I recently moved home to Biloxi, Miss., and have been thinking about visiting the lavish grounds of Beauvoir, the historic site and home of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America.
I hate everything the Confederacy stands for and I was proud when Mississippi changed our state flag a few years ago to remove the Confederate emblem. I also enjoy history and historic sites, however, and Beauvoir is the biggest in the area by far. My problem is that the site charges an admission fee. The property is owned by the Mississippi division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and while I assume some of the money goes to the preservation of this historic site, I don’t know what they do with the rest of their money. (Their website mentions events to commemorate “Confederate Memorial Day,” Jefferson Davis’ birthday and others.) Is it ethical to pay an admission fee and visit this historic site? — Jacob
From the Ethicist:
What can you say about the Sons of Confederate Veterans? Not long ago, the group exhumed the remains of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate general and grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and reburied them in Columbia, Tenn., where the SCV owns and operates the National Confederate Museum, dedicated to presenting “a Southern perspective of the War Between the States.” If you’re wondering about this view, the Mississippi division of the SCV explains that “the preservation of freedom and liberty was the motivating factor in the South’s decision to fight the Second American Revolution.”
That’s part of the common myth of the Lost Cause, a myth that has wrapped itself around itself like Spanish moss in some places in the South that commemorate the Confederacy. Such was the belief of the kind slave owner. This is not particularly relevant to Beauvoir, where Davis moved just after Emancipation. But at Brierfield and in the White House of the Confederacy, Davis appeared to believe he was a benevolent master over the Black people he considered his property. Smithsonian magazine, in a 2018 reportquoted a Beauvoir guide assuring visitors that Jefferson Davis was one of the “good slave owners,” who “took care of his slaves and treated them like family.”
Like a family? It’s a curious family whose members regularly run away when they can. Among Davis’ kept slaves, William A. Jackson, a coachman, escaped from Davis’s Confederate White House in 1862; two more workers, Betsey and Jim, left together in early 1864, followed, over the next few weeks, by members of the household staff: Henry, Davis’s butler, and Cornelius, another domestic servant. Many of those enslaved at Brierfield were forced to help build the defenses at Vicksburg, where at least four of them died. The abomination of slavery is not remedied by avoiding physical abuse. Because servitude to others is really bad — strange that it needs repeating — there is no such thing as a “good master.”
All this is to say that I share your doubts about whether the SCV deserves your support. For what it’s worth, though, my bet is that Beauvoir doesn’t generate money for the Sons of Confederate Veterans or any of its divisions. Its tax returns for the past several years show significant annual operating losses. “Admissions” represent less than half of its revenue; $100,000 a year comes from the Mississippi State Legislature. It’s not a cash cow.
And we can certainly benefit by visiting and studying the homes of people living in serious moral error — even if sometimes the rulers and the guides seem to overlook it. Magnificent places like Beauvoir were maintained by the unpaid labor of unfree workers. The name Beauvoir means “beautiful to look at”; if you visit, you can remind the guides that fully appreciating the site also requires taking in the ugliness.
Readers responded
The previous column’s question was from a reader who believed she was overpaid in her current role at a nonprofit organization. He wonders if it’s ethical to have such a high salary, especially since he doesn’t work full time either. He wrote: “I don’t need to work 40 hours a week to do my job well, and I don’t. I meet every deadline, attend every meeting, hit every goal, but I also take long breaks and sign off early. … Am I doing something wrong by using extra resources on a job where I’m not willing to work more?”
In his reply, the Ethicist said: “A fair profit is a fair profit over time; the correct comparison is not only with people at your job but with people at your career stage. And of course, in nonprofit institutions as elsewhere, salary schedules are designed to attract and retain people with relevant skills. The real problem is that you’re not as excited about this job as you used to be. So a big question is whether you can reconfigure your work to make it more rewarding — both to you and to the organization. You think your employer would be better off hiring someone else to do what you do for less money. That’s only true if you take the work remit as fixed. One way to contribute to an organization is to shape your work according to your talents. (Read the entire question and answer again here.)
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Money is one way An organization can show trust in an employee, and the organization you work for seems to really value you. But it seems that you are not challenged and the organization does not increase your value. So, the Ethicist is right that you should meet with your superiors to see how you can increase your workload. — Ethan
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This is important that the letter writer discuss their extra hours with their manager. The last thing a manager wants to hear is that someone has extra hours, keeps signing off early and doesn’t talk. Additional projects are not extra if there is time in the day to complete them. — Tricia
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I disagree with the Ethicist. The salaries of nonprofit executives are published on Charity Navigator, and I no longer support nonprofits that pay excessive salaries. Be the hero, and offer to take a pay cut if you think you’re overpaid. — Mary
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I spent my career working for nonprofits. At one point, I went to my nonprofit’s board and told them I felt I was overpaid. I cut my hours and took the paycheck. The board gave me an extra vacation day, because that was more important to me than the salary. Everyone seemed satisfied, and the board appreciated my honesty. — Christine
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A wise man once said, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” If you know you can’t afford to be unemployed, why are you complaining about being overcompensated? — Lawrence
