Thanks for these thoughts, and amen to your emphasizing that the removed memorial "was never intended to be a symbol of reunion or reconciliation."
It reminded me of the fierce debate that took place over the course of several days last September in the Wall Street Journal. The argument started with an op-ed opposing removal of the explic…
Thanks for these thoughts, and amen to your emphasizing that the removed memorial "was never intended to be a symbol of reunion or reconciliation."
It reminded me of the fierce debate that took place over the course of several days last September in the Wall Street Journal. The argument started with an op-ed opposing removal of the explicitly Lost Cause monument from Jim Webb—Marine veteran with a Navy Cross, author of ten books, former secretary of the Navy, former Democratic senator from Virginia, and an enigma to me--a Virginian and former Navyman--for half a century. He blamed a “new world of woke” for the then-still-pending removal that he said would reveal “a deteriorating society willing to erase the generosity of its past, in favor of bitterness and misunderstanding conjured up by those who do not understand the history they seem bent on destroying.” Shezzam.
Three days of letters to the editor ensued. The online comment total reached about 3800. WSJ readers cared, and they generally echoed Webb’s cockamamie view that a monument—a public history statment—is ***itself*** history that can somehow be destroyed without first contriving a time machine for traveling back to do the destroying. Webb declared, falsely, that the 1914 monument’s “sole purpose” was “healing the wounds of the Civil War and restoring national harmony.”
Retired Brigadier General Ty Seidule, author of the first and longest letter, rejected that reconciliation argument. As others have pointed out in this forum, his _Robert E. Lee and Me_ traces his lifelong struggle to come to terms with the Civil War and slavery. His six-minute YouTube “Was the Civil War About Slavery?”—viewed by millions—demolishes Lost Cause sophistries.
A decade into his Army career, Seidule became a Ph.D. historian and West Point professor. Later he served as vice chair of the military base renaming commission that called for removing Arlington’s monument. “Reconciliation,” Seidule wrote, “didn’t include nine million African-Americans in the South who lived in a racial police state enforced by a terror campaign of lynching.”
Then: "Removing the monument doesn’t change history. It changes commemoration, which reflects our values. When the monument is gone, we can look to the empty space and say, finally, that the U.S. military no longer commemorates an enemy who chose treason to preserve slavery."
I'm glad Kevin, with his long memory of that thing, has now looked to that empty space and posted his thoughts.
There was a time and place for outrage on both sides re: the future of this particular memorial. That time has passed. What's left are the graves and the stories that they convey about the complexity of our shared past. Ultimately, that's what I am here for.
Thanks for these thoughts, and amen to your emphasizing that the removed memorial "was never intended to be a symbol of reunion or reconciliation."
It reminded me of the fierce debate that took place over the course of several days last September in the Wall Street Journal. The argument started with an op-ed opposing removal of the explicitly Lost Cause monument from Jim Webb—Marine veteran with a Navy Cross, author of ten books, former secretary of the Navy, former Democratic senator from Virginia, and an enigma to me--a Virginian and former Navyman--for half a century. He blamed a “new world of woke” for the then-still-pending removal that he said would reveal “a deteriorating society willing to erase the generosity of its past, in favor of bitterness and misunderstanding conjured up by those who do not understand the history they seem bent on destroying.” Shezzam.
Three days of letters to the editor ensued. The online comment total reached about 3800. WSJ readers cared, and they generally echoed Webb’s cockamamie view that a monument—a public history statment—is ***itself*** history that can somehow be destroyed without first contriving a time machine for traveling back to do the destroying. Webb declared, falsely, that the 1914 monument’s “sole purpose” was “healing the wounds of the Civil War and restoring national harmony.”
Retired Brigadier General Ty Seidule, author of the first and longest letter, rejected that reconciliation argument. As others have pointed out in this forum, his _Robert E. Lee and Me_ traces his lifelong struggle to come to terms with the Civil War and slavery. His six-minute YouTube “Was the Civil War About Slavery?”—viewed by millions—demolishes Lost Cause sophistries.
A decade into his Army career, Seidule became a Ph.D. historian and West Point professor. Later he served as vice chair of the military base renaming commission that called for removing Arlington’s monument. “Reconciliation,” Seidule wrote, “didn’t include nine million African-Americans in the South who lived in a racial police state enforced by a terror campaign of lynching.”
Then: "Removing the monument doesn’t change history. It changes commemoration, which reflects our values. When the monument is gone, we can look to the empty space and say, finally, that the U.S. military no longer commemorates an enemy who chose treason to preserve slavery."
I'm glad Kevin, with his long memory of that thing, has now looked to that empty space and posted his thoughts.
There was a time and place for outrage on both sides re: the future of this particular memorial. That time has passed. What's left are the graves and the stories that they convey about the complexity of our shared past. Ultimately, that's what I am here for.