John Meacham offers a very perceptive take on the confederate history flap in Virginia as the latest episode in conservative “Lost Cause” mythology:
They would like what Lincoln called our “fiery trial” to be seen in a political, not a moral, light. If the slaves are erased from the picture, then what took place between Sumter and Appomattox is not about the fate of human chattel, or a battle between good and evil. It is, instead, more of an ancestral skirmish in the Reagan revolution, a contest between big and small government. (Emphasis mine)
That is exactly right. As someone who grew up in the south, I can testify this narrative was in place by 1978. It’s exactly what Reagan was speaking to when he talked up “states’ rights” in Philadelphia, Mississippi to declare his run for president. By 1986, lunchroom debate held that slavery was a “minor issue” in sparking the Civil War — but there would not have been a Civil War without that “peculiar institution.”
This continuing attempt to divorce the Civil War from its primary cause has been going on since before the south lost. It is the launching point for almost all the right-wing’s historical revisionism.
