some is not systemic societal racism, but the threat of “wokeness” and “cancel culture” that discourages people from saying or engaging in racist actions—Confederate flag paraphernalia included.
To many Americans, it is undeniably clear that racial inequality is inextricably woven into our institutions, but they are unable, or unwilling, to make the affirmative and necessary reforms to create a truly equal-opportunity society. Some white liberals still believe that our institutions are inherently helpful to all citizens and that since we are living in a mostly post-racial or “color blind” society, we can ignore what is obvious to many—Black men, women, and children are routinely murdered and unjustly incarcerated by our legal and law enforcement systems.
But racism goes beyond police brutality and the prison industrial complex. It is deeply embedded in our social constructs, implicit biases, and the way we treat one another as human beings. We must recall that African Americans have been enslaved for longer than they haven’t in the history of our country. For centuries, Black people were denied agency over their own lives, brutalized by their white slave owners, and considered less-than-human by white society in both the North and the South.
Racism towards Black Americans did not evaporate with the surrender at Appomattox or even the ratification of the 13th amendment. In some senses, it only intensified. The KKK came into existence shortly after the end of the war and served initially as a quasi-police force composed largely of Confederate veterans dedicated to retaining white supremacy in the face of intimidating social change. While the federal government at times stepped in to tamp down the influence of the KKK in the South, this white supremacist organization, often recast in other forms, would experience numerous rebirths and evade government interference in the preceding decades.
The disease of white supremacy continues to ripple through our policing system in America, with more connections between law enforcement officers and the KKK and other racially-motivated groups than many would like to admit. Online forums and social media accounts populated by military and police often exhibit explicit white supremacist content, which algorithms promote to aggrieved white males who see the push for racial equality as an offense to their very existence. Our government and policing systems have systematically failed to erase the stain of white supremacy, but it is crucial that we implement the necessary reforms to combat the rise in domestic terrorism against minority communities that have been on national display these past few years.
Our Republic was not meant to be static. We are supposed to grow in the face of new threats and challenges. We are confronted now with near daily police shootings, often against unarmed Black men, women, and children. White supremacist groups and far-right extremists proliferate through social media channels and organize into real-world action, forming weaponized militia groups made up of former law enforcement officials and military veterans, some of whom were enthusiastic participants in the January 6 Capitol insurrection. These extremists see this battle as one for their very existence and proudly fought for the end to democratic practices as we know them.
For many of these individuals, the Confederate rebellion inspires them. Some of those who stalked the halls of the Capitol on January 6 waved the Confederate flag high in the air, or draped it on their bodies, further pushing the narrative of a noble and honorable South worthy of respect and admiration. This tired and divisive viewpoint needs to be put to rest, and the people who espouse it exposed to the truth behind their cause: the denial of Black Americans to live a life free from fear and persecution.
In the end, in order to achieve true racial equity, Americans must reckon with the full racist history of our country. The myth that America has always been an egalitarian, democratic safe-haven for people of all backgrounds is objectively false. When the institution of human bondage was destroyed and Black Americans earned their freedom, they were still centuries away from being accepted by their white peers who dominated the economic, social, and political systems that they lived under. To right the wrongs of our past, our politicians need to understand that fundamental structural change to our institutions and policing systems are the answer. The time is long overdue to stand up in the face of continued systemic oppression in the United States.