Confederate history month bill honors ignoble past

As this year’s legislative session closed, and with little publicity or dissent, the Georgia General Assembly passed Senate Bill 27, designating April as “Confederate Heritage and History Month.”

The bill, which drew controversy before failing two years ago, declares that every April “shall be set aside to celebrate the Confederate States of America, its history, those who served in its armed forces and government,” and all those who contributed “to the cause which they held so dear.”

As a seventh-generation Georgian and a direct descendant of five Confederate soldiers, I wish that the cause the bill’s sponsors are referring to had been a noble one.

Sadly, the historical record compels me to accept that the Confederate cause was grounded in the defense of oppression, not liberty, and Georgia is wrong to glorify this chapter of history.

Unfortunately for its modern-day defenders, the Confederacy’s leaders stated their own motive for secession so clearly and unambiguously that it leaves no room for doubt as to how they understood the cause they held “so dear.”

On Dec. 7, 1860, Georgia Gov. Joseph E. Brown delivered an open letter to the people of Georgia endorsing secession solely because of the threat of abolition.

He said that Georgians “can never again live in peace with the Northern abolitionists, unless we can have new constitutional guarantees, which will … effectually stop the discussion of the slavery question in Congress.”

Since slavery was widely seen as benefiting only the rich, fully half of the letter was directed specifically at poor non-slave-holding whites, warning them of the consequences if slaves were made their equals.

Four Confederate states issued declarations of cause that explained their reasons for seceding. Every one identified slavery. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world,” declared Mississippi, the bluntest of the four.

Henry Benning was Georgia’s commissioner to the Virginia Secession Convention, and on Feb. 18, 1861, he encouraged Virginia to secede as Georgia had: “What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? … It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. This conviction was the main cause.”

Georgia’s Robert Toombs resigned from the U.S. Senate on Jan. 7, 1861, and gave a farewell speech in which he identified four Southern demands, all protecting slavery. The month prior, Toombs had proposed a similar seven-point constitutional compromise to avoid secession; all seven points concerned slavery.

In his Corner-Stone Speech of March 21, 1861, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, a Georgian, told his Savannah audience, “Our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists among us — the proper status of the negro in our civilization. … was the immediate cause of the late rupture and the present revolution.”

He explained that the Confederacy’s “foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth.”

This was the “cause which they held so dear.”

To claim that slavery was only one factor in secession is like saying that Sept. 11 was only one factor in our decision to invade Afghanistan. States’ rights? Only the right to own people.

As a son of the South, I take no satisfaction in these truths. But they are truths nonetheless.

There is much to celebrate about Georgia and Southern heritage, but if Gov. Perdue signs SB 27, singling out the Confederacy for special celebration, slavery is the legacy and the cause that he honors.

LorenCollins, an attorney, lives in Atlanta.