On March 5, the eleventh grade students at de Toledo, as part of a school trip to the southern United States, visited a cemetery near Selma, Alabama. This cemetery was in honor of men who had fought for the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War.
Although the Confederacy lost the war, they still dedicated memorials to the men who fought to preserve their right to own slaves. However, there was no mention of slavery in the cemetery. Instead, the memorials honor the Confederate soldiers and generals as men who “fought to preserve our southern way of life.” Make no mistake, the reason the south left the union in 1860 was definitely to preserve southern culture–the culture of owning human beings; the culture of forcing black people to work for free under threat of assault or death; the culture of separating families permanently and treating it as a mere business exchange.
The Civil War was purely a result of slavery. In every Confederate state’s statement of secession, slavery is mentioned as a primary cause for their state leaving the union. Yet this cemetery stands to honor the Confederate States nonetheless. It is said that history is written in the eyes of the victors. Yet at the cemetery, history is written in the eyes of the Confederacy. Even though they technically lost the Civil War, they still won the battle to tell their side of the story. A side that omits the abusing and enslaving of human beings that caused them to start the war.
The largest monument in the cemetery is a gravestone dedicated to a Confederate general who fought at the battle of Selma named Nathan Bedford Forest. Before the war, Forest had made an enormous fortune off of trading slaves, becoming one of the richest men in Tennessee (and possibly the entire south). His biography–posted on a plaque not far from the monument–does mention that he attained a large amount of wealth, but it does not state how he did so.
When the Civil War started, Forest enlisted, rising to the rank of a general. Under his command, Forest’s men conducted a massacre of African American Union soldiers at Fort Pillow, Tennessee (although it is unconfirmed whether or not he officially ordered the massacre). However, the only battle mentioned in the memorial is the Battle of Selma, a battle in which he surrendered his entire command. He is also described as a “wizard of the saddle,” a subtle reference to his role as the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. The memorial does mention that he suffered from “allegations” of being affiliated with racial violence following the Civil War, but goes no further.
The men who fought and died to defend the Confederate States of America did so to preserve a way of life. A life that involved owning other human beings; a life of persecuting men and women for being born with a different skin color; a life that involved profiting off of the work and abuse of Black people. The cemetery in Alabama does not bother to mention these important aspects of the Confederacy because they are trying to distort the past. To honor the racists who tried to defend their institutions of slavery and call it “southern pride.”
That is the Southern legacy in Alabama.
