Who Was Johnny Reb?

Johnny Reb, the nickname given to the Confederate foot soldier, was little different from the servicemen in all the conflicts fought by Americans, from the Revolutionary War to Afghanistan. Ask the typical soldier why he is in Afghanistan and you will likely get as many vague and different answers as if you asked the man on the street, the average politician, or even the General Officers in today’s armed forces. The truth is there is no single coherent reason for us to be in Afghanistan any more than there was a truthful reason for us to be in Iraq or Panama or any number of murky military engagements throughout our nation’s life. History, though, is written by the winner and almost all our military campaigns have been sanitized and wrapped in the flag except for Vietnam.

This lack of coherent purpose was perhaps most visible during the Vietnam War. American soldiers returning from Southeast Asia, many physically and mentally maimed, were met with boos and jeers when they deplaned in the country they had fought for. They learned to shed their uniforms as quickly as possible in an atmosphere of open hostility. 58,220 young men made the ultimate sacrifice in Vietnam and came home in metal containers, lives of promise cut off, as we were told, to halt the spread of Communism in Asia. Most had been drafted, uprooted from post-high school civilian life and sent across the oceans to an alien world of which they’d never dreamt: steaming jungles, air thick with moisture and the scent of death. While back home the country was torn apart by this conflict, these young men fought valiantly and without hesitation for a cause few understood, and even fewer believed in.

A century earlier, the soldiers of the Confederacy and the Union were much the same: young sons of loving mothers, raised in the United States and conscripted to fight a cause painted, like all wartime causes, with the pigment of emotion, shrouded in patriotism and fueled with the fervor of youth. As the conflict ground on, exacting its terrible toll, the ranks of the services thinned. The war lost its appeal. Food and supplies dwindled as did the numbers of volunteers to fight for the Southern cause. The Confederate Congress enacted the Conscription Act of 1862, and Southern boys were forced to serve in the Confederate military. The Union did the same. The young men who fought for both sides in this tragic struggle were largely drafted and their views on slavery, secession and any other politic were likely dim and in any event irrelevant. They were placed in harm’s way by both governments to fight and kill their fellow countrymen. And they did, in frightening numbers: an estimated 750,000 died in this epic conflict, about 2% of the country’s population. This is slightly less than the total of all Americans killed in all the wars our country has ever been engaged.

Books like The Life of Johnny Reb by Bell Riley paint a well-researched picture of the average Confederate soldier. At the outset, the ranks were filled with volunteers eager to fight against the North, perceived as an invading force attempting to impose its will upon the social and economic mores of the South. The North had threatened ruinous tariffs on Southern agriculture as well as imposing federal regulation on the South, usurping states’ rights. While segregation was a significant and visible target of this effort, it was not the only or perhaps main cause for conflict.

From the beginning, there was societal pressure on the southern young man to join the Confederate forces. The war was romanticized: women held rallies and festivals, food fairs and parties, encouraging their men to enlist and protect their way of life. The tide of regional patriotism was strong and swept many into the war. Others sought relief from lives of boredom and little significance, respite from working behind a counter, in a blacksmith shop, a mechanic’s shed or tending the fields.

Perhaps little-known is the fact that between 3,000 and 6,000 Confederate soldiers were black. While the Union refused to admit Negro soldiers into its ranks, three black regiments turned the tide at the Battle of First Manassas and defeated the Union army. Perhaps another 100,000 blacks aided the Confederate war effort building roads, munitions factories and batteries as well as facilitating the food supply chain.

The battle leaders of the Civil War as well as the infantrymen and sailors served their causes honorably and acquitted themselves with bravery on the field of battle. Many were professional soldiers, graduates of the nation’s military academies and schooled in war. Theirs was not to question but to do.

Is this any different today? Has this ever been any different? Because there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, should we vilify our soldiers who fought for a lie, however unknowingly? Must we tear down the monuments to our Southern warriors for the sake of a naïve notion of political correctness? Should we bulldoze the Vietnam Wall because our political leaders lied to us? Didn’t we watch in shock as the ISIS hordes tore down and destroyed historical artifacts dating back thousands of years? We recoiled in repugnance at the ignorance and violence of these people, until it happened here. It should not happen here. History should not be written in pencil.

George Washington was a slave owner since the age of 11, and the number of his slaves grew from ten to 317 during the 56 years he owned them. Should we change the name of our nation’s capitol, sandblast his face off Mt. Rushmore? Thomas Jefferson, also a slave owner, drafted a section of the Constitution absolving Americans and blaming the British for the practice, an outright falsehood. Do we thus rename the Jefferson Memorial? In truth almost all the Founding Fathers owned slaves. Should we engage in wholesale changing of street names, tear down monuments, topple statues, rewrite and sanitize history for political correctness, however wrong the logic may be?

And were the Confederate generals guilty of treason for leading their armies against the Union? George Washington was a lieutenant colonel in the British Army and saw combat in the French and Indian War. Was he then guilty of treason for becoming a turncoat, leading the American patriots against the British Army in the Revolutionary War?

The American Civil War was primarily about states’ rights and the limits of federal power, most specifically the conflict between the Supremacy Clause of Article VI of the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment. Slavery was a lynchpin of the argument and thus the Confederacy declared the Constitution null and void as the southern states would not abide federal interference in states’ matters. That slavery was not the only cause was evidenced by the fact that it took President Lincoln three years into the war to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

The Confederate foot soldier – Johnny Reb – and his Union counterpart Billy Yank fought bravely and died in unprecedented numbers. Perhaps a quarter million Confederate soldiers by newer estimates, almost twice as many Union troops fell in the conflict. By and large, they didn’t fight for slavery or states’ rights or the Tenth Amendment, had they ever heard of it, but rather for the soldiers next to them on the battlefield. It has always been this way in war. These brave American sons answered the call of duty and should be respected and treated as a part of American history, not an ethically cleansed version of American idealism.

Tearing down statues of Confederate leaders and the Confederate foot soldier is egregious and panders to the few who equate these military men with white supremacy. These people have less tolerance and are more prejudicial than the targets of their enmity. Japanese Americans shipped to the West Coat and interned during World War II represent one of the most flagrant violations of civil rights in our country’s history, and would give the survivors and their offspring more reason to disrespect American war memorials than any of those responsible for tearing down Confederate monuments.

The men of the Greatest Generation who died in World War II would gape in disbelief at what we have become. It is unquestionably not what they fought for. Like the generations that preceded them and their sons who fought in Vietnam, Iraq, Panama and Afghanistan, they answered the call of duty to protect their land and way of life, regardless of the reasons they were given.

Johnny Reb™ beer is a simple concept. It is not a racial statement or stamp of rebellion against political correctness or anything else. It is simply to acknowledge the brave efforts of these largely obscure foot soldiers, black and white, who fought and died in unprecedented numbers in a losing cause answering that call of duty, and who would not dream their monuments are being torn down today. They were Americans, and they do not deserve it.