4B
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2017
We’re still fighting, more than 150 years after Appomattox
Deep divisions
remain between
north, south
By JAY REEVES and
FELICIA FONSECA
Associated Press
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. —
When the Civil War was over,
when the dead were buried and
the union was reunited, it came
time to tell tales and write his-
tory. In reunion gatherings and
living rooms alike, differing
versions of the causes of the
conflict became as hardened as
sunbaked Georgia clay.
More than a century and a
half later, those dueling narra-
tives are with us still.
Did 620,000 die, as North-
erners would have it, in a noble
quest to save the union and end
slavery — the nation’s horrific
original sin? Or was the “War
Between the States” a gallant
crusade to limit federal power,
with slavery playing a lesser
part, as Southerners insisted?
Who was worthy of honor —
Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses
S. Grant, or Jefferson Davis
and Robert E. Lee?
After all this time, it could
be argued that it doesn’t mat-
ter, but the blood that was shed
over a statue of Lee in Char-
lottesville, Virginia, is power-
ful evidence that it does. The
national dispute over the fate of
stone and bronze monuments
begs this larger question: How
does one country with two his-
tories move forward?
The answer, some say, is by
seizing a rare chance to build
a shared history through small
steps.
“This is a moment to
acknowledge the incredi-
ble change that we have seen
among American people when
they look at their past,” said
Peter Carmichael, a history
professor at Gettysburg Col-
lege. “They’re not trying to
sweep things under the rug.
There are no saints and there
are no sinners back in 1861.
Everyone was to blame, except
for the slaves.”
Chad Williams/DroneBase
A statue of Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart on Monument
Avenue in Richmond, Va.
Chad Williams/DroneBase
The statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va.
Aftermath
Other countries have dealt
more forthrightly with the
aftermath of horrific violence
or oppression. After apart-
heid’s end, South African lead-
ers formed the Commission of
Truth and Reconciliation to
promote national unity in the
early 1990s. Rwanda’s com-
munity courts investigated
the slaughter of as many as 1
million people in 1994. Post-
World War II Germany out-
lawed Nazism and its symbols.
Sanford Levinson, a Uni-
versity of Texas at Austin law
professor, said such commis-
sions generally focus on ter-
rorist activity by nationalist
governments, killings and tor-
ture immediately after they
happen to hold oppressors
accountable.
The United States could
examine aspects of the Civil
War, such as military prisons,
the massacre of black soldiers
or slavery itself, he said. But,
“it would turn inevitably into
historians testifying,” he said.
“There aren’t concrete indi-
viduals who are going to come
up and say ‘yes, I did this and
I really beg your apology.’ All
those people are dead.”
Americans also would need
to reach genuine consensus
that the Civil War should be
confronted, a willingness to
dredge up repressed memories
and someone to lead the effort,
he said.
Academics and others told
The Associated Press the road
to avoiding a more divisive
future may be lined with dis-
cussions rather than shouting
matches; more complete his-
tory lessons; local, rather than
state or national action; and a
renewed focus on individuals
who fought and were impacted
by the war, including the depri-
vations they endured.
The drafting of men for the
war, desertions in the Confed-
erate and Union armies, polit-
ical disagreements and dis-
sent are among things not well
represented in the memories
of the conflict, especially not
through monuments, said Ste-
phen Rockenbach, history pro-
fessor at Virginia State Uni-
versity. Americans can draw
on primary sources, including
writings of people who lived
during that time period and
their diaries to understand dif-
ferent viewpoints.
“The danger occurs when
you only look at one aspect,
one person, one battle, even
one time frame,” he said.
Historians often don’t reach
consensus on interpretations of
the past and the general pub-
lic can’t be expected to, either,
Rockenbach said.
“How then do we con-
vey this huge experience that
all kinds of Americans went
through in meaningful way?”
he said. “Statues do not do a
very good job of doing that on
their own.”
Joe Zuniga, a 60-year-old
school teacher in Rio Rancho,
New Mexico, wants to see
Confederate statues in muse-
ums or part of historical sites
or battlefields so that visitors
have the context they need to
understand what happened.
“We are talking about his-
tory,” said the self-described
conservative. “We don’t have
to have it on top of a build-
ing overlooking the city with
the idea of it being glorified.
But, nonetheless, it is history.
Whatever is in a person’s heart
can be there. It doesn’t have
to be replicated by granite or
marble.”
Carmichael, the Gettysburg
College professor, said some
of the problems of today could
be addressed by doing a better
job of explaining the war and
how it affected a group that
generally was ignored by both
sides after Appomattox Court-
house: black Americans.
Rather than simply tear-
ing down statues, interpre-
tive markers should be used
at Confederate monuments to
show the systematic oppres-
sion of black people through
lynching, the denial of vot-
ing rights, and segregation, he
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said. That way, Americans can
understand that the system of
slavery destroyed by the Civil
War didn’t create equality but
instead ushered in Jim Crow
laws.
Reconciliation won’t hap-
pen in the immediate after-
math of Charlottesville, he
said. The best change might
be through local efforts where
people who know each other
can hash things out.
“The more it’s done from
far away, the more I think it’s
likely to provoke resentment
and anger, and not lead to any-
thing wonderfully produc-
tive,” he said.
Reunited
Civil War veterans reunited
on battlefields for years after
the fight. But today, organiza-
tions composed of descendants
of the armies that battled from
1861 to 1865 have few deal-
ings with each other or conver-
sations on a broad level.
The head of the Sons of
Union Veterans of the Civil
War, Mark Day, said open-
ing a shared dialogue about
the nation’s history might be a
good start.
“We’re Americans. We
have an ability to hold differ-
ent opinions and share differ-
ent opinions,” said Day, the
national commander. “I think
it’s a national thing that we
maybe have to talk to each
other.”
Thomas V. Strain Jr. is
Day’s Southern equivalent,
commander-in-chief of the
Sons of Confederate Veterans,
which is more than three times
the size of the Union group
with some 33,000 members.
Strain doesn’t mind talking
to Union descendants — he
recently attended a gathering
of the Northern group — but
he doesn’t know that discus-
sions will help.
People are more interested
today in fighting battles with
monuments as proxies than in
figuring out what happened
long ago, said Strain.
“Until society as a whole
changes and we start see-
ing things for what they are, I
don’t think at any time we’re
going to be able to sit down
and reconcile,” said Strain, of
Athens, Alabama.
The Southern descendants’
group supports the preser-
vation of Confederate mon-
uments and members often
espouse the traditional, South-
ern view of the war that min-
imizes the role of slavery in
the conflict. But it didn’t offi-
cially participate in the Aug.
12 demonstration in Charlot-
tesville that ended in multi-
ple injuries and the death of a
woman who was killed when a
car allegedly driven by a man
aligned with white suprema-
cists plowed into a crowd.
The group continues to
memorialize its forbears;
members were on hand for
the dedication of a monument
to unknown Confederate dead
on private property in rural
south Alabama on Aug. 24.
The NAACP spoke out against
the project, calling it a step
backward.
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