Confederate revisionism in the American-Statesman.

The Austin American-Statesman today printed a revisionist, pro-Confederate editorial by Republican Jerry Patterson, who happens to be the Texas Land Commissioner. The piece begins with the questionable reasoning that because Lincoln held views that we in the 21st century would consider racist (and he did), the Civil War wasn't about slavery. It doesn't get any better.

If slavery were the sole or even the predominant issue in sparking the Civil War, the following statement by Lincoln is puzzling: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves I would do it."

Yes, and Lincoln also said,

"Without slavery, the rebellion could never have existed. Without slavery, it could not continue."

And,

"If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong."

And then there's that whole Second Inaugural Address, where Lincoln says in no uncertain terms that the war was about slavery. And that tiny matter of Lincoln running on the Republican platform of prohibiting the expansion of slavery, and not winning a single Southern state (or even appearing on the ballots of 9 of them) as a result.

Doesn't Patterson know this stuff?

He continues, clumsily,

In light of the fact that 90 percent of Confederate soldiers owned no slaves, is it logical to assume they would have put their own lives at risk so that slave-owning Southern aristocrats could continue their privileged status?

Ridiculous. This is like saying only 2% of Northern soldiers owned factories. Why, then, would they fight to preserve their industrial economy? Or, only 1% of soldiers in Iraq own oil company stock, so that proves the war isn't about oil. These were mostly 16-18 year old kids. Their state governments that sent them to fight did so to preserve their society, which was economically dependent on the Peculiar Institution.

And then we get to states' rights.

...most Southerners' allegiance was to their sovereign states first and the Union second. They believed states freely joined the Union without coercion and were free to leave the Union at will.

This is just standard "Lost Cause" myth, that has been thoroughly debunked again and again. And why would those states want to leave the Union? To preserve slavery. Finally, Patterson tries to defend the battle flag.

If the Confederate flag represented slavery, then the U.S. flag must represent slavery even more so. Slavery existed for four years under the Stars and Bars and for almost 100 years under the Stars and Stripes. If the few hundred members of racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan want to adopt the Confederate flag as their symbol, over the objections of millions of Southerners, should we believe it has been corrupted for all time?

This is the worst part of Patterson's article. Most embarrassingly, he seems not to know the distinction between the "stars and bars" and the battle flag. Also, the notion that only the Klan has co-opted the battle flag for racist purposes is absurd: state governments in the Jim Crow South started adding the battle flag to their state flags in the 1950s and 1960s, to protest integration. It was the South's own elected governments -- not the Klan -- that tied the battle flag to racism.

Patterson shouldn't be lecturing others about rewriting history when he doesn't possess a basic grasp of it himself.