We're not in a new civil war: It's the same lost cause

The insurrection at the Capitol was an act of war, at the direction of the second president of the Confederate States of America.

That would be Donald John Trump.

This isn’t another civil war. It’s the same one that supposedly ended 150 years ago. That much was made clear when a member of the current insurgency carried a huge Confederate battle flag through the halls of the Capitol during the Jan. 6 invasion incited by Trump.

No state legislature from the Confederacy declared a renewal of hostility against the Union, but they didn’t have to because the citizens of nine former Confederate states had already voted for the Confederate president (Trump) to lead the Union. Two other former CSA member states — Virginia and Georgia — supported Joe Biden, but Georgia’s decision to do so was vigorously opposed by Trump and his cronies, who insisted without evidence that it was fraudulent.

Their reasoning: It just wasn’t possible. It didn’t compute. To them, it was as unfathomable as West Bank Palestinians voting for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They were, and are, in denial, just as supporters of the Confederacy have been for more than a century and a half as they clung to the so-called “lost cause.” Trump’s own lost cause isn’t a new story; it’s a new chapter in the same saga of victimhood and false grievance they’ve been reading as their bedtime story for generations.

Lost cause renewed

Of the six senators who objected to affirming Joe Biden’s victory in the state of Arizona — a former Confederate territory — four came from CSA member states: Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, and Ted Cruz of Texas. Josh Hawley represents a state (Missouri) that was accepted into the Confederacy, although it never officially seceded, and Roger Marshall represents another state (Kansas) that was adjacent to Confederate territory.

Of 121 House members who objected to Biden’s election, two-thirds came from what might be called the Confederate sphere: CSA states, disputed states (Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia), Arizona, and Oklahoma, a largely allied region that was known as “Indian Territory” back in the 19th century.

Is it a stretch to designate Donald Trump as the second president of the Confederacy, following in the footsteps of Jefferson Davis? I don’t think so.

During his presidency of this Union, Trump moved from the Union state of New York to the former Confederate state of Florida. This could easily be explained as a tax dodge. But other actions are less easily explained away.

Consider his insistence on vetoing a bill funding the Union armed forces in order to preserve the names of Confederate heroes attached to military bases — a veto that was overridden by the Congress that meets beneath the Capitol dome that was assaulted just five days later by an unlawful militia called together and incited by Trump.

For a man whose actions are so often driven by a thirst for vengeance, it can hardly have come as a surprise.

Consider also Trump’s vehement defense of the Confederate battle flag, the most recognizable symbol of not just the CSA, but its militant and treasonous drive to defy the Union government. Defenders of the flag “love their flag,” Trump said. “It represents the South. They like the South.”

Yes, they love their flag. Some of them obviously love it more than they love the Union Capitol in Washington, D.C., which was assaulted and vandalized before one of these true believers did something never done 150 years ago: He waved this flag beneath the Union Capitol dome.

Violent rebellion

According to a member of his own party, Trump was “delighted” to hear that his supporters were breaking into the Capitol on Jan. 6. Breaking windows. Busting down doors. Defecating in the corridors. Stealing and vandalizing American property. He took joy in this. The most important and one of the most historic structures in the Union was being desecrated, and, I’ll repeat for emphasis, he took joy in this.

By contrast, when people sought to remove monuments to the Confederacy, he protested, declaring, “You don’t want to take away our heritage and history and the beauty, in many cases, the beauty, the artistic beauty.”

Notice the possessive adjective “our.” Trump was claiming these monuments as his own: belonging to him and others who treasured them. And who might those people be? People with fond feelings toward the Confederacy, that’s who.

It’s been customary for many, including Trump, to dismiss these symbols as symbols of the South, not the Confederacy. Of culture, not slavery. That custom has always been offensive to many of us, but even we never dreamed that the so-called lost cause was still kept alive as a dream by so many. A dream expressed as violence on Jan. 6 against the same seat of Union government they opposed in a war that left 600,000 people dead.

No coincidences

Voters in the Southern states were in the minority, and when they lost the White House to Abraham Lincoln in 1860, instead of accepting the results of that election, they launched a rebellion. In 2020, supporters of Donald Trump were in the minority. Nearly 70 percent of the 232 electoral votes he won were cast by states with ties to the Confederacy. When Trump lost, he incited his supporters to rebellion.

These are not coincidences. There’s a historical line running directly from the old Confederacy through the “Southern strategy” of the only president ever to resign from office under pressure (Richard Nixon), and on to the only president — indeed, the only federal officer — ever to be impeached twice.

Not everyone in the old Confederacy supports Trump’s insurrection. Heck, I live in Virginia. But then, not everyone in the Confederacy supported the Civil War. That doesn’t change the fact that Donald Trump is the heir apparent to Jefferson Davis, and that his actions are every bit as seditious as anyone who fought for the Confederate States of America.

Armed rebellion is armed rebellion. Incitement is incitement. The refusal to recognize the results of a free and fair election are un-American in any century.

We are in the midst of a civil war, but it isn’t a new one. It’s the same lost cause, the same conflict all over again.

Stephen H. Provost is the author of three books on Donald Trump. You can find them on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08RC7L8X1