One afternoon, my first grade son came running up the drive off the school bus, in a real hurry. He dropped his book bag on the couch and approached me in the kitchen, all out of breath, to ask a BIG question. "Momma, the kids at school say we're Yankees, because we moved here from West Virginia!!" "Are we Yankees? I don't want to be a Yankee because they don't like em. I want to be a Rebel, so I can yell. But they won't let me because they said I was a Yankee! " He was quite upset, because the children had taunted him all day long calling him a Yankee. This was in the 1980s. I don't think we had ever uttered the word Yankee to him, so this was all new to him.I was not really stunned, but just still amazed that more than a hundred years after the Civil War, we seemed to be still fighting the Civil War all over again and of all places on a playground! I was busy trying to get the last of the garden canned and put up. I really did not want to tackle this subject at all!! But I knew this little boy needed an answer. So I had to sit down a 7 year old and explain a Civil War and what Yankees and Confederates were, more than a hundred years after the fact!!!
I had to explain to him how Yankee and Rebels referred to different sides of men who fought each other on American soil. I told him how it was an awful, ugly, terrible war in which hundreds of thousands of people died for an institution called slavery that was ugly and awful. That it destroyed people's lives and loved ones were killed. That it was over one side wanting to keep the right to have people as slaves because of the color of their skin and the other side wanting to free them.
And then I had to explain slavery! I had to explain how many black people were brought over in ships to be bought and sold much like we do cows and horses today. That they had to work on plantations and farms and industries and were not free but other people actually owned them. I told him they could be bought and sold and separated from their families. I told them they had sometimes very horrible lives because their owners would beat them with whips and worse.
I didn't go into great detail about how slaves were treated by being beaten, lynched, raped and killed on a whim and had very few rights to go to court. I didn't tell him then about the Civil Rights movements that were still working on abolishing the remaining vistages of slavery today. He was seven and I regret I had to keep it to a 7 year old level. I told him that today it doesn't matter about the Yankee's and Rebels because that war is over. The Yankees won and the slaves were freed. I told him I wanted him to go back to school and tell them we were all Americans. We are not at war anymore.
He went back to school the next day...and what I had told him, I hoped would work. Well...it didn't work. I waited for him to get off the bus and this time he wasn't running fast, but walking really slow, as if he had been just so defeated. He came in the house and I asked him, "What's wrong son?" He said, "They won't stop calling me a Yankee! They keep telling me, Yankee, go home."
I started to call the school and make a big stink about it. I wanted to take a stand to say stop these kids from doing this. The Civil War doesn't matter any more. But I knew I was living in a community and fighting a community that believed in glorifying the South in the Civil War and were teaching their kids this same misguided crap. That these bullies were not going to stop, just because a mother didn't like it. My standing up for him and a seven year old standing up to this on his own, are two different things. Especially when that 7 year old has more of a Confederate pedigree than probably most of those kids.
So I pulled my 7 year old son on my lap and told him the story of how our families were originally from Virginia and through my side and his father's side of our families he was one of many generations to live in this county. So he WAS home....truly home. The families moved to West Virginia long after the Civil War.
I didn't tell him they moved probably because of the 1924 Racial Integrity Act. Where Walter Plecker, the Virginia State Registrar was combing through marriage and birth records, in his quest for a pure white race. That people with a certain last surname would be suspect and their race could be challenged. We had the native stories in our family and all people of color they were forcing them to lose their rights, lands and they and their kids would be segregated.That our families moved to another state during a time of those in power were trying to undo the policies of Reconstruction. That was a bit much to tell him then.
But I told him, that he could tell those bullies he had many grandfathers, probably more than they had, that were Rebels. He should tell them he himself was born in Virginia, not West Virginia.
I will never forget his face. It lit up like a really dark cloud went away. He said, "Really momma? Are you sure?" I said, "Yes it's true. But it ain't exactly something to be proud of. That war killed some of those same grandfathers. They died because of that war. There ain't no glory in that, because it was war between our own people. In some of our families, brothers fought against their own brothers. It was really BAD. I don't know why they want to fight it all over again, and hurt people, especially on a playground. That WAR is over, you hear me?! I don't want you playing Yankees and rebels!" I warned him that these things happened, but we do not bring it up and we do not hurt people with being a Yankee or a Rebel. Remember how you felt being called that name. We are just Americans now. That was the end of it...that worked.
I was so proud of him when he came in another time and told me they were trying to pick on another child, calling them a Yankee and he said he took up for them and told the teacher.
But I'm not innocent, there was a time I had to be set straight too. I knew my heritage. Before my son was even born I remember when Southern rock became popular in the 70s and old Charlie Daniels sang, "The South's gonna do it again." People started flying the Confederate flag again. Before then I never saw one except in a history book or in reference to the KKK during the Civil Rights movement. I have no idea what I was thinking when I bought a replica Civil War flag at a flea market and took it over to my dad. He had a couple of grandfathers that fought for the Confederacy. Thought he might like to fly it in honor of that heritage. Wow...... did I get a lesson and a surprise!
First thing, that two branches of the service, 3 war Veteran told me was, "That's not the flag of my country. That's not the flag I serve nor the flag I fought under. That's not the flag men and women are serving and dying under today." Then he asked me, "Why would I want to fly a flag of a defeated country and cause?" I said. "To honor our grandfathers who fought under it, you know our heritage?" He said, " Baby girl, you don't need that to honor them. You know who they are and what they lived through and who you are...You take that flag home and put it up in a drawer someplace because I don't want it and I'm certainly not gonna fly it and you won't either! It's disrespectful to your country to fly that flag."
That was the end of that! That was the beginning of my understanding about who I was and that Civil War in it's proper place.
I don't know what it is about that war nor why so many can't realize what they are doing by not calling out the truth about it. I'm a proud Southerner. We certainly have a lot more to be proud of than a war over slavery.
I once helped a Confederate re-enactor find a Confederate ancestor. He had been participating with a group but really didn't know any of his ancestors that were Confederate.
I searched but most his direct ancestors were all men who fought for the Union. As a matter of fact, there was still a medal in West Virginia for a descendant to claim for their Union service in the Civil War. He was a direct descendant, I offered to help him with the paperwork to claim it. He informed me he absolutely didn't want it nor any part of it because his grandfather fought for the North. That was pretty confusing to me.
I finally found a great great uncle for him that fought in the Confederacy with Mosby's Raiders or Rangers. He was tickled to death.
I was then invited to a Confederate heritage group meeting and asked me to join. I thought it might be fun to dress up in Civil War type clothing and play an 1860's southern belle. But I know my female ancestors were no belles because most mountain folks really didn't have plantations and I'm pretty sure most of them never dress that fancy! But I always like to help others with research and I love recreating different time periods.
At the first of the meeting they gave a prayer and a salute. That salute shocked me. After the prayer when they saluted the Confederate flag, along with the American flag, it looked like to me a salute you'd give Hitler. They said it was the original salute to the flag of the U.S. and made to go along with the pledge that was written and they are resurrecting it again? I told my friend who invited me, that salute can't be resurrected again and taken back. That symbolism no longer means a pledge to the U.S.. Later I noticed in events they put their hands over their hearts for the pledge, but in this private meeting they used this salute, because they know what this symbol means today. It's the white supremacy of Hitler and the eugenics of Walter Plecker all over again.
In my mind I could see my father's face when he spoke to me about the Confederate flag and I knew he would not approve of this group. Here was a man who spent 4 years in a foxhole in Europe fighting men who gave that same salute. He would have tanned my hide for joining such a group or ever giving that salute to a cause or a flag, today. Even dead, my Dad would haunt me on that one!! I never joined because that is not how I want to honor my Southern heritage.
This ugly current of a war that occurred over 150 years ago, seems to still be fought all over again, even more today in conversations and events. Crazy talk of secession, and people arguing over flying the Confederate flag, the monuments that were put up in a time of Jim Crow. I thought this would be a great time to write about my grandfathers in the Civil War, because it seems people have forgotten how bad that war and the institution of slavery truly was.
I already wrote about John D. Kitts. There is also James R. Burress, shot by his own neighbors, the home guard for being AWOL. He refused to fight because he had a brother fighting for the North and one fighting for the South and he refused to bear arms against either side. There is Jordan E. Bowling, who as an old man, joined to take someone else place for 900 acres of land and died for it. He's buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. There is John Wesley Perdue, John Bowling and Henry Hounshell. Along with all manner of Uncles and cousins. I have found that when people learn their ancestors true stories of the Civil War, especially if they died...there is no good war. That war laid waste an entire generation.
The argument of it was just over states rights is really shallow. It was the states rights to continue the practice of slavery, that they wanted to keep. No ifs, ands or buts, it was over keeping people of a different color enslaved and subservient to white people. To deny them all rights white people have. That mindset played out with our relationship to Native Americans, Asian Americans and others. In the 21 Century we can only hope we live up to the words that all are created equal.
You can't clean the U.S. Civil War up and make it pretty, to honor it, because it wasn't honorable to fight for a system that brutalized others for profit. I believe the institution of slavery would not have been abolished without that tragic, brutal war. But that was the only thing good that came out of it. I can't believe the people trying to resurrect this crazed ideology, as seen recently in Charlottesville. But then as my story started, I couldn't believe it was playing out on a playground in the 80s.
I'm going to write about my Civil War ancestors. What I found in my families story was it was more one of survival in a WAR zone. My ancestors are from the counties on the border of Virginia and West Virginia. The county I live in was formed during the Civil War. Their stories, in many ways, show men caught between the powers that order war and the families that just tried to survive those orders, living where they were.
It's not that I think they were not racist themselves, they were, but their stories are showing they were not all gung ho on joining and fighting for some mythical "Southern Cause against Northern Aggression" that these Neo Confederate groups claim they fought for. Only a couple I can find joined, the rest were conscripted (drafted) later in the war, or replaced others for money and land. I'll honor them by telling their stories even if they ended up on what is called the wrong or losing side of history. It's common in this family. I've already written about the "Tories".
But I don't need to fly the flag today they fought under to honor them. As my dad said, it's not our flag and I don't need it or monuments to honor them. They helped create this America in their own way, right or wrong. I will instead fight to make America inclusive and to live up to it's highest moral values embodied in that Constitution.
Below are some links to actual photographs in the National Archives collection of the Civil War and 150th Anniversary of the Civil War collections.
I will start telling our Civil War stories with my great, great grandfather, Jordan Efferson Bowling.
150th Anniversary In Photos
What the war was really like: Thesis about Union Men in North Carolina during the war. It was neighbor against neighbor and split families apart.
Issuing rations. Andersonville Prison, Ga., August 17, 1864. Photographed by A. J. Riddle.
Burying the Dead at Fredericksburg, VA., after the Wilderness Campaign, May 1864 Photographed by Timothy H. O'Sullivan.
Ruins of the railroad at Richmond
Elmira Prison
