2021.05.10 怀旧的战争

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INHERITANCE
WHY CONFEDERATE LIES LIVE ON
For some Americans, history isn’t the story of what actually happened; it’s the story they want to believe.

By Clint Smith
JUNE 2021 ISSUE
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This article was published online on May 10, 2021.

Most of the people who come to Blandford Cemetery, in Petersburg, Virginia, come for the windows—masterpieces of Tiffany glass in the cemetery’s deconsecrated church. One morning before the pandemic, I took a tour of the church along with two other visitors and our tour guide, Ken. When my eyes adjusted to the hazy darkness inside, I could see that in each window stood a saint, surrounded by dazzling bursts of blues and greens and violets. Below these explosions of color were words that I couldn’t quite make out. I stepped closer to one of the windows, and the language became clearer. Beneath the saint was an inscription honoring the men “who died for the Confederacy.”


Outside, lawn mowers buzzed as Black men steered them between tombstones draped in Confederate flags. The oldest marked grave at Blandford dates back to 1702; new funerals are held there every week. Within the cemetery’s 150 acres are the bodies of roughly 30,000 Confederate soldiers, one of the largest mass graves of Confederate servicemen in the country.

From 1866 into the 1880s, Ken told us, a group of local women organized the tracking-down and exhuming of those bodies from nearby battlegrounds. “They felt that the southern soldier had not been treated with the same dignity and honor that the northern soldiers had,” and they wanted to do something about it. Most of the bodies were not identifiable; sometimes all that was left was a leg or an arm. Nonetheless, the remains were dug up and brought here, and the ladies refurbished the old church as a memorial to their fallen husbands, sons, and brothers.

Tiffany Studios cut them a deal on the stained glass: $350 apiece instead of the usual price of about $1,700 ($51,000 today). Thirteen southern states donated funds. Ken outlined the aesthetic history of each window in meticulous detail, giving each color and engraving his thorough and intimate attention. But he said almost nothing about why the windows were there—that the soldiers memorialized in stained glass had fought a war to keep my ancestors in chains.

Almost all of the people who come to Blandford Cemetery are white. “It’s not that a Black population doesn’t appreciate the windows,” Ken, who is white, told me. “But sometimes in the context of what it represents, they’re not as comfortable.” He went on: “In most cases we try and fall back on the beauty of the windows, the Tiffany-glass kind of thing.”

But I couldn’t revel in the windows’ beauty without reckoning with what those windows represented. I looked around the church again. How many of the visitors to the cemetery today, I asked Ken, are Confederate sympathizers?

Confederate history is family history, history as eulogy, in which loyalty takes precedence over truth.
“I think there’s a Confederate empathy,” he replied. “People will tell you, ‘My great-great-grandmother, my great-great-grandfather are buried out here.’ So they’ve got long southern roots.”

We left the church, and a breeze slid across my face. Many people go to places like Blandford to see a piece of history, but history is not what is reflected in that glass. A few years ago, I decided to travel around America visiting sites that are grappling—or refusing to grapple—with America’s history of slavery. I went to plantations, prisons, cemeteries, museums, memorials, houses, and historical landmarks. As I traveled, I was moved by the people who have committed their lives to telling the story of slavery in all its fullness and humanity. And I was struck by the many people I met who believe a version of history that rests on well-documented falsehoods.

For so many of them, history isn’t the story of what actually happened; it is just the story they want to believe. It is not a public story we all share, but an intimate one, passed down like an heirloom, that shapes their sense of who they are. Confederate history is family history, history as eulogy, in which loyalty takes precedence over truth. This is especially true at Blandford, where the ancestors aren’t just hovering in the background—they are literally buried underfoot.

We went over to the visitors’ center, where Ken introduced me to his boss, Martha, a kind-looking woman with tortoiseshell glasses.

She said her interest in women’s history had drawn her to Blandford. “This is how they helped to get through their grief,” she told me. “And this is what their result was, this beautiful chapel.” She added, “I think you could take the Civil War aspect totally out of it and enjoy the beauty.”

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I asked her whether Blandford was concerned that, by presenting itself in such a positive light, it might be distorting its connection to a racist and treasonous cause.

She told me that a lot of people ask why the war was fought. “I say, ‘Well, you get five different historians who have written five different books; I’m going to have five different answers.’ It’s a lot of stuff. But I think from the perspective of my ancestors, it was not slavery. My ancestors were not slaveholders. But my great-great-grandfather fought. He had federal troops coming into Norfolk. He said, ‘Nuh-uh, I’ve got to join the army and defend my home state.’ ”


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As we spoke, I looked down at the counter and reached for one of the flyers stacked there. Martha’s gaze followed my hand. Her face turned red and she thrust her hand down to flip the paper over, attempting to cover the rest of the leaflets. “Don’t even look at this. I’m sorry,” she said. “I will tell you, from a personal standpoint, I’m kind of bothered.”

I looked at the flyer again, trying to read between her fingers. It was a handout for a Memorial Day event at Blandford hosted by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Paul C. Gramling Jr., then the commander in chief of the group, would be speaking. It was May 2019, and the event was just a few weeks away.

Illustration: Broken stained-glass window showing Civil War battlefield
Illustration by Paul Spella; images from Library of Congress / Corbis / Getty
“I don’t mind that they come on Memorial Day and put Confederate flags on Confederate graves. That’s okay,” she said. “But as far as I’m concerned, you don’t need a Confederate flag on—” She stumbled over a series of sentences I couldn’t follow. Then she collected herself and took a deep breath. “If you’re just talking about history, it’s great, but these folks are like, ‘The South shall rise again.’ It’s very bothersome.”


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She told me that she’d attended a Sons of Confederate Veterans event once but wouldn’t again. “These folks can’t let things go. I mean, it’s not like they want people enslaved again, but they can’t get over the fact that history is history.”

More people were coming into the visitors’ center, and I didn’t want to keep Ken and Martha from their work. We shook hands, and I made my way out the door. Before getting back in my car, I walked across the street, to another burial ground, this one much smaller. The People’s Memorial Cemetery was founded in 1840 by 28 members of Petersburg’s free Black community. Buried on this land are people who were enslaved; a prominent antislavery writer; Black veterans of the Civil War, World War I, and World War II; and hundreds of other Black residents.

There are far fewer tombstones than at Blandford. There are no flags on the graves. And there are no hourly tours for people to remember the dead. There is history, but also silence.

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After my visit to Blandford, I kept thinking about the way Martha had flipped over the Memorial Day flyer, the way her face had turned red. If she hadn’t responded like that, I don’t know that I would have felt so curious about what she was trying to hide. But my interest had been piqued. I wanted to find out what Martha was so ashamed of.

Founded in 1896, the Sons of Confederate Veterans describes itself as an organization of about 30,000 that aims to preserve “the history and legacy of these heroes, so future generations can understand the motives that animated the Southern Cause.” It is the oldest hereditary organization for men who are descendants of Confederate soldiers. I was wary of going to the celebration alone, so I asked my friend William, who is white, to come with me.

The entrance to the cemetery was marked by a large stone archway with the words our confederate heroes on it. Maybe a couple hundred people were sitting in folding chairs around a large white gazebo. Children played tag among the trees; people hugged and slapped one another on the back. I felt like I was walking in on someone else’s family reunion. Dixie flags bloomed from the soil like milkweeds. There were baseball caps emblazoned with the Confederate battle flag, biker vests ornamented with the seals of seceding states, and lawn chairs bearing the letters UDC, for the United Daughters of the Confederacy. In front of the gazebo were two flags, one Confederate, one American, standing side by side, as if 700,000 people hadn’t been killed in the epic conflagration between them.

More than a few people turned around in their seat and looked with puzzlement, and likely suspicion, at the Black man they had never seen before standing in the back of a Sons of Confederate Veterans crowd.
William and I stood in the back and watched. The event began with an honor guard—a dozen men dressed in Confederate regalia, carrying rifles with long bayonets. Their uniforms were the color of smoke; their caps looked as if they had been bathed in ash. Everyone in the crowd stood up as they marched by. The crowd recited the Pledge of Allegiance, then sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” After a pause came “Dixie,” the unofficial Confederate anthem. The crowd sang along with a boisterous passion: “Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton / Old times there are not forgotten / Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.”

I glanced around as everyone sang in tribute to a fallen ancestral home. A home never meant for me. Speakers came to the podium, each praising the soldiers buried under our feet. “While those who hate seek to remove the memory of these heroes,” one said, “these men paid the ultimate price for freedom, and they deserve to be remembered.”

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More than a few people turned around in their seat and looked with puzzlement, and likely suspicion, at the Black man they had never seen before standing in the back of a Sons of Confederate Veterans crowd. A man to my right took out his phone and began recording me. The stares began to crawl over my skin. I had been taking notes; now I slowly closed my notebook and stuck it under my arm, doing my best to act unfazed. Without moving my head, I scanned the crowd again. The man in front of me had a gun in a holster.

A man in a tan suit and a straw boater approached the podium. His dark-blond hair fell to his shoulders, and a thick mustache and goatee covered his lips. I recognized him as Paul C. Gramling Jr. from the flyer. He began by sharing a story about the origins of Memorial Day. “I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I like it,” he said, before reading aloud the account of a ceremony that took place on April 25, 1866, in Columbus, Mississippi, when a group of women “decorated the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers.” Those soldiers, he continued, had “earned their rightful place to be included as American veterans. We should embrace our heritage as Americans, North and South, Black and white, rich and poor. Our American heritage is the one thing we have in common.”

Gramling’s speech was strikingly similar to those at Memorial Day celebrations after the end of Reconstruction, when orators stressed reconciliation, paying tribute to the sacrifices on both sides of the Civil War without accounting for what the war had actually been fought over.

Gramling then turned his attention to the present-day controversy about Confederate monuments—to the people who are “trying to take away our symbols.” In 2019, according to a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, there were nearly 2,000 Confederate monuments, place names, and other symbols in public spaces across the country. A follow-up report after last summer’s racial-justice protests found that more than 160 of those symbols had been removed or renamed in 2020.

Gramling said that this was the work of “the American ISIS.” He looked delighted as the crowd murmured its affirmation. “They are nothing better than ISIS in the Middle East. They are trying to destroy history they don’t like.”

I thought about friends of mine who have spent years fighting to have Confederate monuments removed. Many of them are teachers committed to showing their students that we don’t have to accept the status quo. Others are parents who don’t want their kids to grow up in a world where enslavers loom on pedestals. And many are veterans of the civil-rights movement who laid their bodies on the line, fighting against what these statues represented. None of them, I thought as I looked at the smile on Gramling’s face, is a terrorist.

Gramling urged all who were present to understand the true meaning of the Confederacy and to “take back the narrative.” When his speech ended, two men in front of William and me started swinging large Confederate flags with unsettling fervor. Another speech was given. Another song was sung. Wreaths were laid. The honor guard then lifted its rifles and fired into the sky three times. The first shot took me by surprise, and my knees buckled. I shut my eyes for the second shot, and again for the third. I felt a tightening of muscles inside my mouth, muscles I hadn’t known were there.

“Idon’t know if it’s true or not, but I like it”—I kept coming back to Gramling’s words. That comment was revealing. Many places in the South claim to be the originator of Memorial Day, and the story is at least as much a matter of interpretation as of fact. According to the historian David Blight, the first Memorial Day ceremony was held in Charleston, South Carolina, in May 1865, when Black workmen, most of them formerly enslaved, buried and commemorated fallen Union soldiers.

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Confederates had converted Charleston’s Washington Race Course and Jockey Club into an outdoor prison for captured Union soldiers. The conditions were so terrible that nearly 260 men died and were buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. After the Confederates retreated, Black men reburied the dead in proper graves and erected an archway bearing the words martyrs of the race course. An enormous parade was held on the track, with 3,000 Black children singing “John Brown’s Body,” the Union marching song. The first Memorial Day, as Blight describes it, received significant press coverage. But it faded from public consciousness after the defeat of Reconstruction.

It was then, in the late 1800s, that the myth of the Lost Cause began to take hold. The myth was an attempt to recast the Confederacy as something predicated on family and heritage rather than what it was: a traitorous effort to extend the bondage of millions of Black people. The myth asserts that the Civil War was fought by honorable men protecting their communities, and not about slavery at all.

Read: Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Confederate cause in the words of its leaders

We know this is a lie, because the people who fought in the Civil War told us so. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world,” Mississippi lawmakers declared during their 1861 secession convention. Slavery was “the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution,” the Confederate vice president, Alexander Stephens, said, adding that the Confederacy was founded on “the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.”

The Lost Cause asks us to ignore this evidence. Besides, it argues, slavery wasn’t even that bad.

“I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I like it”—I kept coming back to those words.
The early 1900s saw a boom in Confederate-monument building. The monuments were meant to reinforce white supremacy in an era when Black communities were being terrorized and Black social and political mobility impeded. They were also intended to teach new generations of white southerners that the cause their ancestors had fought for was just.

That myth tried to rewrite U.S. history, and my visit to Blandford showed how, in so many ways, it had succeeded.

Read: Five books to make you less stupid about the Civil War

After the speeches, I began talking with a man named Jeff, who had a long salt-and-pepper ponytail and wore a denim vest adorned with Confederate badges. He told me that several of his ancestors had fought for the Confederacy. I asked what he thought of the event. “Well,” he said, “I think if anyone never knew the truth, they heard it today.”

He spoke about the importance of the Confederate flag and monuments, contending that they were essential pieces of history. “They need to be there for generations in the future, because they need to know the truth. They can’t learn the truth if you do away with history. You’ll never learn. And once you do away with that type of thing, you become a slave.”

I was startled by his choice of words but couldn’t tell whether it was intentionally provocative or rhetorical coincidence.

“I think everybody should learn the truth,” Jeff said, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

“What is that truth?” I asked.

“Everybody always hears the same things: ‘It’s all about slavery.’ And it wasn’t,” he said. “It was about the fact that each state had the right to govern itself.”

He pointed to a tombstone about 20 yards away, telling me it belonged to a “Black gentleman” named Richard Poplar. Jeff said Poplar was a Confederate officer who was captured by the Union and told he would be freed if he admitted that he’d been forced to fight for the South. But he refused.

Poplar, I would learn, is central to the story many people in Petersburg tell about the war. The commemoration of Poplar seems to have begun in 2003, when the local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans pushed for an annual “Richard Poplar Day.” In 2004, the mayor signed a proclamation establishing the holiday; she called Poplar a “veteran” of the Confederate Army. The tombstone with his name on it was erected at Blandford.

But the reality is that Black men couldn’t serve in the Confederate Army. And an 1886 obituary suggests that Poplar was a cook for the soldiers, not someone engaged in combat.

Some people say that up to 100,000 Black soldiers fought for the Confederate Army, in racially integrated regiments. No evidence supports these claims, as the historian Kevin M. Levin has pointed out, but appropriating the stories of men like Poplar is a way to protect the Confederacy’s legacy. If Black soldiers fought for the South, how could the war have been about slavery? How could it be considered racist now to fly the Dixie flag?

One Confederate general, Patrick Cleburne, actually did float the idea of using enslaved people as soldiers, but he was scoffed at. A senator from Virginia is reported to have asked, “What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?” General Howell Cobb was even more explicit: “If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong.” In a desperate move just weeks before General Robert E. Lee’s surrender, the Confederacy approved legislation that would allow Black people to be used in battle. But by then it was too late.

Read: The myth of the kindly General Lee

I asked Jeff whether he thought slavery had played a role in the start of the Civil War. “Oh, just a very small part. I mean, we can’t deny it was there. We know slave blocks existed.” But only a small number of plantations even had slaves, he said.

It was a remarkable contortion of history, reflecting a century of Lost Cause propaganda.

Two children ran behind me, chasing a ball. Jeff smiled. He told me that he doesn’t call it the “Civil War,” because that distorts the truth. “We call it the ‘War Between the States’ or ‘of Northern Aggression’ against us,” he said. “Southern people don’t call it the Civil War, because they know it was an invasion … If you stayed up north, ain’t nothing would’ve happened.”

When Jeff said “nothing would’ve happened,” I wondered if he had forgotten the millions of Black people who would have remained enslaved, those for whom the status quo would have meant ongoing bondage. Or did he remember but not care?

A mosquito buzzed by Jeff’s ear, and he swatted it away. He told me that 78 of his family members were buried in the cemetery, dating back to 1802, and he had been coming here since he was 4 years old.

“Some nights I just sit there and just watch the deer come out,” he said, pointing to the gazebo, his voice becoming soft. “I just enjoy the feeling. I reminisce … I want to preserve history and save what I can for my granddaughters.

“This is a place of peace,” he said. “The dead don’t bother me. It’s the living that bother me.”

Alittle later, I was speaking with a mother and son about how often they came to events like these when a man in a Confederate uniform, carrying a saber in his left hand, approached us and stood a few feet away. I watched him from the corner of my eye, unsure whether he was trying to intimidate me or join the conversation.

I turned toward him, introducing myself and getting his name: Jason. He had a thick black beard and a mop of hair underneath his gray cap. He told me that “Civil War reenactor” had sounded like a cool job. “I didn’t realize it’s all volunteer,” he said with a laugh.

I asked him what he believed the cause of the Civil War had been. “How do I put this gently?” he said. “People are not as educated as they should be.” They’re taught that “these men were fighting to keep slavery legal, and if that’s what you grow up believing, you’re looking at people like me wearing this uniform: ‘Oh, he’s a racist.’ ” He said he’d done a lot of research and decided the war was much more complicated.

“We used to be able to stand on the monuments on Monument Avenue [in Richmond, Virginia]—those Lee and Jackson monuments. We can’t do it anymore, ’cause it ain’t safe. Someone’s gonna drive by and shoot me. You know, that’s what I’m afraid of.”

I thought that scenario was unlikely; cities have spent millions of dollars on police protection for white nationalists and neo-Nazis, people far more extreme than the Sons of Confederate Veterans. I found it a little ironic that these monuments had been erected in part to instill fear in Black communities, and now Jason was the one who felt scared.

The typical Confederate soldier hadn’t been fighting for slavery, he argued. “The average age was 17 to 22 for a Civil War soldier. Many of them had never even seen a Black man. The rich were the ones who had slaves. They didn’t have to fight. They were draft-exempt. So these men are going to be out here and they’re going to be laying down their lives and fighting and going through the hell of camp life—the lice, the rats, and everything else—just so this rich dude in Richmond, Virginia, or Atlanta, Georgia, or Memphis, Tennessee, can have some slaves? That doesn’t make sense … No man would do that.”

Read: Why “most Confederate soldiers never owned a slave” is misleading

But the historian Joseph T. Glatthaar has challenged that argument. He analyzed the makeup of the unit that would become Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and pointed out that “the vast majority of the volunteers of 1861 had a direct connection to slavery.” Almost half either owned enslaved people or lived with a head of household who did, and many more worked for slaveholders, rented land from them, or had business relationships with them.

Illustration: Broken stained-glass window of Robert E. Lee in uniform
Illustration by Paul Spella; image from Peregrine / Alamy
Many white southerners who did not own enslaved people were deeply committed to preserving the institution. The historian James Oliver Horton wrote about how the press inundated white southerners with warnings that, without slavery, they would be forced to live, work, and inevitably procreate with their free Black neighbors.

The Louisville Daily Courier, for example, warned nonslaveholding white southerners about the slippery slope of abolition: “Do they wish to send their children to schools in which the negro children of the vicinity are taught? Do they wish to give the negro the right to appear in the witness box to testify against them?” The paper threatened that Black men would sleep with white women and “amalgamate together the two races in violation of God’s will.”

These messages worked, Horton’s research found. One southern prisoner of war told a Union soldier standing watch, “You Yanks want us to marry our daughters to niggers”; a Confederate artilleryman from Louisiana said that his army had to fight against even the most difficult odds, because he would “never want to see the day when a negro is put on an equality with a white person.”

The proposition of equality with Black people was one that millions of southern white people were unwilling to accept. The existence of slavery meant that, no matter your socioeconomic status, there were always millions of people beneath you. As the historian Charles Dew put it, “You don’t have to be actively involved in the system to derive at least the psychological benefits of the system.”

Jason and I were finishing our conversation when another man, with a thick gray beard and a balding head, walked up to us. We shook hands as he and Jason greeted each other warmly. “He’s a treasure trove of information,” Jason said. I mentioned that I had seen him talking with my friend William. “I been in his ear good,” the man said, telling me that he’d even given him his phone number. I said that was very generous. He looked at me, his eyes searching. His face shifted. “I told him, if you write about my ancestors”—the air trembled between us—“I want it to be correct. I’m concerned about the truth, not mythology.”

Like blandford cemetery, the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana has a church. It is large and white and flaked with a thin coat of dirt. The door whistles as it opens, and the wooden floor moans under your feet as you step inside. There are no stained-glass windows here.

Instead, scattered throughout the church’s interior—standing next to the pews, sitting on the floor, hiding in the corners—are statues. There are more than two dozen of them, life-size sculptures of children with eyes like small, empty planets. The boys wear shorts or overalls; the girls, simple dresses. When I saw them I was startled because, at first glance, I thought they were real. Each one was so alive despite its inanimateness, intricately detailed from the contours of the lips to the bridge of the nose. They look like they’re listening, or waiting. They are The Children of Whitney, designed for the plantation by the artist Woodrow Nash.

Once one of the most successful sugarcane enterprises in all of Louisiana, the Whitney is surrounded by a constellation of former plantations that host lavish events—bridal parties dancing the night away on land where people were tortured, taking selfies in front of the homes where enslavers lived. Visitors bask in nostalgia, enjoying the antiques and the scenery. But the Whitney is different. It is the only plantation museum in Louisiana with an exclusive focus on enslaved people. The old plantation house still stands—alluring in its decadence—but it’s not there to be admired. The house is a reminder of what slavery built, and the grounds are a reminder of what slavery really meant for the men, women, and children held in its grip.

On a plot of earth tucked into a corner of the property, between a white wooden fence and a redbrick path, are the dark heads of 55 Black men, impaled on silver stakes. Their eyes are shut, their faces peaceful or anguished. They’re ceramic, but so lifelike that the gleam of the sun could as easily be the sheen of blood and sweat. These heads represent the rebels in the largest slave revolt in American history, which took place not far from here in 1811. Within 48 hours, local militia and federal troops had suppressed the uprising. Many rebels were slaughtered, their heads cut off and posted on stakes lining the Mississippi River.

Like Blandford, the Whitney also has a cemetery, of a kind. A small courtyard called the Field of Angels memorializes the 2,200 enslaved children who died in St. John the Baptist Parish from 1823 to 1863. Their names are carved into granite slabs that encircle the space. My tour guide, Yvonne, the site’s director of operations, explained that most had died of malnutrition or disease. Yvonne, who is Black, added that there were stories of some enslaved mothers killing their own babies, rather than sentencing them to a life of slavery.

At the center of the courtyard is a statue of an angel down on one knee. Her chest is bare and a pair of wings juts from her back. Her hair is pulled into thick rows of braids and her head is bent, eyes cast downward at the limp body of the small child in her hands.

My own son was almost 2 at the time, and his baby sister was a couple of weeks from making her way into the world. This child, cradled in the angel’s hands, evoked in me a surge of grief I had not expected. I felt the blood leave my fingers. I had to push out of my head the image of my own child in those hands. I had to remind myself to breathe.

“There’s so many misconceptions about slavery,” Yvonne said. “People don’t really consider the children who were brought over, and the children who were born into this system, and the way to get people to let their guard down when they come here is being confronted with the reality of slavery—and the reality of slavery is child enslavement.”

Before the coronavirus pandemic, the Whitney was getting more than 100,000 visitors a year. I asked Yvonne if they were different from the people who might typically visit a plantation. She looked down at the names of the dead inscribed in stone. “No one is coming to the Whitney thinking they’re only coming to admire the architecture,” she said.

Did the white visitors, I asked her, experience the space differently from the Black visitors? She told me that the most common question she gets from white visitors is “I know slavery was bad … I don’t mean it this way, but … Were there any good slave owners?”


She took a deep breath, her frustration visible. She had the look of someone professionally committed to patience but personally exhausted by the toll it takes.

“I really give a short but nuanced answer to that,” she said. “Regardless of how these individuals fed the people that they owned, regardless of how they clothed them, regardless of if they never laid a hand on them, they were still sanctioning the system … You can’t say, ‘Hey, this person kidnapped your child, but they fed them well. They were a good person.’ How absurd does that sound?”

But so many Americans simply don’t want to hear this, and if they do hear it, they refuse to accept it. After the 2015 massacre of Black churchgoers in Charleston led to renewed questions about the memory and iconography of the Confederacy, Greg Stewart, another member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, told The New York Times, “You’re asking me to agree that my great-grandparent and great-great-grandparents were monsters.”

So much of the story we tell about history is really the story we tell about ourselves. It is the story of our mothers and fathers and their mothers and fathers, as far back as our lineages will take us. They are the stories Jeff tells as he sits watching the deer scamper among the Blandford tombstones at dusk. The stories he wants to tell his granddaughters when he holds their hands as they walk over the land. But just because someone tells you a story doesn’t make that story true.


Would Jeff’s story change, I wonder, if he went to the Whitney? Would his sense of what slavery was, and what his ancestors fought for, survive his coming face-to-face with the Whitney’s murdered rebels and lost children? Would he still be proud?

This article has been adapted from Clint Smith’s new book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America. It appears in the June 2021 print edition with the headline “The War on Nostalgia.”

Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic.



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为什么邦联的谎言还在继续
对一些美国人来说，历史并不是实际发生的故事，而是他们想相信的故事。

作者：克林特-史密斯
2021年6月号
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本文于2021年5月10日在线发表。

大多数来到弗吉尼亚州彼得斯堡的布兰福德公墓的人都是冲着窗户来的--公墓里被废除的教堂里的蒂芙尼玻璃杰作。在大流行之前的一个早晨，我和其他两位游客以及我们的导游肯一起参观了该教堂。当我的眼睛适应了里面朦胧的黑暗时，我可以看到每个窗户里都站着一个圣人，周围是令人眼花缭乱的蓝色、绿色和紫罗兰。在这些爆炸性的色彩下面是一些我不太明白的字。我走近其中一个窗口，语言变得更加清晰。在圣人的下面是一个纪念 "为联邦而死 "的人的铭文。


在外面，割草机嗡嗡作响，黑人在披着南方邦联旗帜的墓碑之间引导它们。布兰福德最古老的有标记的坟墓可以追溯到1702年；每周都有新的葬礼在这里举行。在公墓的150英亩范围内，有大约30,000名邦联士兵的尸体，是全国最大的邦联军人集体坟墓之一。

肯告诉我们，从1866年到19世纪80年代，一群当地妇女组织了对这些尸体的追踪和挖掘工作，这些尸体来自附近的战场。"她们觉得南方士兵没有得到与北方士兵一样的尊严和荣誉，"她们想为此做些什么。大多数尸体都无法辨认；有时只剩下一条腿或一条胳膊。尽管如此，遗体还是被挖了出来，并被带到了这里，女士们翻新了这座旧教堂，作为对她们死去的丈夫、儿子和兄弟的纪念。

蒂芙尼工作室在彩色玻璃上给她们做了一笔交易：每块350美元，而不是通常的1700美元（今天为51000美元）。南方13个州捐赠了资金。肯一丝不苟地概述了每扇窗户的美学历史，对每一种颜色和雕刻都给予了全面而密切的关注。但他几乎没有说过这些窗户为什么会在那里--彩色玻璃中纪念的士兵曾为使我的祖先被锁住而打过一场战争。

几乎所有来到布兰福德公墓的人都是白人。"这并不是说黑人不欣赏这些窗户，"身为白人的肯告诉我。"但有时在它所代表的背景下，他们不那么舒服。" 他继续说。"他继续说："在大多数情况下，我们试图回到窗户的美丽，蒂凡尼玻璃的那种东西。

但我不能陶醉于窗户的美丽而不去考虑这些窗户所代表的东西。我再次环顾教堂。我问肯，今天来墓地的游客中，有多少人是邦联的同情者？

南方邦联的历史是家族史，是作为悼词的历史，其中忠诚度高于真相。
"我认为有一种邦联的同情心，"他回答说。"人们会告诉你，'我的曾曾祖母，我的曾曾祖父都埋在这里'。所以他们有漫长的南方之根。"

我们离开了教堂，一阵微风从我脸上滑过。许多人去像布兰福德这样的地方是为了看一段历史，但历史并不是反映在那块玻璃上的东西。几年前，我决定在美国各地旅行，参观那些正在努力或拒绝努力解决美国奴隶制历史的地方。我去了种植园、监狱、墓地、博物馆、纪念馆、房屋和历史地标。在我旅行的过程中，我被那些致力于用自己的生命来讲述奴隶制的全部内容和人性的人们所感动。我也为我遇到的许多人感到震惊，他们相信的历史版本是建立在有据可查的假象之上的。

对他们中的许多人来说，历史并不是实际发生的故事；它只是他们想相信的故事。这不是一个我们共同的公开故事，而是一个亲密的故事，像传家宝一样流传下来，塑造了他们对自己身份的认识。邦联历史是家族历史，是作为悼词的历史，其中忠诚度优先于真相。这一点在布兰福德尤其真实，在那里，祖先不仅仅是在背景中徘徊--他们确实被埋在脚下。

我们去了游客中心，肯向我介绍了他的老板玛莎，一个戴着玳瑁眼镜的和蔼女人。

她说她对妇女历史的兴趣把她吸引到了布兰福德。"这就是他们帮助度过悲痛的方式，"她告诉我。"而这就是她们的成果，这个美丽的小教堂。" 她补充说："我认为你可以完全不考虑内战方面的问题，而享受它的美丽。"

杂志封面图片
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我问她，布兰德福德是否担心，通过以如此积极的方式展示自己，可能会歪曲它与种族主义和叛国事业的联系。

她告诉我，很多人问为什么要打这场战争。"我说，'好吧，你找五个不同的历史学家，他们写了五本不同的书；我将会有五个不同的答案。这是一个很大的东西。但我认为从我祖先的角度来看，这不是奴隶制。我的祖先不是奴隶主。但我的曾曾祖父打过仗。他有联邦军队进入诺福克。他说，"不，我得加入军队，保卫我的家乡。 "


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我们说话时，我低头看了看柜台，伸手去拿堆在那里的一张传单。玛莎的目光追随着我的手。她的脸变红了，她把手伸下去把纸翻过来，试图盖住其余的传单。"甚至不要看这个。我很抱歉，"她说。"我要告诉你，从个人的角度来看，我有点烦。"

我又看了看那张传单，试图从她的手指间读懂。那是一张由南部退伍军人之子组织在布兰福德举办的纪念日活动的宣传单。当时该组织的总司令小保罗-C-格拉姆林将发表讲话。当时是2019年5月，离这个活动只有几周时间。

插图。显示内战战场的破损彩色玻璃窗
插图：保罗-斯佩拉；图片来自美国国会图书馆/科比斯/盖蒂
"我不介意他们在阵亡将士纪念日来，把邦联的旗帜插在邦联的坟墓上。那是可以的，"她说。"但在我看来，你不需要邦联旗--"她磕磕巴巴地说了一连串我听不懂的句子。然后她振作起来，深吸了一口气。"如果你只是在谈论历史，这很好，但这些人就像'南方将再次崛起'。这是非常令人烦恼的。"


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她告诉我，她曾经参加过一次南部退伍军人之子的活动，但不会再参加。"这些人不能让事情过去。我的意思是，他们并不希望人们再次被奴役，但他们无法接受历史就是历史的事实。"

更多的人走进了游客中心，我不想耽误肯和玛莎的工作。我们握了握手，我就出了门。在回到我的车上之前，我走到街对面，来到另一个墓地，这个墓地要小得多。人民纪念公墓是由彼得堡自由黑人社区的28名成员于1840年建立的。在这片土地上埋葬着曾被奴役的人；一位著名的反奴隶制作家；参加内战、第一次世界大战和第二次世界大战的黑人老兵；以及其他数百名黑人居民。

这里的墓碑比布兰德福德的少得多。坟墓上没有旗帜。也没有每小时一次的旅游，让人们记住死者。这里有历史，但也有寂静。

相关播客。实验
要如何克服美国历史上最古老的造谣运动之一？请听The Experiment的 "Lost Cause"。
收听并订阅。Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts

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在我访问布兰福德之后，我一直在想玛莎翻开纪念日传单的样子，她的脸变得通红。如果她没有那样的反应，我不知道我是否会对她试图隐藏的东西感到如此好奇。但我的兴趣已经被激起了。我想找出玛莎如此羞愧的原因。

邦联老兵之子组织成立于1896年，自称是一个约有30,000人的组织，旨在保护 "这些英雄的历史和遗产，使后代能够了解激发南方事业的动机"。它是最古老的联邦士兵后裔的世袭组织。我对独自去参加庆祝活动很警惕，所以我请我的朋友威廉（他是白人）和我一起去。

墓地的入口处有一个大石拱门，上面写着我们的邦联英雄。也许有几百人坐在折叠椅上，围着一个大型白色凉亭。孩子们在树丛中玩捉迷藏；人们相互拥抱，拍打着对方的背。我觉得我就像走进了别人的家庭团聚。迪克西州的旗帜像乳草一样从土壤中盛开。有印有南部战旗的棒球帽，有装饰着分离州印章的摩托车手背心，还有印有UDC字母的草坪椅，代表南部联盟的女儿们。凉亭前有两面旗帜，一面是邦联的，一面是美国的，并排而立，仿佛70万人并没有在它们之间的史诗般的大火中丧生。

不止几个人在座位上转过身来，不解地看着站在邦联老兵之家人群后面的这个他们从未见过的黑人，很可能还有怀疑。
威廉和我站在后面看着。活动开始时，有一支仪仗队--十几个人穿着邦联的服装，拿着带长刺刀的步枪。他们的制服是烟的颜色；他们的帽子看起来就像沐浴在灰烬中一样。他们走过时，人群中的每个人都站了起来。人们背诵了效忠誓词，然后唱起了 "星条旗"。暂停之后是 "迪克西"，非官方的邦联国歌。人群带着沸腾的激情一起唱了起来。"哦，我希望我是在棉花的土地上/那里的旧时光没有被遗忘/看远处! 看远一点！看远一点！"。看远一点！看远一点！"。迪克西土地"。

当每个人都在向一个倒下的祖先的家园致敬时，我瞥了一眼周围。一个从未为我准备的家园。发言人来到讲台上，每个人都在赞美埋在我们脚下的士兵。"当那些憎恨的人试图消除对这些英雄的记忆时，"一位发言者说，"这些人为了自由付出了最终的代价，他们值得被记住。"

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南北战争》杂志封面
不止几个人在座位上转过身来，不解地看着站在邦联老兵之家人群后面的这个他们从未见过的黑人，很可能还有怀疑。我右边的一个人拿出他的手机，开始记录我。这些目光开始在我的皮肤上爬行。我一直在做记录；现在我慢慢地合上笔记本，把它夹在腋下，尽力表现得不慌不忙。我不动声色地再次扫视人群。我前面的那个人在皮套里放了一把枪。

一个穿着棕褐色西装、戴着草帽的人走到讲台前。他的深金色头发垂到肩上，浓密的胡子和山羊胡子遮住了他的嘴唇。我从传单上认出他是小保罗-C-格拉姆林。他首先分享了一个关于纪念日的起源的故事。他说："我不知道这是不是真的，但我喜欢它。"然后他大声朗读了1866年4月25日在密西西比州哥伦布市举行的一个仪式，当时一群妇女 "装饰了联邦和邦联士兵的坟墓。" 他继续说，这些士兵 "赢得了他们作为美国退伍军人应有的地位。作为美国人，我们应该拥抱我们的遗产，无论是北方还是南方，黑人还是白人，富人还是穷人。我们的美国遗产是我们的一个共同点"。

格拉姆林的讲话与重建结束后纪念日庆祝活动上的讲话惊人地相似，当时演说者强调和解，对内战双方的牺牲表示敬意，但没有说明战争实际上是为了什么而打的。

格兰姆林随后将注意力转向当今关于邦联纪念碑的争议--那些 "试图夺走我们的象征 "的人。2019年，根据南方贫困法律中心的一份报告，全国各地公共场所有近2000个邦联纪念碑、地名和其他符号。在去年夏天的种族公正抗议活动之后的一份后续报告发现，在2020年，这些符号中有160多个已经被移除或重新命名。

格拉姆林说，这是 "美国ISIS "的工作。在人群中喃喃自语的肯定声中，他显得很高兴。"他们比中东的ISIS好不了多少。他们正试图摧毁他们不喜欢的历史。"

我想到了我的一些朋友，他们花了数年时间为拆除南方邦联的纪念碑而奋斗。他们中的许多人是致力于向他们的学生展示我们不必接受现状的教师。另一些人是父母，他们不希望自己的孩子在一个奴役者高高在上的世界里成长。还有许多人是民权运动的老兵，他们把自己的身体放在生产线上，与这些雕像所代表的东西作斗争。看着格拉姆林脸上的笑容，我想，他们中没有一个是恐怖分子。

格拉姆林敦促所有在场的人理解南方联盟的真正含义，并 "夺回叙述"。当他的演讲结束时，威廉和我前面的两个人开始挥舞大的邦联旗帜，其狂热程度令人不安。又发表了一次演讲。又唱了一首歌。献上了花圈。然后，仪仗队举起步枪，向天空开了三枪。第一枪打得我措手不及，我的膝盖一歪。第二枪时我闭上了眼睛，第三枪时又闭上了眼睛。我感觉到我嘴里的肌肉紧缩，我不知道那里有肌肉。

"我不知道这是真的还是假的，但我喜欢"--我一直回想着格拉姆林的话。这句话很有启示意义。南方许多地方都声称自己是阵亡将士纪念日的始作俑者，而这个故事至少是一个解释和事实一样的问题。根据历史学家大卫-布莱特的说法，第一个阵亡将士纪念日仪式于1865年5月在南卡罗来纳州的查尔斯顿举行，当时黑人工人，其中大部分人以前是奴隶，埋葬和纪念阵亡的联邦士兵。

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就在那时，在19世纪末，"失落的事业 "的神话开始流行起来。这个神话试图将南方联盟重塑为以家庭和遗产为前提的东西，而不是它的本质：一个延长数百万黑人的奴役的叛徒。这个神话断言，内战是由可敬的人保护他们的社区而进行的，根本不是关于奴隶制。

阅读。塔-内希西-科茨（Ta-Nehisi Coates）在其领导人的话语中谈及南方联盟的事业

我们知道这是一个谎言，因为参加内战的人是这样告诉我们的。"密西西比州的立法者们在1861年的分离大会上宣称："我们的立场与奴隶制这一世界上最大的物质利益完全一致。奴隶制是 "最近的破裂和目前的革命的直接原因，"联邦副总统亚历山大-斯蒂芬斯说，并补充说，联邦是建立在 "黑人不等于白人的伟大真理 "之上。

失落的事业》要求我们忽视这些证据。此外，它辩称，奴隶制甚至没有那么糟糕。

"我不知道这是不是真的，但我喜欢它"--我一直在回想这些话。
20世纪初，邦联纪念碑的建造出现了热潮。在黑人社区受到恐吓、黑人的社会和政治流动性受到阻碍的时代，这些纪念碑旨在加强白人的优越性。它们也是为了教导新一代的南方白人，他们的祖先为之奋斗的事业是公正的。

这个神话试图改写美国历史，而我对布兰福的访问表明，在许多方面，它是如何成功的。

阅读。五本让你对内战不那么愚蠢的书

演讲结束后，我开始和一个叫杰夫的人交谈，他留着长长的盐碱马尾辫，穿着一件装饰有南方邦联徽章的牛仔背心。他告诉我，他的几个祖先都曾为南方联盟而战。我问他对这一事件有何看法。"嗯，"他说，"我想，如果有人从未了解过真相，他们今天听到了。"

他谈到了邦联旗帜和纪念碑的重要性，认为它们是历史的重要组成部分。"它们需要为未来的几代人存在，因为他们需要了解真相。如果你取消了历史，他们就无法了解真相。你永远也学不到。而一旦你取消了这种类型的东西，你就会成为一个奴隶。"

我被他的用词吓了一跳，但无法判断是故意挑衅还是修辞上的巧合。

"我认为每个人都应该了解真相，"杰夫说，擦了擦额头上的汗水。

"这个真相是什么？" 我问。

"每个人总是听到同样的话：'这都是关于奴隶制的。而事实并非如此，"他说。"那是关于每个州都有权利管理自己的事实。"

他指着20码外的一块墓碑告诉我，这块墓碑属于一位名叫理查德-波普拉的 "黑人绅士"。杰夫说，Poplar是一名被联邦军俘虏的军官，他被告知，如果他承认自己是被迫为南方而战，他将获得自由。但他拒绝了。

我了解到，白杨是彼得堡许多人讲述战争故事的核心。对白杨树的纪念活动似乎始于2003年，当时南部邦联退伍军人之子的地方分会推动了每年的 "理查德-白杨树日"。2004年，市长签署了一份建立该节日的公告；她称白杨为南方军的 "老兵"。印有他名字的墓碑被竖立在布兰福德。

但现实是，黑人男子不能在南方军中服役。而1886年的一份讣告表明，白杨是士兵的厨师，而不是参与战斗的人。

有些人说，有多达10万名黑人士兵在种族融合的军团中为南方军作战。正如历史学家凯文-M-莱文所指出的那样，没有证据支持这些说法，但盗用像白杨这样的人的故事是保护南方联盟遗产的一种方式。如果黑人士兵为南方而战，战争怎么可能是关于奴隶制的？现在悬挂迪克西旗怎么会被认为是种族主义者？

邦联的一位将军帕特里克-克莱本（Patrick Cleburne）实际上确实提出了使用被奴役的人作为士兵的想法，但他遭到了嘲笑。据报道，一位来自弗吉尼亚州的参议员问道："如果不是为了保护我们的财产，我们为什么要打仗？" 豪尔-科布将军说得更清楚。"如果奴隶能成为优秀的士兵，那么我们的整个奴隶制理论就是错误的。" 在罗伯特-E-李将军投降前几周的一次绝望行动中，南方联盟批准了允许在战斗中使用黑人的立法。但那时已经太晚了。

阅读。善良的李将军的神话

我问杰夫，他是否认为奴隶制在内战开始时发挥了作用。"哦，只是一个非常小的部分。我是说，我们不能否认它的存在。我们知道奴隶区是存在的。" 但只有少数种植园甚至有奴隶，他说。

这是对历史的显著歪曲，反映了一个世纪以来的失落事业宣传。

两个孩子在我身后跑着，追着一个球。杰夫笑了。他告诉我，他不称其为 "内战"，因为那扭曲了事实。"我们称它为'州际战争'或针对我们的'北方侵略'，"他说。"南方人不称其为内战，因为他们知道那是一场入侵......如果你留在北方，就不会发生什么事。"

当杰夫说 "什么都不会发生 "时，我想知道他是否忘记了数以百万计的黑人将继续被奴役，对他们来说，现状将意味着持续的奴役。还是他记得但不关心？

一只蚊子在杰夫耳边嗡嗡作响，他拍了拍它。他告诉我，他的78名家庭成员被埋葬在这个墓地里，可以追溯到1802年，他从4岁起就一直来到这里。

"有些晚上我就坐在那里，看着鹿出来，"他指着凉亭说，他的声音变得很轻。"我只是享受这种感觉。我回忆......我想保留历史，为我的孙女们保留我所能保留的东西。

"这是一个和平的地方，"他说。"死者并不困扰我。困扰我的是活人。"

稍后，我与一对母子谈起他们经常来参加这样的活动，这时，一个身穿邦联制服、左手拿着军刀的人走近我们，站在几英尺外。我从眼角看着他，不确定他是想吓唬我还是想加入谈话。

我转身走向他，介绍自己，并得到了他的名字：杰森。他有浓密的黑胡子，灰色帽子下有一撮头发。他告诉我，"内战重演者 "听起来是一个很酷的工作。"我没有意识到这都是自愿的，"他笑着说。

我问他，他认为内战的原因是什么。"他说："我怎么说得轻巧呢？"人们没有受到应有的教育"。他们被教导说，"这些人是为了保持奴隶制的合法性而战斗，如果这就是你长大后所相信的，你就会看着像我这样的人穿着这身制服。'哦，他是个种族主义者。 " 他说他做了很多研究，决定战争要复杂得多。

"我们过去可以站在[弗吉尼亚州里士满]纪念碑大道上的纪念碑上--那些李和杰克逊的纪念碑。我们不能再这样做了，因为这不安全。有人会开车经过并向我开枪。你知道，这就是我所担心的。"

我认为这种情况不太可能发生；各城市已经花费了数百万美元为白人民族主义者和新纳粹分子提供警察保护，这些人比邦联退伍军人之家更加极端。我觉得有点讽刺的是，这些纪念碑的建立部分是为了在黑人社区灌输恐惧，而现在杰森是那个感到恐惧的人。

他争辩说，典型的南方军士兵并不是为奴隶制而战。"内战士兵的平均年龄是17至22岁。他们中的许多人甚至从未见过黑人。有钱人是那些拥有奴隶的人。他们不需要打仗。他们是免征的。因此，这些人将在这里，他们将放下他们的生命和战斗，经历营地生活的地狱--虱子、老鼠和其他一切--只是为了让弗吉尼亚州里士满，或佐治亚州亚特兰大，或田纳西州孟菲斯的这个有钱的家伙能拥有一些奴隶？这说不通......没有人会这么做。"

请看。为什么 "大多数南军士兵从未拥有过奴隶 "是一种误导？

但历史学家约瑟夫-T-格拉塔尔对这种说法提出了质疑。他分析了后来成为李的北弗吉尼亚军的部队构成，并指出，"1861年的绝大多数志愿者与奴隶制有直接联系"。几乎有一半人要么拥有被奴役的人，要么与拥有被奴役的户主生活在一起，还有更多的人为奴隶主工作，向他们租用土地，或者与他们有商业关系。

插图。穿着制服的罗伯特-E-李的彩色玻璃窗被打破了
插图：保罗-斯佩拉；图片来自Peregrine / Alamy
许多不拥有被奴役者的南方白人都深深地致力于维护这一制度。历史学家詹姆斯-奥利弗-霍顿（James Oliver Horton）写道，新闻界如何向南方白人发出警告，说如果没有奴隶制，他们将被迫与自由的黑人邻居一起生活、工作，并不可避免地进行生育。

例如，《路易斯维尔每日信使报》警告不持有奴隶制的南方白人，废除奴隶制是一个滑坡。"他们希望把他们的孩子送到附近的黑人儿童所受教育的学校吗？他们想让黑人有权利出现在证人席上指证他们吗？" 该报威胁说，黑人男子将与白人妇女睡觉，"违反上帝的旨意，将两个种族合并在一起"。

霍顿的研究发现，这些信息起了作用。一名南方战俘对站岗的联邦士兵说："你们美国佬想让我们把女儿嫁给黑鬼"；一名来自路易斯安那州的联邦炮兵说，他的军队即使在最困难的情况下也要战斗，因为他 "永远不希望看到黑人与白人平等的那一天"。

与黑人平等的主张是数百万南方白人不愿接受的。奴隶制的存在意味着，无论你的社会经济地位如何，总有数百万人在你之下。正如历史学家查尔斯-杜所说，"你不必积极参与这个制度，至少可以从这个制度中获得心理上的好处。"

杰森和我正在结束我们的谈话时，另一个留着浓密的灰色胡须和秃头的男人走到我们面前。我们握了握手，他和杰森热情地打着招呼。"他是一个信息的宝库，"杰森说。我提到我曾看到他和我的朋友威廉谈话。"我在他耳边说得很好，"那人说，并告诉我，他甚至给了他的电话号码。我说那是非常慷慨的。他看着我，他的眼睛在寻找。他的脸色变了。"我告诉他，如果你写我的祖先"--我们之间的空气在颤抖，"我希望它是正确的。我关心的是真相，而不是神话。"

和布兰福墓地一样，路易斯安那州的惠特尼种植园也有一座教堂。它又大又白，剥了一层薄薄的土。门打开时发出呼啸声，当你走进去时，木质地板在你脚下发出呻吟。这里没有彩色玻璃窗。

取而代之的是散落在教堂内部的雕像--站在座位旁边的、坐在地板上的、躲在角落里的。这里有二十多座雕像，都是真人大小的儿童雕塑，他们的眼睛像小而空的星球。男孩们穿着短裤或工作服；女孩们则穿着简单的裙子。当我看到他们时，我很吃惊，因为乍一看，我以为他们是真的。尽管没有生命力，但每个人都是那么有活力，从嘴唇的轮廓到鼻梁的细节都很复杂。他们看起来像是在倾听，或者在等待。他们是惠特尼的孩子，由艺术家伍德罗-纳什为种植园设计。

惠特尼曾经是整个路易斯安那州最成功的甘蔗企业之一，它被一群曾经的种植园包围着，这些种植园举办着奢华的活动--在人们被折磨过的土地上跳舞的新娘派对，在奴役者居住的房屋前自拍的照片。游客们沉浸在怀旧的氛围中，享受着古董和风景。但惠特尼博物馆是不同的。它是路易斯安那州唯一一个完全以被奴役者为主题的种植园博物馆。老种植园的房子仍然矗立在那里--它的颓废很诱人--但它不是用来欣赏的。这座房子提醒人们奴隶制是如何建立的，而这片土地则提醒人们奴隶制对于被其控制的男人、女人和儿童来说意味着什么。

在这片土地的一个角落里，在白色的木栅栏和红砖路之间，有55个黑人的黑头，被钉在银桩上。他们的眼睛紧闭着，脸上或平静或痛苦。他们是陶瓷的，但如此栩栩如生，以至于太阳的光芒很容易成为血液和汗水的光泽。这些头颅代表了美国历史上最大的奴隶起义中的反叛者，这次起义发生在离这里不远的1811年。在48小时内，当地民兵和联邦军队镇压了这次起义。许多叛军被屠杀，他们的头被砍下，贴在密西西比河两岸的木桩上。

与布兰福德一样，惠特尼也有一个公墓，是一种公墓。一个被称为 "天使之田 "的小院子纪念着1823年至1863年死在圣约翰浸礼会教区的2200名被奴役的儿童。他们的名字被刻在花岗岩石板上，环绕着这个空间。我的导游伊冯娜是该遗址的运营主管，她解释说，大多数人都死于营养不良或疾病。伊冯娜是黑人，她补充说，有一些被奴役的母亲杀死了自己的婴儿，而不是让他们过着奴役的生活的故事。

在院子的中心，有一个单膝跪地的天使雕像。她的胸部是裸露的，一对翅膀从她的背部伸出来。她的头发被拉成厚厚的一排辫子，她的头弯曲着，眼睛朝下看着她手中瘫软的小孩。

当时我的儿子快两岁了，他的小妹妹还有几个星期就要出生了。这个被天使抱在手中的孩子在我心中激起了一股我没有想到的悲痛。我感到血液离开了我的手指。我不得不把我自己的孩子在那双手中的形象从我的脑海中赶出去。我不得不提醒自己去呼吸。

"对奴隶制有很多误解，"伊冯娜说。"人们没有真正考虑那些被带过来的孩子，以及那些出生在这个系统中的孩子，当人们来到这里时，让他们放松警惕的方法就是面对奴隶制的现实--奴隶制的现实就是儿童被奴役。"

在冠状病毒大流行之前，惠特尼博物馆每年有超过10万名游客。我问伊冯娜，他们是否与通常可能参观种植园的人不同。她低头看了看刻在石头上的死者的名字。她说："没有人来到惠特尼，认为他们只是来欣赏建筑的，"她说。

我问她，白人游客对这个空间的体验是否与黑人游客不同？她告诉我，她从白人参观者那里得到的最常见的问题是："我知道奴隶制很糟糕......我不是这个意思，但是......有什么好的奴隶主吗？"


她深吸了一口气，她的挫败感显而易见。她的表情就像一个在专业上致力于忍耐，但在个人上却为其付出的代价所累的人。

"我真的给了一个简短但细微的答案，"她说。"无论这些人如何喂养他们所拥有的人，无论他们如何给他们穿衣服，无论他们是否从未对他们动过手，他们仍然在制裁这个系统......你不能说，'嘿，这个人绑架了你的孩子，但是他们把他们喂得很好。他们是个好人'。这听起来多么荒唐？"

但这么多美国人根本不想听这些，如果他们听到了，他们也拒绝接受。2015年查尔斯顿的黑人教徒被屠杀后，再次引发了对南方邦联的记忆和形象的质疑，南方邦联退伍军人之子的另一位成员格雷格-斯图尔特告诉《纽约时报》："你在要求我同意，我的曾祖父母和曾祖父母是怪物。"

我们讲述的许多历史故事实际上是我们讲述自己的故事。它是我们的母亲和父亲以及他们的母亲和父亲的故事，就像我们的血统一样。当杰夫坐在黄昏时分看着鹿在布兰福德的墓碑间窜来窜去时，他讲述的就是这些故事。当他牵着孙女的手走过这片土地时，他想告诉她们的故事。但是，仅仅因为有人告诉你一个故事，并不意味着这个故事是真的。


我想知道，如果杰夫去了惠特尼大学，他的故事会不会改变？他对奴隶制的认识，以及他的祖先为之奋斗的东西，在他面对惠特尼的被谋杀的叛军和失去的孩子时，会不会幸存下来？他还会感到自豪吗？

本文改编自克林特-史密斯的新书《话语是如何传递的》。对整个美国奴隶制历史的清算。它出现在2021年6月的印刷版上，标题是 "怀旧的战争"。

克林特-史密斯是《大西洋》杂志的一名工作人员。