I recently wrote about my reasons why the statue honoring Confederate soldiers in front of the old Rockville court house should be removed.
There is a new petition on MoveOn.org urging Montgomery County officials to remove the statue. I strongly believe that the statue, and all such celebrations of the Confederacy, should be removed from places of public honor. But I have a major problem with this language in the petition: "society does not honor traitors who fought for slavery." Soldiers in wars are not policymakers and, sadly, they are often lambs to the slaughter in "causes" they do not fully understand. Or if they do understand, they are prisoners of their own environments. We condemn the cause of slavery, but there is no need to demonize the ancestors of many of our fellow countrymen. Such language unnecessarily distracts from the real issue: that we should not publicly honor the Confederate cause. THAT is why the statue should be removed.
The Left, of which I consider myself a part, should not repeat the mistake of the Viet Nam era, in which too many people who opposed the War condemned the draftees and enlistees who were sent by our government on what was an ill-considered mission. Those condemnations delayed national reconciliation, and plague us even to this day.
I will not be signing the MoveOn.org petition.
Here is the full text of the petition to remove the statue honoring as "heroes" those Montgomery County residents who chose to take up arms on behalf of slavery and treason. Readers who believe such a monument has no place on public property are invited to sign.
ReplyDeletehttp://petitions.moveon.org/sign/moco-take-down-the-confedera?source=c.em.cp&r_by=9578361
Your comments are thought provoking. But the Civil War and Vietnam were not parallel. Every Montgomery County resident that fought for the Confederacy did so as a volunteer, since the Confederacy could not draft citizens of states that did not secede. While you are correct individual soldiers had different reasons for volunteering, the clear reason for secession stated by those who led the Confederacy was the preservation of slavery. Certainly every Marylander that volunteered for the Confederacy knew he was legally committing an act of treason against the US. More importantly, the statue was erected 48 years after the war by members of a national organization (the UDC) that promoted newspaper articles and school textbooks advocating segregation and claims such as African Americans were happy under slavery and loved their masters. The purpose of the statue when it was erected was to support segregationist policies and violations of civil rights in Montgomery County. While you are correct that we should not denigrate any individual soldier only for fighting in the war, when addressing the Confederate military collectively, we should never have professed "love for the Thin Gray Line." The statue should come down, and petitions are one small way to show support for this end.
ReplyDeleteYou make very good points, Rudy. And, happily, County Executive Leggett has now made it clear that the statue should be removed. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/leggett-wants-rockville-statue-of-rebel-soldier-off-lawn-near-courthouse/2015/07/17/2cfc9e72-2c8f-11e5-bd33-395c05608059_story.html
DeleteI still believe that, notwithstanding the racist motives of those who erected the statue, and the benighted (certainly by our standards) views of those who joined the Confederate army, we should focus on condemnation of the views, not on those who were unfortunate enough to hold them. We will make more progress that way. That is my point about the MoveOn.org petition. In that regard (and, indeed, regarding the entire controversy), I would commend a re-reading of President Lincoln’s brief, but compelling Second Inaugural Address. See http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln2.asp
David, it appears we have very little disagreement. I'd just like to add a quote from Professor James Loewen, who has written on Confederate symbols in the Post recently. This quote is from a podcast: "We can still commemorate the bravery of the troops. We can still commemorate the severity of the war and the casualties, that my family took for that matter. But we're going to have to give up on claiming that the cause was just." http://www.impedimentsofwar.org/singleshow.php?show=704 at 54:03.
ReplyDelete