Thoughts on Monuments to the Confederacy

The events in Charlottesville and the ensuing disappointing response from President Trump (which later was doubled down to a frightening defense of the hate-mongers who initiated the violence) have dominated the news in recent days.  No doubt there are some, perhaps many, who once again lay blame on the ‘fake media’ for misinterpreting Trump’s remarks or for whipping the 'libs' into a frenzy on this issue.

The march of the white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville was prompted by the prospect of the city taking down a statue of Robert E. Lee.  This poses a question about the general purpose and value of such memorials and whether there is indeed a justification for removing them.

At first blush, one may think that it is foolish to try to erase the past by taking down memorials of Confederate heroes.  Isn't this a part of history and doesn't the south have a right to celebrate its war heroes?

But as I have thought more deeply about the question of civil war memorials and honoring historical events and people, I have come to the conclusion that most of these monuments should indeed come down.  There is of course the danger of trying to ‘purge’ historical memory or rewrite history.  But in reality, the monuments extolling the virtues and heroic efforts of Confederate leaders are the real ‘whitewashing’ of history.

The simple fact is that the primary reason, the casis belli, for the Civil War was slavery.  The Southern nostalgia for the pre-Civil War era and its sentimental regard for confederate soldiers is misplaced at best and a complete delusion at worst.  The ‘lost cause’ was not the genteel way of life that one sees in romantic mythology like ‘Gone With the Wind’ and it was not states’ rights.  The ‘lost cause’ - the primary reason that the south seceded - was to avoid what they saw as the inevitable abolition of slavery were they to stay in the Union.  Pure and simple.

Was it tragic that millions of young men lost their lives and that terrific hardship was visited upon the south?  Of course it was.  Were there heroic men, heroic gestures and heroic sacrifices in the war?  Of course there were.  Just as there were many heroic deeds by German soldiers in World War II.  But do you see monuments and statues in Germany extolling the virtues of their soldiers and the ‘lost cause’ of the third Reich? 

It was a bitter pill to swallow, but the Germans faced up to the fact that the best way the suffering by their own people in WWII could be idealized, memorialized or sanctified was to put up monuments honoring the truly helpless victims – the Jews and the Gypsies and all the others that the Nazis exterminated.  And the best way to honor the suffering and sad loss of so many Germans was to vow to never let hatred, extreme nationalism and prejudice take root again in German culture.

This should have been the approach of the post-Confederacy south – an honest recognition that an immoral embrace of human slavery was the cause of their downfall - not the propagation of a myth about a noble ‘lost cause’ and the tragic destruction of the plantation lifestyle, which quite frankly was only possible because of the horrific enslavement and exploitation of Africans.  Monuments are, to put it simply, not appropriate.