August 17th, 2021
I recently visited the Museum and Library of Confederate History located in Greenville, SC and I had a few thoughts about the experience. First, it was quite strange and surreal to visit. I’ve seen people online that support “confederacy” (for lack of a better word) and I’ve even seen confederate flags waving offline, but I’m not sure I’ve ever really interacted or engaged with someone who supports the “confederacy”. I wanted to write down some of my thoughts on the current debate about slavery and the American Civil War. To grossly oversimplify things, I have in my head two primary characters, if you will: a typical African slave and a typical Confederate soldier. What I hear from the left/liberal side of the debate is that the Confederate soldier was fighting to keep the African a slave, therefore we should not glorify the Confederate soldier. Why do we have statues of the Confederate soldier who fought for the right to own slaves? What I hear from the right/conservative side of the debate is that the Confederate soldier is a part of their heritage and should not be erased. It’s a tricky subject, but at present, I have the desire to say we should not celebrate those who rebelled against the government (nor erect statues of them), but that leads me down a train of thought that we should celebrate those who rebelled against the government for a noble cause with Rosa Parks coming to mind. I was also thinking that the narrative is a bit skewed. It definitely seems the case that the narrative is Union=good, Confederacy=bad. I can see how someone might take issue with people saying that their great great … grandparent was evil. I wonder what the children/grandchildren of the Nazi’s think of their parents/grandparents. I think the Confederate history museum should exist, but I think it should be apolitical (which it is to a certain extent, but the gift shop begs to differ). I just found this article about a Nazi museum that was opened some years back: Germany Opens Nazi Museum Promising to Come To Terms With Dark Past. One of the things that the article mentioned was that they wouldn’t be displaying the Nazi uniform or Swastika flag out of respect for the survivors. The Confederate Museum featured the dixie flag prominently. I know these are apples and orange comparisons, but I wonder what people would think about a Nazi Museum opened with the express purpose of preserving the heritage of the Nazi’s; I’m sure that would raise some eyebrows. I really don’t know enough about either subject to speak with any sort of conviction so I will end this discussion by saying that the Confederate museum was very interesting and I should like to go back sometime and chew on it further at a later date.