Governor NeverAgain's Office (NEW OFFICE) (user search)

This is a bill (of which it's meaning and ideals) I have grappled with, and be sure to understand I do not take this decision lightly.

First off, I want to discuss the history underlying my decision, and then move on to what this bill will do. But, first first, for those who are seeing this bill for the first time, this bill authorizes and mandates that our regional government shall fly the Flag of the Confederacy, the flag from March 4, 1861 which was changed to the one shown more prominently at the end of the war after May 1, 1863, dubbed: "The Stainless Banner or The Bloodstained Banner".

The Civil War, as is commonly termed today, was effectively started by the secession of South Carolina on December 20th, 1860, and you are more than welcome to read their declaration here. After that, and the firing on the South Carolinian military base, Fort Sumter, ignited the secession of many other Southern States, and all are welcome and encouraged to hear their declarations, here.

I will note that if you do read these declarations, you will see a sparkling clear rationale for these governments' decisions - the issue of, a word none other can describe, slavery.

Now, getting back to the flag. There are two historical arguments that I have seen, and addressed,
but they are part of the rationale for this bill. The first being that whereas the Southern States fought on the issue of states' rights, and the perception of an overbearing government, and not slavery, this flag is to represent a fight of state's rights and not of bigotry and hate.

To respond to this, I will go back to the declarations of the states as shown above. I see and entirely agree that Confederate states did claim the right to secede as a justification, but no state claimed to be seceding for that right. In fact, many Confederates opposed states’ rights — that is, the right of Northern states not to support slavery, and to abolish it.

On Dec. 24, 1860, delegates at South Carolina’s secession convention adopted a “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.” It noted “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery” and protested that Northern states had failed to “fulfill their constitutional obligations” by interfering with the return of fugitive slaves to bondage. Slavery, and states’ rights only as it relates to slavery, birthed the Civil War.

South Carolina was further upset that New York no longer allowed “slavery transit.” In the past, if Charleston gentry wanted to spend August in the Hamptons, they could bring their cook along. No longer — and South Carolina’s delegates were outraged. In addition, they objected that New England states let black men vote and tolerated abolitionist societies. According to South Carolina, states should not have the right to let their citizens assemble and speak freely when what they said threatened slavery. Now, this ideal, is not representative of all Southern States, but it does underscore the paradox that is assumed with stating that the Confederacy was based around the basics of liberty. But a state without speech, has no liberty.

But again, we saw other seceding states echoing South Carolina. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world,” proclaimed Mississippi in its own secession declaration, passed Jan. 9, 1861. “Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of the commerce of the earth. . . . A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”

The South’s opposition to states’ rights prior to the lead-up to the Civil War is not surprising. Until the Civil War, Southern presidents and lawmakers had dominated the federal government. The people in power in (Nyman) D.C. would always oppose states’ rights. Doing so preserves their own and this ideal that they seceded on.

Now, to a different argument, and one that is so crucial to the basis around this bill and the ideal of the modern preservation of the Confederacy. It being: that the vast majority of white Southerners didn’t own slaves, so they wouldn’t secede for slavery, but rather for different reasons. Therefore the flag only represents their lives lost, in that their secession was obviously for non-slavery reasons.

Indeed, most white Southern families had no slaves. Less than half of white Mississippi households owned one or more slaves, for example, and that proportion was smaller still in whiter states such as Virginia and Tennessee. It is also true that, in areas with few slaves, most white Southerners did not support secession. West Virginia broke away from Virginia to stay with the Union (and became a state of under the Union flag in 1863), and Confederate troops had to occupy parts of eastern Tennessee and northern Alabama to hold them in line.

However, two ideological factors caused most Southern whites, including those who were not slave-owners, to defend slavery. First, Americans are wondrous optimists, looking to the upper class and expecting to join it someday. In 1860, many subsistence farmers aspired to become large slave-owners. So poor white non-slave-owning Southerners supported slavery then, just as many low-income people today, support the massive tax cutting for the wealthy.

Second and more important, belief in white supremacy provided a rationale for slavery. As the French political theorist Montesquieu observed wryly in 1748: “It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures [enslaved Africans] to be men; because allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not Christians.” Given this belief, most white Southerners — and many Northerners, too — could not envision life in black-majority states such as South Carolina and Mississippi unless blacks were in chains. Georgia Supreme Court Justice Henry Benning, trying to persuade the Virginia Legislature to leave the Union, predicted race war if slavery was not protected. “The consequence will be that our men will be all exterminated or expelled to wander as vagabonds over a hostile earth, and as for our women, their fate will be too horrible to contemplate even in fancy.” Thus, secession would maintain not only slavery but the prevailing ideology of white supremacy as well.

So, here is where we stand, this bill before my desk is one that will raise a flag that is representative of the theft and decimation of millions of African-Americans' basic human rights and dignity based solely on the color of their skin. My friends, I do recognize the sacrifice given by hundreds of thousands of men and women, grey or blue, black or white, in this fight. But with this flag, we do not honor their sacrifice, or our great region with all it's people. We will be honoring the hate and bigotry that forced these individuals to give their lives rather than honoring their sacrifice.

And so, I, on this night, do veto this piece of legislation. I have no doubts that this decision will be attempted to be overturned by our legislature, but I ask these legislators to remember that the cause that these men and women died for was not a flag. Their deaths were not for the same reason, nor the same fight. They were all unique, and I ask that we attempt to remember them, each and everyone, by protecting, preserving, and advancing our history, beyond the abhorrence of those who governed here before us. I encourage these men and wom(an) of our legislature to change this bill to protect the cemeteries of all those fallen, build and renew the historical culture of our region through new museums, and to birth a new generation of the South.

While I am saddened that this flag may still rise in contrast to the values of millions of our citizens, it must be our job to rise against the hate and bigotry that this flag stands for, until we can all be free of it. I promise you, that whether this bill fails or succeeds against this veto, I will fight for that.

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