BY ROBIN MIMNA
In my experience as a historian whose research has focused on slavery and forced labor in Volusia County, I’ve heard the hit parade of bigoted rationalizations for avoiding the topics:
“Well, that’s just how things were back then.”
“Many plantation owners were good to their slaves.”
“Releasing all the slaves at once would have threatened the structure of the Southern economy.”
And the one that always brings out the vein in my forehead: “You know, there were more Irish than Black slaves.”
I generally try to remind the speakers that slavery and prison camps were a big part of Volusia County’s history.
Sometimes we also hear the argument about “showing respect” to the citizens of localities where these atrocities occurred, by burying the more sordid facts of their communities’ history.
I’ve seen this sour the camaraderie of teams of local history buffs.
Where do these myths about happy slaves and benevolent masters come from? And why do so many people buy into them?
It’s not an accident.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, former Confederate Gen. Jubal Early became a major promoter of a propaganda campaign known as “The Lost Cause of the Confederacy.”
This pseudohistorical mythology casts the Civil War, its aftermath and Confederate soldiers in glamorized valor and downplays slavery as a cause of the war. It also paints Robert E. Lee as a super awesome guy who hated slavery and only tried to unify the country (Lee owned approximately 10 slaves). It also recasts Reconstruction as a period of Black domination and self-indulgence, an idea that helped lay the foundation for Jim Crow laws.
Early used the Southern Historical Society, of which he was a co-founder, as a vehicle for this deeply false narrative. As part of the campaign, Southern writers like Edward A. Pollard, author of The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates, were called, according to author and Civil War historian Richard Starnes, “to reconstruct the southern historic memory.”
A Pinellas County school textbook published in 1935, The History of Florida by Margaret Fairlie, states: “Many of the negroes loved their old masters and stayed on the old plantations, but others wandered away. Some thought that because they were free they would never need to work any more, so they dressed up in their best clothes and went on picnics and had a good time.”
After Reconstruction, two periods in the 20th century were particularly active for The Lost Cause: 1910-1930, and the 1950s and ’60s. Those two cycles coincide with the 50th and 100th anniversaries, respectively, of the Civil War. During those times, more than 700 Confederate monuments were erected in the United States. Most of them were paid for by United Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
It’s also not a coincidence that these attempts to control interpretation of the war ramped up during periods of Black advancement like the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights movement.
I wish I could say The Lost Cause was slowly fading away, but in my experience as a historian whose work often spotlights slavery and forced labor, it’s not.
And, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ measures to drastically limit race and cultural education are a stern reminder of the challenges we have always faced in Florida to preserve a complete, unbiased account of the past.
With educators effectively silenced, the responsibility now falls to museums and historical societies to record our history for the next generation, unburdened by political influence and racist propaganda.
— Mimna has served as a volunteer for the Enterprise Museum for over five years.
