When I read the recent stories about the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ efforts to obtain approval of a special Texas license plate that displays the Confederate battle flag, I began thinking about a great-great grandfather of mine.
I found out a few months ago that this great-great grandfather had joined a Texas cavalry regiment and fought in northern Louisiana during the Civil war. When the war was over, he became the second husband of my great-great grandmother. Her first husband had died in that terrible war, along with more than 600,000 people on both sides.
And then thinking further about the symbolism of the Confederate flag, I remembered a more recent forebear, a grandfather unrelated by blood to my Civil War ancestor, and recalled some disturbing discoveries about his life.
A Complicated Legacy
My immediate reaction now to seeing the Confederate battle flag on a vehicle or at almost any event does not remind me of the courage and tragic sacrifice on either side of the Civil War. Instead, I think of how difficult it is for human beings to accept even the most hard-won lessons of history.
But my feelings about that great-great grandfather are more complicated. One reason is that I studied American history as an undergrad and graduate student, and I feel compassion toward most of the men who fought on both sides in the Civil War.
Even if you find some fault with Ken Burns' famous documentary on the war, it is hard to imagine anyone watching it without having sympathy for almost all the people caught up in the great national tragedy.
And when men of my age in Texas played “Army” as kids in the Fifties, no one wanted to be a “Yankee.” I remember that it was far better to play the part of an “Indian”— with all the whooping and war-painting and the wielding of toy bows and arrows—in a fight against the cowboys, than to play a plodding Yankee who was bound to lose the battle against the clever, valiant rebels.
A favorite TV show then was "The Gray Ghost," about the Confederate irregular John Singleton Mosby, a man of derring-do who validated our perception that the Yankees were not so brave, not so smart, and not so deserving as southerners like the “Ghost.”
Now, this perception feels like the anachronism that it is.
A Sad Discovery
About twenty years ago, my first wife and I were cleaning out the garage of our house in Texas. She opened an old foot locker full of my grandfather’s clothes, which my recently-deceased grandmother had left in the garage.
She brought the box to me. Folded neatly, and as clean and crisp as if it had never been worn, was the robe and conical cap of the Ku Klux Klan. No Confederate flag—only its meanest offspring.
Now as I reflect on both these men, this is what I see: One fought for the worst of causes, but probably fought in good faith, believing he was actually fighting for his Bosque River farm, his once-widowed wife, for a distorted idea of Texas, and maybe even for a “southern way of life” that wasn’t actually his. Both his courage and his short-sightedness were enmeshed in a tragic moment.
Though I cannot in any way honor the cause for which he fought, or the flag which for some still symbolizes that cause, I can try to understand his predicament and respect his courage. But his participation in the war is not something that I will celebrate.
The other grandfather, much closer to me in time, but tied to the hateful symbolism of the grotesque costume that he wore, leaves me disconnected from better memories of him. In our own day, men continue to wear that costume, which many have joined with that flag; but what they imagine they honor, far removed from its part in a national tragedy, is no more than a ghost.
John Willingham - John Willingham is a regular contributor to the History News Network (HNN.us). His novel The Edge of Freedom is about the Texas ...
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