Confederate monuments tumble; and others?

As we watch the continuing saga of demonstrations against Confederate memorials and statues vs. Southerners who claim removing these icons demeans their history and heritage, America needs more clarity and understanding on this issue

 

As I wrote last week, the statues of Confederate soldiers that can be found in most county seats of the old Confederacy, which was defeated 165 years ago, pose no threat to Americans in the 21^st century.

 

Last week, a San Francisco mob protesting Confederate statues tore down a statue of Gen. U.S. Grant. The Union general was largely responsible for defeating the Confederate army and freeing the slaves. As president from 1869 to 1877, Grant presided over what was probably the administration friendliest to African-Americans until the Truman administration. Grant had ordered U.S. troops to defend the civil rights of freedmen, a practice that would end after the “Compromise of 1876,” which ended Reconstruction.

 

Yet, the mobs who want to tear down statues tackled Grant, too, reportedly on the grounds that he, at one time, owned an inherited slave. The same San Francisco mob knocked down a statue of Spanish missionary Father Junipero Serra, a Catholic saint. A statue of Christopher Columbus was beheaded last week by protesters condemning his treatment of indigenous Americans. Where will this attitude lead? Are the tombstones and homes of soldiers and slaveholders off limits? How strong a disinfectant will be needed to purge America of its infection of racism, slavery and white supremacy?

 

The protesters want to punish men and women who lived in the 19^th century or earlier and failed to adopt the moral principles and social norms of the  21^st century, but those fighting to preserve the heritage of the Confederate years may not be truthful in their protection of statues, flags and other icons.

 

James McPherson, a Princeton history professor who wrote what is to me the best one-volume history of the Civil War (“Battle Cry of Freedom”), has a new essay in The New York Review of Books in which he breaks the news to defenders of the Old South that their version of history of the Civil War and of the antebellum and post-war years is seriously flawed. McPherson calls it “Southern Comfort” — a comforting explanation of how and why their southern armies failed to defeat the Union and what caused the war. The myth of the “Lost Cause” claims superior armies, greater sacrifices and better leaders succumbed only to the superior numbers and wealth of the enemy. Southerners had to comfort themselves that their cause was greater, wasn’t about slavery and wasn’t a fair fight.

 

But it was slavery. McPherson and other historians make clear, slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War and its 620,000 deaths. Worse, the iconography of the South after the war, its tale of noble cavaliers and fearless infantrymen. States’ rights and economic differences perpetuated the lie that the South had God and morality on its side. This led to the discrimination and racial segregation that continued halfway through the 20^th century.

 

But Confederate soldiers and leaders do not bear the guilt alone for slavery and racism. New England merchants profited from the slave trade. Universities, including Yale, Harvard and Georgetown, exploited slave labor to build their institutions. British ships carried Africans in chains to slave auctions in the South and the Caribbean. To participants, these voyages were, as a Mafia don might explain, “just business,” and a profitable business at that.

 

Protesters who want to wipe out every vestige of slavery and discrimination will have to require a lot of historic figures and institutions to do penance for their crimes. Many historians have argued that it is wrong to judge people of the past by today’s (vastly changed) standards. That warning should add nuance to the roles of people in the history of slavery and race in America.

One fewer Confederate statue: does anyone notice?

This post was originally published in the Wilson Times Nov. 30, 2019.

The statue of a Confederate soldier in front of the Chatham County Courthouse and within a traffic circle surrounding the old courthouse has been removed. During my four years of college, I drove around that courthouse and passed that statue each time I went home or returned to campus. In all those times passing the statue, I never gave it much thought; it was just background scenery.

The statue was removed Nov. 19 after the Chatham County Board of Commissioners chose to remove it. This removal follows actions in other towns and states to remove Confederate monuments from public land. Some statues, including the “Silent Sam” statue on the University of North Carolina campus and a statue at the Durham County Courthouse, were brought down by protesters who took the law into their own hands.

Confederate statues, mainly installed in the first quarter of the 20^th century to honor local residents who had fought on the Confederate side in the Civil War, are ubiquitous across the South and, therefore, little noticed. The statue at Chapel Hill was a memorial to the UNC students who postponed their studies to fight in the war. Many of the memorials across the South were paid for or advocated by United Daughters of the Confederacy chapters.

Many African-Americans have objected to the statues and other reminders of the Civil War, including the display of Confederate battle flags. Other protesters against memorials to Confederates, including left-wing “anti-fascists” and veterans of other demonstrations for liberal causes, joined the original protesters. Controversies like this have brought out angry counter-protesters who see the toppling of monuments as a way to erase history.

Emotions are strong. The Chatham County commissioners’ meeting about that county’s statue was called “rowdy” as residents on both sides of the issue loudly made their views known. Some arrests were made in Chatham County and during the Silent Sam protests in Chapel Hill.

Estimates are that there are more than 1,000 Confederate statues or memorials across the South, and about the same number of memorials to Union soldiers in the North, reminders of the deadliest war in American history.

You can mark me as ambivalent about Confederate statues. I have never felt inspired by one, although two of my great-great-grandfathers died in the Civil War while wearing Rebel gray (one in battle, one from disease). I don’t think of my ancestors when I see a Confederate statue, nor do I find the statues to be an endorsement of slavery.

The overwhelming proportion of Confederate soldiers (including my dirt-poor great-great-grandfathers) had no interest in slavery or the slave economy. They fought for what they saw as their patriotic duty, defending their homes and their sovereign state from what they saw as an invading army. These boys in gray were in many ways victims of the war that was thrust upon them by wealthy, slave-owning aristocrats. As N.C. Gov. Zebulon Vance said, “It’s a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.”

What disturbs me most about the toppling of Civil War monuments (from South or North) is the fact that they are memorials to a generation who died doing their duty as they saw it. The memorials were an effort to assuage the grief of losing a father, brother, son or neighbor in that awful war. Every family in the South lost someone. I find it particularly sad that today’s UNC students cannot see the sacrifice that students and their families made, rightly or wrongly, 160 years ago.

Today’s partisans of the Confederate memorials issue might want to take a look at some photos from the 50^th anniversary of the 1863 battle of Gettysburg. The photos from the 1913 reunion show aged Union and Confederate soldiers sharing food, smiles, seats and mementos with a camaraderie that would shock today’s protesters. They celebrated their sacrifices and achievements together and gave honor and respect to those on the other side. Fifty years before, they had been intent on killing each other.

Today’s Americans, unlike the frail former combatants of 1913, seem determined to refight the past.

 
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Civil War history is full of tragedy and nuance

Thanks to historian Philip Gerard for providing some historical context to the debates over Confederate monuments. Gerard's op-ed piece in Sunday's News & Observer was about a new Civil War museum planned for Fayetteville. The museum is to be housed on a historic site where a key U.S. and (later) CSA arsenal had stood.

This museum will be about more than the battles and about more than slavery or states' rights or any of the other issues involved in the war. As Gerard points out, North Carolina's Civil War history "is complicated and full of nuance." Many, probably most, North Carolinians see the Civil War as a struggle between slave-owning aristocrats on their plantations vs. enslaved African-Americans and the northern liberators who sought to free them.

In fact, most Confederate soldiers did not own slaves, and many were little better off economically than some slaves or free blacks. As N.C. Gov. Zebulon Vance admitted, the Civil War was “a rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight.” The aristocrats could buy their way out of military service. Even among that elitist population, not all were die-hard supporters of slavery. Many North Carolinians, especially those in the mountainous western part of the state, opposed secession and fought either a guerrilla war against the Confederacy or enlisted in the Union Army.

The stated purpose of the Lincoln administration was to preserve the Union. Only near the end of the war did Lincoln add abolition of slavery to his war goals.

By the end of this ill-begotten war, the South's economy was utterly destroyed. Farms were burned, livestock was claimed as bounty of war, industrial sites were destroyed, wealth in the form of Confederate dollars became worthless. It would take the seceding states most of the next 100 years to catch up with other states in economic health.

The war settled issues that had been simmering since the founding of the republic — slavery and the sovereignty of member states. While slavery was widely viewed as evil and inhumane, it was widely practiced throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

The question of secession had never been settled in federal courts. The Constitution does not forbid states from resigning from the Union, and those states were less than 100 years from the precedent of the United Colonies' decision to secede from British rule.

The debate over Confederate monuments ignores these nuances and paints everything related to the Confederacy as reprehensible. While some Confederate monuments extol individuals whose views on slavery and the "brotherhood of man" may be repulsive to 21st century minds, other monuments offer gratitude for people who made America's most devastating war less awful. Among these is the monument on the N.C. Capitol grounds honoring Southern wives and mothers who endured incredible hardship, tragedy and sacrifice during four years of war, which included a strategy of destroying the Confederacy's ability to wage war, meaning the destruction of anything of value in Southern hands.

Many other monuments address the sacrifices of nameless Confederate soldiers who sacrificed their lives for a cause they had little stake in and hardly understood. Slavery hung in the balance, it is true, but slavery was not the motivation of most of these poor unfortunates.

Destruction of these monuments will not provide context for a tragic war, nor will it improve the plight of descendants of slavery and segregation.

Silent Sam honors students who died as soldiers

For as long as I have visited or lived in Chapel Hill, nearly 60 years, "Silent Sam" has been a part of the University of North Carolina campus. In all those years, I never thought of the bronze Confederate soldier as a reminder of slavery or as an intimidation of anyone. In fact, I rarely even thought of Silent Sam as a Confederate soldier. Like most students and visitors, I saw Silent Sam as a decoration and a landmark. I suspect most students thought of Sam's reputation (every time a virgin walks by, he fires his musket) far more than they thought of his symbolism.

If I took the time to think about his presence, I thought of the UNC students who dropped their books and took up arms to defend their homes, their university and their state from a threatening military force. The statue was dedicated as a memorial to those students who fought and died in the Civil War. Sam was erected as an expression of grief by a population that suffered more casualties in the Civil War than any other state. UNC students were among those casualties, and Silent Sam honors the sacrifice of those families.

Although one speaker at the 1913 dedication, made tasteless and off-message boasts at the dedication, the solemn intent of the Silent Sam statue was to remember the UNC students who died in the Civil War, as Ed Yoder states in an excellent column in the News & Observer.

Andrew Young, the civil rights hero, confidant of Martin Luther King Jr., former congressman, former mayor of Atlanta, told an NPR reporter recently that removing Confederate monuments, as advocated by Black Lives Matter and other groups, is the wrong fight at the wrong time.

"I'm saying these are kids who grew up free, and they don't realize what still enslaves them — and it's not those monuments," Young said. He worries that the next time the political winds shift, crowds may be advocating tearing down monuments to Dr. King and other civil rights icons.

I hope, before the mob psychology takes hold and sweeps away every offending, misunderstood or uncomfortable vestige of the Civil War, the public and elected leaders will listen to voices of reason like Ed Yoder and Andrew Young.

Violence in Charlottesville, destruction in Durham

The only thing more disturbing than the riot that broke out in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend was the American president's ultimate embrace of the neo-Nazi, Ku Klux Klan, white supremacist mob that sparked the street fighting, injuries and at least one death Saturday.

President Trump first blamed "many sides" for the violence that erupted. The next day, he read a script that laid the blame on the right-wing extremists who came to Charlottesville looking for a fight and who marched through Mr. Jefferson's University chanting Nazi slogans, such as "Blood and Soil." But then, the Real Donald Trump came out the following day and again blamed "both sides" for the violence and defended those using shields, bats and other weapons to attack protesters opposing their march.

This is a free country. You have the right to speech. You have the right to assemble and to petition the government. You don't have the right to assault other people exercising those same rights. White supremacists, KKK and neo-Nazis are reprehensible. Their beliefs are repugnant and uninformed, but they still have the right to their beliefs. What they don't have is a right to force their twisted beliefs on others.

Days after the Charlottesville riot, a mob in Durham, N.C., climbed a pedestal topped by a bronze statue of a non-descript Confederate soldier, tied a rope around the top of the statue and helped mob members on the ground tear down the statue while police watched silently. The hooting as the statue crumbled to the ground was scary. This was mob mentality, spurred on, apparently, by anarchists in the crowd. The next day, police filed charges against the primary actors in destruction of the statue. I hope the leaders of this ugly mob are prosecuted for inciting to riot, destruction of public property and any other illegal acts. To allow this behavior to go unpunished would be an invitation to anarchy, which is apparently what some mob members want.

Confederate monuments have become symbols of slavery, segregation and racial discrimination to many people, but that was not the statues' intent. They were installed to memorialize Confederate soldiers' honorable service in defense of their homes and what they saw as their state's right to leave the United States. Most Confederate soldiers did not own slaves, and many did not support the "peculiar institution." Slavery was the key consideration of the gentry that led the South into a destructive war, but the common soldier had other motivations than defending slavery from abolitionists. Lincoln's wartime goal was to keep the Union intact, with or without slavery (which remained legal in some Union states until passage of the 13th Amendment after the Civil War).

A discussion of Confederate monuments needs to take place. Shouting, violence and vigilante destruction of property will not resolve this issue. Many of the statues are magnificent works of art that should not be lost. Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va., is one of the country's most beautiful boulevards with numerous statues of Confederate officials, who are no threat to African-Americans or anyone else. It would be a shame to lose Monument Avenue. But 150 years after America's bloodiest war, perhaps we have too many statues in too many places, and perhaps some people are intimidated or angered by those statues. Let's see what we can do together.

Across the street from the White House stands a magnificent statue of President Andrew Jackson astride a horse. Jackson was a southerner, a slave owner, a racist who banished thousands of Indians onto the Trail of Tears. Had he lived longer, he almost certainly would have sided with the Confederacy. Can the destroyers of Confederate statues stop with Lee, Stonewall, and the many unnamed, symbolic infantrymen who stand on courthouse lawns and cemeteries, and not also topple Andrew Jackson — and others?

Silent Sam gets lost in another battle

"Silent Sam," the statue at the University of North Carolina memorializing UNC students who fought in the Civil War, has become a rational extension of the movement to purge the South of all remnants of the history of secession and of the hundreds of thousands of deaths expended to keep the United States together.

The statue of a soldier has been defaced with spray paint labeling the soldier "murderer," along with "KKK" and "Black Lives Matter." There have been recurring calls over the years to take down the statue, but the statue, which is beloved not for its connection with the Confederacy but for its generations of connection with the campus, still stands. It's likely more students have known Silent Sam for his legendary firing of his musket each time a virgin passed by than for his Civil War connection.

When this debate over Silent Sam arises, the reason for his existence is ignored. Sam was not erected as a symbol of white supremacy or slaveholder economics or as a reminder of the so-called "Lost Cause." Sam came to stand on the UNC campus because North Carolinians, particularly those with a UNC connection, sought to honor the students who laid down their books and took up weapons as the state seceded from the Union and supplied troops to the nascent Confederate States. Fifty years after the Civil War, the scars of that conflict were still palpable — an economy that had never recovered from the utter destruction of a merciless invading army, and the memory of so many lives lost. Every North Carolina family knew the pain of losing a father, brother, uncle or cousin to the war. A handful of these were slaveholders and fought, at least in part, to extend slavery, but the vast majority had no stake in the slave economy; they only knew that their nation (North Carolina, a sovereign under the Confederate system) was at war.

Silent Sam is harmless. Misleading accusations about him and festering hatred of a bronze idol are not harmless. Let him stand, as a memorial to men who died honorably and as a joke that students love to tell. Harmless.