I was a teenaged Confederate

Let me tell you a story about a young woman in a small Southern town, a history buff who took great pride in her family's heritage.

Ok, screw it, I don't have the patience for this, either. I'm talking about me.

I grew up watching "Gone With the Wind," begging my mom every time we saw our family in Atlanta to drive us to where Tara would've been. I still crush hard on Clark Gable. In my teens, I became a full-fledged Civil War geek, reading everything I could get my hands on about the battles and watching that Ken Burns documentary for fun. I was fascinated by the political blunders that let our country wander off into civil war, and by the human element of it all. When my family went to Petersburg, I made them stand exactly where the U.S. and rebel battle lines were near the Crater - mere yards apart - just so we could all imagine what it was like to experience being so close to your enemy for so long.

While I wasn't ever one of the "but we never whipped OUR slaves" apologists (at least, not that I remember), I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about the white supremacy that necessarily underpinned the Confederacy. That came later.

First there was my humble version of the Civil Wargasm (read Confederates in the Attic if you don't know what that is) through Virginia with my then-BF. In Lee Chapel, I got a little grossed out by the reverence of the whole scene and the crowd of other visitors. Look, General Lee was an extraordinary man, but from everything I know about him he'd be appalled at the idea that people were basically worshipping his grave.

But the last straw for me was a Civil War reenactment in Old Salem, the very last weekend I worked there after graduating college. I was excited about getting to portray a period that was normally outside our interpretive era, and to talk about what life was like for the people here during the war. Basically, on Saturday, we showed the war's early period. Sunday was to show the last year or so of the war, when things were decidely less glamorous. I spent Saturday embroidering; I spent Sunday scraping at cotton scraps to make packing for open wounds.

On Saturday,a group of reenacters portrayed Confederate troops marching through town. On Sunday, the same group played U.S. troops. On Saturday, they paraded, they drummed, it was compelling. On Sunday, the same men in blue marched up Main Street with the same drums. Along with our visitors, we came out of the house to watch.

A woman who was with the reenacters turned to me and said - I'll never forget this as long as I live - "Doesn't it turn your stomach to see that flag?" Well, first of all - first-person interpretation, where you pretend you're really in 18-whatever, has its place when done correctly, disciplined, for educational benefit. But in a private conversation it's just frakking weird. Second... Um, no.

Pretend or not - I can't in a million years imagine a scenario where I look on the flag of the United States and feel anything but pride, and nor do I want to. The fact that some weekend historio-warrior needed to do so is probably what permanently turned me off any kind of romantic view of the Civil War.

Because what I knew of the history of this community was that those U.S. troops that marched into Salem in 1865 read the Emancipation Proclamation on the steps of the "slave church," St. Philips, which still exists today. They raided food, they threatened the head of the Salem Female Academy* (now my alma mater), but they helped end one of the ugliest chapters in America's history.

I remember thinking at the time of those reenacters, with what you're making yourself imagine, with what you're commemorating, you might as well re-create a Nazi review or something.

And that was before we heard about this guy. (Though at least the Civil War actually happened in the same locations where it's being reenacted.) Rich Iott uses the same rationale as the Civil War reenacters: it's important to educate about history. Well, yeah, I'll be the first to tell you that. But this isn't the way to do it.

Example... back to that asterisk a few paragraphs above. When the U.S. troops reached Salem, one of the stories noted in the town records was this: a soldier put a gun to the head of the girls school's head (inspector) - why, I don't know; maybe he was looking for supplies, maybe he was just being a dick - anyway, the inspector shouted out his name, DeSchweinitz. The soldier pulled away. Turns out he had a teacher by the same name back home in Pennsylvania - probably a relative of the Salem DeSchweinitz, given the ties between the two areas. No one bothered the school after that.

My point is that history is about more than who carried what gun or wore which uniform on X battlefield. It's about people, and subtleties of relationships that can't be categorized, or demonized. It's about a lot of people and incidents that will never show up in history books because of the privilege - or lack thereof - of the people involved. And Faulkner was right, it never is really past.

So, in all the ridicule of Rich Iott and his fellow Nazi reenactors, ask yourself how the nostalgic Confederates are any different.

Screw Scarlett and Rhett. How about Mammy and Hoke and those white trash Slatterys?