“The statues that the youth in our country are tearing down pay homage to those men who were willing to risk their lives because of their commitment to their oath.”
After the attacks from the Alt Right and Alt Left in Charlottesville, a lot of people have been lashing out at Confederate Civil War statues throughout the country. The media has of course portrayed this through the simplified lens of oppressed protestors fighting against the institution of racism. However, I believe that this is a far cry from reality.
First off, we need a history lesson of the time period around the Civil War. The North did not care about slavery as an issue, at least not the way it is portrayed in school history classes. What they cared about was the fact that the South had too much power in the House of Representatives because of the 3/5ths compromise which allowed slaves to be counted as 3/5ths of a person. The North and South were at competitive economic odds, with a commercial economy in the North and an agriculturally based economy in the South. This created a congressional struggle where the two groups had very different ideas on taxation and power.
Additionally, prior to the start of the Civil War, Lincoln himself stated that he would have allowed the South to keep using slavery if it meant keeping the Union whole. The issues behind the start of the civil war were much more convoluted than simply being about slavery. In fact, turning the war into an issue of slavery was a brilliant tactical move by Lincoln to pull support from Europe away from the South since the South needed Europe to supply its weapons.
This is in no way an effort to give any credence to the views of the South or any racist ideology at all. I would highly recommend that anyone who is truly interested in how horrifically racist the South (and much of the country for that matter) was at the time that they look at the writings from the President of the Southern States, Jefferson Davis. It is beyond disgusting. Here is one quote from Davis as an example of how people thought at the time:
“We do not think that whites should be slaves either by law or necessity. Our slaves are black, of another and inferior race. The status in which we have placed them is an elevation. They are elevated from the condition in which God first created them, by being made our slaves. None of that race on the whole face of the globe can be compared with the slaves of the South. They are happy, content, unaspiring, and utterly incapable, from intellectual weakness, ever to give us any trouble by their aspirations.”
No modern person can claim to be intelligent and support any part of this worthless diatribe.
Surprisingly though, not all slave owners were white. In fact, there were quite a number of plantations run and controlled by black slave masters. They too abused the system to extort free labor from human beings bought and sold as property. They did not care about the racial injustice as much as they cared about the economic benefit for themselves.
“There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil.” ….Robert E. Lee
The bottom line is that most people in the US have an exceptionally basic and distorted view of what the Civil War was actually about. Was slavery a key part? Absolutely. But at its onset it was not about trying to free the slaves, simply to preserve the Union. Like most things go in history, the truth is often deeply rooted in traditions and values that we, the people looking back in time, cannot completely understand.
As far as the statues go, as a retired military officer with a deep love of military history, I have a different view on this than many people do. The Civil War was not simply some minor conflict. It literally tore families apart, with brothers fighting against each other on different sides of the fence. Everyone who fought in it, especially those in the South, were fighting because of a belief in States rights over the Federal Government.
The warriors who were leading these armies were all trained together and viewed each other as brothers, just like the warriors of our nation today. They were compelled by their conscience and their commitment to their oath to the Constitution to fight for what it stood for. It is the same oath that I have taken and begins with, “I do solemnly swear, that I will protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
The southern military members felt that the Constitution had been corrupted from within, by domestic enemies. In their mind, they had no choice but to rise up against the North.
I will again acknowledge that one of the key things that the Confederates were fighting for included a disgusting view on minorities and their status in the world. I cannot and will not excuse these ideas, but that was the norm of the time period. One hundred years from now people will look back at our social norms with disgust as well I am sure. I am not making an apology for slave owners, again all racism is disgusting and should be condemned as such, even if that tradition was rooted in the social norms of the times.
The statues that the youth in our country are tearing down pay homage to those men who were willing to risk their lives because of their commitment to their oath. This is why the Southern Commanding General, Robert E. Lee, has a barracks at West Point named after him. They are not honoring the fact that he rose up against the Union and by doing so supported the institution of slavery. They are honoring his service and his brilliance. In fact, Robert E. Lee was not a supporter of slavery at all, and called it out in his writings saying, “There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil.” This, by the way, was prior to the breakout of the Civil War.
Slavery was and is vile. There can be no truly rational conversation that does not first and foremost acknowledge this point. However, to simply allow the entirety of the Civil War and those who fought on either side to be watered down to such a simplistic version does a disservice to us as a nation.
Should we honor those who fought for the Confederacy?
I believe we should honor those who fought and died on those battlefields. Not because of their views towards slavery, but because they were, at the end of the day, part of us, and still representatives of our nation. They stood shoulder to shoulder and fought against those they loved out of a sense of duty and honor. We honor them because we needed to heal as a nation and come together, instead of trying to continue to tear each other apart.
To allow these ignorant juveniles to get away with the vandalism and violence they are committing is to encourage this behavior in others. When he was the Governor of California, Ronald Reagan had to deal with a bunch of violent protestors in the late 60s at Berkeley University. Here is what he had to say about them,
“All of it began the first time some of you who know better, and are old enough to know better, let young people think that they had the right to choose the laws they would obey as long as they were doing it in the name of social protest.”
That is the same reason why the current “protestors” are not being criminalized. The left has idealized their cause and is supporting them. To the left, laws are only for those who oppose them. Anything else is simply youthful protest.
I agree with another statement of Reagan’s regarding the protestors of his era. His words would, in my opinion work today as well.
“It began a year ago, when the so called free speech advocates who in truth have no appreciation for freedom, were allowed to assault and humiliate the symbol of law and order of policemen on the campus and that was the moment when the ringleaders should have been taken by the scruff of the neck and thrown out of the university once and for all.”
