As a lover of history, especially Civil War history, I can appreciate the value of remembering such a significant historical event in America's history. Politics and passions aside, what happened in Montgomery, Alabama on that arguably chilly day in February, 1861 was far more momentous than even the participants and witnesses at that time perhaps fully understood or appreciated. With the hindsight of history we can do so now as many of those who are now going to participate will not be around when the bi-centennial of that even comes around in 2061. It is then, for those now taking part, to remember that moment with the respect, dignity, and sensitivity that it deserves, as this will also be recalled when it is again remembered 50 years hence.
The war that resulted from this event was terrible and the echoes of that conflict are still reverberating throughout the world even now. It shaped both America and the world afterwards, and will do so as long as there is history left for us to live, and a posterity in which it can be remembered also.
I pray, then, that the gravity of this memorial, and its significance, is not lost on this generation. I also pray that it is remembered with sensitivity by those who claim a heritage from those who fought for the Confederacy, those who fought against it, and the descendants of the slaves that this government was inaugurated to perpetuate.
I realise that many people claim that Southerners deny that slavery was the primary motivation for secession but that kind of revisionist history is not fair to the four millions of black people held in bondage. I also realize that most Confederate soldiers, including the famed General Robert E. Lee, were not slave holders themselves. Indeed, as much history will reveal, most Southern soldiers were simply fighting because they felt it was their duty to defend their homes and what they defined as their 'country' from an invasion by the North, whether they called their country Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, etc., or the Confederate States of America.
Indeed it is also true that many free blacks, especially from Louisiana and other parts of the South, were more than willing to take up arms to defend 'their country' and yet were denied that right up until the very last weeks of the war itself, when it was too late. This, too, must be remembered by the participants and by those who will gather to protest against them.
The Civil War, then, was not simply a 'white man's war' fought between slave holders and non-slave holders, between 'racists' and non-racists. Both the North and the South were GUILTY of the sin of slavery and both paid a terrible price for its final eradication in the United States. As President Abraham Lincoln rightfully asked during his second inaugural address "If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him?"
By the living record of these immortal words, by the sacrifices of the soldiers, both North and South, by the lashes experienced by the slaves and the horrible wounds and interminable suffering this war brought upon the nation, it behooves us, Americans and non Americans, blacks, whites and whatever shade of colour in between, to remember and honour this event.
It also should give us pause to remember, as well, the man, Jefferson Davis, who bravely and heroically, bore upon his own person, the hatred and wrath of both his erstwhile countrymen and the (unfair) condemnation of generations, both blacks and whites to come, for leading the South during the war. He was not a Hitler, Mao, Stalin, or Pol Pot, and does NOT deserved to be remembered among such vile villains any more than does Lee, Stonewall Jackson or Joseph E. Johnston. That, too, is revisionist history, and is unbecoming of those who wish to protest against this solemn and historical re-enactment.
Davis was, by any measure, a Christian gentleman, a man of his time, and a patriot fighting for what he believed to be right and proper, as did countless others of his time and generation. If any fault can be accrued to him it's that the Confederacy's first and only president (and an unwilling one at that, according to his wife's, Varina, memoirs), was on the wrong side of history. Had he succeeded in securing the South's independence, history would look upon him far more favourably than it does now and those gathered to protest this event would perhaps remember how his slaves loved and cherished him as a fair and just master and, ultimately, the one who set events in place which led to their freedom some years after that conflict; which surely would have happened regardless of the result. This, too, must also be remembered, if only in the abstract.
What must, however, be remembered now, though, is the rich legacy of courage, honour, and sacrifice of those who fought in the conflict that resulted from this event. It must also be remembered that the America that emerged from it was a far far greater nation than the one that before it. The division between free and slave state might have disappeared , but the bitter harvest of racial politics and Jim Crow laws that resulted from the Northern occupation of the South, had only begun. This ‘second’ civil war, was not truly over until yet another Southerner, Martin Luther King Jr., 100 years later, stood up and called upon all men to behave as brothers, regardless of skin colour.
This, too, is a legacy of the Civil War and the inauguration being remembered in Montgomery, Alabama. In so far as it encompasses Americans of every stripe, political distinction, colour, and background, I earnestly pray, therefore, that it serves to remind Americans and the people of this world, of their joint heritage and join interest in this event. Rather than divide people, as it did in 1861, I hope that this inauguration reunites them in memory and in fondness of the price paid by Americans of every creed for the liberty which they, and the world, now enjoy.
Jefferson Davis, in his declining years, when asked by a reporter about how he wished to be remembered, said “tell them that I only loved America.” The America he fought for and against had changed fundamentally since the day he took the Oath of Office as President of the Confederate States of America in February, 1861, and would continue to change right until the present day. In 1978, almost 90 years since his death, US President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, a liberal, and a Southerner, signed into law a bill to posthumously restore Davis’s citizenship after it was revoked following the war. At that point it can be said, much as it was said upon Lincoln’s death in 1865, that he now “belongs to the ages.”
History, it is said, is written by the victors, but that’s not really true. History is written by us, their posterity, and how we remember it will mark us as surely as it marks those who participated in the events of that time. If it is done with bitterness, partisanship, and hatred, it will surely mark this generation with it and cast a dark shadow upon us when future generations recall this period. If it is remembered, however, with unity, with a spirit of compassion and respect for history, and a time of healing for divisions that no longer matter, then it will mark us as worthy successors and redeemers of those good and noble qualities that who fought and died for represented.
To quote Abraham Lincoln, “I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
God bless you all.
In Christ,
I.M. Ulysses
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
