My personal feelings on removing and destroying the Confederate statues

 You cannot go on Facebook nowadays and not see simplistic memes about the removal, and in some cases, the destruction of Confederate statues on both sides of the issue so, although I have tried to ignore this and against my better judgement, I feel it is time for me to write a little bit about this and how I feel about it. This is something that cannot be summed up in a meme in my opinion; history is not a bumper sticker slogan but rather a life lesson. 

  This is a touchy subject because you cannot take the contrary opinion without being branded a racist or a white supremacist nowadays but, as I alluded to above, this is part of the simplistic approach I have found on Facebook and I find the Civil War to be a subject of our history which is fascinating, almost more so than the Revolutionary War. To think this was the culmination of the Founding Fathers’ unwillingness to address that “peculiar institution” when writing the Constitution and instead kicking the can down the road by 20 years is mind-blowing. The Civil War was inevitable, it is amazing it was delayed for so long.

  Over the years I have become a Civil War buff; I am not saying I am an expert on the subject, I am not, but I have read many books on the Civil War, both from a Northern and a Southern perspective, and I have tried hard to educate myself on not only the war itself but the antebellum years leading up to the great conflict. 

  I have visited several Civil War battlefields from Gettysburg to Fredricksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness and a couple of others and every time I stood on one of these battlefields I was taken aback by how powerful it was.

  Standing at the copse of trees and looking to the left and to the right and picturing General Picketts’ men coming out of the woods for as far as the eyes could see to charge on the Northern position in an ill-fated attempt to drive the “Billy Yanks” all the way back to Washington DC was powerful beyond belief.

  Then there was Guinea Station where Stonewall Jackson died, seeing this place was powerful as well. A little known fact about Stonewall Jackson: being a devout Christian he set up, against Virginia law, a Sunday school for black children. After the first battle of Bull Run the first letter he wrote, before writing his esposa Anna, was to his pastor and included money to keep the school funded.

  So what I am getting to is this: the Civil War is part of our history, it is a sad part of our history but still it is not just part of our history but an important part of our history and I do not want to see it removed from the annals of history.

  I fully understand why people want these statues taken down from public areas and honestly I do not have a problem if it is done the right way. This should be up to the people and the legislatures of the States, but they should not be destroyed. Perhaps a good compromise would be to move them to museums in the various states, or some other type of specific memorial, where people who want to learn about and observe history can see them.

  In his memoirs General Grant said this about General Lee about their meeting at Appomattox: 

“I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.” 

  I guess I feel the same way in a sense although for a different reason; I do not think we should try to pretend like none of this happened but rather we should use these monuments as a bridge to the past no matter how painful the past might be. Abraham Lincoln’s approach was to forgive the transgressions of the South to unite the country but that has been lost.

  We need to learn from the past, this is where I am supposed to insert the quote about those who do not learn from history… but I am not going to do that. What I am going to write is this; perhaps it is time for people to step back and remember that you cannot change history by taking down a statue, but if cooler heads prevail perhaps we can all learn something that will make us better in the long run.

  History is interesting to those who want to better understand how we got to where we are today. History is a lesson but it is more than just a history lesson, it is a life lesson and we can all learn more from history by acknowledging it than by pretending it did not happen. 

  Well, that’s my two cents, have at it…