Neo-Confederacy

Neo-Confederacy
Author: Euan Hague
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2009-09-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0292779216

A century and a half after the conclusion of the Civil War, the legacy of the Confederate States of America continues to influence national politics in profound ways. Drawing on magazines such as Southern Partisan and publications from the secessionist organization League of the South, as well as DixieNet and additional newsletters and websites, Neo-Confederacy probes the veneer of this movement to reveal goals far more extensive than a mere celebration of ancestry. Incorporating groundbreaking essays on the Neo-Confederacy movement, this eye-opening work encompasses such topics as literature and music; the ethnic and cultural claims of white, Anglo-Celtic southerners; gender and sexuality; the origins and development of the movement and its tenets; and ultimately its nationalization into a far-reaching factor in reactionary conservative politics. The first book-length study of this powerful sociological phenomenon, Neo-Confederacy raises crucial questions about the mainstreaming of an ideology that, founded on notions of white supremacy, has made curiously strong inroads throughout the realms of sexist, homophobic, anti-immigrant, and often "orthodox" Christian populations that would otherwise have no affiliation with the regionality or heritage traditionally associated with Confederate history.

The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader

The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader
Author: James W. Loewen
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 439
Release: 2011-01-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1604737883

Most Americans hold basic misconceptions about the Confederacy, the Civil War, and the actions of subsequent neo-Confederates. For example, two thirds of Americans—including most history teachers—think the Confederate States seceded for “states' rights.” This error persists because most have never read the key documents about the Confederacy. These documents have always been there. When South Carolina seceded, it published “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.” The document actually opposes states' rights. Its authors argue that Northern states were ignoring the rights of slave owners as identified by Congress and in the Constitution. Similarly, Mississippi's “Declaration of the Immediate Causes. . .” says, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world.” Later documents in this collection show how neo-Confederates obfuscated this truth, starting around 1890. The evidence also points to the centrality of race in neo-Confederate thought even today and to the continuing importance of neo-Confederate ideas in American political life. The 150th anniversary of secession and civil war provides a moment for all Americans to read these documents, properly set in context by award-winning sociologist and historian James W. Loewen and coeditor, Edward H. Sebesta, to put in perspective the mythology of the Old South.

Apostles of Disunion

Apostles of Disunion
Author: Charles B. Dew
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2017-02-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813939453

Charles Dew’s Apostles of Disunion has established itself as a modern classic and an indispensable account of the Southern states’ secession from the Union. Addressing topics still hotly debated among historians and the public at large more than a century and a half after the Civil War, the book offers a compelling and clearly substantiated argument that slavery and race were at the heart of our great national crisis. The fifteen years since the original publication of Apostles of Disunion have seen an intensification of debates surrounding the Confederate flag and Civil War monuments. In a powerful new afterword to this anniversary edition, Dew situates the book in relation to these recent controversies and factors in the role of vast financial interests tied to the internal slave trade in pushing Virginia and other upper South states toward secession and war.

Confederate Exceptionalism

Confederate Exceptionalism
Author: Nicole Maurantonio
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2022-09-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0700634223

Along with Confederate flags, the men and women who recently gathered before the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts carried signs proclaiming “Heritage Not Hate.” Theirs, they said, was an “open and visible protest against those who attacked us, ours flags, our ancestors, or our Heritage.” How, Nicole Maurantonio wondered, did “not hate” square with a “heritage” grounded in slavery? How do so-called neo-Confederates distance themselves from the actions and beliefs of white supremacists while clinging to the very symbols and narratives that tether the Confederacy to the history of racism and oppression in America? The answer, Maurantonio discovers, is bound up in the myth of Confederate exceptionalism—a myth whose components, proponents, and meaning this timely and provocative book explores. The narrative of Confederate exceptionalism, in this analysis, updates two uniquely American mythologies—the Lost Cause and American exceptionalism—blending their elements with discourses of racial neoliberalism to create a seeming separation between the Confederacy and racist systems. Incorporating several methods and drawing from a range of sources—including ethnographic observations, interviews, and archival documents—Maurantonio examines the various people, objects, and rituals that contribute to this cultural balancing act. Her investigation takes in “official” modes of remembering the Confederacy, such as the monuments and building names that drive the discussion today, but it also pays attention to the more mundane and often subtle ways in which the Confederacy is recalled. Linking the different modes of commemoration, her work bridges the distance that believers in Confederate exceptionalism maintain; while situated in history from the Civil War through the civil rights era, the book brings much-needed clarity to the constitution, persistence, and significance of this divisive myth in the context of our time.

Pernicious

Pernicious
Author: Edward H Sebesta
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2016-09-16
Genre:
ISBN: 9781537732541

The neo-Confederate movement is an ongoing and growing threat to modern democratic life. This neo-reactionary movement uses the antebellum slave past as a blue print for an America which is opposed to democracy, public schools, equality and which supports a society of inequality in which there is subordination based on race, religion, gender, and class. It regards the Ku Klux Klan of Reconstruction as heroes and its ideology regarding violence is frightening. They hope to break up the United States and advocate secession. In regards to religion the neo-Confederates denounce Unitarians, Muslims and praise and promote anti-Semitism. They are opposed to feminism. They see inequality as the natural order of things. They are hostile to Lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and Trans (LGBT) people. The neo-Confederate movement is not composed of marginal belligerent individuals spewing forth racist slurs, but instead is made of educated, often with advance degrees, of person in the establishment, such as professors, columnists, authors and others, and who have substantial influence in the conservative movement. Some of their books are New York Times bestsellers. This book introduces the concept of banal white nationalism regarding why there is tolerance in the general public to accommodate neo-Confederacy and Confederate monuments, flags, Confederate names for public places forming a racialized landscape. He reviews a popular American history textbook showing how it accommodates the Lost Cause (neo-Confederate) interpretations of history. The book also discusses the geography of politics in the opposition to the ratification of the 19th Amendment giving women the vote. This book not only explains what neo-Confederacy is but offers a plan to defeat this reactionary force and by doing so bring about a Third American Revolution. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Edward H. Sebesta has been investigating and fighting the neo-Confederate movement for over 20 years. An autobiographical account of his research and efforts, "Has Neo-Confederacy Fallen?" was published at Black Commentator in 2015 and can be accessed for free at (http: //blackcommentator.com/613/613_cover_confederacy_fallen_sebesta_guest.html). In 2015 he was awarded the Spirit of Freedom Medal by the African American Civil War Museum in Washington, DC for his lifetime work. He is the co-editor of "Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction," University of Texas Press, a critical academic inquiry, co-editor of the "The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader," University Press of Mississippi, a compilation of primary sources which show in their own words that it is about preserving slavery and white supremacy, contributor of the Civil War and Reconstruction chapter to the book, "Politics and the History Curriculum," Palgrave MacMillan, which was a book about the notorious Texas teaching standards for history text books. He is published internationally in peer reviewed academic journals, the latest in the Journal of American Studies at Cambridge University. He has had multiple articles published in Black Commentator. Additionally he has been an information resource for numerous journalists, authors, and others. His curriculum vitae is online at his web site www.templeofdemocracy.com. DUST JACKET "In this groundbreaking book on the neo-Confederate movement, Sebesta sounds the alarm on a growing and persistent threat to the modern democratic system of governance. Invoking their interpretation of an antebellum slave past as a blueprint for a future America, the neo-Confederates provide a white supremacist vision in which equality and justice are dead, and black lives don't matter. In that regard, Sebesta issues not merely a warning, but also a challenge to the lovers of democracy to overcome the reactionary forces among us, and usher in a Third American Revolution." -David A. Love, journalist and commentator

"Truth is mighty & will eventually prevail": Political Correctness, Neo-Confederates, and Robert E. Lee

Author: Peter S. Carmichael
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 29
Release: 2011-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807882763

Truth is mighty & will eventually prevail" Political Correctness, Neo-Confederates, and Robert E. Lee by Peter S. Carmichael Why do we argue—and argue—so much about Robert E. Lee? "While northerners might appear comparatively apathetic about the memory of the Union cause, white southerners have been tenacious in searching for moral clarity in the past."

The Guns of the South

The Guns of the South
Author: Harry Turtledove
Publisher: Del Rey
Total Pages: 577
Release: 2011-04-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307792358

"It is absolutely unique--without question the most fascinating Civil War novel I have ever read." Professor James M. McPherson Pultizer Prize-winning BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM January 1864--General Robert E. Lee faces defeat. The Army of Northern Virginia is ragged and ill-equpped. Gettysburg has broken the back of the Confederacy and decimated its manpower. Then, Andries Rhoodie, a strange man with an unplaceable accent, approaches Lee with an extraordinary offer. Rhoodie demonstrates an amazing rifle: Its rate of fire is incredible, its lethal efficiency breathtaking--and Rhoodie guarantees unlimited quantitites to the Confederates. The name of the weapon is the AK-47.... Selected by the Science Fiction Book Club A Main Selection of the Military Book Club

The Confederate Battle Flag

The Confederate Battle Flag
Author: John M. COSKI
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674029866

In recent years, the Confederate flag has become as much a news item as a Civil War relic. Intense public debates have erupted over Confederate flags flying atop state capitols, being incorporated into state flags, waving from dormitory windows, or adorning the T-shirts and jeans of public school children. To some, this piece of cloth is a symbol of white supremacy and enduring racial injustice; to others, it represents a rich Southern heritage and an essential link to a glorious past. Polarizing Americans, these flag wars reveal the profound--and still unhealed--schisms that have plagued the country since the Civil War. The Confederate Battle Flag is the first comprehensive history of this contested symbol. Transcending conventional partisanship, John Coski reveals the flag's origins as one of many banners unfurled on the battlefields of the Civil War. He shows how it emerged as the preeminent representation of the Confederacy and was transformed into a cultural icon from Reconstruction on, becoming an aggressively racist symbol only after World War II and during the Civil Rights movement. We gain unique insight into the fine line between the flag's use as a historical emblem and as an invocation of the Confederate nation and all it stood for. Pursuing the flag's conflicting meanings, Coski suggests how this provocative artifact, which has been viewed with pride, fear, anger, nostalgia, and disgust, might ultimately provide Americans with the common ground of a shared and complex history.

Apostle of the Lost Cause

Apostle of the Lost Cause
Author: Christopher C. Moore
Publisher: Univ Tennessee Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2019
Genre: Baptists
ISBN: 9781621905394

Perhaps no person exerted more influence on postwar white Southern memory than former Confederate chaplain and Baptist minister J. William Jones. Christopher C. Moore's Apostle of the Lost Cause is the first full-length work to examine the complex contributions to Lost Cause ideology of this well-known but surprisingly understudied figure. Commissioned by Robert E. Lee himself to preserve an accurate account of the Confederacy, Jones responded by welding hagiography and denominationalism to create, in effect, a sacred history of the Southern cause. In a series of popular books and in his work as secretary of the Southern Historical Society Papers, Jones's mission became the canonization of Confederate saints, most notably Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis, for a postwar generation and the contrivance of a full-blown myth of Southern virtue-in-defeat that deeply affected historiography for decades to come. While personally committed to Baptist identity, Jones supplied his readers with embodiments of Southern morality who transcended denominational boundaries and enabled white Southerners to locate their champions (and themselves) in a quasi-biblical narrative that ensured ultimate vindication for the Southern cause. In a time when Confederate monuments and the enduring effects of white supremacy are in the daily headlines, an examination of this key figure in the creation of the Lost Cause legacy could not be more relevant.

It Wasn't About Slavery

It Wasn't About Slavery
Author: Samuel W. Mitcham
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2020-01-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1621578771

The Great Lie of the Civil War If you think the Civil War was fought to end slavery, you’ve been duped. In fact, as distinguished military historian Samuel Mitcham argues in his provocative new book, It Wasn’t About Slavery, no political party advocated freeing the slaves in the presidential election of 1860. The Republican Party platform opposed the expansion of slavery to the western states, but it did not embrace abolition. The real cause of the war was a dispute over money and self-determination. Before the Civil War, the South financed most of the federal government—because the federal government was funded by tariffs, which were paid disproportionately by the agricultural South that imported manufactured goods. Yet, most federal government spending and subsidies benefited the North. The South wanted a more limited federal government and lower tariffs—the ideals of Thomas Jefferson—and when the South could not get that, it opted for independence. Lincoln was unprepared when the Southern states seceded, and force was the only way to bring them—and their tariff money—back. That was the real cause of the war. A well-documented and compelling read by a master historian, It Wasn’t About Slavery will change the way you think about Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the cause and legacy of America’s momentous Civil War.