His View: Tarring millions with the same, racist brush

As this column hits newsstands, Katherine and I will be in Kentucky to visit my 94-year-old first cousin, Anita. It will be our second visit in as many years to this God-fearing, progressive thinking, absolutely charming lady.

My background in Western Kentucky goes deep. McGehees first planted roots here in 1805. I am heir to the rebel, outlaw Highland clan of the MacGregors. Both sides of my family fought for the South in what my forebears no doubt referred to as the war of Northern aggression.

Whenever I think of how even the ordinary foot soldier who marched off to do battle against Grant and Sherman is besmirched as a racist who took up arms to defend the abomination of slavery, my hackles go up.

Aside from the fact that the most reliable data from the 1860 census shows only 5.67% of white Southerners as slaveholders, today’s spin on history has the defense of that horrific, hateful institution as the prime motivator for the other 95% of Johnny Rebs who took up arms.

When it is realized that plantation owners received a free pass from induction in the Confederate Army, it’s a fair bet that very few slaveholders of any prominence actually risked their lives on the battlefield.

Although their brass belt buckles might have been stamped CSA, the common soldier fought to defend his home in Arkansas, North Carolina and Virginia.

This was true even at the highest levels. Virginia was one of the last states to secede and only joined the Confederacy after war broke out. Until that moment, Robert E. Lee was in negotiation with Lincoln about assuming command of the Army of the Potomac. He waited until his home state seceded and only then did he agree to take command of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Lee was a career soldier, owning very few slaves, and his will directed that those few be freed should he die fighting in Mexico. Consider as well that he described slavery as “a moral and political evil.”

By contrast, Washington who owned 173 slaves and held them in bondage until his own death is revered as the Father of our Nation. Tom Jefferson owned over 600 slaves, freeing only 10 and yet his profile graces our nickel. Lee is reviled, his statues are toppled while the other two are national heroes.

Was this campaign in historic eyewash on account of Lee’s ownership of slaves? In light of the above, I doubt that. Was it because he waited until Virginia seceded before taking command?

Or was it because, in our current reading of history, anything having anything to do with the Confederacy is a subject of national shame and disgrace — including taking down statues of common foot soldiers who, despite being painted as vicious racists, saw their duty clearly as defending their homes against the northern invaders.

If ever in doubt, those clad in gray needed to look no further than Sheridan putting the lush Shenandoah Valley to the torch and Sherman leaving a wide swath of devastation as he marched through Georgia. Johnny Reb saw the face of modern warfare — total war against a civilian population.

As for slavery, it was and has always been wherever it has raised its ugly head, an abhorrence. I despise it with every fiber in my being.

I consider myself far to the left of even Bernie Sanders, so I am certainly no apologist like Doug Wilson or the governor of Florida. I say “tear down any monument to Bedford Forrest, the Confederate cavalry general who, before the war, was a slave trader and after the war was a founder of the Ku Klux Klan.” An evil man.

What bothers me, I guess, is that millions of young men, hundreds of thousands of whom died defending what they perceive as their homeland and not to defend an institution they took no part in, should be tarred with the same brush.

As for Lincoln, an honest reading of his Emancipation Proclamation shows that any state voluntarily returning to the union could keep its slaves.

And, as far as who benefited from the wickedness of human bondage, look no further than the North where textile mills hummed because of Southern cotton picked by black hands. In 1860, in New York alone, there were no less than 472 cotton mills.

The expansion of railroad lines and shipping industries owed much to slavery. Make no doubt that human bondage is ugly. But, in our desire to heap justifiable scorn on the institution’s practice in the South, let us not forget that the industrial might of America — most of it situated north of the Mason-Dixon Line — was built on the backs of slave labor.

I am aware that these opinions will rankle many of my fellow radicals but they are my opinions and are based on a lifelong study of what we now call the American Civil War.

McGehee, a lifelong activist, settled here in 1973 and lives in Palouse with his wife, Katherine. His work life has varied from bartender to university instructor to wrecking yard owner.