A Graveyard Tourist's Observations on the Confederate Dead
The South has risen again. But at what moral cost?
As some of you know, I am a graveyard tourist. I enjoy cemeteries. In my own region and whenever I travel, I seek out the dead. I am drawn to the long deceased because they have things to tell us. But most of us aren’t listening. I am a writer. Writers need to keep their ears open to all, including those who are heartbeat challenged. Last week I spent some time listening to those killed fighting for the Confederacy.
Magnolia Cemetery is a sprawling necropolis in Charleston, South Carolina. Among its 35,000 residents are 1700 Confederate soldiers and sailors, including the three crews of the early submarine CSS Hunley, which went down with its Union target in 1864. In the main CSA section, there are 57 gravestones clustered together simply stating, “Unknown. Confederate States Navy.” No dates given. Were they killed in action in some of the 53 naval battles with the Union? Or succumbed to disease as POW’s? Or both?
CSA graves at this cemetery are largely marked by the national flag of the Confederacy, in its various iterations. Only one grave had the more familiar Dixie battle flag, commonly called the Stars and Bars. And, of course, towering over the CSA section is a statue on a tall plinth of a soldier clutching the banner close to his chest. A plaque reads:
In proud and grateful remembrance of their devotion, constancy and valour, who against overwhelming odds by sea and by land kept Charleston virgin and invincible to the last.
Most of the markers either provide no name or a name and little else. One stands out, deviating somewhat from the sepulchral reticence:
CORP JOHN S FULHAM
CO F
1 SC REGT
CSA
FEB 4, 1844
JUN 13, 1863
His life cut short at 19, did Corporal Fulham know what he gave his life for? States’ rights? Slavery? Big Cotton? Did he sacrifice himself in vain? After all, the CSA, having lost a quarter of a million men, did lose the war.
Or did it?
Whatever you may think of CSA President Jefferson Davis, he was prescient, 16 years after Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, when he said, “The contest is not over, the strife is not ended. It has only entered upon a new and enlarged arena.”
At best, historians view Reconstruction as a noble but failed experiment to massively reform Southern society. At worst, it’s viewed as a “diabolical” experiment, “to be remembered, shuddered at, and execrated.”
In any case, the South killed it through racial violence, subversion and a shady political compromise in 1877 in which Rutherford B. Hayes was chosen as president with the acquiescence of Southern politicians in return for deoccupation. The Dixiecrat-laden Democrats then swept control of Congress, ushering in decades of control of key committees by powerful, long-serving conservative Southerners.
USA: 1. CSA: 1.
From the end of Reconstruction until around the 1965 Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, Jim Crow ruled the South with a heavy boost from the KKK. Its systemic discrimination was dismantled following LBJ’s landmark legislation.
USA: 2. CSA: 2.
With the 2013 Supreme Court decision in the Shelby County v. Holder case, the Voting Rights Act was greatly weakened with the gutting of the preclearance provisions. Within minutes of the decision, CSA states began to cynically and methodically implement voter suppression measures ranging from reducing polling stations in Democrat-majority districts to requiring strict voter ID mandates ostensibly to counter nonexistent “voter fraud.” Naturally, the target populations are African-American and other communities of color. Welcome back Jim Crow!
USA: 2. CSA: 3.
Fast forward to the Gingrich/Tea Party/Trump era. CSA states are on a culture war jihad the aim of which is to roll back the 21st century — and a good chunk of the 20th, to boot. The wickedly funny 2004 counterhistory mockumentary, CSA: The Confederate States of America captures the dream of today’s far-right populists:
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the Confederate States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all white people. Amen.
What governors DeSantis and Abbott are pulling off in Florida and Texas, respectively, may bear trappings that are more Fascist than Confederate, from re-mandating school prayer to outlawing LGBTQ people to bringing back child labor. Making guns available to everyone under the sun would not be allowed in a Fascist system. Or any system marked by a modicum of sanity. Other CSA states are following suit with policies that blend cruelty with lunacy. Confederate-friendly Trumpism is hardly dead. And should the twice impeached, indicted, disgraced ex-Orange Face be re-elected by an apostate, Fox-addled electorate, well, you ain’t just whistling Dixie. Far-right populism is ascendant.
USA: 2. CSA: 4.
But the South must be doing something right. Just look at the stats, care of the New York Times’s brilliant David Brooks:
Between 2010 and 2020, the fastest-growing states were mostly red — places like Texas, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and South Carolina. During the pandemic, that trend accelerated, and once again, most of the big population-gaining states are governed by Republicans.
If you go back farther, you see decade after decade of migration toward the more conservative South. The Brookings Institution demographer William Frey has noted that in 1920, the Northeast and the Midwest accounted for 60 percent of America’s population. A century later, the Sun Belt accounts for 62 percent of the nation’s population. These days we are mostly a Sun Belt nation.
Why are these red states growing so rapidly? The short answer is that they are more pro-business. In a study for the American Enterprise Institute, Mark J. Perry compared the top 10 states people were flocking to in 2021 with the top 10 states people were flocking from.
The places they are flocking to have lower taxes. The 10 states that saw the biggest population gains have an average maximum income tax of 3.8 percent. The 10 states with the biggest population loss have an 8 percent average rate.
The growing states also have fewer restrictions on home construction. That contributes to lower housing prices. The median home price in those 10 population-gaining states is an average of 23 percent less than that of the 10 biggest population-losing states.
Perry goes down a range of other factors and concludes that Americans are moving away from blue states with high energy costs, byzantine regulatory regimes and unfriendly business climates. They are moving to economically vibrant red states with lower costs, more conservative fiscal policies and more job opportunities.
This picture contradicts writer Paul Theroux’s description of the South, in his travelogue, “Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads” as “rotting, picturesque, hopeless, forgotten.”
USA: 2. CSA: 5.
Which gets me back to Corporal Fulham. A Northerner by birth and predilection, I’ve been criss-crossing the South every year over the past six years due to a daughter at Tulane and our love of South Carolina’s coastline as a vacation destination. We’ve come to love the South and Southerners. And have gained a greater grasp of the heritage, contradictions, joys and pathos of this burgeoning, yet befuddling region through informative chats with folks ranging from the Sons of Confederate Veterans to the Gullah Geechee people. And that’s why I consult the dead as well as the living at cemeteries, museums, monuments, battlefields and libraries. I’ve seen over the past several years pedestals emptied of CSA generals and porches filled with “Let’s Go Brandon” banners. So, who’s winning the Civil War now? What’s the score?
I’m pretty certain most of the CSA fallen felt they knew what they died for. The vast majority not having owned slaves, likely felt they were fighting for their homes, their states, their region’s honor. They perished in an age marked by gallantry, courage, faith, rectitude and a pre-modern protectiveness of women. Would Corporal Fulham and his comrades approve of the likes of Donald Trump? Ron DeSantis? Marjorie Taylor Greene?
Visit their graves — and listen.