A monumental problem

As much as I've avoided this, it's time to say a few words on Confederate monuments.

In the terrible violence that has taken place in Charlottesville, and devastated our nation, there stands one figure behind everything that has happened, at the root yet also hiding in the shadows thrown by the violence.

Seen  here.  On a horse.  Tiki torches not included.

The white supremacists who chose to violently demonstrate in Virginia were there specifically to try and bully Charlottesville into keeping the statue of Robert E. Lee that the city had previously decided should be taken down.

It's part of a trend of cities realizing that their Confederate memorials are a really terrible idea, usually followed by a chorus of people shouting about how taking down the memorials is an attack on Southern history and pride.

I've mostly kept my opinions to myself.  Mostly because why should anyone give a hoot what yet another northern liberal has to say on the subject?  Obviously, I'm just going to accuse the Confederacy of being evil, the statue of supporting racism and hate, and demand they all be removed.  Because everyone in Virginia always listens to what people in Massachusetts say.

So why say something at all?  As a northerner, how could I possibly be able to understand the meaning of these statues for the descendants of the Confederate soldiers who fought and died for the rights they felt the North was taking away from them?

Here, maybe if I introduce some of my ancestors, it'll make things more clear:


One I'd like to introduce you to is my great-great-great grandfather Joseph Pavy.

I wish I could pull that outfit off.

Another is my great-great-great grandfather John Self III (no photo, sadly).  They both lived in Caroline County, Virginia, and both served in the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee.

Pavy was wounded at Gettysburg and captured by Union soldiers.  He was imprisoned and held until the end of the war, starved, tortured, and subjected to such deplorable living conditions that he died less than a year after being freed in 1865.  He was, in short, killed by the Yankees.  Self was with the army right up to the end, a loyal soldier who was part of the long shameful march home from Appomattox Courthouse following Lee's surrender.

And I was taught by my grandfather, a native Virginian, that Robert E. Lee himself was a proud American, who loved his country, who served it with distinction, and would have done anything for it, except take up arms against his home.  He loved the United States, but he loved Virginia more.  And that the statue of Lee represents a good man, a hero of Virginia, and not hatred and evil.

And as the great-great-great grandson of two men who fought for the Confederacy, and the grandson of a proud Virginian, I can with absolute clarity of conscious and with all the sense of history in my blood declare: that's bullshit.

First of all, Lee was a traitor, pure and simple.

Okay, yes, he was a war hero from the Mexican War, a brilliant general, and the best military leader our country had in 1860, and Lincoln wanted him to lead the Army.  But he said no.  Fine, that was his right.

But the second he took up arms against the United States of America, he became a traitor.  I don't care how much he loved Virginia, he could have said no then, too.  He could have refused to betray his country for the sake of his state, and he didn't.  And there was absolutely nothing noble in that. The same goes for my own ancestors: they may have been good and decent men, good fathers and good husbands, and upstanding members of their communities.  They may have done good things in their lives, things to be proud of.

But taking up arms against the United States isn't one of them.  There is no pride in that.  They lost, lost badly, and they deserved to lose.  There should be nothing to commemorate their actions.  Instead, they should serve as a warning, a cautionary tale, of those who would betray their nation on the whim of short-sighted, ignorant, arrogant, blow-hard politicians.

Furthermore, the Lee statue, as with most Confederate statues, has little or nothing to do with honoring the memory of the Confederacy, but rather was as erected part of a campaign in the late 19th century and early twentieth century to reframe the Civil War as something for Southerns to be proud of.  And by Southerns, I mean, of course, Southern whites.  The statues were also meant as an intimidation tactic to remind former slaves and the descendants of slaves that their freedom was tenuous, and could be revoked if they didn't stay in their place.  These Confederate memorials were built as part of a larger trend to find new, legal ways of disempowering minorities, to keep power in the hands of those who held it before the Civil War.  They are indivisible from Jim Crow laws and restrictive voter requirements.

Supposedly, the statues commemorated the "bravery" of those who fought for "Southern rights."  Yeah, the only right they fought for was the right to keep slaves.  And there's no bravery or pride in fighting for that.  Bravery, in the 1860s, would be standing up against slavery, not fighting to defend it.

But, the counter-argument runs, ultimately the Civil War is an important part of American history, so shouldn't its statues also be treated as part of that history?  Or should we seek to erase that horrible period from our history books; erase the painful reminder that once our country was torn apart by the desire for one group to deny human rights to another group?  My own town has a memorial to the War to Preserve the Union.  Should it, too, be taken down?

What we choose to honor represents the moral center of our country.  One kind of memorial reminds us that the Union was split, and brave men took up arms to defend the Union, the Constitution, and the ideas that the Union was founded on.  The other memorial tries to lionize those who would have destroyed all that.

You see, while one part of my ancestry is firmly planted in Virginia, another part of my heritage traces back to Maine, They've been there a long time.  I mean, back before Maine was Maine, and before this country was a country.  And my ancestors were there in the 1860s, and they joined the army to fight the Confederacy.  Maine was not a slave state, and was as far from the front-lines of the fighting as one could possibly get.  But the nation needed help, and my ancestors answered that call.  My great-great-great uncle, Sam Houston (no, not that one) was sent to New Orleans, where he died.  Probably from the heat.

And then there is my great-great-great grandfather, Lindley Whitaker.  (My Maine relatives had all the best names.)

And all the best beards!

Whitaker joined the 19th Maine Infantry.  He fought at Fredericksburg, at Chancellorsville, and at Gettysburg.  He was wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness.  These two men answered the call of their country and sacrificed themselves for a fight that ultimately didn't directly affect them.  Why?  Because their nation needed them.

We preserve these memorials to the Union cause to remind us that our nation NEEDED to be preserved, against those who would tear it asunder to keep other human being stripped of their freedoms.

Make no mistake: tearing down the statues will not fix everything.  There will always be Confederate flags.  There will always be white supremacists.  And, unfortunately, there will always be short-sighted, ignorant politicians who try to pass laws dictating what bathroom you can use.  Bigotry and hate were here in this country before the Civil War, and stuck around after the war.  But thankfully, the history of this country, while very far from perfect, is full of lessons on how to effectively deal with that hate.  If the history of our country tells us anything, it's that Confederate statues stand for treason, for racism, for depriving other human beings of basic human rights.  Our country does not, will not, can not stand for that.  And ignoring it is not enough; we must always actively fight against it.

We are, almost uniquely in this world, a nation founded exclusively on ideas.  And even if slavery was woven into the fabric of this nation at its inception, is was never part of the ideas that form its foundation. Instead, we are a people and a nation "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."  And in such a country, a statue to Robert E. Lee, or Stonewall Jackson, or P.T. Beauregard, has no place.

Finally, my argument against Confederate statues, against the lionizing of the Confederacy and the romanticizing of the pre-Reconstruction South, has one final advocate, and you might be surprised by who it is:

General Robert E. Lee, who wrote in 1869, "I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, commit to oblivion the feelings engendered."

Okay, maybe my grandfather was sort of right about him after all.

Which is why I say:

Take down the damned statues!