Civil War Memory is Complicated

A private space for us to converse and connect

Confederate Monument in Arlington National Cemetery

There is a small grassroots movement that is hoping to prevent the removal of the Confederate monument in Arlington National Cemetery. The Naming Commission included it for removal among a long list of recommendations intended to disassociate the U.S. military from symbols of the Confederacy.

Letters are being written to congressmen and money is being raised to cover legal expenses. Of course, the people involved have every right to do so. This in and of itself isn’t news or even that interesting to me, but what I do find interesting and problematic is their claim that the Arlington monument is best understood as a symbol of reunion.

You can certainly find a number of references to sectional reunion in President Woodrow Wilson’s dedication address in 1914.

My privilege is this, ladies and gentlemen: To declare this chapter in the history of the United States closed and ended, and I bid you turn with me with your faces to the future, quickened by the memories of the past, but with nothing to do with the contests of the past, knowing, as we have shed our blood upon opposite sides, we now face and admire one another. I do not know how many years ago it was that the Century Dictionary was published, but I remember one day in the Century Cyclopedia of Names I had occasion to turn to the name of Robert E. Lee, and I found him there in that book published in New York City simply described as a great American general. The generosity of our judgments did not begin to-day. The generosity of our judgment was made up soon after this great struggle was over. Men came and sat together again in the Congress and united in all the efforts of peace and of government, and our solemn duty is to see that each one of us is in his own consciousness and in his own conduct a replica of this great reunited people. It is our duty and our privilege to be like the country we represent and, speaking no word of malice, no word of criticism even, stand shoulder to shoulder to lift the burdens of mankind in the future and show the paths of freedom to all the world.

In 1923 President Warren G. Harding struck a similar theme at the Confederate monument in Arlington.

Oh, it is a glad privilege today to utter a special love and reverence for the Civil War veterans who still witness the progress of the nation they saved, and find new reason, from year to year, to glory in their achievement. Out of their example is undying inspiration, for their accomplishment is measureless gratitude. I like to tell these aged veterans before me that long after they are gone we will be gratefully remembering them and all succeeding generations will sing their glory. And every time we meet to memorialize and honor them, every time our successors meet to pay annual tribute, there will be a patriotic resolution in every grateful heart to be worthy of the heritage which these have left behind, each to do his part in the making of a greater and a better republic, mindful of every obligation at home and unafraid to play our part in the world in which he lives.

The pull of reunion was strong at the turn of the twentieth century, but we should resist the urge to select pieces of evidence that vindicate our own assumptions about history or serve to reinforce our own agendas.

It goes without saying that any piece of historical evidence first needs to be contextualized. A fuller accounting of the individuals involved and events leading to the dedication of the monument in 1914 reflect much more than a desire to reunite the nation and move beyond sectional rancor.

We could spend hours discussing the politics of Civil War memory. Why did President William F. McKinley reach out to white southerners during his tour of the region and suggest that the federal governmnt should care for the remains of Confederate dead? What goals did it serve? We could ask the same about Wilson and Harding.

This is not intended to dismiss their actions and words, but to provide context.

Wilson’s own reunion-themed speech obscures the fact that he refused to take part in a Memorial Day exercise organized by the Grand Army of the Republic. As a result the G.A.R. requested that he not take part in the dedication of the Arlington monument.

Reunion did not exist in a vacuum.

Anyone interested in the subject of Civil War memory should start their reading with Caroline Janney’s book, Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation. Janney makes a very helpful distinction early in the book between reunion and reconciliation.

Reunion, according to Janney had been the goal of the war for the vast majority of the loyal citizenry of the United States. Reunion was a fact. “Reconciliation was harder to define, subject to both multiple and changing interpretations.” It is important to remember that demonstrations of reunion did not necessarily imply reconciliation.

Union and Confederate veterans who attended the 1913 reunion at Gettysburg, for example, may have taken part in acts of reunion by embracing one another over the stone wall, but that did not mean they were reconciled.

The point is that at no time during this period did the nation coalesce around one memory of the Civil War. They were always in tension with one another. This was true of the dedication of the Arlington monument as well.

To whatever extent the members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy hoped to benefit from or encourage reunion, the monument itself is an unapologetic celebration and vindication of the Confederacy and slavery that came at the expense of African Americans, whose own history was grossly distorted in the form of the “loyal slave.”

Demonstrations of reunion existed precariously alongside a lingering bitterness and suspicion. African Americans struggled, but persisted in reminding the nation of their own contributions to defeating the Confederacy, saving the Union, and ending slavery.

Charles Francis Adams may have praised Robert E. Lee as part of a ceremony marking the centennial of his birth in 1907, but for the veterans in the G.A.R. the former Confederate general would forever be remembered as a “traitor” to the nation.

Union veterans were opposed to the decorating of the few Confederate graves that existed in Arlington in the years following the war. They even went as far to call for the banning of family members from visiting these graves. Despite the presence of James Tanner in the dedication ceremony, many G.A.R. members remained opposed to honing their former enemies.

As I suggested above, the folks hoping to prevent the Confederate monument in Arlington from being removed have every right to do so. The meaning that they attach to it is not worth debating because it is very much a personal connection, but to suggest that the monument itself represents nothing more than reunion reflects a poor grasp of the relevant history.

I have said much the same about people calling for the removal of these monuments based on generalizations and a simplistic reading of the past. The tendency to reduce every Confederate monument to nothing more than an attempt to impose white supremacy on Black Americans tells us very little about why they exist.

One final point. Regardless of how you think Americans approached the commemoration of the Civil War era at any given time does not mean that we must follow in the their footsteps. Our collective memory of the past and the values that we hope to uphold through a commemoration of the past in our public spaces is constantly evolving.

Public spaces belong to the living. That doesn’t mean that each generation must start from scratch, but it does mean that we have a responsibility to ensure that our public spaces reflect our basic values.

---

Tomorrow I will record the first in a series of video interviews with historians and others who work in the field of history. First up is Hilary Green, who is one of my favorite historians working in the field of Civil War memory. This promises to be an entertaining and engaging discussion. It should drop on Monday.

p.s. This content is for paid-members only.