Question: Why did the Confederacy lose the war?
Answer: Too many flag bearers, too few muskets.
Historian Kevin Levin appears to be setting the agenda for the Sons of Confederate Veterans these days. You can tell that Kevin Levin’s book Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth is getting under the Sons’ skin.
At their commemoration of Lee/Jackson Day in Lexington, Va. this weekend a quarter of their “Symposium” is devoted to “The Black Confederate “Myth” Examined.” In other words, debunking the debunking of the “Black Confederate Myth.” Then, for the second day of Lee/Jackson Day, the Sons are encouraging members to embark on a Black Confederate Self-Guided Tour. Participants are encouraged to “explore the lasting impact that Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson had on the local African-American community.” Since Jackson and his wife owned six slaves and Lee’s army had arrested free Blacks during the Gettysburg campaign and shipped them back to Richmond to be sold at auction, you might assume that this would show the two generals in an unflattering light. You would be wrong. The tour seems designed more with Levin in mind than with any concern with Black history in Lexington. Lee and Jackson are presented as the friends of Black men brought off to the war as slaves to serve the needs of white masters. These African Americans are then described in the tour guide as “Black Confederates.” Levin motivated the modern Confederate Sons to roam the streets of Lexington while literally “searching for Black Confederates.”
Perhaps next year, instead of Lee/Jackson Day, the Sons will rename it Kevin Levin Day. Of course they could just call it Martin Luther King Day like everybody else.
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