These monuments are not history

A friend of mine had written a column, and I knew I had to respond.

He’s a retired newspaperman, an amateur historian, and one of the best photographers I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. In other words, one very smart guy.

This was a few months back, and my friend had written a column about the sensitive topic of monuments to the Confederacy, the same sorts of monuments that have created a national controversy/discussion/argument in recent days.

My friend’s position — true to his devotion to history — was that it would be revisionist to eliminate the statues. He viewed them as touchstones to the Civil War.

I didn’t see it that way. And despite our friendship — or maybe because of it — I felt compelled to let him know how I felt.

I’ve dug through my email files to track down our exchange at that time.

Here goes:

“I read your op-ed piece … about the Confederate monuments and can’t shake the feeling that you got it wrong.

“The monuments in question are not relics of Civil War history. Instead, they’re ugly remnants of Reconstruction, that era when the South re-fought the war with propaganda and terror. Second time around they won, and we are still dealing with the consequences today.

“I know how much you value history, but there is nothing worthy of respect or reverence in these nasty bits of revisionist statuary. It is simply appalling to me that they have stood in place for so long.

“But their years — and the sentimentality of Civil War history buffs — count for little when faced with the enormity of slavery, insurrection and treason.

“When the Soviet Union collapsed, most of its citizens had the good sense to topple the statues of Lenin and Marx or move them to museums or backwater venues. A few still remain in the post-Soviet equivalents of Alabama, but I suspect their days are numbered.

“In Prague, where we were last week, they used explosives to demolish the largest monument to Stalin on the face of the earth. Few mourn its passing.

“Should history be erased and sanitized? Of course not.

“But that’s not what’s happening …

“Instead, new history is being written. Wrongs are being righted. Old lies are being put to rest.

“Someday, I suspect, there will be statues erected to those brave public officials who had the courage to finally do the right thing and send odious Confederate idolatry to the dustbin where it belongs.

“Thanks for giving me a chance to vent.”

I felt good sending that email. But I felt even better when I received his response, another op-ed piece he’d had published.

Here, in part, is what he had to say:

“Upon further review and urged by a couple of folks to do some more thinking, I think I was wrong on this business of keeping the monuments to the Confederacy in the aftermath of the Civil War. Said one respondent, right up front, ‘I can’t shake the feeling that you got it wrong.’

“Let me back up here a minute. A few weeks ago, down in New Orleans, they took down the statues to some heroes of the old, white, male, slave-owning South: Gen. Beauregard, Jefferson Davis and Gen. Robert E. Lee were removed from their perches where they have stood, silently bronzed, for a hundred years. And I started carrying on here about being careful about what you blow up because you can’t put it back together again. Part of our heritage and all that sort of thing. …

“Now, a little bit of history is important here. The Confederacy — the states which tried to bolt from the United States of America — lost the Civil War. Slavery was ended right then and there. But there were those in the South who embraced what is now called the ‘Lost Cause,’ the belief that, in the words of the song, ‘the South will rise again.’ And those of the Lost Cause applied nostalgic and romantic language and art — including statues — to mask the racism, the bigotry, the terror that was at their core. Lipstick applied to the pig.

“(My friend) is correct. Please let the record so show. Now, let us move on.”

This discussion ought to be over.