Erasing History?

Photo by Dean Hinnant on Unsplash

This past weekend, a statue of Williams Carter Wickham, a Confederate general, was torn down by protesters in Richmond, Virginia, while Governor Ralph Northam has pledged to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee from that city’s Monument Avenue.

On Monday, news reports indicated that Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy were willing to discuss renaming army bases named after Confederate generals. This was swiftly rejected by President Trump, who tweeted, “These Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage, and a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom. The United States of America trained and deployed our HEROES on these Hallowed Grounds, and won two World Wars. Therefore, my Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations.”

Demands to remove statues honoring Confederate generals and to rename bases named after them have been made regularly for years. Such demands often enter the national consciousness in connection with extensive media coverage of events of discrimination or police brutality against African Americans, such as the recent killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers.

Resistance to these actions, however, has been strong and consistent, and while some statues and monuments to the Confederacy have been removed over the years, many remain, along with ten American military bases named after its generals.

Many of those who object claim that removing statues or renaming bases constitutes an effort to erase American history. Others, more controversially, argue that the Civil War was not actually fought over slavery, and instead was a struggle by the South to retain its culture and to protect the rights of states against the federal government. As a result, those generals should be seen as American heroes, worthy of being remembered and honored through such statues and bases.

This second argument finds its source in the so-called “Lost Cause” myth of the South. Largely invented in the years following the Civil War after Reconstruction in an effort to explain why the South lost, and to preserve the racial dominance of whites, the Lost Cause myth has been thoroughly debunked by historians. But make no mistake—the effort to rewrite the history of the Civil War is deeply embedded in the fabric of these statues. At the unveiling of the A.P. Hill Monument in Richmond on May 30, 1892, the keynote speaker was introduced by the Reverend Doctor J. William Jones, himself a former Confederate soldier who served in General Hill’s infantry regiment. In his introduction, Reverend Jones said:

[Richmond’s] peerless [statue of George] Washington surrounded by his compatriots of the revolution of ’76—her Lee—her Jackson—her Wickham—her monument to “the true hero” of the war, the private soldier, now being erected—her monument to “the flower of cavaliers” dashing, glorious Jeb. Stuart, which is to be erected in the near future—and the projected grand monument to our noble Christian president, soldier, statesman, orator, patriot—Jefferson Davis—all these will teach our children’s children that these men were not “rebels” and not “traitors” but as true patriots as the world ever saw.

Such an express defense of the cause of the South is fairly uncommon now, at least in the general media or by the vast majority of politicians. Most defenses for retaining the statues and base names, as exemplified by the president’s tweets, largely rely on the first argument. As this line of reasoning goes, these generals are an important part of America’s past, and removing their statues or renaming bases named after them rejects our heritage and erases our history.

This argument is disingenuous at best, however, and in fact gets the correct conclusion exactly backward. We can, after all, learn history from books, lectures, news articles, the internet, and many other sources. Removing a statue or renaming a base does not change what we know or can learn about history. Nothing is forgotten, nothing is lost.

But something does change when a statue is gone, or a base renamed.

We do not erect a statue just to remember something. We do so because the individual depicted is someone we want to emulate, and who we want others to emulate. As public monuments, they depict the heroes of our stories, and express our values as a people.

Such was, in fact, the express purpose of the Confederate statues. At the close of his dedication speech of the Robert E. Lee Monument in Richmond on May 29, 1890, the former Confederate officer Archer Anderson said:

[Robert E. Lee] was the pure and lofty man, in whom we see the perfect union of Christian virtue and old Roman manhood. His goodness makes us love his greatness, and the fascination, which this matchless combination exerts, is itself a symptom and a source in us of moral health. As long as our people truly love and venerate him, there will remain in them a principle of good. For all the stupendous wealth and power, which in the last thirty years have lifted these States to foremost rank among the nations of the earth, are less a subject for pride than this one heroic man—this human product of our country and its institutions.

Let this monument, then, teach to generations yet unborn these lessons of his life! Let it stand, not as a record of civil strife, but as a perpetual protest against whatever is low and sordid in our public and private objects! Let it stand as a memorial of personal honor that never brooked a stain, of knightly valor without thought of self, of far-reaching military genius unsoiled by ambition, of heroic constancy from which no cloud of misfortune could ever hide the path of duty! Let it stand for reproof and censure, if our people shall ever sink below the standards of their fathers! Let it stand for patriotic hope and cheer, if a day of national gloom and disaster shall ever dawn upon our country! Let it stand as the embodiment of a brave and virtuous people's ideal leader! Let it stand as a great public act of thanksgiving and praise, for that it pleased Almighty God to bestow upon these Southern States a man so formed to reflect His attributes of power, majesty, and goodness!

This same desire to identify heroes whose values and lives we wish to memorialize applies to the names we choose for our military installations. Through those names we honor those leaders who we want our troops to recognize as role models, as ideal soldiers worthy of admiration.

So, when we remove a statue or rename a base, we are saying something about our values and principles. We are saying that we will no longer honor those removed, and instead will look to those we choose to take their place.

One might think it unnecessary to say so, but it should be recalled that each and every Confederate general committed treason against the United States of America. They fought a war of rebellion, and were defeated. I cannot think of any other circumstance where a country has honored the military leaders of its enemy, who caused such a volume of death, destruction and suffering.

Further, the Lost Cause myth is exactly that—a myth; the South fought a war against the United States for the purpose of preserving its “peculiar institution”: slavery. Had those generals won, their goal would have been achieved—maintaining hundreds of thousands of human beings in slavery simply because of the color of their skin.

Removing those statues or renaming those bases does not erase history. In fact, history is erased by the presence of those statues and the continuation of those names. By choosing to honor those who fought for the Confederacy, we ignore the purpose for which they fought; we erase their role in the South’s attempt to maintain the right of one human to own another human, at the cost of the lives of 620,000 soldiers.

Ironically, one person who did not support the erection of monuments to the Civil War was Robert E. Lee himself. He had been invited to participate in the preservation efforts of the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association. In turning down the request, he wrote:

My engagements will not permit me to be present, and I believe if there I could not add anything material to the information existing on the subject. I think it well, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.

The speeches given at the original dedications of Confederate statues waxed eloquent over the personal qualities of the individuals so honored. Whether or not an accurate summary, however, such virtues as they might have had must be subordinated to the purpose to which they were employed. These men used their talents, and were willing to give their lives, and to lead hundreds of thousands of soldiers to their deaths, to preserve slavery. No personal qualities can overshadow their evil purpose.

In a nation of increasing diversity, our public monuments should display the values that we as a people cherish. We should not, must not, say to our fellow Americans, of all colors and creeds, that we hold to the ideals and principles of those who fought for slavery, who would perpetuate a society built on a foundation of racial supremacy.

Let us honor instead those who have upheld the values of freedom and equality, for all people.