Dixie

April 2, 2023

New Orleans

Here in the Big Easy, once the largest and richest city of the Confederacy, I’m fascinated by the human capacity for self deception.

I’m here for two weeks to enjoy the gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, and beignets, not to mention the various flavors of jazz, the streetcars, the Mississippi River, and the beautiful old architecture of the French Quarter where I’m staying.

Thankfully I have not experienced the high crime rate that New Orleans is known for, but every day I see the rampant homelessness of destitute people sleeping on the sidewalks.

Folks here have been friendly, but apparently that easygoing way of life also includes tolerance for corrupt politicians and police officers.

I had a long talk the other day with Alan, a 58 year old black musician and street artist, and when I asked him about race relations in this town, he said that there has been a lot of progress since the Jim Crow segregation era ended around the time of his birth in 1964. He confirmed what I have observed so far – that the races coexist harmoniously, at least on the surface. But he said that there still remain some tensions between blacks and whites.

Now, with the large influx of people from Latin America and Asia, that old black/white dichotomy is being diluted here in New Orleans, as elsewhere.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time in the Civil War Museum, a beautiful red sandstone and brick structure built in 1891 as a social hall for Confederate veterans to share their war stories. It’s located next to Lee Circle, a traffic roundabout in the center of which is a 60 foot marble column that until recently was topped by a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Now the column is capped by nothing, the statue being one of four Confederate monuments removed by Mayor Mitch Landrieu in 2017 and stored in a city warehouse.

When I asked a museum employee about the statue removal, she lamented the loss, saying that it was an attempt to erase Southern history and heritage.

The elegant, spacious, wood-paneled interior has an excellent collection of Confederate uniforms, battle flags, swords, guns, portraits, and display cases explaining in a neutral fashion the history and causes of the War Between the States. One of the displays features two 10-dollar bills from before the Civil War, printed by a New Orleans bank in both English and French. Since the French word for 10 is dix, some local sailors referred to those 10 dollar bills as dixies, and ever since the Deep South has been referred to as the land of Dixie.

As is so often the case in combat, young men in the North and South eagerly signed up to fight, thinking that the conflict would be brief and bring them excitement and glory. Little did they realize the immense suffering and death they would encounter.

Most Americans, myself included, see the Civil War as a battle over the preservation or abolition of slavery. But only six percent of Southerners owned slaves, and most Southern soldiers fought not to perpetuate slavery, but to defend their hometowns and states from what they perceived as an invasion from another country.

But the Southern economy was built upon the labor of enslaved people, and what the Confederate soldiers and people failed to fully appreciate is that their way of life and their personal freedoms depended upon depriving other human beings of their freedom.

Abraham Lincoln hated slavery, but in order to avoid hostilities and preserve the union, he offered to let the South keep its slaves as long as it agreed to not expand slavery into the American West. But Southern politicians feared (correctly, I believe) that if non-slave states were added in the West, the South would be outvoted in Congress and it would eventually be forced to give up the slave-based backbone of its agricultural economy. So the Southern states left the union and attacked the federal Fort Sumter in South Carolina, triggering what was probably an inevitable clash and exciting the passions of pro and anti slavery people.

As one museum display explained, “On January 26, 1861 (when Louisiana left the union)…all over New Orleans bells rang and cannons boomed when the news arrived. In the successionists’ jubilant Mardi Gras atmosphere, few foresaw the upcoming years of desolation and despair that would be awaiting them.”

One of the ironies of the struggle between the states is that thousands of immigrants whose people themselves had been collectively oppressed fought on behalf of the South. Although as many as 150,000 Irish were Union soldiers, about 40,000 Confederate soldiers were Irish, and of the 10,000 Jews who participated in the struggle, 3,000 defended the South.

In the (shortened) words of the popular 1859 song “Dixie”:

I wish I was in the land of cotton

Old times they are not forgotten

Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

I wish I was in Dixie, hooray! hooray!

In Dixie Land I’ll take my stand

To live and die in Dixie.

Away, away, away down south in Dixie.

Given the willingness of the brainwashed Russian masses to support Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, or the fanatical devotees of the Donald Trump cult, I guess it should come as no surprise that we human beings are easily led by our emotions and limited perspectives.

As for me, I intend to continue having a good time here in Dixie. Might as well enjoy the Big Easy before the next hurricane hits.