A couple days ago, Michigan state senator Dale Zorn, a Republican from Monroe county, wore a Confederate flag mask on the floor of the Michigan state Senate.
Michigan.
Republican.
He apologized, but apparently this old white geezer is either too racist or too stupid to grasp the gravity of his offense.
Let's unpack this.
First of all, the Republican Party was founded on March 20th, 1854 as an antislavery party in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska act, specifically calling for a return to the Missouri compromise under which no further expansion of slavery would have occurred. The party's rise was meteoric, and the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, ran on preserving the Union against the looming crisis of Southern secession and gave his all, so that our nation should not perish, only to be assassinated for it by John Wilkes Booth, a Southern sympathizer aided by a gang of incompetents and misfits.
I used to be a Republican. I was a conservative, lots of people who know me think I still am, despite my change of political parties. I'm a lifelong student of Civil War history. My Dad was a Civil War reenactor, I still own his replica Civil War weapons and much of his gear. I'm an American, I'm a United States Air Force veteran. Fundamentally unless you have some other extant ethnic or national group you identify with I feel very strongly that the American flag is the only flag we goddamned well need. America is the world's melting pot. I don't care for the idea of forcing people to assimilate into some idea of "American" culture, but at least melt in a little bit, will ya? While I'll gladly concede to modern sensibilities and say a Mexican American should have a right to also display a Mexican flag if they want (for example) and to observe their own culture, the Stars and Stripes deserves primacy of place per flag code as far as I'm concerned. But let's get one thing straight right now. If your ethnic group is "Southerner" you are still obligated to revere the United States flag. The Confederate States of America was militarily defeated and dissolved. That's all there is to it. The fact that Republicans have become the people who support the Confederate flag is offensive to me. I'm on record saying that if you're not both from the South and in the South, specifically one of the former Confederate states, you have no Goddamn business displaying, possessing or wearing the Goddamn Confederate flag. The Confederates motherfucking lost, get the fuck over it.
Ya'll lucky that the United States Government was as merciful to you as it was. As far as I'm concerned, Davis, Lee, and a whole bunch of other motherfuckers should have been hanged for treason. I have always felt this way. The Confederates neither deserved nor did the vast majority of them reciprocate Lincoln's spirit of "With malice toward none and charity for all."
And those who did follow Lincoln's spirit of healing and unity, such as James Longstreet, who led the police forces in New Orleans after the war and fought battles against the racist White League in New Orleans, were historically minimized, their war records attacked, and many of them, Longstreet in particular, were blamed for the South's defeat in the war and all but historically erased by the "Lost Cause" romanticist historians whose school of thought prevailed for a very long time.
In fact, racist Southerners and their hangers-on from the rest of the country and ideological descendants, have never done anything but continue to wage their bitter battle against the rest of us. They've even irrevocably corrupted the Republican Party and in so doing tarnished the legacy of Lincoln himself....because Republicans rolled over and let them...because they thought all they would get was votes. Camel gets its nose in the tent and pretty soon the Camel is the only one in the tent and all that.
Republicans like me and a hell of a lot of other people got ran out because just like James Longstreet, we had greater ideals that tribalism, a tribal religion, and shitty behavior.
But as for people in our own modern day, when the Civil War itself has long since passed out of living memory...people don't still lift up the Roman eagle or fly the flag of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or the Republic of Vietnam, why the fuck is the Confederate flag different?
I have lost friends over that statement. That's Okay, nothing of value was lost.
The answer, of course, comes down to the same reason people still display the Swastika or the flag of Nazi Germany is racism. It's much the same with the Stars and Bars.
Secondly, Michigan, which then had yet to become the industrial powerhouse it would be later in the 19th century and throughout most of the 20th century as well, was even so one of the engines that drove the Union's war effort. When Virginia asked Michigan to send delegates to the Washington peace conference, the legislature responded that "concessions and compromise are not to be entertained of offered to traitors."
Michigan's Civil War Governor Austin Blair, sworn in on January 2nd of 1861, immediately began raising companies of troops to support the war effort. When asked to stop at four regiments, he refused, and it turned out every one of those troops was needed. Blair would not only drive the state's contributions, but spent so much of his own money on supporting the war effort that he drove himself nearly into poverty. There is a statue of him at the state Capitol today, and deservedly so.
Thirty regiments of infantry were raised including a regiment of Black soldiers, eleven cavalry regiments, artillery and engineer regiments and companies of sharpshooters and other specialists. Of Michigan's population of 800,000, there were 110,000 men deemed fit for military service. 90,000 of them, almost a quarter of the male population of the state, were mustered into Union regiments and nearly 15,000 of them died, with thousands more wounded.
But my state's contribution is more than numbers, much more.
One of those infantry regiments, the 24th Michigan Volunteer Infantry, reached the front just in time for the bloody Union defeat at Fredricksbug. The ancestor of a friend of mine fought in that battle, and his account of it, provided by my friend, formed the basis of a paper I wrote for my Civil War class at North Central Michigan College. The 24th, part of the Iron Brigade under John Gibbon and later Samuel Meredith, and itself commanded by Colonel Henry Andrew Morrow, was one of the first Infantry regiments into action at Gettysburg as part of II Corps, then commanded by former Brigade commander Gibbon. They came in right behind John Buford's Union cavalry, who were dismounted and fighting as infantry with their Sharps Carbines, on defense against twice their number of Confederate troops at McPherson's ridge, advance elements who, legend has it, were foraging and attempting to acquire a large quantity of shoes from a local factory.
The 24th Michigan and other Iron Brigade regiments and the lead units of I Corps defended the cavalry's flanks and the three elements stood and delivered such a volume of fire and such skilled musketry that Bobby Lee and his generals thought they'd run smack into a whole division. A couple days later, the Iron Brigade's units, fighting under Winfield Scott Hancock and John Gibbon, were part of the II Corps line that took the brunt of Pickett's Charge. The 24th Michigan went into action with 496 officers and men, suffering 89 killed and 218 wounded. Five color-bearers were shot out from under the regimental flag and all the Color Guard were killed or wounded. Colonel Morrow was shot in the head bearing the regiment's colors, but survived.
Imagine this, if you will, a line of men a mile long, advancing in silence with blood in their eyes across three quarters of a mile of open ground toward your lines, taking artillery fire, but still coming on in the hope that their resolute advance will throw off your nerve and cause you to falter in defense of your position. The line compacts gradually to about half that length as artillery blows holes in the line first with iron shot and explosive rounds, but then switching to canister shot as the range closes, whole regiments disintegrate under this fire. Further up the line, Union troops begin shouting "Fredricksburg! Fredricksburg! Fredricksburg!" as they recognize the Confederate strategy is the same that the Union employed in that disastrous defeat. In an initial exchange of fire a battalion of Ohio men, firing from a Defilade position, causes a regiment of Mississippi troops to break and run. But as the two armies close to musket range they let loose with deafening volumes of fire, the smoke over the battlefield becomes so thick that it obscures the view of field artillery, depriving the Army of fire support...but due to superior discipline and iron courage the line holds...mostly. Only at one point, called the Angle, do Confederate troops breach the Union lines, andup there is vicious hand-to-hand fighting, with fixed bayonets, rifle butts, improvised weapons and bare fists. Confederate troops attempt to turn captured artillery on the defenders, only to find that there is no ammunition, and the Rebels are thrown back, bloodily.
Thunderous cheers erupt across the Union line as Confederate forces fall back in complete disarray, their army so severely mauled that nearly one half of the attackers do not return to their own lines. The high water mark of the Confederacy is eclipsed by Union discipline and skill, by better logistics and well-chosen positions. A flanking maneuver by Confederate cavalry later that day is foiled by the 1st Michigan Cavalry under Colonel George Armstrong Custer in an engagement that comes down to sword against sword.
While Custer would later have his own appointment with destiny, the 24th Michigan served in every one of the Army of the Potomac's campaigns save Appomattox, having been diverted to garrison duty in Illinois where it would muster out in July of 1865
Michiganders were right there in the thick of things the whole time and saw some of the worst action in the bloodiest battle in American history when the United States Army told Bobby Lee and his army of slavers to go fuck themselves.
And make no mistake about it, that's what they were. It's estimated that over 40 northern Free Blacks, most of them born free, were captured and taken south under guard, to be sold into slavery by the Confederate Army.
That's what that flag means.
Slavery.
War for a profit motive.
Those are the only things that flag means.
The so-called "right" of one human being to own another one. This was essentially the only thing they really considered a god-given right. Their entire society was based on it.
And they didn't care if you were born outside their system, they'd force you into it if they could.
The people that flew that flag said so themselves. It was in the Confederate Constitution.
They weren't fighting for heritage or honor or the right to be left alone. They were fighting so that rich men could continue to get rich by exploiting the unpaid labor of other human beings and the only excuse they even bothered with was skin color!!
The Confederate flag stands for racism, in our modern day outside of very limited geographical and historical contexts that is the only purpose of it and the only thing it is used to represent. Don't take my word for it, listen to how the people that fly it talk. They'll tell you themselves, maybe they'll lie to themselves a bit first but all you have to do is listen to the words they use. They think they're being subtle with their dog-whistles but they're really not. Those words are lies, but they're obvious lies.
Fuck the Confederate flag, and if you believe in it, display it, support it or wear it, fuck you too.
Nobody in this day and age needs to fly that goddamned flag or worship its god-forsaken cause, and it should have no place in our modern world outside of history book or a museum.
And if any of that hurts your feelings, too fucking bad. Your side lost, it's well past time to get the fuck over it.
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