Though I’m not proud of it, this Southern boy grew up venerating the last vestiges of the Grand Lost Cause of the Confederacy. He revered Robert E. Lee as a gallant, dashing warrior pushed into a cause he did not firmly believe in, but embraced nonetheless. Everyone loves a winner, especially one who shields himself and his historical reputation in virtue. Now, attitudes are changing, and changing fast. Even so, I remember a recent trip to Eastern Pennsylvania where I noticed a Confederate battle flag proudly waving from a house.
Yesterday, Lee’s statue representing the state of Virginia was quietly removed from Statuary Hall inside the U.S. Capitol. It represents a significant reevaluation of a man who has been lumped in with all who supported a short-lived nation built on the backs of enslaved labor and justified by the principle of white supremacy.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi summarized the action in this statement:
“The Congress will continue our work to rid the Capitol of homages to hate, as we fight to end the scourge of racism in our country,” she said. “There is no room for celebrating the bigotry of the Confederacy in the Capitol or any other place of honor in our country.”
Many of the far-right Confederate flag waving partisans still supporting Donald Trump would be shocked to recognize that there was no such thing as a solid South. My paternal Great-Great Grandfather, William Anderson Camp, was a Southern Unionist. He took up arms against the rest of his native state of Alabama and served as William T. Sherman’s eyes and ears in his infamous March from Atlanta to the Sea, which broke the back of the Confederacy and secured the city of Savannah on this exact date, 156 years ago.
Yes, there were people, even in the Deep South who stayed loyal to the Northern cause. My ancestor was not alone. Written in 2004, historian Margaret M. Storey’s book Loyalty and Loss. Alabama’s Unionists in the Civil War and Reconstruction shares the story of the brave men and women who resisted against all odds, risking their livelihoods and indeed their very lives to aid the Union cause. Most of them hailed from the northern sections of the state. Most were too poor to own slaves of their own, but Storey is quick to note that some Southern Unionists did own other human beings. It is also worth noting that most Confederate soldiers did not own slaves, either.
Alabama, along with the rest of the Confederacy, supplanted its fighting force with a military draft. Some decided to resist, hiding in caves and safe houses. My favorite story is that of an enterprising man marked to be drafted into the Confederate army. He decided to rub some sort of plant or bramble thorn across his entire body that closely resembled an outbreak of smallpox. The Confederate recruiters who arrived on the scene to press him into service were scared away, afraid they’d catch whatever it was he had.
William Anderson Camp was a farrier, a blacksmith, and as such, he was considered a skilled craftsman and thus exempt from the Confederate draft. This might explain why he didn’t formally enlist in the Union army until August 1864. There he served with distinction, being promoted to Corporal two months after Appomattox Court House, in June 1865. It is a little known fact that the actual fighting of the Civil War did not cease with Lee’s surrender to Grant. It continued in North Alabama among so-called, never-say-die, guerilla bands of Confederates who refused to admit the inevitable. My ancestor was mustered out in December of that year and resumed his life, which included four wives (three who died in childbirth) and several children by various women.
My Great-Great Grandfather contracted an ailment referred to in documentation as “piles” (today we would say hemorrhoids) and drew a Union pension for the rest of his life. But, and this is a big but, I sincerely doubt that he felt that blacks were the equals of whites. Family lore paints him as little more than a mercenary, fighting for the highest bidder, certainly not an abolitionist. Perhaps he did have sympathy for African-Americans, but the example of his life proves that this country cannot deceive itself into believing that the North was supremely good and the South was supremely bad.
If matters were so cut and dry, racism, institutionalized or otherwise, would have been easily eradicated. Instead, we’ve made progress, but have a long way to go. This progressive Democrat, echoing President-Elect Joe Biden, is eternally grateful to the African-American community for its voting impact and unwavering support. Back in the day, enslaved people and free blacks in Alabama helped to undermine a racist system in similar ways. My Christmas wish this year is to win control of the Senate, and I recognize that, yet again, should we win, we will owe a serious debt of gratitude to black and brown people.