The Last Confederate Flag, by Lloyd Lenard.
New York: America House, 2000.
$30 - 432 pages.

I still hear the faint calls of the bugles at Gettysburg; still hear the distant sounds of the roll of the drums, see and feel the explosions of the bursting shells. I’m charging up Cemetery Ridge with the long lines of valiant men in gray, as my Confederate comrades scream, die, and reluctantly fall back. For a moment that day, we reached the high ground. If only we could have held it ... if only we had won ... if only...

These are the final lines of Lloyd Lenard’s novel The Last Confederate Flag. Variations of these lines recur throughout this novel, reflecting the longings of Stonewall Bedford, a Southerner engaged in a local battle over a Confederate battle flag flying above a statue of Robert E. Lee.

William Faulkner wrote similar lines in one of his novels, and doubtless many Southern boys have felt such emotions on first reading of Pickett’s Charge. (Recently, while dealing with a Northerner who had retired to Florida and was now in the mountains spreading rancor and ill will, I found myself wishing that Stonewall Jackson had pushed on to Washington after Bull Run, and most of my folks in the Civil War were Yankees from Pennsylvania).

In The Last Confederate Flag, Stoney Bedford, a member of the city council of Forest, Ga., opposes a move by certain members of the council and by militants to remove the Confederate flag. Bedford serves as the center for the firestorm of emotions and violence that erupts because of his defense of the flag and of his heritage. Bedford and his family, his wife, son and future daughter-in-law, become the target of violence. Attacked in the middle of the night in his home, Bedford suffers the tragic consequences of standing up for his beliefs.

The rest of the novel treats Bedford’s trial for murder and offers a courtroom battle in which various views of the South, its heritage and Bedford’s stand are examined. Lenard’s courtroom characters are well-drawn, and though it is clear where his sympathies lie in regard to Bedford, he does give those opposed to displaying the Confederate flag a reasonably fair hearing.

Lenard also does a fine job in this novel in showing us the reactions of various members of the community to Bedford’s cause. We see which neighbors and friends stand with Bedford, which are bought by the opposition, which turn away out of fear. Morris Light, who makes documentaries, is a particularly interesting character, a newcomer to Bedford’s point of view who appreciates truth and insists on trying to capture it on film.

Where this novel fails is where most political and religious novels fail - in the quality and style of writing. Some of Lenard’s writing, particularly the dialogue, is stilted or rings false; the scene in which Bedford and his daughter-in-law discuss Faulkner’s Snopses is trashy, silly and nonsensical. Several times during the trial some of the dialogue falls apart or is unrealistic. Bellows Windhorst, for example, who is the psychiatrist appearing against Bedford, is asked about three people whom he once killed while driving high and intoxicated. Windhorst says that “... the people in the other car I hit don’t count. They were black people on welfare. They had little if any future. The world is better off without them.” Are we really expected to believe that a witness for the state, a witness against a man accused of killing several black militants, would talk this way? Would anyone - even someone stupid enough to harbor such sentiments - talk this way while under oath in a courtroom?

Finally, Bedford’s account of his heritage falls apart in several places. Near the beginning of the book, he reads from the diary of General Bedford, his grandfather. Although the diary entry was written in 1864, by its optimism and the statement “Now that the war has finally come” lead us to believe that the war is newly commenced rather than being three years old and a lost cause. Moreover, Bedford writes that his mother was a little girl at the war’s end. Since we may assume that Bedford was born at some point in the 1920’s, we must then assume that his mother was over 55 years of age when she bore her son. The genealogy simply doesn’t work.

All these criticisms aside, however, I found The Last Confederate Flag an engaging and bold look at the changing South and the demands that are still being made on Southern culture. By erasing parts of our history that some find unpleasant, by changing the facts and deeds of the past to fit the exigencies of the present, we are doing great harm both to that past and to this present.

(Jeff Minick owns Saints and Scholars bookstore on Main Street in Waynesville.)

 

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