Sons of Confederate Veterans

This is a transcript of an earlier broadcast of this episode; there may be slight changes in wording in the rebroadcast.

ED: If you want to think about wars that were personal, nothing like the American Civil War. It took place right here on our own land. It involved virtually everybody, killed massive numbers of people over issues of fundamental difference. And people simply could not put it out of their minds for generations. So decade after decade, people carried the grudge on both sides against their countrymen on the other side.

I want to play for you guys an interview I did recently with a man who continues to live with this struggle. He served for more than 20 years in the US Navy during Vietnam and the first Persian Gulf War. But he continues to identify very strongly with a very different group of veterans.

FRANK EARNEST: I am Frank Earnest, representing the Virginia Division Sons of Confederate Veterans. I am the immediate past commander of the Virginia Division and currently serving as International Chief of Heritage Defense.

ED: Perhaps you could give us a brief overview of the history of the organization.

FRANK EARNEST: Well, with the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars and other organizations, to put it simply, the Korean veterans take care of the older World War II vets. The Vietnam vets take care of the Korean vets as they get older. That was not going to happen with the Confederate veterans, because there would never be any more Confederate veterans generated. So in 1896, the veterans said, well, who will take care of us as we get older? And they formed the organization I’m currently associated with, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which actually started out with the genuine sons of veterans.

ED: And what’s your personal connection?

FRANK EARNEST: Well, a great-great-grandfather who rode with the Ninth Virginia Calvary, great-great-uncle who rode with Stuart in the First Virginia Calvary. I came in under a great-great-uncle, who served with General Pickett in the 18th Virginia Infantry.

ED: It sounds like you have your bona fides lined up there.

FRANK EARNEST: Right. If you find out you have a Confederate ancestor, I guarantee you have at least a dozen.

ED: So let me ask you this. Literally, it’s something I’ve never understood is how you are a veteran of the United States Navy, I understand, 20 years, correct?

FRANK EARNEST: Yes, sir.

ED: I’ve never really understood how somebody could be loyal to the United States and loyal to a nation that tried to leave the United States. Perhaps you can explain that to me. I’ve never understood how people have a Confederate flag and an American flag on their car, since the whole point of the Confederacy was to leave the United States.

FRANK EARNEST: We thought it was a pretty good idea in 1776, when we left England. And that turned out to be a good idea.

ED: But you don’t see Union Jacks on our cars though.

FRANK EARNEST: Well, that’s because we’re the side that separated from England. But you do see Union Jacks in Williamsburg. And you don’t see anybody get upset about that fact, because they’re celebrating the history of what happened. The Confederate flag, we’re the only section of the country that has a regional flag.

I can go anywhere as a Virginian in the South, and when I see that flag, it simply ties me to my brothers in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama. I know that my ancestors, like theirs, fought alongside each other to stand up for American freedoms and rights as expressed in the Constitution of the United States of America.

ED: What do you say though to black people about that?

FRANK EARNEST: Again, with these misconceptions about it, I say read and study and found out the truth. Not only did conscripted slaves fight on both sides because they were conscripted.

ED: No, sir. This is not true. And we won’t argue about this on the air. But we can’t go down this road of all these black people fighting for the Confederacy.

FRANK EARNEST: So no black people ever fought for the Confederacy?

ED: Any numbers of those are trivial compared to the 4 million people held in slavery for 200 years and the 180,000 who fought for the Union. So it’s a trivial thing. Some I’m just going to ask the question again.

FRANK EARNEST: That’s fine. And I’m not here to defend slavery.

ED: I understand. And I’m not trying to put you in a corner on that. I’m just going to ask you the question again and ask, what do you say to black people when they see the Confederate flag, and they think it means something else?

FRANK EARNEST: Well, the Confederate flag has been misused. We don’t deny that. We can also show you films that exist of 40,000 clansman marching down Pennsylvania Avenue with the US flag. So that’s certainly been misused. We don’t approve of these radical racist organizations using our emblem, which we consider a sacred emblem.

The flag as used historically by the Confederate States of America was a grouping of people fighting for a number of reasons and for their rights as they saw them under the Constitution of America. And it’s not against anybody, black, white, or otherwise.

ED: What do you think that the heritage of the Confederacy has to tell us about the situation of veterans today coming back from the war in Iraq?

FRANK EARNEST: Well, as Sons of Confederate Veterans, our job is to honor the veterans, just like any other veterans’ organization. A lot of that comes down to as simply as taking care of monuments and marking graves. And as I’ve told city councils, you’re marking an American soldier’s grave. We’re not getting into what he did or didn’t fight for or what his government did or didn’t believe. They are veterans.

We’re talking about veterans today. These are American veterans, who, like any other American in any other war from the Revolutionary War on, believed strongly enough to fight and die for their beliefs. And we feel that they should be honored. As a matter of fact, I’m really happy to see, as a Vietnam-era Veteran, that although there are quite a few people not satisfied with the war we’re currently in and how it’s being conducted, at least they’re not taking it out on the troops, like they did in Vietnam.

ED: And it does seem, certainly compared to Vietnam, that people, whatever their thoughts about the war, do have a different attitude about the veterans and where blame lies, if there’s blame to be assigned.

FRANK EARNEST: Yes, yes.

ED: I appreciate you giving us this time for the interview. And thanks very much.

FRANK EARNEST: Thank you, sir.

ED: Frank Earnest is the Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia for the Sons of Confederate Veterans. I spoke with him in 2008.

PETER: Well, Ed, that was an interesting interview. And I would wander as a son of the North how you do feel about this invocation of heritage to justify honoring people who made war against their country.

ED: Well, I’ve looked at this for decades now and spoken to SVC groups. And I find that they want to talk about the constitutionality of secession. And it strikes me that there is some truth to what they say about that. It was not clear in the Constitution itself that states could not leave.

PETER: No, I would say that’s right, Ed.

ED: Right? So I guess what struck me most in our interview here was the way that he framed this in terms of veterans, that putting one’s life at risk is really what is honored. And they say that the cause is not really salient, because the cause is defined by the politicians. The cause is defined by the state.

PETER: Right. But I think one of the things we’re celebrating when we celebrate Confederates is their patriotism, that is they’re saying it wasn’t that we were just cannon fodder and we had no choice. And you’ve got to respect our existential dilemma. No. They’re saying we need respect because we made the choice to defend our country.

ED: They’re trying to have it both ways.

PETER: Yes, that’s what I’m saying.

ED: And that’s the reason it goes back to the very first thing I said. What do they think that they are fighting for then? It’s the very same values that are inscribed in the American Constitution. So there’s a lot of sophistry involved in all this I think it’s fair to say. And it would be better if we had some quick language to excise all this. But apparently, we can’t find it, because we keep going over and over and over this ground and not being able to persuade each other of even what we’re talking about.

BRIAN: We’re going to take a short break now. When we get back, we’ll consider the role that mothers and wives have played in the lives of returning vets.

PETER: We’ll be back in a minute.