With the new round of controversy over what to do about Confederate monuments, I’ve been thinking about something Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1789:
I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, ‘that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living’: that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.
In the late nineteenth century, when many of these monuments were erected, the communities determined that honoring Confederate soldiers aligned with their values. Their decisions should have no power over us today.
It is not erasing history to remove the monuments. There is a difference between remembering and honoring. We have many ways to remember our history: books, museums, documentaries, and now mega-hit Broadway musicals As a history teacher I would hate to think that we can only remember our history through erecting monuments. Statues don’t tell much of a story after all. Of course, we need to remember, but do we need to honor the Confederates with monuments in highly visible public places? Robert E. Lee was by all accounts a gentleman and an inspiring leader. That’s not why he got a monument. He was a high ranking officer in the United States army, trained at West Point, and he became a traitor to his country. His actions contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of United States soldiers. Many are taught, as I was, that the main cause of the Civil War was not the protection of slavery–it was about tariffs and states’ rights. It is interesting how this is so unclear to us today; it wasn’t to anyone in 1860. The South lost the war but they won the history. Read any of the ordinances of secession issued by the southern states. They were most alarmed by the attacks on the institution of slavery. Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States, knew what the cause was about:
Our new government is founded…. its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
Thank goodness that the dead have neither powers nor rights over us.
Character Mattered 
I love how you make me reconsider stuff. I don’t think of Lee as a traitor. I think he was an officer and a gentleman who after MUCH agonizing just tried to do the next right thing. But doesn’t matter, either way. I believe the majority of the poor dumb ignorant soldiers who fought and died for the South showed up because they were supposed to; most had no choice. Is that like the Nazis all just following orders? Hmmm…not really. Have to think more about how I really feel about getting rid of the monuments to them. So many were just country kids who didn’t know any better. I ache for the senseless slaughter on both sides. But that’s the fault of the leaders, not all the men who ended up simply being cannon fodder.
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Thank you for reading my blog and your very thoughtful response!
I think that in many of our wars the average soldier did not understand the geopolitical reasons for the war. I remember reading once that the great majority of the draftees in WWI had no idea what the war was about. (I still don’t.) It wasn’t just the southern soldiers who were dragged in to a fight they didn’t fully understand. How about all those poor bewildered Irish immigrants who were just getting off the boats in NY and were handed a gun and a uniform and sent off to fight?
I just love all the discussions swirling around right now. Erasing history? NO! We are digging into our history and still interpreting it. As William Faulkner said “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” More true now than ever! For me, the most important part of the discussion is to get it absolutely clear that the South seceded to protect slavery. One of my favorite historians is Gary Gallagher at UVA who specializes in the Civil War. He’s very well-spoken with lots of YouTube videos that make this point far better than I ever could. One of the papers he has his students write is: “You hear a friend say the CW was not about slavery. How do you respond.?” Every single ordinance of secession written in 1860 emphasizes the slavery issue. You just simply can not study the history and conclude that it was the tariff issue, or states’ rights (the right to do what??) A more interesting paper to write is how the South lost the war but then won the history. The South seceded to protect slavery, then were destroyed economically, politically and socially, and lost their slaves anyway. So they had to rewrite the story. From Jefferson Davis on down, they wrote volumes that argued it wasn’t slavery. Then organizations such as the Daughters of the Confederacy began working to establish monuments to the glorious Lost Cause and built people such as Lee into almost godlike figures. Did any other losing general who had committed treason against his country ever come out looking more like a winner? And of course Grant was just a drunk who had overwhelming numbers on his side.
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