Once Again, Racism Rears Up in the Sons of Confederate Veterans
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For much of the last decade, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) has been roiled by an internal civil war between racial extremists and those who want to keep the Southern heritage group a kind of history and genealogy club.
It’s beginning to look like the racists won.
First came the news, originally reported on this blog last August, that the SCV was planning a Feb. 19 march down Dexter Avenue here in Montgomery, Ala., to “CELEBRATE THE BEGINNING OF THE CONFEDERACY” and ensure that it “is remembered and portrayed in the right way.” What the SCV meant by “the right way” was made obvious by its website promoting the event, which insists that “the South was right!” and claims that “there is no difference between the invasion of France by Hitler and the invasion of the Southern states by Lincoln.”
And now, from the Mississippi Division of the SCV, comes this new gem: The group wants the state to issue a special license plate, keyed like the Montgomery march to the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, to honor Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest — a millionaire Memphis slave trader before the war, an apparent war criminal who presided over the massacre of surrendering black prisoners at Fort Pillow, Tenn., during it, and the first national leader of the Ku Klux Klan afterward, when the Klan’s terrorist violence paved the way to a Jim Crow South.
Neo-Confederate apologists in the SCV and elsewhere claim that Forrest has been mischaracterized, that he was a good man who disbanded the Klan when it became violent. Mississippi SCV member Greg Stewart told The Associated Press that Forrest had sought “Christian redemption” and ultimately rejected the Klan. “He redeemed himself in his own time,” he said. “We should respect that.”
That is false. Forrest, for all the fawning attention he’s received from the historical revisionists of the neo-Confederate movement, was certainly a brilliant and highly successful cavalry general — but he was also a homicidal bully.
Before the war, according to a newspaper account at the time, he was known for personally bullwhipping slaves who were held stretched out in the air by four other slaves. Women slaves were reportedly stripped naked and whipped with a leather thong dipped in salt. Former slaves later backed up these accounts.
In 1864, Forrest demanded the surrender of 580 mostly black troops at Fort Pillow, warning them that otherwise, “I cannot be responsible for your fate,” even as he stealthily and illegally improved his position during negotiations under the white flag. Then, when the Union commander refused, Forrest unleashed his men. “The slaughter was awful,” an appalled Confederate sergeant later wrote his family. “I with several others tried to stop the butchery and at one time partially succeeded, but Gen. Forrest ordered them shot down like dogs, and the carnage continued.” Numerous surviving Union soldiers reported hearing Confederate officers saying that Forrest had ordered them to “kill the last God damn one of them.”
Forrest was known for personally executing deserters or Confederates who fled the field. As the war came to a close, he came upon a father and son near Selma, Ala., and decided they were deserters. He ordered them shot and their bodies left out for two days before burial with a sign, “Shot for desertion,” hung above them. Several days later, it emerged that the pair had, in fact, been entirely innocent.
After the war, even as former Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was urging fellow Southerners to “promote harmony and good will” in the reborn Union, Forrest initiated hard-line resistance to Reconstruction and secretly became the Klan’s first national leader. It is false that he disbanded the Klan because it became violent. In fact, Forrest disbanded the Klan — after lying to Congress about his membership — only after its work was done and it had come under severe criticism. Klan terrorism had by then already made it impossible for blacks and Republicans to vote.
Both the Montgomery march and the Mississippi license plate request are part of a whole series of events planned by the SCV to commemorate the sesquicentennial anniversary of the Civil War. None of them give so much as a nod to the horrors of slavery or to the civil rights movement that finally liberated the South a century later — and, in fact, the Montgomery neo-Confederate parade, in a particularly ugly and unmentioned irony, follows the same route as the end of the famous 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march led by Martin Luther King Jr.
None of this is much of a surprise if you take a look at the national SCV website promoting the series of events, including the Montgomery march, that are meant to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. There, a series of writers attempt to make the case that slavery had nothing to do with the war, another utter falsehood. In fact, as virtually all serious historians agree, the South seceded because it became obvious that Congress would not allow the extension of slavery to the new Western territories, threatening the slave lobby’s dominance. The Texas Declaration of the Causes of Secession, for example, said plainly that the free states were “proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality for all men, irrespective of race or color,” and added that blacks were “rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race.” Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, said as much in his infamous 1861 “Cornerstone” speech: “Our new Government is founded on exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and moral condition.”
But these historical facts are of no interest to the SCV. Instead, while most Americans remember the bloodiest war in American history as the nation’s most trying moment, the SCV is busy promoting a Southern past that never was.
on February 11th, 2011 at 1:00 pm
I think we can expect a big revival and celebration of the book (Mitchell) and the movie, “Gone With The Wind.”
Those charming Confederates were like Rhett and Ashley, right?
on February 11th, 2011 at 1:31 pm
In some ways, the election of Barack Obama has had the same effect as lancing a boil. All the pus is coming out now. By coming out all at once, the toxic racism can be exposed and dealt with in a way not possible before.
on February 11th, 2011 at 1:44 pm
Way to go little Alec.
on February 11th, 2011 at 4:35 pm
Great article, as are all of the Hatewatch updates. I believe Robert Von Bargen has it right when he observes that President Obama’s election was like lancing a boil. I pray that the pent-up hate & racism that is spewing out doesn’t result in a national tragedy.
on February 11th, 2011 at 5:43 pm
Well, SPLC…you do some awesome research and I must commend your morality in making it public.
I continue to be shocked at this countries regression into times past instead of progression and change to be something new and exciting and BETTER!
All because of the fear of the color of a persons skin…Nathan Rutstein said,”prejudice is an emotional commitment to ignorance”. That’s what we’ve got working against us in this society. The answer is EDUCATION.
on February 12th, 2011 at 6:45 am
There is a huge difference between the invasion of France and the invasion of the “Confederacy.” France did not start hostilities against Germany in the manner that the rebels did at Ft. Sumter. Moreover, France was a sovereign nation, whereas the Confederacy was nothing but a bunch of hypocritical, slavery-loving, Bible-thumping, treasonous dandies.
on February 12th, 2011 at 8:12 pm
Naomi, I think it is indeed time for a revived Gone With The Wind. Maybe in 3D IMAX. Unless I missed something, it is against slavery and racism and historically accurate. It’s also a whole lot better than the plotless computer generated exploding demo derbys that Hollywood is grinding out today.
on February 12th, 2011 at 9:29 pm
Those who continue to push racism so many years after the civil rights were passed are just desperate for a scape goat for their personal weaknesses. Thy are trapped in the past. But its good when they air their minds because afterwards they will join the rest of human race.
on February 13th, 2011 at 12:40 am
“Once Again, Racism Rears Up in the Sons of Confederate Veterans” A neo-confederate group that’s RACIST *gasp*. Historical revisionists make me laugh, especially when they claim that the facts (like that the confederacy was founded on slavery, as it said in their constitution) are wrong. Doesn’t detachment from reality make someone certifiably insane?
on February 13th, 2011 at 7:43 am
The only racism here is the writer of this article and their sheeple minions. There is nothing wrong with honoring Gen. Bedford Forest on a license plate. The Fort pillow event was NOT his fault and he was exonerated by Washington DC trial court hearing. Same with the KKK. If we listed Gen Forest sins side by side with Sherman and Grant, Forest would be4 the lesser of the other 2 evils.
on February 13th, 2011 at 3:00 pm
“The only racism here is the writer of this article and their sheeple minions.” Really, how is the writer of this article racist? How do you explain this: “No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed” “In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.” -Source, Constitution of the Confederate States of America.
on February 13th, 2011 at 3:49 pm
Nazi Germany’s invasion of France cannot be likened to that of the Confederacy by Lincoln. For starters (as Ruslan noted above), France was already a sovereign country and did not “secede” from the invaders’ country (as the Confederacy did). Secondly, Lincoln invaded the CSA because he wanted to maintain the Union’s federal status, and keep the states together, but also because they were treasonous. It is correct that Lincoln did not initially wage war against the Confederacy with the goal of the abolition of slavery. However, the reason the South seceded and created the “Confederacy” was because they feared that Lincoln’s election as president would lead to the emancipation of the slaves. Additionally, there was no parallel to the puppet government in Vichy, or a Dixie Philippe Petain, because the Confederacy was not split between occupied and “free” (I put “free” in quotation marks, because Petain would virtually enforce the Nazis’ policies in South France and the imperial colonies, and he was just a pawn of Hitler).
@JosephineSouthern What group (that you define as a race) do you think Mark Potok (the author) is racist against? As for your post’s point, Nathan Bedford Forrest was the first Imperial Wizard and instrumental in founding the first KKK. The court hearing was, of course, in a time in US history where the Confederates’ policies were basically allowed to be implemented in the South anyway after reconstruction. Blacks were almost constantly persecuted there and still worked on cotton fields, living as lower-caste citizens; if they were unemployed, they were even worse off. The judicial and legislative systems were generally sympathetic to White supremacists and former Confederate traitors. They even went so far as to make Confederate VP Alexander Stephens, yes, the same one who made the speech proclaiming that the CSA’s “corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man”, a US senator. So it is indeed possible that Forrest was exonerated in a US court. However, he founded the Klan, which was a violent terrorist group almost from the beginning, and which he disbanded a long time after it perpetrated its first violent action. So, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
on February 13th, 2011 at 3:58 pm
The SCV is not a Neo-Confederate group in particular, but a genealogical Southern heritage organization for people who can trace their family lineage to a soldier in the Confederate military. Apparently, there are some Neo-Confederate racist members, but this is not the purpose for its existence. The Sons of the American Revolution is another one of these organizations.
on February 14th, 2011 at 9:40 am
Can we please ban the word “sheeple” from our collective vocabulary?
on February 14th, 2011 at 11:10 am
Seven score and 10 years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in slavery and dedicated to the proposition that white folks are better than black folks. That’s got a nice ring to it doesn’t it? I wonder if the Sons of Confederate Veterans have considered forming a confederacy with the Sons of Horsethieves and Whoremongers?
on February 16th, 2011 at 1:01 pm
and just think,the south claims to be the cradle of god fearing christians in this country…..what a sick joke they are!
on February 18th, 2011 at 10:22 pm
Hey ruben. Not all southerners are neo-confeds, be fair, don’t generalize.
on February 22nd, 2011 at 12:27 pm
And not all southerners claim that the south is “the cradle of god-fearing christians in this country” Jordan. I think ruben’s point is that the neo-confeds claim this. What’s your point?
on February 22nd, 2011 at 2:52 pm
My point is don’t generalize, that’s exactly what hate mongers like the neo-confeds do, don’t sink to their level or we’re no more relevant then them. When people make statements like “the south claims”, or “the north is” or “liberals think” it assumes that an entire group of people feel one way. This is untrue unless it is in regards to some sort of idea-centered, freely-joined organization (like a political party, or an advocacy group, or even a hate group), so one can say “democrats support…”, or “republicans endorse”, or “the SPLC thinks”, but not “liberals support” because this is no better than saying “all blacks are…” or “all whites are…” So again, my point is, don’t sink to their level.
on March 17th, 2011 at 1:37 am
The SCV is a fraternal organization, not a racist organization! No jgt2598, it is not the KKK! Yes, we are proud of our ancestors who fought for four long years against the Yankee invader!. Membership is limited to male decendents of Confederate soldiers! Our motto is “Heritage, not Hate”! If it will make you feel any better, I also belong to the SUVCW (Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War). We decorate Civil War soldiers graves and are currently planning Sequitennial events! …and no I am from Oregon, not the deep South! SCV member # 568
on October 13th, 2011 at 11:57 pm
Dude, go to a local SCV meeting, they’re open to the public, and that would put to rest most of the rubbish in this article. As the the Confederate battle flag, hmm remember those northern slave states that the Emancipation Proclamation exempted? read it sometime.
T.Vincent is right. The Confederacy was not trying to overthrow the American government, it simply declared its independence, as America had done from Britain. And if you look deeper into the main SCV website you will see that the SCV issued an official proclamation condemning the use of the battle flag by hate groups and various other racists. And like T.Vincent, I too have Union ancestors, of which I’m just as proud.