Ignorance is Bliss at Lee-Jackson Day
Ignorance is Bliss at Lee-Jackson Day
Symposium predicated on absolving Southern responsibility for slavery damages societal unity
[Lee-Jackson Day symposium. Silent auction (left), “Stonewall” Jackson’s birthday cake (top), and speaker Philip Leigh presenting a slide about tariffs (bottom). Source: The Spectator]
Let me begin by stating what should be obvious to everyone who knows me: Robert E. Lee is one of my personal heroes. I own almost every major biography written on him since he died in 1870, and I think it's safe to say that I know more about his time at Washington College (now our beloved Washington and Lee University) than any other student on campus.
Naturally, I also know much about the Civil War and its causes. I have taken seminar courses taught by some of the best professors in their field and I have attended many talks about the period in my three-and-a-half years in Lexington. And while this may come as a surprise to many critical readers, I have never attended the annual Lee-Jackson Day parade.
I did, however, set aside time on Friday, January 12, 2024 to attend a “symposium,” featuring three speeches about Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and the causes of the Civil War.
Philip Leigh, an author and Civil War commentator, spoke first on the causes of the conflict. Leigh’s talk, as well as every other speaker that weekend, was livestreamed on Facebook by The Stonewall Brigade, the local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV).
I’ll admit, I went into the meeting skeptical and left without listening to the other two talks. I knew that the speakers would not be as renowned as the powerhouse that spoke about Southern loyalty at W&L’s 2022 Institute for Honor, and I expected the audience to be, well, rather homogenous.
I am fascinated by the concept of the “Lost Cause” as a historical movement in American history but bemoan the ever-too-often use of that term to dismiss any discussion of the Confederacy, Civil War, or the South. I suspected this talk would pull from the Lost Cause ideology, but did not want to overreact in advance.
Although highly complicated and often nuanced, Lost Cause discourse is dominated by several key ideas. Proponents generally believe that Southern secession and the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery, or at least that slavery was secondary to much bigger issues like the tariff and good-ole’ states rights. Implicit is that Southerners were the noble victims of an oppressive tyrant — Lincoln — whose only objective was to cripple Southern identity.
This is the message that many students think I advocate when I fight to preserve the historic integrity of Lee Chapel, National Historic Landmark, or invite a Ph.D.-wielding historian to discuss President Lee’s contribution to our campus from 1865-70.
But in reality, I thought, nobody with any genuine knowledge or appreciation for the subject could promote such inaccurate beliefs today.
And then, there was Leigh’s talk.
[Philip Leigh addresses a crowd at the Hampton Inn in Lexington. Source: The Spectator]
He made his message clear from the start: “Today’s dominant interpretation is that [the Civil War] was caused by slavery because the declaration of causes for secession … attributed their secession to slavery. But the opposite of that theory is the truth.”
According to Leigh, secession did not cause the war: “War came only when Northerners decided to militarily force the cotton states back into the Union.” What the Northerners called, “preserving the Union,” Leigh called “coercion.”
This opening underlined his talk’s two primary arguments: slavery was not a big deal and the Northerners were the bad guys. Sound familiar?
Other aspects of his talk focussed on the legality of secession, where he cited 6 examples from 1789 to 1846 where Northern states threatened to secede if their needs were not met. Most notable of these was the Hartford Convention of 1814-15, when leaders of the Federalist Party of New England assembled to discuss their grievances of the War of 1812 and threatened to secede. Leigh, however, did not acknowledge the obvious: in none of those examples did the aggrieved leaders actually secede. In Hartford, the motion was merely proposed by more radical statesmen and failed to gain consensus among the delegates present.
Leigh also failed to acknowledge Southern threats of secession before the war. These threats had become common rallying cries for men like John C. Calhoun (1782-1850), whose writings were used by Confederates to justify secession in 1861.
To his credit, Leigh’s talk did not fabricate dates and events. In fact, his talk was well researched and it is clear he knows his history. But that’s the problem: he knows his history, the history he wants to be true. In presenting secession and slavery’s role in the conflict, Leigh either purposefully (in a cynical read) or unintentionally (in a more charitable read) ignored the obvious. I tend to favor the latter position, because I think Leigh merely manifested the culture around these events: heritage, not hate.
You hear this term often in neo-Confederate defenses of statues and parades like Lexington’s annual Lee-Jackson holiday. The phrase has a breadth of meanings which I won’t try to explore here, other than to note that the parties saying it don’t think they’re bad, hateful people (and most of them, I would argue, aren’t).
[Editor’s Note: This column has been corrected to properly attribute the Mary Anna Jackson Order of Confederate Rose with preperation of the lunch, not the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC).]
After Leigh’s talk, the group broke for a lunch prepared by the Mary Anna Jackson Order of Confederate Rose. Diligent time and resources were put into the spread, which included dips, vegetables, crock pots, and desserts. Everyone sang a happy 200th birthday to “Stonewall” and they even had a Confederate battle flag dip. Did the ladies who made that dip do so to scare off minority groups? I highly doubt it. Would it have? Absolutely.
[A segment of the spread served at the Lee-Jackson Day Symposium, including a Confederate battle flag-themed dip. Source: The Spectator]
I grabbed my plate and found a seat next to some ladies from Roanoke. We had a pleasant conversation during which they asked me about my interests and future plans. They — like many other visitors I have encountered in Lexington — talked very proudly about their ancestors and being members of the UDC. Did they say anything racist? No. Would they have said something racist to a minority student who sat next to them? I doubt it. But the reality is that such an encounter would likely never happen in that setting.
And frankly, I don’t think that is a scenario which the Lee-Jackson Day attendees consider. In the same regard, there are minority students who don’t consider that the people marching down main street once a year could be doing it for reasons beyond racial supremacy.
More than anything, Lee-Jackson Day emphasizes a shared ignorance of misunderstanding between two groups.
The people at the symposium were ignorant about slavery and the black experience. This is partly a generational divide, where discussions of slavery are taboo and uncomfortable. But this divide widens through the channels of misinformation that fester at events like the symposium.
Leigh claimed that slavery was on the decline, gradually succumbing to popular sovereignty in places like Kansas. “Slavery would eventually end if it could not spread geographically,” he continued. Furthermore, states like Virginia only joined the Confederacy because they would not tolerate an “unconstitutional” and “forced” reconciliation.
False arguments like these downplay the inhumanity of slavery, which had been a hypocritical blight on the republic since it formed. Hoping to damn Lincoln and subsequently absolve the South, Leigh argued that “it was not a noble gesture to end slavery.”
The Republicans, he insisted, used emancipation merely as a means to justify an economic end. Leigh also said that postwar Republicans “made false promises to the freedmen and taught them to hate their former masters.”
I could not believe that anyone could say something so contradictory. But nobody else seemed to be bothered. And I suspect that's because they’ve never read accounts of the enslaved. Actually, they’re barely reading anything other than what reinforces their beliefs.
At the end of his talk and again during the Q&A, Leigh explained why he has recently taken to writing novels instead of nonfiction: “Anything we write that is nonfiction is going to be attacked by the academics … But if we can research the history accurately … and find a mystery, in that mystery we can connect the dots and change that perspective.”
Of everything Leigh said, this concerned me the most.
It’s one thing to go in front of a crowd and spew historical misinformation. This is something that multiple students and faculty did in the 2021 protests against the school’s name, and something that Leigh did on the 12th. As an educated audience member — on both occasions — I was able to recognize the flaws in those arguments and better defend my own beliefs.
But it’s another thing to ignore non-fiction written by academics, as Leigh and his followers seem to have done and encourage. Historians have been warning us that the end of history is dangerously approaching, and continued ignorance will only further divide us into separate clusters who can’t understand each other.
So what’s the solution? Frankly, I think we should read more academic works (like this one) and have more conversations with people of different backgrounds and perspectives. Some of the best conversations I’ve had in college have been with professors who absolutely hate Robert E. Lee. But we can find a middle ground rooted in facts, and come to our own opinions from there.
The problem occurs when we pretend that we are rooted in facts when instead we are making them up or ignoring the ones that don’t support our claim. As I have told people since I was a freshman, you’re welcome to hate Robert E. Lee and everything he stood for, just take some time to read beyond the basics. If you love him, learn something to hate about him. And if you hate him, learn something to love about him.
I admire Lee because he knew that he had many faults. I also admire him because he did not try to glorify and whitewash the Confederate cause like many of his contemporary and present-day supporters still do. Instead, he did something from which we all need to learn: he put down his sword and worked to reconcile a bitter community.
[The opinions expressed in this magazine are the author's own and do not reflect the official policy or position of The Spectator, or any students or other contributors associated with the magazine. It is the intention of The Spectator to promote student thought and civil discourse, and it is our hope to maintain that civility in all discussions.]
