First of all, the title is stolen from Drew Gilpin Faust's excellent book This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. There was also a documentary based on the book on Netflix a few years back, which I also recommend.
Anyway, yes! It's time for a history blog! I've been thinking about American Civil War history for awhile now, and how it's being interpreted. I'm not an expert by any means, so please consider this post a summary and a compass to point you towards more information.
As a sort of disclaimer, I don't have any records of direct ancestors of mine fighting in the war. My mother's side is entirely German (more on that later!) and the earliest arrival I can consistently source is my great-great grandfather John Harders, who arrived in New York in 1865. Various branches of my father's family arrived very early, in the 1630s, more arriving in the 1840s, and finally the Norwegians in the 1880s and 1905. My great-great-great grandfather Samuel Cotton apparently voted for Abraham Lincoln and was a Republican, but I haven't any service records for any ancestor on that side. None of my ancestors ever lived south of Pennsylvania, so as far as I know, no one in my family owned slaves after 1799, when slavery was restricted in New York. The point is that I have no Civil War heritage to defend or glorify.
The Civil War had such an incredible impact on America that it's hard for us to imagine the scope. Entire towns disappeared because so many men never came home. The concept of death changed dramatically, as argued by Gilpin Faust's book mentioned above. Before the war, families could plan on death, even sudden and accidental deaths, occurring close to or at home. A dying person could bid farewell to their loved ones and make their peace with God. This process was referred to as a "good death," a death where no unresolved issues are left behind and everyone can mourn without any doubts about whether or not the soul had safely arrived in heaven. After death, the family could spend time preparing the body for its final journey and enact the social rituals of mourning in their communities. Families knew where their dead were buried and could visit and tend to their graves personally.
War interrupted these rituals. This has always been true, but the scale of this conflict not only interrupted, it destroyed them, forcing Americans to create a new way of mourning. Graves could not be visited or tended if your husband, son, brother, father was buried in a trench somewhere in Tennessee, far away from your home in Maine or Mississippi. Records of mass graves or even individual graves were not well kept at the beginning of the war, and one of the extraordinary tasks Clara Barton took on was to track down missing men and report to their families, not finishing the project until 1869.
New kinds of memorials had to be created, especially for the Southerners. They had lost not only people, but an entire social structure had been dismantled.
Society in the South counted on the slaves being the very bottom. Many white Americans (including many abolitionists) believed that the black person was by nature inferior, less than human. It was certainly not their (the black peoples') fault, as God had made them this way. In the pro-slavery view belief, they had to be tamed, managed and taken care of by their betters (white people). The social order depended on the men managing the slaves (or managing the male overseers who managed the slaves on larger farms) and the women managing the home and children under the men's guiding hand. When a family didn't own slaves, they could still hope one day to be prosperous enough to buy a slave or two, thus climbing the economic ladder. Remember, slaves were property. When one has property, one is rich. When one is rich, one is important. All Southerners had to believe in this system for it to work.
Slight digression - I've often seen comparisons of African-American slavery to the treatment of white European immigrants, specifically the Irish. Here's the problem with that comparison: blacks in America were subject to what is called chattel slavery, a system whereby a human being is bought and owned by another human being. The slave has no personal rights or freedoms other than what his/her master allows in chattel slavery. Any child of that slave is also a slave, no matter the full parentage (i.e. when a white master had children by a black slave, those children were legally slaves unless the master freed them). Whites were more often subject to indentured service, a legal contract bonding one person in service to another. Say I lived in Ireland and wanted passage to America, but couldn't afford it-I could indenture myself as a servant to someone in exchange for passage and a set period of service, during which the original debt would be paid off in work. At the end of my indenture, I was free to go and do whatever. These terms were set in a legal document, a contract, held by the servant. Criminals were also transported as indentured servants as part of the punishment.
There is no comparison. Yes, many indentured servants were treated horribly, and that's very wrong. I am not minimizing their treatment and discrimination. But they were not owned. Their children were not owned. Their families were not separated by sale. They had legal recourse if the terms of the indenture were not met.
The South lost. Badly. The men who returned had often lost their livelihoods. The land was occupied territory. The towns and cities had been attacked and in some cases destroyed. It took years for the economy to partially recover, although in many ways the Southern economy has never recovered from the abolition of slavery. When the entire plantation system's success rests on the backs of slaves, it can't continue without them. Imagine removing the wheels from cars, then having to find a way to replace them. In the South, the Reconstruction years were years of hard choices and harsh truths for former slaves and slave owners alike. The social structure of the South didn't shift overnight - black people were still considered inferior, but white people no longer had direct control over black lives. The white people had to find and create new methods of keeping the old social order intact. Thus the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, enforcing racial segregation and limiting rights and opportunities.
When anyone comes to the defense of a Confederate veteran (specifically Robert E. Lee these days) with "well, they didn't like slavery" or "they didn't own slaves, so they can't have been a bad person" they are ignoring an important point. Any man who fought for the Confederacy supported slavery. That was the whole point of fighting, to preserve their right to own slaves and maintain the economy and way of live. Anyone who starts saying "states rights" at this point should remember that the fight was about a state's right to allow and preserve slavery. We simply can't dodge the issue or hide it - the Civil War was fought over slavery.
The comparison recently made between Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Presidents Washington and Jefferson is ridiculous. All four of these men owned slaves. All four of these men were good people who accomplished good and great things. Only two of them fought in a war over slavery, on the side supporting slavery. Memorials to Washington remember him as a war-winning leader who created much of the presidency as we know it today. Jefferson is memorialized as a great writer and diplomat, a scientist and scholar who helped articulate our country's founding principles. Lee is not usually remembered as an accomplished member of the Army Corps of Engineers, he is honored as the leading general of the Confederacy. Jackson is not honored as a Mexican War veteran or a mediocre teacher: he is remembered as one of the most popular and iconic generals of the Confederacy.
All four of these men had documented mixed or negative feelings about slavery. There is no way of knowing how Washington and Jefferson would have reacted to the Civil War, but Lee and Jackson chose to fight for slavery. Their reasons are not the point: their reasons may have been admirable, but they still fought to preserve the inhumane institution. That is why their statues are coming down, why Confederate or pro-slavery related statues and memorials are being removed. It is not that these were bad men not worth remembering. It is not "taking away our history and culture" as Southerners. The reason is that SLAVERY WAS AND IS WRONG, and honoring it in any way is also WRONG. Antebellum culture is an important part of our nation's history, and that's where it belongs. In our past, not our present.
These monuments were created to remember and idealize a time when life was "better" in the South, a time before the world changed. They were created along with Jim Crow laws, and are associated therefore with limiting the rights and freedoms of American citizens. It is not at all surprising that these memorials are upsetting and offensive. Think about being a Jewish or Czech person walking past a statue of Reinhard Heydrich every day. This man, represented and remembered by this statue, murdered your people and suppressed your culture. How would you feel every time you looked at his face? How would you feel every time someone posed for a picture with his statue? That's how black people say they feel walking past statues of antebellum and Civil War figures or events.
In Trevor Noah's memoir Born a Crime (which you should read, it's awesome) he briefly compares how history is taught in Germany and Great Britain versus America and South Africa.
In Germany, the Holocaust is extensively taught, and there is no glorification or romanticization of Nazis. Today it is illegal to perform the Hitler salute. Mein Kampf, Hitler's famous book was only recently republished in Germany (2016).
It can be difficult to be a German-American sometimes. I remember first learning about the Holocaust at age 10 and being terribly ashamed that I was half-German (5/8ths, technically). There is a delicate balance between being proud of my German heritage and being aware of Germany's at times cruel legacy. This balance is easier for me since all of my German ancestors were in Minnesota or Wisconsin by 1886, but I still feel the stigma.
But the message we learn in school here as well as in Germany is that Germany was wrong in World War II. There are no monuments honoring Adolf Hitler or Reinhard Heydrich. There are memorials for their victims, honoring the people they hurt. No Jewish person has to walk past a marble monument to the Nuremberg Laws every day. The Nazi Party and its ideals of racial supremacy and purity were and are wrong.
We don't learn that about the Civil War in school here. At age 11, I remember learning about the gallant South, reading Gone With the Wind, and thinking that yes, slavery is bad and wrong, but not all slaves were treated badly. The white supremacy of the KKK was not dissected and condemned in detail that I can recall. (Another slight digression: white men, no one is replacing you. Shut up.) I don't really remember learning much about it, actually, until we were taught about the Civil Rights movement. The North was presented (to me at least) as industrious, efficient, and at times boring. As a class, we were told to pick sides and imagine what it was like. I chose the South, having some affection for the underdog and also preferring to not be conventional by picking the winner. I knew that slavery was inhumane and wrong. I had read about Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth and knew that slavery was cruel. But for some reason, idealizing the South was (and still is for some) irresistible.
I think one of the most important things to remember is that we don't get to decide if black people feel oppressed or offended. This is true of any situation, not just race relations. I don't get to tell you that you aren't being harassed or upset: you have a right to your feelings and I can't make them go away. If you are uncomfortable or in pain I can't stand in front of you and tell you that you're fine, get over it. The best I can do is respect those feelings, and listen to you. Shouting at each other, belittling each other, and ignoring each other won't change a damn thing. We have to talk and we have to listen.
