The NAACP should formally adopt the Confederate battle flag, and all things Confederate, in the way that community groups adopt sections of roads.
Why?
This would send the Ku Klux Klan, and any genuine racists, into fits. It would also bridge the gap between the NAACP and Southern heritage groups, and perhaps help to heal the wounds between Southern blacks and whites left over from Reconstruction.
To justify this action, ask a simple question. Does the NAACP want real social progress, or is it merely engaged in posturing for fund-raising? Kweisi Mfume, the head of the NAACP, is a Democrat cast from the same mold as Clinton, and – no surprise – has opted for money instead of justice and progress.
Southrons are attached to the battle flag, as well as the three National flags of the Confederacy and the Bonnie Blue flag, because Southern nationalism did not end with the war. Yes, Southern nationalism. Loss of the war aside, the Confederacy was a de facto independent nation for roughly four years. Would you forget a thing like that? Do you think the colonists would have forgotten the taste of freedom if the British had won the American War of Independence? Not likely. If you still have doubts, think about Patrick Henry: Give me liberty, or give me death. Heck, the New Hampshire state motto is “Live Free or Die,” and they’re Yankees.
Also, consider the case of international law. When there is the break-up of an existing state, as in the case of Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia, who decides whether the new entities are really states? Basically, other states decide. Czechoslovakia split peacefully into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic; since neither of them complained, other states such as Germany, France and the U.S. had no difficulty in recognizing their existence as states. Similarly, Slovenia and Croatia are recognized as independent states, now that the fighting in those formerly Yugoslavian areas has died down.
In the case of a war of secession – as when the British colonies in America forcibly earned their independence from Mother England – recognition usually does not come until after the rebels have won.
Of course, international law itself raises a philosophical question: what does it mean for one state to “recognize the existence” of another state? Surely, if it didn’t exist, there would be nothing to recognize. Yet recognition seems to confer existence in the minds of states. At a minimum, it can be said that international law is not sufficiently informed by libertarian and classical liberal thinking. But the Confederate States of America certainly existed as a functioning government. It was not recognized by any foreign nations, but it was recognized by the sovereign state of Maryland.
But back to my main point. The NAACP gains nothing from its demonization of all things Confederate. The solid core of NAACP supporters is going to stick with the NAACP through thick and thin. But what about those on the fence, or those who, in defense of their own heritage, despise the tactics of the NAACP? Such a confrontational stance gains some supporters from those on the fence, but others are pushed into the ranks of the furious and defensive Southern heritage groups. It does not seem to be a good idea to willfully and intentionally push away people who might otherwise be sympathetic to one’s cause.
My suggestion could be adopted in a variety of ways. The NAACP could stop opposing the battle flag, and begin a reasoned discussion of the pros and cons of the battle flag as a symbol of the Confederacy. Of course, this would involve an acknowledgment of history, instead of myths, for example dropping the claim that the War for Southern Independence had anything to do with slavery.
In point of fact, as Charles Adams has recently demonstrated in his marvelous short book, When in the Course of Human Events, the war was fought over economics and politics. The political issue was the power structure of the federal government and the states, known as federalism. The South adhered to the vision of the founders, i.e. of a federal government created by the sovereign states and limited in its powers. Because the united States were a union of sovereign states, a state that wished to leave the union could do so at any time. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence as well as a President of the United States, said so explicitly in public speeches. So did President John Quincy Adams. The South had good reason to oppose Abraham Lincoln’s ridiculous claim that the union was permanent, and that it was “prior to the states.”
The war was also fought over economics. Lincoln’s Northern backers favored the high tariff which Lincoln passed immediately upon taking office. The Lincoln tariff was intolerable to the South for several reasons. First, the Northern-controlled Congress spent the vast majority of revenue raised in the North. Second, the South was an exporter of raw materials such as cotton, and an importer of European manufactured goods. With a high tariff, Southerners would be induced to buy lower-quality Northern goods instead of European goods which had been priced out of the market by the protective tariff. In the process, the busy ports of the South would lose a great deal of business.
Slavery, in contrast, was not even announced as a war aim by Lincoln until two years of fighting had elapsed. Even then, the Emancipation Proclamation, which European publications ridiculed as a sham, only alleged to free the slaves in the Deep South, where Lincoln had no authority. It did not free the slaves in the border states, such as Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, which Lincoln was still struggling to keep in the union.
Lincoln had successfully prosecuted cases returning fugitive slaves to their masters. He campaigned with explicit statements of his lack of constitutional authority to do anything about slavery, and he stated numerous times that he did not want to do anything about slavery. When he did suggest ways to deal with slavery, Lincoln’s preferred plan was to ship the slaves back to Africa because, he said, he would prefer the white race to be superior, and he did not believe that the two races could ever live together. It should also be remembered that while leader of the Illinois legislature, Lincoln passed laws forbidding freed blacks from living in that state. Adams’ book is richly footnoted on all these points.
But Lincoln was not alone in his attitudes. The allegedly abolitionist Northern states had laws forbidding free blacks from moving in, holding property, or taking jobs. Northern cities such as Boston had “black codes,” which were later copied by the Southern states and known as “Jim Crow.” The black codes told blacks where to live, among other things. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed, nowhere were blacks treated worse than in the states where there had never been slavery.
The South, by contrast, featured integrated areas of cities, where freed blacks lived side by side with whites and with slaves. C. Van Woodward’s short book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, is also informative on this point. Although set 90 years before the War for Southern Independence, the Mel Gibson film The Patriot illustrates this point: the film features free blacks working for Gibson’s character (a South Carolinian), as well as one slave who wins his freedom through militia service and stays to fight beside his fellow (mostly white) South Carolinians as a free man.
As Adams documents, Northern Reconstruction ended all this. The Union League, the GAR, and the Republican Party disenfranchised anyone who had fought for the South, armed the freed slaves, and turned Southern society on its head. The resulting lawlessness – characterized by federal troops and Northern politicians literally raping and stealing their way through the South for a period of years – spawned the Ku Klux Klan. It should not be forgotten that the Union Army which “liberated” the South was immediately thereafter engaged in the massacre of the Indians. For that, one might expect the NAACP to ban the Stars & Stripes.
So back to my suggestion.
The NAACP can do something which no white politician can do. It can tone down the rhetoric. It can end the conflict by acknowledging that things don’t have to be the way they are. It is possible to celebrate the South and the Confederacy without being a racist. The Southerners saw themselves as following in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers who were in the role of Mel Gibson’s character – those who fought the tyrannical British to gain American independence. They did not see themselves as defenders of slavery, but rather as defenders of their homes and their freedom. Given that six percent of Southerners owned slaves, and, as Jeffrey Rogers Hummel has demonstrated in his excellent book Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men (the title is taken from a speech made by Lincoln prior to his presidency), slavery made the South poorer, this should not be surprising.
Either these statements about the South are true or they are false. If they are true – which they are – it does no one any good, the membership of the NAACP included – to attack them as if they were false. As a matter of political philosophy, the Bonnie Blue flag was spontaneously flown by Southerners after secession. It is spontaneously being flown by Southerners today who wish to celebrate their heritage while not being slandered as “racists.” It is therefore a flag chosen by the people, and not by a government. But this is a minor point, and besides, the Somali flag looks confusingly similar. Somaliland, as it used to be called, was a U.N. protectorate, and the Somali flag features a five-point star on a field of U.N. sky blue, which is a lighter shade than the royal blue of the Bonnie Blue. On the other hand, if Americans cannot recognize the Bonnie Blue, they are not likely to recognize the Somali flag.
What would happen if the NAACP renounced its attacks on all things Confederate? It is likely that some members who would quit the organization in a fit of rage. A split in the ranks would be likely. But so what? Supposing that there are blacks, just as there are whites, who cannot or will not reconcile themselves to give the other side a fair shake, why let them set the agenda? The League of the South has been a model in this regard, celebrating Southern heritage while also drawing fire for its “No Kluxers” stance. As prominent black writers – Larry Elder and Thomas Sowell among them – have observed, the world contains both white racists and black racists.
But no one should let the racists set the agenda, no matter what their color.
Happily, there has already been a spontaneous display of black civil rights support of the Confederate battle flag: a former NAACP county chairman in Texas protested a local judge’s order banning the display of the Confederate battle flag at the county court house by showing up at the court house in a Confederate uniform, carrying the battle flag, and announcing that he was defying the court order so that he might be arrested.
The tragedy here is that my suggestion will never be adopted. Kweisi Mfume, for one, would have to find honest work, and there is not much demand for demagogues in the free market. Picture Bill Clinton filling out job applications, and you get the idea. It will never happen. But a man can always hope.
November 18, 2000
Mr. Dieteman is an attorney in Erie, Pennsylvania, and a PhD candidate in philosophy at The Catholic University of America.
