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Historians Under Fire The Public and the Memory of the Civil War A few years ago, I participated in a symposium on "southern symbols" at a southern university. After my presentation on the Conf... ederate battle flag, an undergraduate student beckoned me out of the room and explained with startling candor his own feelings about the flag. He explained he was from rural Mississippi, ashamed of the virulent racism of his father, and now recognized why the flag offended African Americans. But, he insisted, he still did not abide the growing tendency to vilify all things Confederate and wanted to know why he should be ashamed of his ancestors. We had a long chat and returned to the room for the next presentation — which was about the latent, even subconscious, racism of some Civil War reenactors. The same student felt emboldened enough to stand up during the question and answer period and essentially repeat the story he had told me. The reaction of the session moderator was swift and unequivocal. She told him that he was out of line and, in so many words, to sit down and shut up. I'm ashamed to say that I did not intervene and insist that he and his question be treated with due respect. There is an unfortunate dynamic that exists between professional historians and the millions of Americans who sympathize with the Confederacy in the Civil War. These neoConfederates whom Tony Horwitz depicted — accurately, I believe — in his book "Confederates in the Attic"1 are proud of their Confederate ancestors, conservative in their politics, and increasingly sensitive to what they believe are unfair attacks upon their ancestors and their values. Confederate sympathizers ascribe, consciously or unconsciously, to what many historians generally consider an erroneous and distorted interpretation of the Civil War that dates back to the Lost Cause era.2 There is a large and easilyidentified body of neo-Confederate literature that competes with academic scholarship, but the neo-Confederate viewpoint is more evident and oft-expressed in the frequent public disputes over Confederate flags, monuments, and other symbols and over the names of streets, bridges, or public buildings. I confess that my perspective may be skewed. I have worked for nearly 14 years in an institution — the Museum of the Confederacy - that has had to find and maintain balance between sensitivity to the views of a core proConfederate constituency and scrupulous attention to scholarship and inclusiveness. Also affecting my viewpoint is the recent collapse of that balance. The museum is now explicitly courting the financial support of those individuals and groups who insist that it must be a museum for (not of) the Confederacy, a result that would threaten the institution's scholarly integrity and credibility. The museum's fate is caught up in a strong backlash among white southerners and white Americans in general against a perceived political correctness running amok in America today. As we know from many other celebrated incidents, a large segment of the American population believes that politically correct or "revisionist" historians have hijacked history and have distorted truth with "context." The contested memory of the Civil War is just one example of the ongoing "history wars." Resentment over political correctness and the ongoing campaign by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People against the publicly-sponsored or -endorsed display of Confederate symbols explains much about the gulf between scholars and the pro-Confederate public, but there are other contributing factors. The most important and consistent factor is ancestry. Perhaps more than any other avocational historians, many proConfederate Civil War buffs perceive the subject as synonymous with the honor and reputation of their ancestors. Discussions of slavery as the cause and issue of the war are considered an implicit condemnation of their ancestors. [Show More]

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