Youngkin Appointee Resigns from Board Over Lost Cause Comments

No one should be surprised by Ann Hunter McLean’s resignation this week from the Virginia Board of Historic Resources. Neo-Confederate groups like the Virginia Flaggers and Sons of Confederate Veterans were thrilled with Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s appointee because they viewed her as an ally in the defense of Confederate monuments and other public displays of Confederate iconography. That approval, however, failed to extend much further.

Whatever mandate Youngkin believes he holds as a result of a campaign that vilified history teachers and insisted that children were being taught Critical Race Theory, it clearly didn’t extend to an appointment of an extreme Lost Cause advocate.

Youngkin was quickly forced to distance himself from McLean’s claims that slavery was not the cause of the war, that slaveowners were in the process of abolishing its “peculiar institution,” and that Lincoln committed treason in calling for volunteers to put down the rebellion.

Source: Virginia Mercury

This reminds me of a similar incident back in 2010 when then Virginia Republican Governor Bob McDonnell decided to sign a proclamation declaring April Confederate History Month after an 8-year absence. He did so at the request of Neo-Confederate groups and their conservative allies and likely believed that few people would notice or care.

The backlash was immediate and relentless. McDonnell was forced to rescind the original proclamation over its failure to recognize slavery and issued the following statement:

The proclamation issued by this Office designating April as Confederate History Month contained a major omission. The failure to include any reference to slavery was a mistake, and for that I apologize to any fellow Virginian who has been offended or disappointed. The abomination of slavery divided our nation, deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights, and led to the Civil War. Slavery was an evil, vicious and inhumane practice which degraded human beings to property, and it has left a stain on the soul of this state and nation. In 2007, the Virginia General Assembly approved a formal statement of "profound regret" for the Commonwealth's history of slavery, which was the right thing to do.

The governor eventually issued a new proclamation declaring April “Civil War History in Virginia Month.” Interestingly, he made the announcement at one of the “Signature Conferences,” sponsored by the state’s Civil War 150th commission, on the history of emancipation and slavery in Virginia.

The media is framing the Youngkin-McLean split largely as a result of protests from members of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus. Certainly this is part of the story, but it also reflects a much larger demographic shift throughout the state and changes in how Americans think about the history and legacy of the Civil War.

It would be a mistake to reduce the debate over Civil War memory in Virginia to one of monuments and statues, but a quick glance reveals a landscape that has been utterly transformed.

Museums in Richmond are now displaying Confederate statues and addressing some of the most controversial subjects surrounding the legacy of the Lost Cause in Virginia. As alluded to above, its Civil War 150th commission led the way in helping Virginians think about the the causes and consequences of the war based on the latest scholarship. Colleges and universities like Washington & Lee and the Virginia Military Institute—two schools that once celebrated Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson respectively—are now distancing themselves from their Lost Cause roots. Civil War battlefields in Virginia, overseen by the National Park Service, now introduce visitors to a much more sophisticated narrative compared to years past.

This just scratches the surface.

Both incidents suggest that the most extreme voices in Virginia, who still embrace a Lost Cause vision of the past and present, enjoy very little, if any, political influence. Just ask former Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Corey Stewart.

The resignation of Ann Hunter McLean is one more nail in the Lost Cause coffin.