Weary Soldier
“Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times.”
from Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
The Confederate foot soldier has stood his silent sentry post in the heart of Alexandria for as long as I’ve lived in the area. He’s looking south–wishing Richmond hasn’t fallen–and he’s tired. Even the way he’s removed his slouch hat, clutching it like he knows the war’s over. This piece speaks nothing of glory and victory; I don’t see how you could call it a monument.
But midst the current demonstrations spanning the entire country, the statue came down this past June 4. Alexandria of today isn’t the same town it was back in the 1800s–at least not politically. It was occupied only months after the war’s start by Unions troops from Washington, and stayed that way for the duration, somewhat like Baltimore, rebel sympathizers were everywhere.
Appomattox by M. Caspar Buberl Photo by Ser Amantio di Nicolao, 2010
It surprised me to find an article about the statue’s retirement in the LA Times of all places. Written by the newspaper’s art critic, the LA Times’s article, begins a bitter diatribe:
“A racist civic sculpture celebrating white supremacy was taken down off its pedestal on Tuesday in Alexandria, Va. The action, dramatic and long overdue, represents a sliver of light piercing the current gloom.
The bronze figure of a lone Confederate soldier, positioned to face due south, had stood for 131 years in the city’s historic core, just seven short miles from the White House and eight from the U.S. Capitol dome. Beneath the now-banished statue, an inscription on the base declares: “They died in the consciousness of duty faithfully performed.”
Consciousness. Duty. Faith. This civic salute to a gross perversion of human decency could hardly be more unashamed.
Memorial sculptures like this one have a specific purpose. They cast institutional racism in bronze.”
From LA Times article by Christopher Knight
It’s a very PC position to adopt, but is it true? Has the journalist ever seen it close up? Has he ever lived here? Had his family?
Assuming the statue was erected 30 years after the war, then this was still during the lives of Confederate veterans. “Memorial sculptures like this one… cast institutional racism in bronze.” In this instance, I will disagree.
This sculpture is not a glorification but a sorrowing foot soldier grieving–for the defeat, yes, but also the futility of the deaths of his comrades. The sculpture is simply enough named Appomattox. In my mind it represents the too-often repeated story of foot soldiers carrying the load of their superiors, presumably capable of better judging the larger questions.
That the leaders of the Confederacy ruined their own country and grievously wounded the entire nation—and haunts us to this day—is not what the sculptor’s representation is about, though if one were to ascribe a lesson, it should be that.
There’s a legitimate argument so many of the Civil War monuments celebrate the ‘lost cause.’ Virginia Governor Northam has just recently announced the removal of Robert E. Lee’s representation so high above the traffic on Monument Avenue in Richmond. ‘Bout time?
By contrast, the Jefferson Davis statute, just a few blocks east of Lee’s, is the most hagiographic pile of cow crapI’ve ever seen, walked by and muttered curses at. Complete with encircling colonnade and entablature, it’s surprising that angels with long trumpets don’t leap out to welcome Massa Davis past the pearly gates. Why on earth (or in heaven) would Virginians want to keep a reminder in the heart of Richmond of the Mississippi racist who dragged this beautiful birthplace of Washington and Jefferson through four bloody years of war? Give me a sledge.
Given that Virginia lost four times more souls and fortunes, betting on the US Senator elected by Mississippi planters, if I were a veteran of those poor kin, I’d be holding a grudge, not elevating Davis to sing with the angels. Misguided loyalties aside, Lee was at least born in Virginia, so they took the wrong statue down.
I wonder whether the LA Times journalist ever saw the statue in Alexandria that offends him so. And I don’t believe removing statues–even the grotesques, can heal what’s wrong with the country. This isn’t a Hollywood movie, and Gregory Peck’s no longer with us.
Years ago I heard it suggested–perhaps in sarcastic gest–that a second statue of a slave child huddled in chains gazing back at the Appomattox soldier—she should be erected one block south on Washington Street completing the story.
Appomattox by M. Caspar Buberl Close crop of photo by Ser Amantio di Nicolao, 2010
Since Arlington Cemetery was begun with a bitter Union general sending a note to Lee saying he “would bury our dead on your front lawn,” it might be well for the sorrowing green soldier and a second monument to slaves be placed in a dialogue somewhere in Arlington Cemetery. By the river I think.
Did Lee look back on the war, regretting the thousands of Confederates he’d commanded to their deaths? How could he not? Was he ever relieved the rebellion had been put down and the slaves freed? He was a skilled general, but I don’t know if he was as great a man as some would believe. In my mind, he had two glaring character flaws–that he went against his officer’s oath to defend the United States, the country his own father had fought to become free, and that he himself fought to perpetuate slavery.
If Lincoln had been espousing some moral injustice, perhaps Lee’s oath breaking could be seen as principled. But of slavery, Lee stood on the wrong side of the moral question–and the wrong side of history.
War Between the States
Not all Southerners supported secession, just as not all Northerners wanted to free the slaves–or even hold the Union together. It was what made the war so emotionally fraught, these split loyalties. Some six hundred-twenty thousand Americans died in the Civil War. Six times what Covid-19 has killed. Battlefields.Org
This same website gives the following results for Southern troops at Gettysburg, the war’s worst battle”
“The 26th North Carolina [regiment], hailing from seven counties in the western part of the state, suffered 714 casualties out of 800 men during the Battle of Gettysburg. The 24th Michigan squared off against the 26th North Carolina at Gettysburg and lost 362 out of 496 men. Nearly the entire student body of Ole Miss–135 out 139–enlisted in Company A of the 11th Mississippi. Company A, also known as the "University Greys" suffered 100% casualties in Pickett's Charge…
“It is estimated that one in three Southern households lost at least one family member.”
from Civil War Casualties
One in three Southern families lost kin. Out of three farmhouses standing in a row, one was draped in black crape, and the vast majority were not slave owners.
If I had survived the Civil War’s calamity, or had been born in the aftermath to one of the Southern families who’d lost sons, brothers and fathers–would I have argued for monuments raised to my dead? Would I not have ached to remember how my kin had marched across that field at Gettysburg in the face of a murderous cannonade and not be proud of the courage that took? Would that by itself make me a racist?
The Civil War was an insanity brought on principally by Southern leaders such as Jefferson Davis and Lee amongt his generals, intending to maintain the enslavement of other humans. And the horrific losses of that war cannot excuse the hatred of the one hundred-sixty odd years since, the continuing discrimination, oppression and murders of our Black brothers and sisters.
Though midst the pain borne of civil war, in that time one might have been blinded by grief to the evil of what they were defending. Perhaps.
Just as it’s hard in the present day, with the still-vivid image of a policeman kneeling on his neck, choking the man until he dies—to be able to think anything kind about the police in general—still we need to, or this wound will never heal. But how do we do that? How did they slap chains on children?
My god, I want a different world. And for certain that older brother, that police officer who once pulled me over would sadly agree.
Following the defeat of the South, there were many in the North who refused to admit the seceding states back in the Union, demanding the southern states be dissolved utterly and treated as a territory. Northern losses had been fearful as well, even though spread over a much larger population. So such sentiments might be understandable. However Lincoln, in the Civil War’s immediate aftermath, insisted that forgiveness was necessary if the country was to heal itself. After four years of Southern vilification, and before his murder, Lincoln insisted they be welcomed back into the Union.
If we believe Lincoln stands as one of the nation’s foundational leaders, we might take a lesson from what he pleaded. Or if that’s too long in the past, remember another of the nations’ foundational leader, Martin Luther King.
Reparations
If there are to be reparations for slavery–and the continuing discrimination that’s well enough described in Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Case for Reparations–let them be in the form of full funding for our woeful education system, educating and then paying the salaries of more and better teachers across the country. For all.
Had the illiteracy and ignorance of nineteenth century southern white farmers been sooner ameliorated through full education, had the gift of knowledge been given the former slaves, what might the country look like today? Education may not cure what’s in a person’s heart, but its lack deprives that person the opportunity to live respectably–and perhaps the ability to reflect more kindly on their fellow humans. Raising a national cause, recognizing the need to improve the nation’s education standards could carry forward beyond the current moment. Is that not something we can agree on?
One could accuse Coates of a sly argument to offer the Old Testament as his basis, however:
And if thy brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the LORD thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing today.
— Deuteronomy 15: 12–15
Do the descendants of slaves deserve more? Probably. The slaves for sure deserved better, but all we can do today is honor them. But the point is, we need to heal our nation, and work toward bringing our African American brothers and sisters more fully into the fold. I expect African Americans—at least the one’s I’ve known—would welcome working toward a ‘more perfect union’ and the rest of us, I expect we’ll find out in time.