Confederacy Quotes

“The most important thing now, his father told him: Grow. Gather. Keep. Because then, in the echoing halls, and even in future whispers, they will build monuments in your honor and you will be remembered not for your failures—not for your stumbles or your transgressions or your kills—but for only your greatest triumphs.”
― Robert Jones Jr., The Prophets

“The Lost Cause was not an accident. It was not a mistake that history stumbled into. It was a deliberate, multi-faceted, multi-field effort predicated on both misremembering and obfuscating what the confederacy stood for. And the role slavery played in shaping this county.”
― Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

“In the former capital of the confederacy, equalities surest foothold was found on the autopsy table.”
― S. A. Cosby, All the Sinners Bleed

“These women, so swift to kindness, so tender to the sorrowing, so untiring in times of stress, could be as implacable as furies to any renegade who broke one small law of their unwritten code. This code was simple. Reverence for the Confederacy, honor to the veterans, loyalty to old forms, pride in poverty, open hands to friends and undying hatred to Yankees. Between them, Scarlett and Rhett had outraged every tenet of this code.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“The Confederate flag stopped flying as the pennant of reconciliation, the joining of the southern military tradition to northern establishment might to spread Americanism abroad. It now was the banner of those who felt that the establishment had sacrificed that tradition, "stabbed it in the back." The battle flag became the banner not of a specific Lost Cause but of all of white supremacy's lost causes.”
― Greg Grandin, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America

“There are former Confederates who sought to redeem themselves—one thinks of James Longstreet, wrongly blamed by Lost Causers for Lee’s disastrous defeat at Gettysburg, who went from fighting the Union army to leading New Orleans’s integrated police force in battle against white-supremacist paramilitaries. But there are no statues of Longstreet in New Orleans. Lee was devoted to defending the principle of white supremacy; Longstreet was not. This, perhaps, is why Lee was placed atop the largest Confederate monument at Gettysburg in 1917, but the 6-foot-2-inch Longstreet had to wait until 1998 to receive a smaller-scale statue hidden in the woods that makes him look like a hobbit riding a donkey. It’s why Lee is remembered as a hero, and Longstreet is remembered as a disgrace.”
― Adam Serwer, The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump's America

“The overseas frontier—wars in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, Nicaragua, and Haiti—acted as a prism, refracting the color line abroad back home. In each military occupation and prolonged counterinsurgency they fought, southerners could replay the dissonance of the Confederacy again and again. They could fight in the name of the loftiest ideals—liberty, valor, self-sacrifice, camaraderie—while putting down people of color.”
― Greg Grandin, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America

“Netherton was looking at the oversized bronze head of a bearded man, its neck having been crudely severed from whatever figure it must once have topped. “Lee,” said Fearing, noting the direction of Netherton’s gaze. “Robert E.” The name meaning nothing to Netherton.”
― William Gibson, Agency

“Privilege is saving confederacy statues because they're 'historic' but bulldozing through ancient sacred sites & artifacts for pipelines.

(8/18/2017 on Twitter)”
― Ruth Hopkins

“Memorial Day has the tendency to conjure up old arguments about the Civil War. That’s understandable; it was created to mourn the dead of a war in which the Union was nearly destroyed, when half the country rose up in rebellion in defense of slavery.”
― Adam Serwer, The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump's America

“White Southerners' commitment to the Confederate cause was not predicated on whether or not they owned slaves. The commitment was based on a desire to maintain a society in which Black people remained at the bottom of the social hierarchy.”
― Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

“So much of the story we tell about history is really the story that we tell about ourselves, about our mothers and our fathers and their mothers and their fathers, as far back as our lineages will take us. Throughout our lives we are told certain stories and they are stories that we choose to believe--stories that become embedded in our identities in ways we are not always fully cognizant of.

For many of the people I met at Blandford, the story of the Confederacy is the story of their home, of their family--and the story of their family is the story of them. So when they are asked to reckon with the fact that their ancestors fought a war to keep my ancestors enslaved, there is resistance to facts that have been documented by primary sources and contemporaneous evidence. They are forced to confront the lies they have upheld. They are forced to confront the flaws of their ancestors. As Greg Stewart, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, told the New York Times in the aftermath of the 2015 Charleston massacre, "You're asking me to agree that my great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents were monsters." Accepting such a reality would, for them, mean the deterioration of a narrative that has long been a part of their lineage, and the disintegration of so much of who they believed themselves to be in the world.

But as I think of Blandford, I'm left wondering if we are all just patchworks of the stories we've been told. What would it take--what does it take--for you to confront a false history even if it means shattering the stories you have been told throughout your life? Even if it means having to fundamentally reexamine who you are and who your family has been? Just because something is difficult to accept doesn't mean you should refuse to accept it. Just because someone tells you a story doesn't make that story true.”
― Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

“The students on campuses with such a [Confederate] statue had higher levels of implicit racial bias. This finding speaks to the haunting effects of historical expressions of racism. Not only do these statues cause pain for many black students and faculty; they may help to sustain implicit anti-black bias.”
― Geoffrey L Cohen, Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides - Library Edition

“[On slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Confederacy] Now, gentlemen, we have got our harpoon into the monster, but we must still take uncommon care, or else by a single flop of his tail, he will send us all to eternity.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“When one-third of the population of the erstwhile Confederacy had consisted of the much-maligned Sons of Ham, the blacks had really been of economic, social and psychological value to the section. Not only had they done the dirty work and laid the foundation of its wealth, but they had served as a convenient red herring for the upper classes when the white proletariat grew restive under exploitation. The presence of the Negro as an under class had also made of Dixie a unique part of the United States. There, despite the trend to industrialization, life was a little different, a little pleasanter, a little softer. There was contrast and variety, which was rare in a nation where standardization had progressed to such an extent that a traveler didn't know what town he was in until someone informed him. The South had always been identified with the Negro, and vice versa, and its most pleasant memories treasured in song and story, were built around this pariah class.

The deep concern of the Southern Caucasians with chivalry, the protection of white womanhood, the exaggerated development of race pride and the studied arrogance of even the poorest half-starved white peon, were all due to the presence of the black man. Booted and starved by their industrial and agricultural feudal lords, the white masses derived their only consolation and happiness from the fact that they were the same color as their oppressors and consequently better than the mudsill blacks.”
― George S. Schuyler, Black No More

“Stice had worked in Salisbury a year, long enough to recognize that memories endured here much longer than in his native Oklahoma. "In school I remember learning that the Civil War ended a long time ago," he said. "Folks here don't always see it that way. They think it's still half-time.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“Want to meet a Daughter of the Confederacy?" I asked.

Connor laughed. "You heard what the man said. Some folks here think it's still Scarlett and Mammy days."

I remembered something. "You asked how I'd define prejudice. That's it. Making assumptions about people you've never met."

Connor shook his head. "You call it prejudice. I call it sense.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“As the meeting got underway, the twenty or so men in the room pledged allegiance to the Stars and Stripes. Then the color sergeant unfurled the rebel battle flag. "I salute the Confederate flag with affection, reverence and undying affection to the Cause for which it stands," the men said, effectively contradicting the pledge they'd just made to "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“When the singing ended, I chatted with others in my pew, including a tall, aristocratic-looking man with pomaded gray hair. I told him about the Lee-Jackson gatherings I'd attended and asked how he felt about people still celebrating the Confederacy.

"I'm happy they have the freedom to celebrate those men, the same way we celebrate [Martin Luther] King here," he said. "But you didn't see nobody black at those meetings, did you? We had white folks here, at least a few. Anything you got to do with your own kind in secret, something's wrong with it. You feel bad about it inside." A wry smile creased his lips. "I got one word for those folks--Appomattox. The game's up, you lost. Get over it.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“Michael King was a young preacher with horn-rimmed glasses and a close-cropped beard and mustache. "The Bible says, if eating meat offends your brother, eat meat no more," he said. "Worship of the Confederacy offends me."

"When I asked why, he walked me to the Confederate monument, which occupied a median strip on Salisbury's busiest street. The 1909 memorial depicted a bronze angel cradling a dying rebel soldier and holding forth a laurel crown. Chiseled on the granite base was the Confederate motto, Deo Vindice. With God As Our Defender.

"What's the message here?" King said. "God dispatched an angel to ferry this brave rebel to heaven. As a Christian pastor, I got a problem with that. The whole notion that God was involved with one race putting down another, that's going against the grain of a Christian nation. God ain't with racism or anything to do with subdividing people.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“It seems peaceful out there," he said, shutting the door behind me, "but don't be fooled. The [Civil] War is emotionally still on. I call it the thousand-year war. It'll go on for a thousand years, or until we get back into the Union on equal terms.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“...Ward felt the tale carried a redeeming message. "What were they putting up monuments to in the first place? A lot of Southerners dying for nothing. And look at us now, still arguing about the rebel flag. To me, that says we're still a lost cause in a lot of ways." She dumped an armful of old documents in the canoe and turned off the lights. "Maybe the message of the whole mix-up is that we shouldn't make such a fuss about these old symbols. Forget it. There's real things to worry about.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“Bud Sharpe was a fifty-five-year-old construction foreman....

"I feel like the [rebel] flag's the only thing working people like me have left," he went on. "All my life it's been one thing after another. First they integrated the schools. Then they integrated everything. Then they say 'colored' ain't right anymore, it's got to be 'black,' then 'African-American.' But nothing changes for us. We're still 'crackers' and 'peckerwoods' and 'rednecks.' I feel like I've swallowed enough for one lifetime.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“I sat at the [Confederate] monument for a while. For the past several weeks people had been talking to me about "heritage." But, like the flag, this obviously meant very different things to different people. For the Sons of the Confederate Veterans I'd met in North Carolina, it meant the heritage of their ancestors' valor and sacrifice. For Bud Sharpe, it was the heritage of segregation and its dismantling over the past forty years. Was it possible to honor one heritage without upholding the other?”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“The waitress came over to refill my coffee. She'd served the CCC at breakfast and formed her own views about the [South Carolina capitol Confederate] flag dispute. "You know what the state should'a done? Send someone to the capitol in the dead of night to take the flag down without telling anyone. I'd bet a week's worth of tips that not a single person in South Carolina would'a noticed it was gone." She sighed. "It's too late now. As soon as you make an issue of something, everyone feels they got to pick sides, same as they done back in eighteen-whatever.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“There wasn't much that Walt did trust about the State--or "the Snake," as he called it. That was why he'd taken a day off work, without pay, to demonstrate for the rebel flag. "I'm not an American, I'm a citizen of the Confederate States of America, which has been under military occupation for the past hundred thirty years.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“Robert Penn Warren, who watched the [Jefferson Davis] monument's construction as a child, later recalled the bemusement he felt as this "immobile thrust of concrete" soared above his native soil. Remembrance of the Confederacy, he wrote, "had never been of burning importance in Guthrie, where to a certain number of contemporary citizens the Civil War seemed to have been fought for the right to lynch without legal interference.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“Rob's comments raised a question I'd been chewing on since the start of my trip. Was there such a thing as politically correct remembrance of the Confederacy? Or was any attempt to honor the Cause inevitably tainted by what Southerners once delicately referred to as their "peculiar institution"?”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“The question loomed again—massively so—a few minutes later as we strolled down Richmond's most famous, or infamous, street: Monument Avenue. The boulevard was lined with statues of the Confederacy's Holy Trinity—Davis, Lee and Jackson—and of two of their ablest lieutenants, Jeb Stuart and Matthew Fontaine Maury, a naval commander and brilliant oceanographer....

The scale of Monument Avenue also amplified the weirdness of the whole enterprise. After all, Davis and Lee and Jackson and Stuart weren't national heroes. In the view of many Americans, they were precisely the opposite: leaders of a rebellion against the nation—separatists at best, traitors at worst. None of those honored were native Richmonders. And their mission failed. They didn't call it the Lost Cause for nothing. I couldn't think of another city in the world that lined its streets with stone leviathans honoring failed rebels against the state.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“Whatever one felt about the Confederates, their enshrinement on Monument Avenue was historic in its own right, a unique museum piece of the Lost Cause mentality.

Still others gave this rationale a political twist. "[Arthur] Ashe isn't a soldier and his statue will barely reach [Robert E.] Lee's saddle," said Wayne Byrd, who headed a chapter of the Heritage Preservation Association, a pro-rebel flag group I'd encountered elsewhere in the South. "This statue will trivialize Ashe and be disrespectful of Confederate-Americans who hallow the other men on that street."

In the name of inclusiveness and sensitivity—both to Ashe's memory and to "Confederate-Americans," a heretofore neglected minority—Byrd proposed memorializing still another ignored group: black Confederates. Recent scholarship suggested that some slaves and free blacks fought in the rebel ranks, though their numbers and motivation were unclear. In effect, the Heritage Preservation Association, one of America's most politically incorrect groups, was trying to claim politically correct motives while making a gesture that was precisely the opposite. By honoring blacks who took up arms in defense of their white masters, the group had found a sly way to disassociate the Cause from slavery.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War