WHY CONFEDERATE LIES LIVE ON
For some Americans, history isn’t the story of what actually happened; it’s the story they want to believe.
By Clint Smith
Most of the people who come to Blandford Cemetery, in Petersburg, Virginia, come for the windows—masterpieces of Tiffany glass in the cemetery’s deconsecrated church. One morning before the pandemic, I took a tour of the church along with two other visitors and our tour guide, Ken. When my eyes adjusted to the hazy darkness inside, I could see that in each window stood a saint, surrounded by dazzling bursts of blues and greens and violets. Below these explosions of color were words that I couldn’t quite make out. I stepped closer to one of the windows, and the language became clearer. Beneath the saint was an inscription honoring the men “who died for the Confederacy.”
Outside, lawn mowers buzzed as Black men steered them between tombstones draped in Confederate flags. The oldest marked grave at Blandford dates back to 1702; new funerals are held there every week. Within the cemetery’s 150 acres are the bodies of roughly 30,000 Confederate soldiers, one of the largest mass graves of Confederate servicemen in the country.
From 1866 into the 1880s, Ken told us, a group of local women organized the tracking-down and exhuming of those bodies from nearby battlegrounds. “They felt that the southern soldier had not been treated with the same dignity and honor that the northern soldiers had,” and they wanted to do something about it. Most of the bodies were not identifiable; sometimes all that was left was a leg or an arm. Nonetheless, the remains were dug up and brought here, and the ladies refurbished the old church as a memorial to their fallen husbands, sons, and brothers.
Tiffany Studios cut them a deal on the stained glass: $350 apiece instead of the usual price of about $1,700 ($51,000 today). Thirteen southern states donated funds. Ken outlined the aesthetic history of each window in meticulous detail, giving each color and engraving his thorough and intimate attention. But he said almost nothing about why the windows were there—that the soldiers memorialized in stained glass had fought a war to keep my ancestors in chains.
Almost all of the people who come to Blandford Cemetery are white. “It’s not that a Black population doesn’t appreciate the windows,” Ken, who is white, told me. “But sometimes in the context of what it represents, they’re not as comfortable.” He went on: “In most cases we try and fall back on the beauty of the windows, the Tiffany-glass kind of thing.”
But I couldn’t revel in the windows’ beauty without reckoning with what those windows represented. I looked around the church again. How many of the visitors to the cemetery today, I asked Ken, are Confederate sympathizers?
Confederate history is family history, history as eulogy, in which loyalty takes precedence over truth.
“I think there’s a Confederate empathy,” he replied. “People will tell you, ‘My great-great-grandmother, my great-great-grandfather are buried out here.’ So they’ve got long southern roots.”
We left the church, and a breeze slid across my face. Many people go to places like Blandford to see a piece of history, but history is not what is reflected in that glass. A few years ago, I decided to travel around America visiting sites that are grappling—or refusing to grapple—with America’s history of slavery. I went to plantations, prisons, cemeteries, museums, memorials, houses, and historical landmarks. As I traveled, I was moved by the people who have committed their lives to telling the story of slavery in all its fullness and humanity. And I was struck by the many people I met who believe a version of history that rests on well-documented falsehoods.
For so many of them, history isn’t the story of what actually happened; it is just the story they want to believe. It is not a public story we all share, but an intimate one, passed down like an heirloom, that shapes their sense of who they are. Confederate history is family history, history as eulogy, in which loyalty takes precedence over truth. This is especially true at Blandford, where the ancestors aren’t just hovering in the background—they are literally buried underfoot.
We went over to the visitors’ center, where Ken introduced me to his boss, Martha, a kind-looking woman with tortoiseshell glasses.
She said her interest in women’s history had drawn her to Blandford. “This is how they helped to get through their grief,” she told me. “And this is what their result was, this beautiful chapel.” She added, “I think you could take the Civil War aspect totally out of it and enjoy the beauty.”
I asked her whether Blandford was concerned that, by presenting itself in such a positive light, it might be distorting its connection to a racist and treasonous cause.
She told me that a lot of people ask why the war was fought. “I say, ‘Well, you get five different historians who have written five different books; I’m going to have five different answers.’ It’s a lot of stuff. But I think from the perspective of my ancestors, it was not slavery. My ancestors were not slaveholders. But my great-great-grandfather fought. He had federal troops coming into Norfolk. He said, ‘Nuh-uh, I’ve got to join the army and defend my home state.’ ”
As we spoke, I looked down at the counter and reached for one of the flyers stacked there. Martha’s gaze followed my hand. Her face turned red and she thrust her hand down to flip the paper over, attempting to cover the rest of the leaflets. “Don’t even look at this. I’m sorry,” she said. “I will tell you, from a personal standpoint, I’m kind of bothered.”
I looked at the flyer again, trying to read between her fingers. It was a handout for a Memorial Day event at Blandford hosted by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Paul C. Gramling Jr., then the commander in chief of the group, would be speaking. It was May 2019, and the event was just a few weeks away.
Illustration by Paul Spella; images from Library of Congress / Corbis / Getty
“I don’t mind that they come on Memorial Day and put Confederate flags on Confederate graves. That’s okay,” she said. “But as far as I’m concerned, you don’t need a Confederate flag on—” She stumbled over a series of sentences I couldn’t follow. Then she collected herself and took a deep breath. “If you’re just talking about history, it’s great, but these folks are like, ‘The South shall rise again.’ It’s very bothersome.”
She told me that she’d attended a Sons of Confederate Veterans event once but wouldn’t again. “These folks can’t let things go. I mean, it’s not like they want people enslaved again, but they can’t get over the fact that history is history.”
More people were coming into the visitors’ center, and I didn’t want to keep Ken and Martha from their work. We shook hands, and I made my way out the door. Before getting back in my car, I walked across the street, to another burial ground, this one much smaller. The People’s Memorial Cemetery was founded in 1840 by 28 members of Petersburg’s free Black community. Buried on this land are people who were enslaved; a prominent antislavery writer; Black veterans of the Civil War, World War I, and World War II; and hundreds of other Black residents.
There are far fewer tombstones than at Blandford. There are no flags on the graves. And there are no hourly tours for people to remember the dead. There is history, but also silence.
After my visit to Blandford, I kept thinking about the way Martha had flipped over the Memorial Day flyer, the way her face had turned red. If she hadn’t responded like that, I don’t know that I would have felt so curious about what she was trying to hide. But my interest had been piqued. I wanted to find out what Martha was so ashamed of.
Founded in 1896, the Sons of Confederate Veterans describes itself as an organization of about 30,000 that aims to preserve “the history and legacy of these heroes, so future generations can understand the motives that animated the Southern Cause.” It is the oldest hereditary organization for men who are descendants of Confederate soldiers. I was wary of going to the celebration alone, so I asked my friend William, who is white, to come with me.
The entrance to the cemetery was marked by a large stone archway with the words our confederate heroes on it. Maybe a couple hundred people were sitting in folding chairs around a large white gazebo. Children played tag among the trees; people hugged and slapped one another on the back. I felt like I was walking in on someone else’s family reunion. Dixie flags bloomed from the soil like milkweeds. There were baseball caps emblazoned with the Confederate battle flag, biker vests ornamented with the seals of seceding states, and lawn chairs bearing the letters UDC, for the United Daughters of the Confederacy. In front of the gazebo were two flags, one Confederate, one American, standing side by side, as if 700,000 people hadn’t been killed in the epic conflagration between them.
More than a few people turned around in their seat and looked with puzzlement, and likely suspicion, at the Black man they had never seen before standing in the back of a Sons of Confederate Veterans crowd.
William and I stood in the back and watched. The event began with an honor guard—a dozen men dressed in Confederate regalia, carrying rifles with long bayonets. Their uniforms were the color of smoke; their caps looked as if they had been bathed in ash. Everyone in the crowd stood up as they marched by. The crowd recited the Pledge of Allegiance, then sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” After a pause came “Dixie,” the unofficial Confederate anthem. The crowd sang along with a boisterous passion: “Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton / Old times there are not forgotten / Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.”
I glanced around as everyone sang in tribute to a fallen ancestral home. A home never meant for me. Speakers came to the podium, each praising the soldiers buried under our feet. “While those who hate seek to remove the memory of these heroes,” one said, “these men paid the ultimate price for freedom, and they deserve to be remembered.”
More than a few people turned around in their seat and looked with puzzlement, and likely suspicion, at the Black man they had never seen before standing in the back of a Sons of Confederate Veterans crowd. A man to my right took out his phone and began recording me. The stares began to crawl over my skin. I had been taking notes; now I slowly closed my notebook and stuck it under my arm, doing my best to act unfazed. Without moving my head, I scanned the crowd again. The man in front of me had a gun in a holster.
A man in a tan suit and a straw boater approached the podium. His dark-blond hair fell to his shoulders, and a thick mustache and goatee covered his lips. I recognized him as Paul C. Gramling Jr. from the flyer. He began by sharing a story about the origins of Memorial Day. “I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I like it,” he said, before reading aloud the account of a ceremony that took place on April 25, 1866, in Columbus, Mississippi, when a group of women “decorated the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers.” Those soldiers, he continued, had “earned their rightful place to be included as American veterans. We should embrace our heritage as Americans, North and South, Black and white, rich and poor. Our American heritage is the one thing we have in common.”
Gramling’s speech was strikingly similar to those at Memorial Day celebrations after the end of Reconstruction, when orators stressed reconciliation, paying tribute to the sacrifices on both sides of the Civil War without accounting for what the war had actually been fought over.
Gramling then turned his attention to the present-day controversy about Confederate monuments—to the people who are “trying to take away our symbols.” In 2019, according to a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, there were nearly 2,000 Confederate monuments, place names, and other symbols in public spaces across the country. A follow-up report after last summer’s racial-justice protests found that more than 160 of those symbols had been removed or renamed in 2020.
Gramling said that this was the work of “the American ISIS.” He looked delighted as the crowd murmured its affirmation. “They are nothing better than ISIS in the Middle East. They are trying to destroy history they don’t like.”
I thought about friends of mine who have spent years fighting to have Confederate monuments removed. Many of them are teachers committed to showing their students that we don’t have to accept the status quo. Others are parents who don’t want their kids to grow up in a world where enslavers loom on pedestals. And many are veterans of the civil-rights movement who laid their bodies on the line, fighting against what these statues represented. None of them, I thought as I looked at the smile on Gramling’s face, is a terrorist.
Gramling urged all who were present to understand the true meaning of the Confederacy and to “take back the narrative.” When his speech ended, two men in front of William and me started swinging large Confederate flags with unsettling fervor. Another speech was given. Another song was sung. Wreaths were laid. The honor guard then lifted its rifles and fired into the sky three times. The first shot took me by surprise, and my knees buckled. I shut my eyes for the second shot, and again for the third. I felt a tightening of muscles inside my mouth, muscles I hadn’t known were there.
“Idon’t know if it’s true or not, but I like it”—I kept coming back to Gramling’s words. That comment was revealing. Many places in the South claim to be the originator of Memorial Day, and the story is at least as much a matter of interpretation as of fact. According to the historian David Blight, the first Memorial Day ceremony was held in Charleston, South Carolina, in May 1865, when Black workmen, most of them formerly enslaved, buried and commemorated fallen Union soldiers.
Confederates had converted Charleston’s Washington Race Course and Jockey Club into an outdoor prison for captured Union soldiers. The conditions were so terrible that nearly 260 men died and were buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. After the Confederates retreated, Black men reburied the dead in proper graves and erected an archway bearing the words martyrs of the race course. An enormous parade was held on the track, with 3,000 Black children singing “John Brown’s Body,” the Union marching song. The first Memorial Day, as Blight describes it, received significant press coverage. But it faded from public consciousness after the defeat of Reconstruction.
It was then, in the late 1800s, that the myth of the Lost Cause began to take hold. The myth was an attempt to recast the Confederacy as something predicated on family and heritage rather than what it was: a traitorous effort to extend the bondage of millions of Black people. The myth asserts that the Civil War was fought by honorable men protecting their communities, and not about slavery at all.
Read: Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Confederate cause in the words of its leaders
We know this is a lie, because the people who fought in the Civil War told us so. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world,” Mississippi lawmakers declared during their 1861 secession convention. Slavery was “the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution,” the Confederate vice president, Alexander Stephens, said, adding that the Confederacy was founded on “the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.”
The Lost Cause asks us to ignore this evidence. Besides, it argues, slavery wasn’t even that bad.
“I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I like it”—I kept coming back to those words.
The early 1900s saw a boom in Confederate-monument building. The monuments were meant to reinforce white supremacy in an era when Black communities were being terrorized and Black social and political mobility impeded. They were also intended to teach new generations of white southerners that the cause their ancestors had fought for was just.
That myth tried to rewrite U.S. history, and my visit to Blandford showed how, in so many ways, it had succeeded.
After the speeches, I began talking with a man named Jeff, who had a long salt-and-pepper ponytail and wore a denim vest adorned with Confederate badges. He told me that several of his ancestors had fought for the Confederacy. I asked what he thought of the event. “Well,” he said, “I think if anyone never knew the truth, they heard it today.”
He spoke about the importance of the Confederate flag and monuments, contending that they were essential pieces of history. “They need to be there for generations in the future, because they need to know the truth. They can’t learn the truth if you do away with history. You’ll never learn. And once you do away with that type of thing, you become a slave.”
I was startled by his choice of words but couldn’t tell whether it was intentionally provocative or rhetorical coincidence.
“I think everybody should learn the truth,” Jeff said, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
“What is that truth?” I asked.
“Everybody always hears the same things: ‘It’s all about slavery.’ And it wasn’t,” he said. “It was about the fact that each state had the right to govern itself.”
He pointed to a tombstone about 20 yards away, telling me it belonged to a “Black gentleman” named Richard Poplar. Jeff said Poplar was a Confederate officer who was captured by the Union and told he would be freed if he admitted that he’d been forced to fight for the South. But he refused.
Poplar, I would learn, is central to the story many people in Petersburg tell about the war. The commemoration of Poplar seems to have begun in 2003, when the local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans pushed for an annual “Richard Poplar Day.” In 2004, the mayor signed a proclamation establishing the holiday; she called Poplar a “veteran” of the Confederate Army. The tombstone with his name on it was erected at Blandford.
But the reality is that Black men couldn’t serve in the Confederate Army. And an 1886 obituary suggests that Poplar was a cook for the soldiers, not someone engaged in combat.
Some people say that up to 100,000 Black soldiers fought for the Confederate Army, in racially integrated regiments. No evidence supports these claims, as the historian Kevin M. Levin has pointed out, but appropriating the stories of men like Poplar is a way to protect the Confederacy’s legacy. If Black soldiers fought for the South, how could the war have been about slavery? How could it be considered racist now to fly the Dixie flag?
One Confederate general, Patrick Cleburne, actually did float the idea of using enslaved people as soldiers, but he was scoffed at. A senator from Virginia is reported to have asked, “What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?” General Howell Cobb was even more explicit: “If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong.” In a desperate move just weeks before General Robert E. Lee’s surrender, the Confederacy approved legislation that would allow Black people to be used in battle. But by then it was too late.
Read: The myth of the kindly General Lee
I asked Jeff whether he thought slavery had played a role in the start of the Civil War. “Oh, just a very small part. I mean, we can’t deny it was there. We know slave blocks existed.” But only a small number of plantations even had slaves, he said.
It was a remarkable contortion of history, reflecting a century of Lost Cause propaganda.