Thoughts on Memorial Day

by | May 25, 2015 | Editor's Blog | 11 comments

This post was originally posted on Memorial Day, 2015.

Memorial Day has come to represent the unofficial beginning of summer, even if the solstice is still more than three weeks away. Shop owners and rental agents can finally begin to refill coffers that have been dwindling since Labor Day. And Southern clothes hounds can declare that it’s finally okay to breakout the seersucker.

However, Memorial Day is not so much a holiday as a somber day of remembrance and respect for those who lost their lives in our nation’s wars. It started as a day to honor those killed in the Civil War. After World War I, it became a day to remember the dead from every conflict.

As far as I know, my only direct ancestor to die in battle was Sergeant Matthew Goodson, who died of wounds he sustained during Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. He was my great-great-grandfather and he left behind a daughter, my great-grandmother, who was only eight months old when he died. He’s one of only two Confederate soldiers with markers in Evergreen Cemetery in Gettysburg. 

Growing up, I was proud of my Confederate heritage. I owned beach towels that bore the Confederate battle flag. I had a coaster with a caricature of a white-bearded Confederate veteran with the words “Hell no, I ain’t fergettin’ ” and, for awhile, I wore a hat that read, “Keep the South beautiful. Put a yankee on a bus.” I bought into the Southern myth of honor, valor, and the Lost Cause.

At the same time, among my earliest memories is the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I remember it as a major tragedy and believed him to be a martyr and a hero. I knew that segregation was wrong and was proud to have friends both black and white. I believed that racism was a plague on our country that especially infected the South.

Over time, I realized how hurtful the symbols of the old Confederacy must be to African-Americans. Public displays of the Confederate flag are often accompanied by the phrase “Heritage not hate,” but in the eyes of African-Americans, the battle flag must be somewhat akin to what swastikas are to Jews. It’s time we white Southerners come to terms with our past and begin to reconcile some of our contradictions.

Revisionists like to claim that the War was about states’ rights more than slavery. But even if that were true, the war would be no less unjust. Our country was founded on high-minded ideals. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” Jefferson wrote, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” It’s those human principles that we should defend–the ones denied slaves–instead of constructs of government like states’ rights.

In the wake of their defeat, white Southerners created the myth of the Lost Cause to convince themselves that their boys did not die in vain, but for something noble. In doing so, they denied or ignored the inhumanity of slavery and extended the systemic brutality of black Southerners for another hundred years. Unlike post-war Germany, which faced its sins, took responsibility, and rebuilt its society and economy, the South is still struggling to come to terms with its defeat and its culpability 150 years after the end of the Civil War.

The Lost Cause was not an honorable mission, but a futile defense of a feudalistic economic and social system that sacrificed the lives of hundreds of thousands of young men. Slavery, and then Jim Crow, were kept in place by brutality that rivals that of the Islamic State today. Sexual violence, torture, and murder, tacitly sanctioned by religious authorities, kept a large segment of the population submissive and traumatized. That’s nothing to celebrate or honor.

So today, let’s remember the men and women who gave their lives to protect our freedom and our liberty, the principles and ideals on which this country is founded. They deserve our recognition and deep appreciation.

But let’s not forget men like Matthew Goodson, either. His loss offers us a lesson. His death was a senseless tragedy that left his daughter to grow up never knowing her father. Such a sacrifice might have been warranted to protect her freedom and liberty, but it was a waste in defense of the inhumanity of slavery. So if ever again, our government calls on us to take up arms in defense of discrimination and injustice, our answer should be, quite clearly, “No.”   

11 Comments

  1. Sam

    I have a simple question for idiots like you who write this crap, and buy into this bull about the Confederate flag, Confederate memorials, Arizona tea labels, and whatever else they dream up tomorrow being offensive to blacks. Should we ban the growing of cotton? Why is it that a large cotton field doesn’t seem to offend blacks or remind them of slavery ownership? If they decide tomorrow that it does, should we eliminate all crop production of cotton?

    • Allison Mahaley

      Sam, I have a simple question for you – who’s the idiot now? If you call correct history “this crap” then where do you get your information? I bet it starts with an “F” and ends with “ox.” Thomas, what a providential post – great insight and articulation. And a shout out the Bree Newsome who had the guts to take it down in SC. Enough with the hate and pompous outrage, Sam. You are outdated. America is moving on.

  2. wafranklin

    My grandfathers were in War to Free the slaves, both traitors to the US. One died at Richmond and the other returned a drunk and wastrel. This is the one whose family owned blacks and exploited them. A pox on them and all their kind.

  3. larry

    My great grandfather and his brother fought on opposite sides during the great war between the States, the American Civil War. Since then my family has never celebrated or been afflicted with a flag fetish nor the imaginary fantasy that that war was one of honor. It was a conflict, a horrible war and scar on our national soul. And it had nothing to do with right or rights but the mans enslavement of man.

  4. Chris Whitaker

    Excellent thoughts on Memorial Day. The only documented ancestor who died in battle was my maternal great-great-grandfather, Claiborn Borden. He died of a “ball to the head” at Stones River. He enlisted with two brothers who died of diseases, one from typhoid fever and the other of “chronic diarrhea”. All Tennesseans, all were fighting for the Union in the 9th KY Volunteer Infantry.

  5. Someone from Main Street

    A beautiful post, Thomas.

    I am not from the South – I am from the Midwest via Europe (first generation on my mother’s side – second generation on my father’s side) – and I do not understand the reverence given to the Confederate flag. I’m seeing it today, waving alongside the American flag. The one I see waved all around isn’t even the official Confederate flag – but instead the Army of Northern Virginia flag – and this was the flag I associated with the Confederacy when I lived up north.

    For a long time, I thought these flags had fluttered over Southern states for centuries. When I moved South (not long ago), I did a little research and discovered that these flags were designed between 1861 and 1865 specifically for the Confederacy. The Confederate flags represent secession and anti-American sentiment. They were carried by people who fought and died for slavery. They flew over states that fought bitterly to be released of their connection with the United States of America. I do not understand why people today cherish a symbol of slavery and anti-American sentiment. Really – it is a puzzle to me.

    The South has not fully embraced its status within the United States of America. Too much talk of secession still (there was an NC petition for secession just a couple of years ago!) I don’t know why people still support secession from one of the great nations in the world. But the Confederate flag still waves proudly in the breeze – and is being flown today, the day we remember those who died protecting American freedoms. And today, that flag remains a symbol of slave owners and that desire to leave America and start a new nation.

    • Someone from Main Street

      Yes – so true that the issue about “states’ rights” was about the right of states to maintain the institution of slavery – and to expand it to new states.

  6. William Ewing

    As a son of the old south – my dad the first to live north of the Mason Dixon line for 200+ years (and I was born in Texas ) I only wish I could be as eloquent and succinct. Well done.

  7. Frank McGuirt

    Beautifully written. Thanks. 2 of my great grandfathers served in the Confederate army. They came home broke and poor.

  8. Vicki boyer

    Excellent remarks.

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