There was once a great and malignant evil in America. That evil was slavery. It was malignant because, like the scourge of cancer, it metastasized into other evils. It metastasized into the KKK, into neo-Nazis, into anti-Semitism, and into various white supremacist groups. It metastasized into segregation, into lynchings, into bombings, into Jim Crow, and into murderous attacks on black churches. Slavery was an enormous evil and America suffers the scourge of its repercussions to this day.
Slavery is gone, but there is no way to wipe out history. Institutionalized slavery is a part of America’s past. We cannot, nor should we, pretend it never happened. We have to admit that our ancestors screwed up in a big way. They bought and sold people and called it good and proper. They inflicted a great evil on America and then fought a devastating war in a failed attempt to preserve that evil institution.
The remnants of slavery exist today in monuments to the defenders of slavery. I know there will be people who will claim the Civil War wasn’t about slavery – it was about “states’ rights.” Sure it was – it was about Confederate states “right” to be slave states.
There are people who call themselves “Christians” who think that monuments to Southern slavery are just fine and no one should bring those monuments down. I fear for their souls. They are so very far on the wrong side of history.
Should the statues come down? In one sense, they’re museum pieces. They’re like that piece of pottery from ancient Rome that today’s society would consider obscene. Civil War statues are not artifacts of today’s society. They are artifacts of the past and can instruct us as to where we have come from.
Civil War monuments to vanquished Southern military officers are like those museum pieces. They belong in a museum. No one, I hope, not Southerners nor anyone else, believes they are monuments to slavery. They’re artifacts from a time and place that no longer exists, and that is the way they should be seen. But that time and place did once exist, and we shouldn’t forget it. What our ancestors did was so very wrong. It’s hard for Southerners to accept this fact: our ancestors are guilty of participating in a great evil.
Civil War statues commemorate men who were bold and brave and daring and fearless and gutsy and stalwart, but when all is said and done, those men were very, very wrong.
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When I was a young boy, my family moved from Cincinnati Ohio to Perry Florida. Looking for something to do, I wandered into the town park where a group of boys were flying a model airplane.
They immediately recognized me as a stranger, and as soon as I opened my mouth they identified me as a "yankee". They began to close in on me and shove me around, chanting "damn yankee!"
An adult approached and took control. He asked me "Is that true son? Are you a yankee?" Knowing a little bit about the civil war (and wishing at that moment I knew more), I said "No sir, I am a Virginian!" One kid yelled, "That's a yankee state!"
The man said "You idiot! Richmond Virginia was the capitol of the confederacy!" At that point, I was known as the kid from the capitol, and had a whole town full of instant friends!
I marveled at the fact that they were still living the civil war! Now, over 60 years later, my neighbor sports a confederate flag from his garage and my beloved college home of some 4 years, Charlottesville, has moronic storm troopers marching with Tiki torches chanting "blood and soil."
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