Talbot Boys Isn't Honoring The Confederacy

Estimated read time: 10 minutes

Maryland's comptroller, Peter Franchot, once again inserted himself in the Talbot Boys debate.  He lives on the other side of The Bridge, yet he insists on sticking his nose in Talbot's business.  On his FaceBook page, he posted a history revisionist's version of what the Talbot Boys is all about.  Below is my reply.

"Anyone who has followed my career and my social media accounts knows that Talbot County is one of my favorite places in all of Maryland," wrote Peter Franchot in an opening sentence on his FaceBook page.  He then launched into an ill-informed tirade against the Talbot Boys monument in Easton, MD.

Maybe the handful of family and friends who have followed his career know Talbot County is one of his favorite places.  The rest of us know he's an outsider who has lived a lackluster political career.  For born and raised Eastern Shore residents, we scratch our heads wondering why outsiders from the other side of The Bridge always feel a need to stick their noses where it doesn't belong.

First things first.  The Talbot Boys is not a monument honoring the Confederacy.  It is a monument honoring some 84 Confederate veterans from Talbot County.

The last sentence is worth repeating.  The Monument honors Confederate veterans who fought in the Civil War.

The monument does not honor the Confederacy.  It does not honor slavery.  It does not honor White supremacy.

The monument honors veterans.

Thomas Jefferson, when he penned the words, "All men are created equal," predicted the outcome of the juxtaposition of those words with the institution of slavery: "But as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go."  In later speeches and writings, he expressed his concern that a bloody conflict would most likely address the conflict between his words and slavery.

Jefferson's warning came true almost a hundred years later in the form of the Civil War.  By 1860, the year the Civil War began, two-thirds of Blacks living in Talbot County were free.  As farmers switched from labor intensive crops like tobacco to less labor intensive crops like cereal and grains, their need for slave labor diminished.  As Maryland's neighbors to the North entered the Industrial Revolution over half a century earlier and phased out slave labor because they had no need for it, Maryland (and Talbot County) were phasing out slave labor prior to the Civil War because they had no need for it.  In fact, only 19 families in 1860 owned slaves in Talbot County.

The above sounds cold and harsh, and matter-of-fact.  If we want to deal with race issues today, we have to look at the cold hard facts.  The North didn't phase out slavery because it was the right thing to do.  They phased slave labor out because they didn't need it any more.

Despite what history revisionists claim, slavery wasn't a North/South issue.  It was a national institution since the founding of the country.  Domestic slave trade was big business.  

Above all that the U.S. domestic slave trade, worth perhaps $440m in total and moving more enslaved people (about 750,000) since 1790 than the middle passage of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was crucial in the westward movement of investment together with the development of new financial products including securities, bonds, and mortgages. These historians have revealed how deeply committed many nineteenth century banks, especially in New York, were to the continued expansion of slavery.  -American Civil War Museum

Fast forward a hundred sixty years and look at the effect this national attitude towards slavery and Black people has had on today's minorities.  COVID-19 has shown a clear cut and disproportionate negative effect on Blacks and minorities.  Blacks and other minorities are over-represented in the low end of the payroll scale, yet those low paying jobs are deemed "essential" by our politicians.  While higher paid, White employees had the luxury of working from the safety of their home, lower paid Blacks had to drive buses to get other Blacks to the food processing plants, grocery stores, and distribution centers.  Their efforts - by default - and their unwilling exposure to the pandemic has cost them in financial hardship, negative health effects, and death.  A lot of us, who had the luxury of working from home, miss that point.  The disproportionate representation of Blacks in jobs on the lower end of the pay scale has its roots in the Yankee's racist attitudes since the founding of this country...long before the start of the Civil War.

So there were no good guys riding in on stallions from the North to save the slaves from the dumb hillbillies plodding along on donkeys in the South.  History revisionists, like Peter Franchot, try hard to paint that picture, but the picture is a lie.

In 1860 Talbot County, two-thirds of Blacks were free...or as free as what the Yankees would codify under the Jim Crow laws after the Civil War.  Funny how Peter Franchot linked the rise of Civil War monuments to the Jim Crow era as if the Jim Crow era were the fault of the Confederacy.

Nope, doesn't work that way.  Jim Crow has roots in the North.  Did you ever wonder why most major cities, including all the ones north of the Mason-Dixon Line, have historically Black neighborhoods?  Even after the US Supreme Court shot down a lot of the housing practices of cities in the early 1900s, the de facto mode of operation was keep the Whites separated.

Yes, Peter Franchot, take a look at Baltimore and its suburbs, including where you live.  Now you know why you most likely don't have a Black neighbor.  And now you know why the average Black family most likely doesn't have a White neighbor.  It was by design over a hundred years ago...and that design wasn't made by the Confederacy.

Want to know why Blacks and minorities are over represented in the low skill, low paying jobs?   When the Civil War ended and most freed slaves fled north to the "promised land," they found the only jobs they could fill were janitors, maids, bell hops, and shoe shine boys.  The new plantation owners in the factories dare not trust Blacks and minorities in positions of responsibility or authority in their factories.

By the reasoning of all the history revisionists, including Peter Franchot, we not only need to get rid of Confederate monuments, but also Yankee monuments.  We need to remove the portraits of Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, and McKinley from the White House presidential portraits.  They all were instrumental in the "separate but equal" laws of the Jim Crow era.

Ridiculous, isn't it?

Yes, and just as ridiculous as removing a monument honoring veterans from a war predicted almost a hundred years earlier by Thomas Jefferson, himself a slave owner.

In 1860, the average soldier on both sides held a fourth grade education.  In Talbot County, they were smart at farming the land and fishing The Bay, but were oblivious to state and national politics.  They usually found out who their president was six months after the election.  Most didn't care about events outside of their community, didn't care about what was happening on the other side of The Bay, and didn't care about the folks in DC, as long as the DC folks kept their noses out of their communities.

At the start of the Civil War, President Lincoln took a lot of actions that could be considered unconstitutional, at least in the eyes of the watermen and farmers with a fourth grade education.  President Lincoln threw Maryland's governor, Baltimore's mayor, and many Confederate sympathizers in jail, where they sat out the war without a trial or being charged with a crime.  He sent Union troops to seize the armory in Easton.  Halfway through the Civil War, the Yankee Congress passed a draft with quotas to fill the Union ranks. It's not too difficult to see how the typical Talbot County citizen with a fourth grade education would view these events as an attack on his community.

Community.  Now there's a word that has lost a lot of meaning over the last hundred and sixty years.  Back in 1860, though, community meant something, no, everything.  Community was family.  Community was one's life.  And community was defined as an area that didn't spread much past the nearest town where one lived.  County, yeah, kind of.  State, not really.  Nation, Hell no.

When President Lincoln took actions to secure Maryland as at least a neutral state so that DC wouldn't be surrounded by the Confederacy at the git go of the Civil War, some of Talbot County's residents chose to fight for the Confederacy instead of waiting to be drafted into the Union Army. They fought to protect their communities from the tyrants in DC, tyrants who directly threatened their communities and their livelihoods.

They weren't fighting to preserve slavery.  Most couldn't care less about slavery.  They did care about their community and attacks by outsiders.  Instead of waiting to be drafted by the Union, the 84 soldiers inscribed on the Talbot Boys monument chose to fight on the side they felt had their community's best interest at heart.

The Confederate soldier played an important role in shaping and defining this country as did the Yankee soldier.  Thomas Jefferson predicted the bloody conflict, the conflict was fought, but the conflict wasn't won.  It's still going on. 

Note George Floyd was killed in Minnesota, a Union state since 1858 and as far from the South as one can get.  White vigilantes in Philadelphia, home of our first Congress and in a Union state, patrol the streets with bats in hand ready to kick some Black protestor asses.  A New Jersey counter protest held a re-enactment of George Floyd's death, another Union state mocking racial inequality.

Ok, Peter Franchot, what is the national drive to tear down anything and everything Confederate again?

Oh yeah, it takes the pressure off everyone else when we can point our fingers to a scapegoat for today's police brutality and racial tensions.

I looked at your career, Peter Franchot.  I didn't see any effort on your part to end racial inequality that has plagued this country since its founding.  Should we remove you from history since you did nothing but abet the racial inequality prevalent throughout your tenure?

Could someone explain how dumping trash
here solves racial inequality across the nation?

Enough of the tear-down-everything-Confederate sideshow.  The sideshow is a diversionary tactic.  It throws the blame for today's racial disparities and institutionalized racism on the dead.  The dead can't solve anything. 

Our veterans should never shoulder the blame for atrocities committed by the politicians of their time.  Nor should they shoulder the blame in a rewrite of history in modern times.  We don't have living Confederate soldiers to ask why they fought the war they did.  But, unlike you Peter Franchot, I am a veteran and feel comfortable stating, unequivocally, the Talbot Boys didn't fight for the Confederacy to preserve slavery nor assert White Supremacy.

Let's give a scenario of a history rewrite yet to come.  A hundred and sixty years from now, a strong Asian-American community demands justice and reparations for the Vietnam War.  They claim soldiers invaded their country during the American War (as the Vietnamese call it) to expand American Imperialism and reap the economic benefits of controlling southeast Asia.  Americans raped and pillaged their villages, left American children behind when they fled the country like cowards, and abandoned the boat people (including their own children) when the Vietnamese tried to flee the devastation the Americans left behind.

Here's your challenge, Peter Franchot.  Ask any Vietnam veteran if they fought the War on behalf of American aggression and economic gain and ask them if they raped and pillaged the Vietnamese villages.  Bet you won't get an answer.  Bet you'll get your ass kicked, instead.

If you could be alive a hundred and sixty years from now, how would you feel when you see trash littering the base of the Vietnam War Memorial in protest of how Asian-Americans are being treated?  Would you rejoice in the desecration of a veteran's memorial in the same vein you rejoice in the desecration of a Confederate veteran's memorial?

We don't get the luxury of judging why a veteran fought a war and deciding whether or not we should honor the veteran of that era.  We honor the veteran and condemn the politicians and business leaders who put the veteran in a difficult position.

So, yes, the destroy-everything-Confederate craze is a diversion to take the blame off each and every one of us who doesn't fight racial discrimination and injustice at every turn.  Racial injustice and racial inequality has existed since America was discovered and continues to exist today, from the Mexican border to the Canadian border and from sea to shining sea...and, sadly, from state capitol to state capitol and from Congress to the White House.

Destroying everything Confederate doesn't end the racial injustice and inequality. Tackling the problems of today instead of looking for scapegoats in the past will go much further in our fight for racial equality and justice than tearing down monuments to our veterans will ever achieve.


TL;DR folks
Another round of Confederate cleansing sweeps the nation.  Our comptroller decided his duty is to stick his nose in Talbot County's business and help cleanse the county of the Confederacy.  Keep in mind, Peter Franchot isn't even a native Marylander much less a resident of Talbot County.  He hails from Massachusetts.  Yes, that state.  The state, whose 1861 Army Regiment opened fire on Baltimoreans as they passed through on their way to DC to fight the Confederacy during the Civil War.  Perhaps he has some score to settle for one of his distant ancestors in that regiment that made history in the 1861 Baltimore Riots.

Or he's simply a busy body sticking his nose where it doesn't belong.  He's had a long political career where he could've made a difference in racial injustice, but chose not to.  So now he wants to defame veterans.

Flashback 51 years ago for your listening pleasure:

Posted by A Drunk Redneck