Ok…this post will be a tad different. At the end of the day, the purpose of The Civil Conversations Project is to provide knowledge and education so that you can engage in conversations and take whatever action works for you to help end America’s Thing With Race…this Thing that has long been so harmful to America and American democracy. Lately we’ve been talking a bit about the UDC – the United Daughters of the Confederacy – and their relationship to Civil War propaganda, promoting the lies of The Lost Cause, and their installation and dedication of so many of the hundreds of memorials to men who took up arms against the United States in defense of keeping humans in bondage.
The UDC web site introduces themselves this way: The UDC was incorporated under the laws of the District of Columbia on July 18, 1919. As stated in the Articles of Incorporation, the Objects of the society are Historical, Benevolent, Educational, Memorial and Patriotic and include the following goals:
To honor the memory of those who served and those who fell in the service of the Confederate States.
To protect, preserve and mark the places made historic by Confederate valor.
To collect and preserve the material for a truthful history of the War Between the States.
To record the part taken by Southern women in patient endurance of hardship and patriotic devotion during the struggle and in untiring efforts after the War during the reconstruction of the South.
To fulfill the sacred duty of benevolence toward the survivors and toward those dependent upon them.
To assist descendants of worthy Confederates in securing proper education.
To cherish the ties of friendship among the members of the Organization.
But all of their actions seem geared not so much to “…collect and preserve the material for a truthful history of the War Between the States”, but to promote a false narrative of White supremacy in the United States. A narrative and debilitating national problem that we still live with today.
I had an acquaintance, a brilliant orthopedic surgeon (he replaced my hips, so he better have been a brilliant surgeon!) and as kind as the day is long. But he had a thing about America’s Thing With Race and the war that he bitterly referred to as The War of Northern Aggression, and his hatred towards Abraham Lincoln – 150 years or so after the end of the war and Lincoln’s assassination – was palpable. How could his animosity towards ‘northern aggressors’ that he never knew have survived or even existed in the first place. The answer is the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
He’d grown up in West Virginia where, starting shortly after The War of Northern Aggression and lasting in some southern states all the way until 1980 when a federal law suit bought by co-authors and historians James Loewen and Charles Sallis ended the practice and forced schools across the south to begin using factually correct schoolbooks, the UDC had held sway for generations and had approved or disapproved the history that was taught and the text books that were used across the south.
National UDC President Mrs. James A. Rounsaville put it this way at the group's annual convention in Charleston, South Carolina in 1909: “It has ever been the cherished purpose of the Daughters of the Confederacy to secure greater educational opportunities for Confederate children, and by thorough training of their powers of mind, heart and hand, render it possible for these representatives of our Southern race to retain for that race its supremacy in its own land.”
The constitution of the UDC's North Carolina Division, for example, said the group aimed to insure that "The portion of American history relating to [the Civil War] shall be properly taught in the public schools of the State, and to use its influence towards this object in all private schools…We must see that the correct history is taught our children and train them, not in hatred towards the North who differed from us, but in knowledge of true history of the South in the war between the States and the causes that led up to the war, so that they will be able to state facts and prove that they are right in the principles for which their fathers fought and died; and continue to preserve and defend their cause, until the whole civilized world will come to know that our cause was just and right. … There is an expression often used by our people as the "Lost Cause." Let us forget such, for it is not the truth. …No, our cause was not lost because it was not wrong.”
So what were some of the UDC’s educational ‘truths’ that were taught in schools throughout the south that helped shaped attitudes that America still sees and endures?
“The South was partially saved from the terrible results which were to be expected from this sudden emancipation of four millions of negro slaves, her people are and ever will be indebted, first, to the civilizing and humanizing influences of the institution of negro slavery as it had existed in the Southern States from the days of the Colonies down to 1865, second, to the innate superiority and naturally dominating power of the white race, third, in the absence of the quality of savage ferocity in the negro race in the South, induced by generations of humane training by his white masters and mistresses, and to the kindness and loyalty felt and manifested by the former slave to his white friends in the South and, mainly, to the courage and endurance of Southern white women and the manliness and patience of Southern white men.”
“As a rule the slaves were comfortably clothed, given an abundance of wholesome food, and kindly treated. Occasionally some hard-hearted master or bad-tempered mistress made the lot of their slaves a hard one, but such cases were not common. Cruel masters and cruel mistresses were scorned then just as men and women who treat animals cruelly are now scorned. These slaves were brought into the colonies fresh from a savage life in Africa and in two or three generations were changed into respectable men and women. This fact shows, better than any words can, how prudently and how wisely they were managed.”
“Life among the Negroes of Virginia in slavery times was generally happy. The Negroes went about in a cheerful manner making a living for themselves and for those for whom they worked.
… Slaves did not work so hard as the average free laborer, since he did not have to worry about losing his job. In fact, the slave enjoyed what we might call comprehensive social security. Generally speaking, his food was plentiful, his clothing adequate, his cabin warm, his health protected and his leisure carefree.”[1]
1980 - when some southern states were finally forced to discontinue use of UDC approved schoolbooks - was not so long ago. Likely well within the lifetime of many Civil Conversations Project readers and clearly what my surgeon had been taught. You can see why America is dealing with some attitudes, stereotypes and misperceptions that are so harmful to our country.
Anyway, as I said earlier, The Civil Conversations Project is about education. I was almost humored when I found this statement on the UDC website. Your assignment, should you decide to accept it – as they used to say on the Mission Impossible television series – is to find the fallacies in the following UDC statement. And you gotta love that the UDC President is also a general. Kinda reminds me of a banana republic.
Statement from the President General
The United Daughters of the Confederacy appreciates the feelings of citizens across the country currently being expressed concerning Confederate memorial statues and monuments that were erected by our members in decades past.
To some, these memorial statues and markers are viewed as divisive and thus unworthy of being allowed to remain in public places. To others, they simply represent a memorial to our forefathers who fought bravely during four years of war. These memorial statues and markers have been a part of the Southern landscape for decades.
We are grieved that certain hate groups have taken the Confederate flag and other symbols as their own. We are the descendants of Confederate soldiers, sailors, and patriots. Our members are the ones who have spent 128 years honoring their memory by various activities in the fields of education, history and charity, promoting patriotism and good citizenship. Our members are the ones who, like our statues, have stayed quietly in the background, never engaging in public controversy.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy totally denounces any individual or group that promotes racial divisiveness or white supremacy. And we call on these people to cease using Confederate symbols for their abhorrent and reprehensible purposes.
We are saddened that some people find anything connected with the Confederacy to be offensive. Our Confederate ancestors were and are Americans. We as an Organization do not sit in judgment of them nor do we impose the standards of the 19th century on Americans of the 21st century.
It is our sincere wish that our great nation and its citizens will continue to let its fellow Americans, the descendants of Confederate soldiers, honor the memory of their ancestors. Indeed, we urge all Americans to honor their ancestors’ contributions to our country as well. This diversity is what makes our nation stronger.
Join us in denouncing hate groups and affirming that Confederate memorial statues and monuments are part of our shared American history and should remain in place.
Jinny Widowski, President General, 2022-2024
I urge you to read more about the UDC and their long-term control of the Lost Cause narrative taught to well over 70,000,000 southern students. Most of this post was taken from this valuable site, Facing South.
[1] https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/04/twisted-sources-how-confederate-propaganda-ended-souths-schoolbooks