The following piece was contributed under the theme “For Love of Place” by Frank Ethridge, editor and writer at Electric City Life - http://electriccitylife.com/
It Has No Place in My Home
by Frank Etheridge
My first move after becoming man of the house was to take down “Hope of the Confederacy.”
Daddy bought the painting — a limited-edition print, rather, of a work the National Archives commissioned artist G. Harvey to do in 1991 — when he and mama dropped me off to start school at Washington and Lee.
Yes, that Lee. The university is named after him in tribute to the general’s tenure as its president for five years after the Civil War. After the conflict left broken. Not bitter, though. Reflective. While school president, he put philosophy to paper, world-weary musings that included the wish that humanity would “render unto oblivion” anything and everything that honors war.
No matter, the shops and tourist stops filled the tiny college town of Lexington, Virginia, with anything and everything that connected it to Lee. Hotels, storefronts, road maps, and highway signs all put Lee front and center for all to see. And spend. Daddy ventured into an art gallery while bumming around town, “Hope of Confederacy” caught his eye, and he bought it. I don’t think he bought it so much to celebrate the Confederacy — though it depicts Gen. Robert E. Lee plus three men on horseback, one hoisting up the Rebel flag, the focal point painted all vibrant in red and blue. I think to celebrate his son attending (and him being able to pay for) a school far beyond his reach in high school.
Daddy was a product of his time and place, as we all are. Growing up in harshly segregated Columbus, Georgia, the Lost Cause was mythology everyone he knew believed in. The War between the States (nay, the War of Yankee Aggression) was not about slavery. It was about states rights. Lee and fellow Southern leaders were revered legends put (literally, in statues all over the South() on a pedestal.
Though a bit diluted from daddy’s attitudes, I, too, loved the South and took pride in being Southern. I ignored its Original Sing as I embraced the white-washed version of its history.
So maybe that’s why I knew enough about Civil War history as a curious kid growing up in Columbus, Georgia to know that G. Harvey’s painting captured a scene from the Battle of the Wilderness, fought in Virginia in 1863. I learned enough about Civil War history as a history major at W&L to know that the Civil War was about slavery and the states-rights defense was a load of crap.
I began to challenge daddy on the issue.
“It might have been about states rights,” I’d counter his canned answer for what caused the war, “but there was ONE right the states wanted so bad that they started a war they lost. And lost badly, killing off a couple of generations, and ruining its economy, with fields and factories left in smoldering ashes.”
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Daddy wasn’t racist. Far from it, actually, taking strong stances in his lofty position in community as a bank president. It’s insane that it wasn’t until the 1990’s that these changes took place (in a town that held segregated high-school proms until five years ago) but daddy fought (against entrenched opposition) to integrate Columbus Country Club as well as his bank’s board of directors. In a newspaper interview late in his career, he said that “racism is the number-one thing holding this town back.”
Most important to me, however, is what he taught me. He led by example in showing respect for all. He explained how all those attitudes of power and prejudice seemingly all around me were flat-out wrong. And he told me to never, under no circumstances, absolutely not, use the N-word, also seemingly all around me.
So I don’t think he’d have a problem with me taking down “Hope of the Confederacy” from its prominent place in the center hall of our home. I did it two months after he died. I did it amid the cultural reckoning in our country over a cruel, oppressive past based on race. I did it before George Floyd. But I did after Dylan Roof killed all those worshippers in a Charleston church. I did after Charlottesville, when all the dark shadows surrounding an ancient, absurd White Power mentality in America were exposed in the light.
About that same time, my cousin Ben, who shares my mama-side’s South Alabama and North Mississippi roots, tossed out a Robert E. Lee portrait. A Marine and war veteran, he said it offended him by honoring traitors that took up arms against the United States. A lot of us Southerners seemed to have such time-warped things tributes in our homes, often hand-me-downs in families like mine, on daddy’s side seven-generations deep in Georgia.
I took down “Hope of the Confederacy” and slid it, facing the wall, into an ignored closet upstairs. I struggled over what to do with it next. No way I’d give it to friend or family, afraid they might actually hang it up in a place of pride. Framed all nice, pretty and in perfect condition with a ‘Certificate of Authenticity’ slapped on the back, it had to be worth good money.
So I decided it sell it.
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I started my search for a buyer with the local Chapter of Confederate Veterans.
I had interviewed a couple of them for an article about how the aforementioned cultural reckoning was impacting historical sites and attractions in Columbus. We’re the city on the Chattahoochee that’s home to the last Civil War battle and the first Memorial Day (for Confederate dead, mind you). The past has long played an important part in how we present ourselves to the outside world.
I scored a pretty good scoop with this story. Charles and Duane from the Benning Camp SCV chapter met me at Linwood Cemetery — final resting place for about 100 Confederate soldiers and site of that first Confederate Memorial Day in 1874.
In 1994, City Council granted the SCV group to erect two flagpoles and fly on each Confederate battle flag (the incendiary stars-and-bars one), with more allowed on holidays such as Confederate Memorial Day. The county’s 6-4 vote was along racial lines and came as result of a compromise that gave permission to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to come and speak in Columbus.
Right after Charlottesville, those Confederate flags came down and reported stolen by the SCV. “They weren’t stolen,” Charles told me, delivering the scoop that their chapter president rook them down in the dead of night immediately after Charlottesville. He told everyone — the chapter, the cops, the press — they were stolen. Likely an act vandalism. A lie.
After kicking out their disgraced ex-president, the SCV filled their flagpoles’ void with two Georgia flags. The state’s banner is basically the official Confederate flag — the forgotten, more politically correct version — adopted in 2003. This came after outrage over the stars-and-bars (added in the 1957 as the Civil Rights Movement heated up) removal from the state flag, a political move that cost the Democratic governor his job, replaced by the first Republican since Reconstruction.
About a year after my article was posted, Charles emailed with the news that the city cut down their flagpoles. I no longer cared to cover the controversy, even if the city cut through steel to make sure nothing Confederate flew over Columbus following America’s cultural reckoning. I never responded to Charles.
Maybe that’s why he didn’t answer my emails and phone calls asking for help finding some local to buy “Hope of the Confederacy.”
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Next, I contacted my buddy Mike Bunn, a former colleague at the Columbus Museum, where he was the respected, nay revered, Curator of History. Mike’s now director of an Alabama historical state park and accomplished author, with about a dozen books published to high praise.
His keen intellect and professional, straight-forward approach to history provide a compelling counter-balance to good-ole-boy roots. I learned a lot our workplace chats. I don’t know but I can guess that any sway Mike’s Southern heritage has toward Confederate nostalgia is stopped dead in its tracks by his academic assertions on the true arc of history.
After all, he put together a booklet to accompany an exhibit commemorating the Civil War’s 150th anniversary. A collection of documents, diatribes, and dissertations, the booklet proved fascinating to the history nerd in me as I consumed it carefully in my duty as the museum’s editor.
One particular piece flashed a revelatory light bulb above my head as bright as any of the earth-shattering classes I took in college. It was by a retired Columbus State history professor and a critique of Lost Cause mythology.
Its expert research revealed how slavery was front and center of every Southern state’s declaration of succession. How all that Old Times Not Forgotten revery was the byproduct of generation left behind in squalor after the Confederacy. Broke, removed from positions of power by the carpetbaggers they so resented, and hooked on morphine, these lost souls conjured up idyllic images of life — for appreciative slave and benign overseers alike — on Old South plantations. Images of bloodthirsty, murderous hordes invading from the north, hellbent on destroying their way of life. Images of the men that fought against them. Men who were Southern gentlemen. Chivalrous, Christian men like Gen. Robert E. Lee.
All this flooded my flow of thoughts as I composed my Facebook message to Mike. I didn’t want to delve deep on the subject of why I was selling it, just saying that it belonged to my dad and could be worth a pretty penny. He responded quick with links to historical auction houses, with the caveat that he doesn’t venture into that world much anymore.
As for life as a family man and glorified park ranger at a historical site down by Mobile Bay? “Never been better.”
Mike’s link led me to Heritage Auctions. Based in Texas and boasting sales of prized Civil War firearms, even Heritage’s website was stuffy. Still, I filled out the consignment request form, providing info about the artwork already mentioned plus some details: In the frame, it measured 24 inches wide x 36 inches high. It weighed 11 lbs.
An email full of formal correspondence style — Mr. this, thank you, sir that, Best Regards this — befitting the rarefied air of peddlers of old-ass guns — soon followed. Heritage Auctions, I was informed, had a minimum $5,000 consignment requirement. His research arrived at an estimate between $500 and $750, Dave Coleman wrote, and he advised going to Morphy’s Auctions or Cowan’s Auctions. Or try eBay.
Neither auction house was so kind as to respond in the genteel manner of Heritage Auction. l But I did get a response after posting “Confederate Art” on eBay.
I never bought a thing off eBay, much less sold something. Hopefully that justifies how giddy I got when my Gmail dinged with an offer almost immediately after putting “Hope of the Confederacy” up for sale with a $500 starting bid.
‘Wow!’ I thought, ‘this dude is offering $900! Must be really rare, really worth something.’
The email form angsegun124 read: “Am ready to pay right now. Buying this item for a cousin as a GIFT in OHIO and I will add money for the postage fee once you accept my offer. Text my number (774) 315-4924 so I can pay via PayPal”
I hit him up quick, introducing myself with, ‘This is Frank Etheridge. You want to buy ‘Hope of the Confederacy’?”
“Thanks for texting me,” angsegun124 replied and then asked, “How are you?
“Fine. How are you?”
“Fine. Thank you for asking. I am ready to pay now. I want you to add $500 gift card to my shipment.”
That’s when reality began to break through the pancake batter in my eager brain. I didn’t reply right off and go a series of ? texts, like an enraged ex-girlfriend or junkie friend would do.
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My last effort was to contact a college friend who went crazy our junior year and became obsessed with the Confederacy.
Before that departure from our shared reality and into schizophrenia, Dow was as cool as they come. Too smart, too sensitive for this cruel world, this indifferent universe, is my guess. And not that he wasn’t cool after. Just hard to hang out with, impossible to relate to. Stuff like keeping cups of his piss in the freezer, covering his room windows with tin foil, and taping a couple dozen flashlights on his windshield so he could make the long, curvy drive to our house nested in Blue Ridge Mountains without using his headlights.
The obsession with the Confederacy manifested itself in rants on Rebel rapscallions and respecting our proud heritage. Off the wall, unhinged, and annoyingly offensive to my increasing awareness of how things really were then and really are now? Yes. Dangerously deranged? No.
Dow dropped out of school and moved to Savannah. I didn’t hear a thing of him until a few years after I graduated. Mama clipped an article out of the Columbus newspaper and mailed it to me with a Post-it note stuck at the top.
The article was about the dedication ceremony in Savannah of a slave memorial inscribed with a poem by Maya Angelou that depicts horrors along “the middle passage” route of ships filled with chained Africans followed to the New World. Months of controversy preceded the ceremony. Un-Reconstructed Savannah citizens, the article explained, claimed Angelou’s words were too harsh, her depictions too stark, to have a place under their glorious live oaks and tidy town squares.
The writer went on to capture the scene of the slave memorial’s dedication on a steamy summer morning. It noted that, despite the rancor leading up to the event, the ceremony was a tranquil affair. Except for the antics of one man. A man dressed in head-to-toe in the grey Confederate soldier’s uniform, Rebel flag resting on his shoulder and flapping in the breeze behind him as he marched in around the square. “The South will rise again!” the man shouted as he stepped in strict cadence.
“Is this your friend Dow?” Mama asked in perfect cursive on the Post-it note.
“Yes, I am still networked with a lot of Confederate history groups in the South,” Dow replied to the query I sent after finding him on Instagram.
I told him about the framed, limited-edition print. About how daddy bought it in Lexington back when we started school. How I’m now selling it and looking for buyers.
Dow said he’d put some feelers out to connections he has as editor of this historical database. He sent a link to it, which I followed to the online home of the Society of Independent Southern Historians.
I scrolled, eyes wide in shock, at the Society’s list of recommended reading, broken down into sections including:
Concerning Slavery and Emancipation
Concerning Atrocities
Concerning Confederate Apologia
The Atrocities listed North Across the River: A Civil War Trail of Tears, a book that takes fault with Gen. William T. Sherman for burning Roswell, Georgia to the ground. It argued the town was once sovereign Cherokee land with that its mills supported the displaced Native Americans exiled to Oklahoma. Slavery and Emancipation concern centered around It Wasn’t About Slavery: Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War, published in 2020.
I clicked to learn about this Great Lie but quickly closed the tab in disgust.
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I paused, breathing deep, in reflection over what I just saw. I searched for some sort of conclusion on my own conflicted Confederate history.
We believe what we’re taught, I came to realize. The lesson on the Lost Cause taught too many for too long a lie. As lies do, it was used to cover up a toxic blend of guilt and shame.
I don’t know if I can always determine the difference between the truth and a lie. But I do know one thing: “Hope of the Confederacy” has no place in my home.