On Thursday, June 17,2004, I attended the lecture given by a Dr. David Goldfield on his new book Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History at the Georgia Historical Society. I was surprised to hear of his good reputation because on the whole I found his remarks to be shallow, one-sided, self-righteous and subjective, all unbecoming traits in a Doctor of History. The thesis of Dr. Goldfield's book is that after the War Between the States, the white South, like other defeated peoples of the world, was and still is guilty of romanticizing its "Lost Cause," which according to him was originally an elaborate and quixotic myth fabricated to give them hope, enabling them to get through hard times then and now. The act of remembering brings the past into the present but this process inevitably alters the facts and is usually different from what actually went down. The dark reality of the matter, Dr. Goldfield explained to us all, is that despite the fact that Southerners fought bravely on the battlefield their cause was the worst in the history of civilization because they were defending slavery. That's what the war was really about. All this other fluff about states' rights, honor, nobility, and the purity of women that still plagues our section is nothing but a series of dangerous neuroses covering a guilty countenance that cannot face the truth.
Dr. Goldfield really didn't have anything new to say. We've been having this shoved down our throats for 150 years. People like him have been trying to make a profit from the race card ever since the War. A fairer and more objective appraisal might have added that the North has been just as guilty of romanticizing its cause. Dr. Goldfield's speech was a prime example. Wars aren't started for altruistic humanitarian reasons. They are started over clashing economic interests. There was no federal income tax before the war and 95% of federal revenue came from tariffs. When the South seceded, they dropped Lincoln's 47% tariff on all foreign goods to 10%. In my opinion, this is a more realistic cause of the war than any other. The North could not compete with that rate.
I would suggest furthermore that the victors also have the burden of justifying the use of aggressive force to the rest of the world especially when one's reputation honors the principle of government by consent which was blatantly disregarded in 1861 by the Lincoln administration. There was nothing in Dr. Goldfield's talk about the legitimate concerns that the South had about maintaining an equilibrium of power between the sections. It was all about slavery, Goldfield insisted, "just look at the speeches of the Southern leaders."
Sir, we know what is in those speeches. We've read them many times. You and your ilk, however, still cannot get it through your heads. No one is denying that slavery was an issue that North and South were arguing over. What the South was afraid of, though, was that if the North continued to gain power within the Union then increasingly decisions would be made with or without Southern support. The South was fighting for the right to handle its own problems, slavery included. What they didn't want was somebody such as yourself, coming down from the North or out of an academic ivory tower to con wistful romantic platitudes about the brotherhood of man without any real knowledge of the actual problem. The well documented corruption of the Grant administration after the War and the exploitation of both the white and black South during Reconstruction were clear testaments to antebellum southern concerns about losing control within the union.
Despite his 'inclusive' rhetoric, Dr. Goldfield represents forces that are inimical to not only the South's heroes but to American heroes as well. The slave issue is being used to castrate the founding generation of this country. He seemed glad that a school in New Orleans has discarded the name of George Washington for an African American and that a laser vision of Martin Luther King, Jr is now imposed over Robert E Lee on the side of Stone Mountain. Yet though we all have a holiday for Martin Luther King, no respect is accorded to General Lee, whose birthday falls on the same day. By choosing one, the other is apparently negated so I cannot see how his vision is any more embracing. I do know, though, that Dr. Goldfield enjoys the popular support of an academic establishment and that he gets paid to say what he says. Then it all makes sense.
We've known you for a long time, Dr. Goldfield. The face of Leviathan always wears a humanitarian mask. And I can promise you, sir, that as long as you "slick fellers from the city" continue to come down here with your half-baked theories and "dollah chasin'" ways, we in the South will 'still be fighting the war.'
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