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your mind's eye, imagine this scene: On April 6, 1865 one of the
most savage battles of all the Civil War took place:
the battle
of Saylor's Creek. Along a cold, obscure stream, for five hours
the hills were rife with the smell of powder and smoke and the cries
of terror. And of carnage. Hollow-eyed Confederates, dazed by lack
of sleep and enervated by lack of food, attacked the Union with
a fury rarely seen, even in this great war. But on this day, the
Union men kept coming, and the battered rebels, their assaults increasingly
disjointed, could not keep up their ferocity. They tried and failed
and tried and failed, and soon, their bloody reverse was swift and
incalculable. By day's end, it was the South's worst defeat of this
entire campaign; the dead lay so close and dense that bodies had
to be dragged away to let a single horse pass.
General Robert
E. Lee himself felt the sting of defeat sharply. Late that afternoon,
in a powerful image that still lives in the heart of countless Southerners
today, Lee rode out to a high ridge overlooking the battlefield.
"My God!" he cried out, watching his vanquished men lurch
across the chaotic edges of shifting battle lines. "Has the
army been dissolved?"
An aide, General
Bill Mahone, riding at Lee's side, steadied his voice and offered
words of encouragement. "No general, here are troops ready
to do their duty."
But now, Lee,
his blood up and his famous temper flaring, was drawn to the fight
himself. Leaning forward in his saddle, he snatched a single battle
flag, the Confederate Cross, to rally fresh troops as well as retreating
men. On this day, it was no idle gesture. Already, five men, including
two young brothers, had died merely to keep a single flag aloft.
And at this point, it was Lee who sought to cheat fate. Riding past
Mahone's assembled troops, Lee held the flag staff high in one hand.
At the top of a rise, he stopped and waited. During the course of
this war he had forged a mighty army in his own image, waged titanic
battles against the enemy, and helped hold together a fledgling
nation. Now, however, he was close to total despair. Engaged and
erect, Lee clutched the red silk flag as the sun gently began to
set over the slaughter of Saylor's Creek.
And then came
this: The wind caught the flag, and it snapped and curled around
his silver mane, flapping about him and draping his body in Confederate
red. Mahone's men fell deathly silent, and then suddenly, quite
spontaneously, this collective hush was punctuated by a scattered,
throaty cry emanating from the men: "Where's the man who won't
follow Uncle Robert!"
Why
is so much emotion wrapped up in one flag? How do we understand
it? The reasons are often many and heartfelt, but to appreciate
the Tuesday referendum in Mississippi, in which voters overwhelmingly
voted in favor of retaining the Confederate battle cross as a prominent
feature of the state flag, one need go no further than the vignette
above. For many Southerners, and clearly the majority of Mississippians,
the Confederate Cross remains a powerful symbol for those who cherish
the memory of their Confederate forebears who fought with dignity
and valor and honor--the majority of whom never owned slaves.
To be sure,
the issue is complex. The Confederate Cross also remains (for opponents
that is) an offensive vestige of slavery, an ugly reminder of racial
oppression, decades of Jim Crow, and the rise of white-supremacy
movements. The great dilemma, of course — and we should not
forget that it is indeed a great dilemma — is that to varying
degrees both sides are right.
I have suggested
elsewhere that Missippians should consider changing the flag. The
reasons are many: For starters, the flag they voted on Tuesday wasn't
even the Confederate flag: The Southern Cross is but one
of more than a dozen flags widely used by the South during the Civil
War (Mississippi itself raised the Bonnie Blue Flag over its capitol
when it first seceded); it was not one of the three National Confederate
flags officially adopted by the Confederacy; nor is it even the
Stars and Bars as most people commonly suppose (in the smoke and
haze of battle, that flag bore such a striking resemblance to the
Stars and Stripes that Southern military commanders loudly clamored
for a new flag). And while it was the flag of Lee's famed Army of
Northern Virginia, it can be noted that even Lee's personal headquarters'
flag was different.
There is also
a question that disturbs many white Southerners, ardent devotees
of the Confederate battle flag themselves: the misappropriation
of the Southern Cross by a motley assortment of hate groups, Aryan
groups, fringe Nazi skinhead groups, churchburners, and sordid survivalist
groups. In fact, in 1989, no less than the Sons of the Confederate
Veterans bitterly denounced "extremist political" organizations
for, in effect, highjacking their banner. The flying of the Southern
Cross by these fringe groups would unquestionably appall a Jefferson
Davis or a Robert E. Lee today. Arguably, the case could be made
that Southerners who take pride in their heritage seem to have as
much at stake in redesigning their state flags as do many civil-rights
activists.
And finally,
it is sobering to look at places around the world that remain unable
to craft compromises: a divided Ireland, a Balkans mired in atavistic
hatreds, or the Middle East, where symbols, however large or small,
are minefields. Here, it is also worth recalling that Robert E.
Lee himself, after his surrender at Appomatox, remained not just
a devoted a Southerner (he was indeed) but an equally faithful proponent
of a new and united United States.
And yet…
To many detached
observers, few debates seem as incomprehensible as the Confederate-flag
debate; but to those intimately involved in the debate, few things
seem to cut to their core of their history, to their values and
their heritage, as this does. We should not blithely minimize how
bruising and painful the disputes that already took place in Georgia
and South Carolina over the flag were. So too in Mississippi.
Yet something
else seemed to happen on Tuesday that we might take notice of: For
those who cared about retaining the flag, it is quite clear that
they cared deeply. By contrast, according to news accounts, the
opposition to the flag seemed rather tepid, almost disinterested.
Organized African-American groups like the NAACP did take the matter
seriously (as did economic groups in the state, fearing a backlash);
yet a rather large number of black Mississippians seemed content
to kept the flag, along with white Mississippians themselves.
One suspects
there is a message there — that all is well with the republic,
and with Mississippi, or at least more so than we had perhaps been
led to believe. On this score, only time will tell.
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