There’s been a lot of news going around lately on the tearing down of various monuments to the Confederacy and statues of famous Americans. It’s generated a tremendous amount of debate regarding our nation’s history and how we tell the story of America. As a history major, this is something I spent a fair amount of time discussing in various classes. One of the things we often discussed was the problem of who writes history. So often, it is the winners that write history. Rarely do we hear viewpoints that challenge the narrative written by the winners.
Of course, since it is the winners who are writing the
history, they tend to gloss over the not so nice parts of their stories. We also tend to make villains of the losers so that
it is clear who the bad guys are in the story.
Think about what gets taught in American schools, what you learned about
our story. Think about what you were
taught about these characters:
Christopher Columbus – sailed in search of a sea route to India, discovered the
Americas and opened up a whole new continent for European exploration.
The Pilgrims – good Christian believers who fled persecution in Britain for a
new home in America.
George Washington – founding father, led a rag-tag bunch of farmers in a war
against tyranny and freed us from British oppression. Rejected calls to become our king and was
elected our first president.
Thomas Jefferson – founding father, wrote the Declaration of Independence,
instrumental in drafting the Bill of Rights, third president of the United States
Now let’s take a second and flush out those histories a
little more:
Christopher Columbus – the Americas already existed and were well populated in
1492, Columbus simply became the first European to be aware of their
existence. He deliberately and intentionally
brought blankets infected with smallpox in a genocidal effort to eliminate
native populations. Enslaved thousands
of natives in an ultimately futile quest for gold.
The Pilgrims – also known as the Puritans.
Before leaving England they spent considerable time and effort
persecuting other Christians whom they deemed not “pure” enough in their faith;
hence the name “Puritans.” Their
“persecution” resulted from the simple fact that many other Christians chose
not to fall in line with Puritan practices and beliefs. Puritans weren’t the persecuted party, they
were the persecutors.
George Washington – slave owner who used teeth from his own slaves to replace
his own. While he acknowledged the evil
of slavery by freeing his slaves at his death, he refused to address the
broader issue and do anything to free all slaves.
Thomas Jefferson – slave owner. Sexually
assaulted at least one of his slaves.
Did not free the vast majority of the slaves he owned. As vice president, he spent the majority of
his term deliberately thwarting the efforts of President John Adams and
ensuring a disastrous four years of governing.
Now please do not get me wrong. I’m not trying to say they are all bad people. Certainly Washington and Jefferson are vital characters to the American story and one could say they same about the Puritans. You could even go so far as to say that the United States doesn’t happen without Columbus introducing Europe to the existence of the American continent. However, it is absolutely critical that we take the good AND the bad. We have to take time to understand the totality of the individuals we study. No one is 100% good or 100% bad. So where does that leave us in deciding which monuments need to come down?
I think we have to look at the totality of their life’s work and decide if that is something we want our children emulating. In the case of Washington and Jefferson and the other founding father’s I think it can reasonably be argued that the answer is “Yes.” They stood up to tyranny and helped usher in the representative democracy style of governing. Monuments to US Presidents should be left untouched, even while we take the time to acknowledge the horrible atrocities some of them committed while in office. We cannot whitewash history under some phony guise of patriotism. We have to talk about the darker parts of our history.
When it comes to figures like Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and other leaders of the Confederacy it’s a firm “No” from me. It’s important to remember that these men led others in open rebellion against the United States. They were traitors to their nation. These men decided loyalty to country was not as important as loyalty to a racist, immoral, and unjust system of slavery. Most history books used in American classrooms teach some version of the Civil War that pushes slavery to the side and focuses on the war as a fight over states’ rights. Seeing as how slavery was mentioned more than 80 times in the articles of secession, it’s rather specious to argue that it wasn’t about slavery. Those who push the states’ rights narrative conveniently forget that the specific right they were arguing about was the right to continue the institution of slavery. It is long past time we stopped celebrating men who are known for taking up arms against their nation in support of the horrible institution of slavery.
For me, the monument question is fairly simple. Monuments to the Confederacy need to come down; the rest should be left alone.
