The Uses of History

Recently, I have been surprised at the amount of "pro-Confederacy romanticism" that's out there. I wouldn't mind it so much if it wasn't wrapped around claims like (a) the Civil War was not fought over slavery and (b) Lincoln didn't free the slaves and (c) if the South had been permitted to seccede, it would have solved its slavery and race issues immediately and without trauma. All of which is nonsense on stilts. The North fought to prevent seccesion; the South secceeded to protect it's "peculiar institution" from a president who had been elected on a free soil platform. Read McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom to get a flavor of the South's efforts to extend slavery into the Free States and Cuba. (Part of the opposition to the Mexican American War was the concern that the South had initiated the war in order to find new territories to expand slavery.)

Having said all that, some perspective is in order. The Confederates were American. The Confederacy was an American phenomenon. Confederate dead are American dead and deserved to be included in the tradition of commemoration on Memorial Day. Hence, recent criticisms of Bush for continuing the tradition of placing a wreath on Jefferson Davis' grave are meretricious. One such criticims was levelled by Maureen Dowd.

Here's a part of Robert Musil's thoughtful take-down of Dowd:

That tradition follows the great insights of Abraham Lincoln, who understood, in one of his most inspired strokes of graceful political genius, that after a civil war it is urgent that people set aside their vindictiveness, differences and hard feelings, no matter how justified - as much as possible. The dead Confederate soldiers should be honored despite their false cause because it is possible to honor these dead and not honor their cause. We can love and remember even those whose cause was wrong, and send wreathes to their graves, without honoring their cause. Thank God for that miracle, for it also makes our love and honor of our own parents right, even when they cleave to a false cause. We tolerate ignorance of such matters in our less insightful young. But people who do not eventually make peace with such aspects of human life become sad, permanent juveniles.

Nicely said. The Confederacy was a mistaken enterprise motivated by the worst impulse, but Southern dead are our dead and, as Lincoln knew, if we were to become one people, we had to abandon the sectional attitudes that fueled the war.