History matters: not Gone With the Wind

Confederate soldiers never reached the US Capitol during the Civil War, but the "Confederate flag" (which was actually the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia) finally arrived in the building on January 6. Join us for a deep dive into the question: why does that symbol still speak to people so long after the Civil War? The answers lie in another disinformation campaign — one that took root in this country 155 years ago, and still impacts us today. This time on the podcast: America’s original Lost Cause — and the real cost of alternative facts.

Cover art:
A printed poster from 1896 celebrates the Confederacy more than 30 years after the end of the Civil War. It features (center) Confederate Generals Stonewall Jackson, PGT Beauregard and Robert E. Lee along with three versions of the flag of the Confederate States of America and the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. Surrounding them are Confederate notables including President of the Confederate State of America, Jefferson Davis, Vice President Alexander Stephens, and storied army officers James Longstreet and A.P. Hill. 

For photos and resources, visit our website: anewnormalpodcast.com

Theme music: Fragilistic by Ketsa; licensed under CC BY NC ND 4.0

Much of the music in this episode was from the Free Music Archive by:

• Lobo Loco (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lobo_Loco) CC BY-NC-SA 
• Cletus Got Shot (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Cletus_Got_Shot) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
• Shake that Little Foot (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Shake_That_Little_Foot) CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
• The Joy Drops (https://freemusicarchive.org/search/?quicksearch=the+joy+drops)CC BY

Episode Transcript

Kelley Lynch (00:00):
History is really just stories, stories, people,
and societies tell aboutthemselves about who they are,
how they live, what they believeand what they consider
important.
We have no way of knowing whatstories moved.
Kevin Seefried to remove exhibita better known as the

(00:23):
Confederate flag from where itwas usually displayed outside
his house in Wilmington,Delaware, and carry it into the
Capitol building on January 6thto stop the steal thereby
becoming the first person everto carry that flag into the US
Capitol building.
Photographers captured Seefriedstrolling the halls of the

(00:44):
Capitol shouldering that symbolof another insurrection on one
side of him was a portrait offamed Northern abolitionist,
Charles Sumner, and on the otherSenator John C.
Calhoun of South Carolina, whowas the leader of the Senate's
pro-slavery faction.
It was like a perfectencapsulation of the two

(01:07):
opposing perspectives at theroot of what is undoubtedly our
biggest national story.
And it prompted us to ask whydoes that symbol still speak to
people so long after the civilwar?
The answer as we came to findout lies in another
disinformation campaign, onethat took root in this country

(01:29):
155 years ago, and stillreverberates today this week in
our continuing quest tounderstand more about the past
that informs our present andwill shape our future.
We present the story ofAmerica's original Lost Cause
and the real cost of alternativefacts.

(01:56):
Welcome.
I'm Kelly Lynch and I'm CindySealls, and this is a new
normal—a podcast that reimaginesa future that starts with each
one of us.
This week our story starts closeto home at the remains of Fort
Stevens—just 10 minutes fromwhere we live before January

(02:17):
6th, this Civil War Fort was theclosest the Confederate flag, in
battle, ever got to the USCapitol.
I drove past here every day,taking my kids to school for
like four years.

(02:38):
I just drive by and see thosekind of hills.
And, you know, I never eventhought it was anything.

Cindy Sealls (02:46):
Yeah, I knew it was a Fort only because I used
to go to church across thestreet there.
And, you know, we used to comeover here after catechism class
or when my dad was doing hisorgan practice and we'd come
over here and play, wait forhim, it was just, we knew it was
a Fort.
We didn't know why it was a Fortover here.
You know, as kids, you don'tthink about that kind of stuff

(03:08):
or you're just like, Ooh, a bighill to run down.

Kelley Lynch (03:10):
Local history, enthusiast, Cliff Schwartz,
who's looking around the fortwith his wife, Barbara, tells us
what we're seeing.
Can I get you—because you're sogood at describing these things
and you probably have avocabulary that we don't—we

(03:33):
don't speak fort.
Could you, describe just in yourwords, like what's here and what
we're seeing?

Cliff Schwartz (03:41):
Sure.
So this kind of fort is referredto as a, not dirt for a, uh,
works, uh, something where.

Kelley Lynch (03:54):
He texted me later to say"the word I was looking
for his earthworks..."

Cliff Schwartz (04:00):
but that had the characteristic construction of
being, uh, piles of dirt with amoat around it.
And the idea was that that wouldslow troops, land troops coming
in.
Obviously the moat you couldshoot down, it would slow them.

(04:21):
Uh, having the, uh, dirt works,protects the people behind it
when you can have tenants, butyou don't have that many canons
canons, a heavy.
And if you have mud, you don'thave good roads.
How do you get it?
You have horses that are pullingit.
So this was pretty goodprotection, uh, because it

(04:41):
wasn't that easy for cannon--tolob cannon balls over into this
F ort.
U h, what you see here of coursei s cement, but t hey're
simulating the wood that wouldhold up the dirt works.
And also f orts in general, youwould want as high as possible

(05:03):
because not only could you see,but you have a better
trajectory.
Uh, y ou know, y our cannon ball c ould go farther.

Kelley Lynch (05:15):
And what about this thing in the middle?

Cliff Schwartz (05:18):
So again, this is my guess.
It doesn't say on, on thatlittle chart that they have
there, but my guess is that thisis a pill box there's visit door
on the other side that goes in,and my guess is that that's
where they would keep it cannonballs, the, um, gunpowder,

(05:39):
because if you loved the cannonball from the enemy here, it
would explode.
So you want to keep yourammunition, right?

Kelley Lynch (06:04):
The battle of Fort Stevens took place during the
fourth year of the war.
At the time, Washington was oneof the most heavily fortified
cities in the world situatedjust across the river from
Confederate Virginia.
The city was encircled by astring of 68 forts supported by

(06:25):
93 batteries mounting over 800cannons and linked by some 20
miles of rifle pits and trenchesFort Stevens was the city's
Northern most Fort.
It guarded the entrance toWashington at the seventh street
pike, which is now GeorgiaAvenue throughout the war rumors

(06:48):
, circulated of pending attackson Washington.
But in the end, there was onlyone attempt on the city during
the war.
And it happened here at a timewhen the city's rock solid
defenses were manned, not bythousands of seasoned soldiers,
but by a hastily assembled crewof war, office clerks, new
recruits, wounded soldiers, andworn out veterans,

Peter Findler (07:13):
The year is 1864, and the union forces under
general Ulysses grant areattacking Petersburg, Virginia

Kelley Lynch (07:24):
American history teacher.
Peter Findler has brought hisclasses to Fort Stevens for
years.

Peter Findler (07:30):
And Petersburg is a critical location for the
Confederate army under the armyNorthern Virginia under Robert
E.
Lee, because it provides acritical supply line to
Richmond, which was the capitalof the Confederacy.
So Lee feels as though he may beoverwhelmed by Grant's, you
know, forces, which outnumberthe Confederate forces and this

(07:53):
industrial might that they'recarrying with them as well, and
they may lose Petersburg.
So in order to try to, uh, getgranted withdraw from
Petersburg, or at least bringsome of his troops out is he
sends Jubal Early up theShenandoah Valley to March into
Maryland to threaten WashingtonDC.
And outside of Frederick,Maryland, there's a small battle

(08:14):
called the battle of Monocacyand Early's forces defeat Lew
Wallace.
And then it becomes clear thatEarly's aims are to take the
Capitol and that he stands agood chance of doing that.
So Grant, this is when Granttakes his troops and sends them
North to Washington, DC.
Early's forces have beenmarching for maybe a month or

(08:37):
two, and they arrive outside ofWashington, DC on July 9th and
10th of 1864.
They come upon the mansion ofMontgomery Blair, who was the
founder of Silver Spring.
And I mean, they'd been marchingright through the summer for
months, hundreds and hundreds ofmiles.

(08:58):
They find barrels of whiskey inthe basement of the Blair
mansion, and they just getcompletely wasted.
And so Early wakes up the nextmorning to like rouse his
soldiers for the invasion of theCapitol, right?
And finds half of them are stilldrunk from the night before.
And the other half are laying onthe ground, hung over sleeping

(09:18):
and he has to delay the invasionuntil the afternoon, which gives
Grant's troops even more time toarrive, to reinforce the Capitol
.
Now, one interesting fact--theBattle of Fort Stevens is that
it's the only time when asitting US President has come
under fire during a battle.
So Lincoln went to the battle ofFort Stevens and as part of a

(09:40):
political maneuver, right, toshow the people of Washington
that everything was safe andwe're fine, and I'm even going
to go check it out myself.
So he gets to the battle and insort of a bit of a blunder that
that could have cost him hislife, he gets up on the parapets
on the edge of the Fort to lookout and survey the battle scene
and nearly loses his head.

(10:01):
Because there's Confederatesharpshooters that are in the
houses in and around FortStevens right there within 100,
200 yards.
Right.
So we're not sure who, but itmay have been Oliver Wendell
Holmes Jr., Looks up at Lincolnon the parapet, grabs him and
says, get down you fool andpulls him down off the parapet,
maybe saving his life.

(10:23):
Um, just a kind of a fun factabout Fort Stevens.
The fighting lasts for July 11thand July 12th, but eventually
Early decides that there's noway that they're going to take
the capitol because it's soheavily fortified and so heavily
defended.
Early retreats on July 12th.
And that will be the only battlethat takes place in Washington,

(10:46):
DC during the civil war.

Kelley Lynch (10:52):
With the surrender of the army of Northern Virginia
on April 9th, 1865, Early fledto Texas on horseback.
He eventually made his way intoMexico disguised as a farmer.
And from there, he sailed toCuba.
And finally to Canada, they'rein a self-imposed exile and

(11:15):
encouraged by Lee and others whowanted to see the Confederate
version of the war on the recordas soon as possible.
He picked up his pen and withit, he would spend the rest of
his life waging a battle for thepublic memory of the war.
Published in 1866, Early'smemoir was the first book by a

(11:38):
major Civil War figure on eitherside of the conflict.

Peter Findler (11:42):
Part of what he references in that writing is
his correspondences with RobertE.
Lee, that those beliefs aboutwhy the war was fought are not
just his, that they come fromthe great Robert E.
Lee as well.
And those beliefs include thatthey were trying to hold onto
and preserve a legacy of agenteel, peaceful life that they

(12:05):
imagined, of course onlyimagining it for themselves, but
not for black folks.
And that the Confederate Statesfought to preserve state's
rights and in their minds, theywere doing exactly what the
colonists did.
And so for succession, there,there was a belief among Lee and

(12:26):
Early and others that the wholereason for fighting the war was
because the Union had encroachedupon the rights of States to do
various things.
Now, if you look at the historyfor me, that's the right to have
slaves, you know, that's thestate, right that they were
protecting.
And I think if you looked intoit, y ou'd probably find that

(12:46):
the truth of it is morecomplicated than just slavery,
but at the same time, the ideathat the Confederates weren't
fighting to defend slavery, thatthe cause of war wasn't to
preserve slavery is wrong.
And all you have to do is golook at the succession
declarations that were made bythe various States and how many

(13:07):
times slavery is mentioned as areason for fighting against the
North.

Kelley Lynch (13:14):
This Southern interpretation of the war also
argued that Confederates weredefeated only because of the
Union's overwhelming advantagein men and resources, that in
losing to this more powerful foe, brave Confederate soldiers had
not surrendered their honor,that all Confederate leaders

(13:34):
were great heroes, butespecially Robert E.
Lee, that Confederate women hadwillingly sacrificed their
husbands, fathers and sons tothe cause.
And that African-Americans werehappy and faithful slaves, loyal
to their masters and to theConfederate cause and woefully

(13:56):
unprepared for theresponsibilities of freedom.
It was a narrative that was boththerapeutic and political that
came to be known as the LostCause.

Peter Findler (14:13):
The cities of the South Charleston, South Carolina
destroyed.
It's in ruins.
Atlanta, after Sherman's Marchto the sea, in which he used
total war to destroy the South,to destroy towns, to destroy
fields, to destroy what littleof railroad lines were in the
South at the time on his way to,to really bring the South to its

(14:36):
knees, to force a capitulationof the war.
So transportation communication,the economy just on top of, of
the sheer scale of death wasjust an incredibly dark time for
southerners to deal with.
You have 4 million plus formerslaves.

(14:57):
Who've now been freed and keepin mind, there's all throughout
the years in which slaveryexisted, there was always the
possibility of a slaverebellion.
There was always the possibilityof violence.
And so now with 4 million plusAfrican-Americans newly free,
there's the possibility ofviolence against their former
owners.

(15:18):
You also have the recognition onthe part of the United States
army that African-Americans arenow privileged to positions of
power.
We have representatives from theSouth that are elected to
Congress.
And so there's this sense thatAfrican-American slaves in the
South prior to the end of thecivil war had always been at the

(15:41):
bottom of the social structure.
And now that understanding ofthe world, the understanding of
the people in the world is nowbeen completely destroyed.
Slaves that were oncesubservient to you are now seen
as equals.
And regardless of what you maythink about slavery, that is an

(16:03):
upsetting thought if you'vegrown up and lived your entire
life with a certain race ofpeople you've been taught as
being beneath you.
And you have to remember thatthis is an entire generation of
men that have passed away fromthe ages of 20 to 40, who are
gone now.
It's sons.

(16:24):
It's cousins.
It's brothers.
It's uncles, fathers.
It's an incredibly sad thing.
It's an incredibly devastatingreality.
Um, and remember that most ofthe fighting was done in the
South.
Most of the battlefields were inthe South.
And so, you know, most of themass graves of human bodies are
in the South.

(16:46):
I think there was an intenseamount of pain.
I think there was a lot of griefabout losing.
That there was really no goingback at this point.
And so what's left, you know,what control do they have over
anything anymore, except for thememory of why it happened?
Why are we experiencing so muchpain?

(17:08):
It can't possibly be becausewe've fought for something that
wasn't worth fighting for.
And so they retreated into thismythological tale.

Kelley Lynch (17:27):
More than 620,000 soldiers North and South lost
their lives in the war.
An equivalent proportion oftoday's population would be six
and a half million people.
Almost one in four of thesoldiers that went to war, never
returned.
It was death and destruction onunimaginable scale.

(17:51):
And for those left behind, itwas made worse knowing that the
bodies of their loved ones layrotting on battlefields or
hastily buried in shallow ormass graves far from home.
Shortly after the war unionburial crews began the process
of recovering the remains oftheir soldiers from Southern

(18:11):
battlefields.
By 1870 300,000 Union soldiershad been reentered in new
national cemeteries.
These efforts deliberatelyignored the Confederate dead.
In their grief, thousands ofmiddle and upper class, white

(18:32):
women, the widows, sisters,mothers, and daughters of those
Confederate soldiers joinedforces.
They created cemeteries, trackeddown and disinterred the dead,
and gave each set of remains aproper burial.
Throughout the South, theseladies Memorial associations

(18:54):
also organized Memorial daycelebration and erected the
first monuments to theConfederate dead.
It was a campaign that took offin the 1890s as members of these
local groups joined a newgeneration of Confederate
daughters informing what becamethe largest and most influential
Confederate heritageassociation, the United

(19:14):
daughters of the Confederacy orUD.
By 1917, the UDC and its almost100,000 members were well on
their way toward transformingtheir forefathers defeat on the
battlefield, into political andcultural victory.
As women, they were consideredapolitical, which meant that

(19:37):
they could promote and spreadthe Lost Cause ideology without
being accused of incitingrebellion.
And because they were focused onmourning, memorializing and
commemorating the dead, theirefforts more easily gained the
kind of state support thathelped them to establish the
lost cause as official publicmemory.
They lobbied for the creation ofstate archives and museums,

(20:00):
historic highways, parks, andnational historic sites.
They named schools, streets andhighways after Confederate
generals, put Confederateportraits and flags into
schools.
And in States across the Northand the South, they erected
hundreds of Confederatemonuments.

Peter Findler (20:22):
Many of the memorials, what they were also
trying to promote was theimportance of messaging about
the history of the war and afight for control over the
memory of the civil war.
What are we going to say aboutwhy we fought.
And in their minds, it was, ifwe let northerners tell the

(20:44):
story of the civil war, thenthey're going to tell it wrong.
And they're going to say that itwas about slavery, and they're
going to say it was aboutemancipation and that we were
fighting to defend slavery.
When in reality we weren't.
And so the memorials go up allover the place.

Kelley Lynch (21:00):
They came in two waves.

Peter Findler (21:03):
One is the statutes that come like in the
immediate years of the war,right?
So it's the widows, it's thefamily members, it's the raise a
couple of dollars to put somegravestones up or a, you know,
an obelisk or something likethat.
And then there's another wavethat happens kind of at the turn
of the 20th century, in thefirst two decades of the 20th

(21:24):
century.
And those are the more nefariousmonuments to me.
Those are the ones that arecoinciding with the film, the
Birth of A Nation, which is likeAmerica's first Hollywood
blockbuster, which is thisincredibly racist film that
actually was based on a bookwritten by a good friend of

(21:46):
Woodrow Wilson's.
So when Birth of A Nationbecomes popular, Woodrow Wilson
screens it in the White House.
And so this is happening at thesame time as the second rise of
the Klu Klux Klan who had gonesort of quiet, a bit dormant
through the 1880s and 1890s.

(22:07):
Because if you think about whatthe KKK is, it's this terrorist
organization that has to operatein secret, because they're doing
these terrible things to people,but when reconstruction ends,
you don't need to really be allthat secret about it anymore.
It's just kind of out in theopen?
Right?
The federal troops have beenremoved from the South, you
know, lynchings are, it's allgood.

(22:29):
So you see these pictures ofpeople and they're not afraid of
being like ID'd.
They're all standing theresmiling, celebrating a lynching
because there was no threat thatany sort of legal punishment
would come from their actions.
So at the turn of the 20thcentury, there's a second rise
of the KKK, which by the way,happens in the North, as well as

(22:52):
the South and Woodrow Wilson isscreening, you know, Birth of A
Nation in the White House, theKKK is rising and these
monuments begin to beconstructed as well.
That are, to me, they are signsthat African Americans need to
stay in their place.

(23:16):
And so there's a, there's asecond wave of these memorials
and monuments that are built atthat time as well.
And during the same time,textbooks are written to ensure
that children in the South learnwhat they would call the q uote
u nquote right history of thecivil war.
And to do that by preventingother narratives from even being

(23:40):
taught in schools f rom evenfrom being held in libraries
throughout the South in thisbroader historical context of a
doubling down on the lost causeand white supremacy,

Kelley Lynch (24:01):
Cynthia, how are ya?

Cindy Sealls (24:03):
Hey, doing good.
I've been searching around andfound some juicy textbook
information for us.
So in your search type in, um,Mildred Rutherford, Measuring
Rod.

Kelley Lynch (24:22):
Okay.

Cindy Sealls (24:23):
All right.
Okay.
You want to look for the onethat's that's under archive.org
and it says a measuring rod totest textbooks and reference
books and click on that link andit takes you right to the
document.

Kelley Lynch (24:38):
Okay.
Got it.
Got it.
Yeah.

Cindy Sealls (24:41):
Yeah.
So it's written by this woman,Mildred Rutherford, who was the
historian general for the Uniteddaughters of the Confederacy.
And it's basically guidelinesfor people who are reviewing
textbooks, books to go intoschools or books that will be

(25:04):
reviewed to go into a library asto what should and should not be
in the books, um, as pertains tothe South and the Civil War.
And if you did not follow theseguidelines and standards, your
book could be marked Unjust tothe South, which meant it

(25:25):
probably wasn't going to getread or, and it definitely
wasn't going to be in theschool.

Kelley Lynch (25:30):
Huh?

Cindy Sealls (25:30):
Look on page five.
And this is the one that sayswarning at the top.
Huh?
Yeah.
Um, so if you read down thatlist, there are things for
instance, look at where it saysreject the book that calls the
Confederate soldier, a trader orrebel or a rebellion.

(25:53):
Hmm.
Reject a book that says theSouth fought to hold her slaves,
huh?
Reject a book that speaks of theslave holder of the South as
cruel and unjust to his slaves.
Wow.
She has.
So some of the headings in thislittle, I guess it's a pamphlet

(26:14):
of some sort.
Um, but one of them sayssecession was not rebellion.
The North was responsible forthe war between the States.
Oh yeah.
That's a new one for me.
Boy.
Never.

Kelley Lynch (26:28):
She's got lots of, um, justifications.
Apparently it looks like forthat.

(26:32):
Oh yeah.
We heard that we've all heardthis one before.
This is an oldie, but a goodie,the war between the States was
not fought to hold the slaves.
Here's another one, slaves werenot ill treated in the South.
That's another oldie, butgoodie.
Uh, and they have a couple ofquotes in here.

(26:55):
Uh, some guy who was travelingthrough the South and came upon
a plantation and he says, quote,"How they sang, how they danced,
how they laughed, how theyshouted, how they bowed and
scraped and complimented sofree.
So happy.

Kelley Lynch (27:11):
Does it make you miss slavery even though you
weren't there?

Cindy Sealls (27:14):
Yeah, man, I, gosh , look at, I missed, Oh my gosh.
Uh, he says he could do, he goeson to say"To me, it is the
dearest institution I have everseen.
And these slaves seem far betteroff than any tenants I have seen
under any tenantry system."

Kelley Lynch (27:34):
Oh my God.
Wow.

Cindy Sealls (27:37):
What was wrong with those people?
Those slaves running away.
You know what it was, it gotgood after they left.
You know how it is when you'reat a show and the show is pretty
bad or the movie's bad.
And you say, this is terrible.
I'm going to get up and leaveand you leave halfway through.
And then the show, or the moviegets better at the end.
Everybody says, Hey, youshould've stayed.
It was awesome.
Same thing.
You know, it got better afterthey left.

Kelley Lynch (27:59):
Oh my God.
Yeah.

Cindy Sealls (28:03):
It is pretty amazing.
Oh man.
And the last one, I guess, youknow, it's a little bit of, what
do they call it?
Grievance?
The South has never had herrightful place in literature.
Of course the measuring rod waspublished before Gone with the
Wind was published.

Kelley Lynch (28:23):
And that is the ultimate lost cause novel.

Cindy Sealls (28:29):
All right.
And then you have to type in theKU Klux, Klan or invisible
empire.

Kelley Lynch (28:38):
Okay.

Cindy Sealls (28:40):
Uh, and it should be by Laura Martin Rose.

Kelley Lynch (28:45):
Okay.
archive.org.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.

Cindy Sealls (28:56):
Did you open it up?
Do you see a little cartooncharacter?
Ku Klux Klan guy.

Kelley Lynch (29:02):
Oh man.
Dude on the horse.

Cindy Sealls (29:04):
The dude on the horse and the horse, even a Ku
Klux Klan horse, who's got asheet on and the eyes are cut
out.
So this book is dedicated by theauthor to the youth of the
Southland.
If you look a little further,it's got, you know, the stamp of
approval from the UDC and I'msure Ms.

(29:25):
Rutherford.
This book was unanimouslyendorsed by the United daughters
of the Confederacy andconvention in new Orleans,
Louisiana, November, 1913, andcooperation pledged to endeavor
to secure its adoption as asupplementary reader in the
schools and to place it in thelibraries of our land.

Kelley Lynch (29:48):
Chapter one, the Ku Klux Klan, reasons for its
existence.
The KU Klux Klan or theinvisible empire as it was also
called, was an organizationformed at the close of the war
between the States during theperiod known as reconstruction
for the purpose of protectingthe homes and women of the

(30:09):
South.

Cindy Sealls (30:11):
The South was under what was known as the
carpet bag regime men withoutprinciple were in power and
Negroes already demoralized bytheir freedom were elevated to
the highest positions.
The black and tan governmentcomposed of Republican
carpetbaggers, homemade Yankeesor scallywags and ignorant and

(30:34):
brutal Negroes now held fullsway.
Union leagues whose members weremainly Negros and the lowest
element of whites were hotbedsfor engendering, racial strife
and Negro equality and plans toplace the black heels on the
white necks.

(30:54):
The Negro considered freedomsynonymous with equality and his
greatest ambition was to marry awhite w ife.

Kelley Lynch (31:03):
Hmm, Hmm is that so.

Cindy Sealls (31:05):
Yeah, I guess they did a survey.
They found out under suchconditions.
There was only one recourse leftto organize a powerful secret
order to accomplish what couldnot be done in the open.
So the Confederate soldiers,members of the Ku Klux Klan and
fully equal to any emergencycame again to the rescue and

(31:29):
delivered the South from a worsethan death.
Wow.
Oh, they said violence was onlyused as a last resort.
Repeat it.
Warnings Kelly.
We're giving to her.
That's true.
That's true.
Because when the black peoplewere trying to register the
vote, they just come, they'vejust come in a night, you know?

(31:49):
And I just looked burn a littlecross on the yard.
Hey, we were here.
Don't do that again.
Don't go try to vote again.
You know?
And then the next time theywould go, I mean, they had to do
something.
It was a last resort.
Well, they got to do.
It says it is true that someNegroes were killed by the KU
Klux.

(32:10):
The Klu Klux would visit a Negrowho had been guilty of
wrongdoing and who had beenrepeatedly warned to conduct
himself in the proper manner.
They would carry him out to givehim a severe whipping as
punishment and in order to scarehim into behaving himself and
the Negro would make an attackon the KU Klux who were then

(32:31):
forced to kill him inself-defense.

Kelley Lynch (32:32):
God, that all sounds so tremendously familiar.

Cindy Sealls (32:40):
Remember this is a children's book, Kelly.
Okay.
Children must have a bedtimestory.
This is the story of the KluKlux Klan.
What did the book for the adultslook like?
And we chopped off each one ofhis fingers in the blood ran...

Kelley Lynch (33:07):
Says here the attractive illustrations and
true history should makeinteresting reading for young
and old.
And for all of those who holdthe glorious deeds of our
Southern heroes in everlastingremembrance.

Cindy Sealls (33:23):
Well, they right about that.
It has been an everlastingremembrance hasn't it.
Now, here we are in 2021 talkingabout the KKK.

Kelley Lynch (33:38):
and the lost cause.

Cindy Sealls (33:39):
and the lost cause.

Kelley Lynch (33:52):
Thanks in large part to the efforts of Ms.
Millie, as she was known and theUnited daughters of the
Confederacy, the happy slaves,evil Northern carpetbaggers and
crusading Knights of the KKKlived on in Southern textbooks
into the 1970s.
Rutherford called for committeesto scrutinize not only history

(34:14):
textbooks, but also Americanliterature and geography to make
sure that they presented theright version of history.
She called out offensivetextbooks by name and the
organization worked to have thembanned.
UDC members were appointed tostate textbook commissions.
They served on local schoolboards and two States,

(34:35):
Mississippi and Texas partneredwith the organization to choose
their textbooks.
As the organization's powerbegan to wane a generation of
segregationist politicians thathad grown up on the lost cause
took up the fight.
In the 1950s, based with schoolintegration, protests, marches,

(34:58):
and progress on voting rights.
They doubled down on the lostcause pushing it even deeper
into the curriculum.
In 1957, for example, forVirginia commissioned a new
series of lost cause textbooks.
By the time these textbooks werephased out of the schools in the
1970s, more than a millionchildren had learned an official

(35:20):
version of state history thatblamed the civil war on Abraham
Lincoln, said that abolitionistslied about slavery in the South,
and showed illustrations ofhappy, captive Africans in
Western dress clothes, shakinghands with their new masters on
slave ships.

(35:46):
I can see people saying, sowhat, why should I care about
some 50 year old textbooks ormyths about history that are
more than 150 years old?
Cindy, Peter, what would youguys say to them?
Cindy?
How about you go first?
You're the African-Americanhere.

Cindy Sealls (36:06):
I mean, I would say that it affects all of us,
but it's not just something thathappened in the past.
It's happening now all aroundus.
Think about it.
70 million children wereenrolled in elementary and
secondary schools in the Southbetween 1889 and 1969.

(36:33):
That's 70 million children wholearned the lost cause version
of history and not just thechildren in the South because
Texas is so large that many ofthe textbook publishers would
market the books made for Texasto other parts of the country.

(36:56):
So those books would trickle outall over the country to other
States and goes into the novels,goes into the movies pretty
soon, it's embedded in the mindsof the people in the South and
in the North.
Today's political leaders,people who hold positions of

(37:18):
power in our country, theyprobably learned the lost cause
version of history.
So how does that affect the waythat they're legislating?
How does that affect the waythey see their constituents?

Kelley Lynch (37:36):
Peter, what do you think, would you say that that
narrative is one of the mainreasons we still have so many
unresolved issues around race inthis country?

Peter Findler (37:48):
I think without the lost cause narrative, we
wouldn't have the racial tensionwe have in our country today.
I think there's no doubt aboutit.
I think that we never dealt withAmerica's original sin of
slavery and that if we hadsomething like South Africa, a
truth and reconciliationcommission that would have

(38:11):
provided some healing and somedialogue and a path forward,
much of the racial tension thatwe see still today wouldn't
exist.
I think there's no doubt aboutit.
No doubt about it.
And I think you have to look atreconstruction to understand how
this came to be.

Kelley Lynch (38:32):
I think it might be really helpful, at least for
me, if you could give us a quickrefresher onn reconstruction.

Peter Findler (38:40):
So when the civil war ended there were competing
visions over what the new nationwould look like, competing
visions over, uh, reconstructionplans that involved, uh, what to
do with former Confederatesoldiers, general sympathizers,
what to do with the Southerneconomy and how to provide a way

(39:01):
forward for civil rights in theSouth.
And unfortunately, but all cometo a screeching halt in 1876
with the election of Rutherford,B Hayes.
Prior to that election, theradical Republicans, which were
a wing of the Republican partyat the time had taken a majority

(39:24):
in the Senate and had taken amajority in the house after the
midterm elections of 1866 andhad instituted military
reconstruction, which involvesseparating the South into
military districts and enforcingthe end of slavery and civil
rights for African-Americans inthe South, through military law.

(39:51):
So fast forward 10 years to theelection of 1876, Samuel Tilden
is the Democrat and Rutherford BHayes is the Republican and the
election resulted in neithercandidate winning a majority of
electoral votes.
And so a special electoralcommission was sent to Florida

(40:13):
and I believe maybe a few otherStates, but to recount the votes
and this special electoralcommission had Republican
members and Democrat members.
And they both recounted thevotes or oversaw that process.
They both brought envelopes withthose recounted votes back to
Washington DC.
And what do you know, theRepublican envelope counted more
Republican votes in Florida andthe democratic envelope counted

(40:36):
more democratic votes inFlorida?
So a compromise was engineeredin which the Democrats would
allow Rutherford B Hayes to bethe president of the United
States if he agreed to onecondition.
And that condition was to removefederal troops from the South.

(41:01):
And as soon as he's inaugurated,federal troops are withdrawn and
white Redeemer governments whocan preserve and enhance white
supremacy in the South areinstalled.
And that ends reconstruction.
And during that time, duringthat 10 year phase of 1866 to
76, blacks were voting.

(41:23):
Blacks were being elected to thehighest levels of power in the
house of representatives.
And in the Senate, theFreedman's Bureau was building
hospitals, building schools.
The 14th amendment was passed,which provides birthright
citizenship, equal protectionunder the law.
The 15th amendment was passed,which guarantees the right to
vote to all men regardless ofcolor.

(41:47):
And in order to be readmittedinto the union, Southern States
had to prove that they wereallowing everyone to vote, that
they were abiding by the termsof the 15th.
And then, and so as soon as thefederal troops are removed, all
of that protection goes rightout the window.

(42:08):
This is the era when poll taxeswere created and when literacy
tests become common.
And when, uh, the Jim Crowsegregation laws are created.
And so there was a need and inthe minds of southerners, a
desire to preserve the old wayof life.
And along with that comes yourview of your own history.

(42:29):
You know, because the way thatyou view your own history is
tied up in your own identity.
It's who you believe you areright now.
Uh, so that the writing of thosetextbooks were absolutely a part
of the failures ofreconstruction and the
unfettered access to power thatthe Redeemer governments of the

(42:52):
South held.
And they called themselves thatthey were the white redeemers.
They were going to redeem theSouth from this terrible thing
that had happened to them.
And that's why the civil rightsmovement is also known as the
secondary construction because ahundred years later
African-Americans in the 1960sare still on the outside looking

(43:17):
in when it comes to politicalpower in this country.
So the poll tax, for example,isn't eliminated until the
middle of the 1960s, which was away of, uh, a way that was

(43:40):
designed to keep blacks out ofthe polls is they, Southern
States would say, okay, if youwant to vote, you have to pay a
tax.
Well, if you were a slave twoweeks ago, you probably don't
have very much money.
You don't have a job literacytests were created, which were
designed to keepAfrican-Americans out of the
polls.
There were these impossibletests that you had to pass to

(44:02):
prove that you were educated.
Um, but they were full ofridiculously worded questions.
And if you got one wrong, youfailed and it was timed.
And so the grandfather clausewas created too, because they
realized poor whites would beunable to pay the tax and then
able to pay the test as well.
So the grandfather clause said,well, if all else fails, if your
grandfather voted, you can vote.

(44:24):
Okay.
There were no, there were noblack people in the South.
His grandfathers could vote.
I mean, it just wasn't 1866.
It just wasn't the case.
And at the end of the day, ifall that fails, there's
terrorism at the polls.
We'll just stand there with,with a gun and a couple of thugs

(44:46):
to, to make sure that if theytry to vote, they know what's
going to happen.
As soon as they come out of thepoll.
I mean, it was just a disaster.
It was an absolute failure.
And that was the time when wecould have made a path forward
and had some kind ofreconciliation.
But because that failed, we havea further entrenchment of racism

(45:09):
that still hasn't been dealtwith.
I look at it like a wound, youknow, if you have a wound that's
unintended, it will fester, itwill become infected.
It will grow, it will begin toaffect other parts of your body.

(45:33):
And I think as a nation, we havea wound that we haven't really
dealt with.
We've tried to ignore it attimes.
We've tried to pretend like it'snot there.
Um, but it keeps making itselfknown.
And I think until we have ahealthy dialogue around it,
we're not going to have anyclosure.

Kelley Lynch (46:00):
So one place, there has been a lot of
conversation lately is aroundthe Confederate monuments.
What do you think we should dowith those?

Peter Findler (46:10):
Those monuments belong in museums because they
are objects that are to bestudied and discussed and
pondered.
They are not to be celebrated.
Okay.
And that's not my line.
They should be remembered, notcelebrated.
I don't know somebody elsesmarter than me, so that, but

(46:31):
that's what they're there for isto be celebrated.
Um, and I think that weshouldn't, I think that the
desire to destroy them right, tolike set them on fire and throw
them in the ocean is the wrongimpulse, because they were
constructed in a specifichistoric moment.
We can learn a lot about thepeople who lived at that time by

(46:51):
studying what they thoughtshould be celebrated, but they
needed to be taken down off oftheir celebratory pedestals for
sure.
And maybe it's a matter of also,you know, you can buy and sell
slaves on the national mall upuntil 1850 on the national mall,

(47:11):
but you're not going to see aplaque or a statue about that.
You know, maybe we need more ofthat if you've been to
Georgetown right there at theDean and DeLuca, that was a
slave market, right on M street,there's an awareness issue.
So I think the teaching, theclassrooms and the, and the, the
history piece is important, butalso public history, museums

(47:34):
memorials.
I think this debate that we'rehaving right now is a really
good thing about theseConfederate statutes, because
it's, it's creating an awarenessof that history that we haven't
really talked too much about.
And that conversation, I thinkin the long run will be really
good for us.

(47:54):
I think it's a little messyright now, but I think in the
long run, it's a good thing.

Cindy Sealls (48:04):
Of course, another prominent symbol of that history
is the Confederate flag.
And that's what kinda got usstarted on all of this in the
first place.
It would be good to go back andtalk about that.

Peter Findler (48:21):
Well, I guess the first of all, the stars, the
stars and bars flag that we seenow, as touted as the
Confederate flag was never theflag of the Confederacy.
It was a Virginia Battle flag.

(48:46):
So I have a friend, and I wentover to his house one day and I
was stunned to see a Confederateflag hanging from his garage.
And I said, what's up with theflag?
You know, like, why are you, whyare you flying the flag?
Um, you know, that Confederateflag represents a nation that

(49:10):
declared war on the UnitedStates and, and lost.
And he's like, well, that's notwhat it means to me.
What his view is is that itrepresents like his family, his
culture, his state, and he usedthe phrase that you often hear.
He said, it's heritage not hate.
But to me, there's a, there's anoversimplified version of

(49:33):
history that he's bought into,which is that, that flag doesn't
actually represent a fightagainst the United States to
defend the state's right, tohave slavery because that flag
was used by soldiers to defendthe Southern way of life.
And the root of that Southernway of life was the enslavement

(49:56):
of thousands and thousands ofpeople.

Cindy Sealls (50:02):
Given what we just talked about, it seems to me
that the lost cause is part ofthe reason that flag still
speaks to so many people, somany years after the civil war.

Peter Findler (50:16):
Yeah.
I think there is a through linethere.
I think that, um, that his viewthat that flag represents
heritage is a byproduct of thelost cause myth because his
belief is that that flagrepresents the heritage of
Southern States.
It represents the culture of theSouth and that that culture has

(50:38):
somehow been divorced fromracism.
Right?
But you can't divorce theculture of 1860s, Virginia from
racism.
You know, the two are bound upin the same story.
Racism was the fundamental pieceof, of the economic and social
life of southerners.
And so to believe that it wasanything else is, is, is a

(51:02):
result of being told.

Kelley Lynch (51:10):
So after all of that, what do you think about
the Confederate flag has doingthis episode changed anything
for you?

Cindy Sealls (51:20):
Yes.
I still don't like it.
It's still a symbol to me of amindset that believed that black
people were not human beings andwe're inferior and we're not
even worth being treated as wellas animals.

(51:43):
That's what it means when I seeit.
But I do understand that lots ofpeople have been taught that
it's a different kind of symbolthat yes, it can be seen as that
symbol, but then it's this othersymbol too.
And they learn that in school.
And when you learn something inschool, you tend to think it's

(52:05):
true.
So, I mean, I'll feel the samewhen I see it, but I'll
understand that those peopledon't realize that they were
taught something that was nottrue.
Hmm.
What about you?

(52:26):
Did you learn anything fromthis?

Kelley Lynch (52:27):
As somebody who has not been the most
historically savvy person on theplanet, having done this episode
and learning more aboutreconstruction and what
happened, I see so many echoes.
I mean, as Mark Twain would havesaid rhymes, I mean, I'm

(52:51):
thinking about Kevin Seefriedwith his flag, walking through
the Capitol.
We have no way, again, ofknowing what that flag meant to
him, but we do know that he wasthere to support the"Stop the
Steal" thing—.

Cindy Sealls (53:09):
—another lost cause narrative.

Kelley Lynch (53:12):
Exactly.
That's exactly what I wasthinking.
I mean, and it's like textbooklost cause you know, it's like
white grievance.
Um, the idea that Trump wasrightful winner...

Cindy Sealls (53:27):
All those fake ballots, it's like the North,
they, the South would have won,but the union had too many more
soldiers and the Trump wouldhave won, but there were too
many more votes for the otherside.

Kelley Lynch (53:42):
And then you had also all the, all the other
forces aligned against him, youknow, the deep state and these
horrible Satan worshipingsocialists Democrats...

Cindy Sealls (53:54):
They're like the carpet baggers in the
scallywags, you know everybodywas against him and against his
people.
And so that's the only reasonwhy they lost—

Kelley Lynch (54:06):
And he was supported by his generals.
You know, I mean, Robert E.
Lee had Jubal Early and Trumphas, you know...

Speaker 3 (54:16):
Giuliani!

Kelley Lynch (54:17):
They almost sound the same.
Thanks for listening.
We hope you found this episodeworth the wait.
We really enjoy taking the timeto delve into all of this, doing

(54:38):
lots of research and someoccasionally more than
occasionally obsessive thinkingto bring you something we hope
you find both entertaining andinformative.
We're really grateful for yourcomments, your reviews, ratings,
and shares.
We want to say a big thank youto Peter Findler for sharing his

(55:00):
time and his insights.
Little does he know I've beenlooking for an excuse to have an
extended conversation with himabout American history.
Ever since my daughter had himas her ninth grade history
teacher, which was almost adecade ago every afternoon, when
she came home, I'd asked her totell me all about what she
learned in her American historyclass.

(55:21):
Needless to say that didn'tyield much information, but it
did convince me that what Ilearned in my high school
history classes so many yearsago was woefully inadequate.
I would imagine I'm not the onlyone who feels they would benefit
greatly from a historicalrefresher course or two in
midlife with a great teacherlike Peter this week.

(55:46):
I hope you'll check out the shownotes for some interesting books
and articles and videos thathave informed our research.
For this episode.
You can find them at ourwebsite, a new normal
podcast.com and be sure to signup for our newsletter while
you're there.
We'll let you know by email whenthe next episode comes out.
Another way to make sure younever miss an episode is to

(56:06):
subscribe to the podcast on yourfavorite platform.
We're not yet sure where thestory gods will take us next,
but we look forward to beingback in your ears with another
episode until then take care.