Scott, that is true in many cases, but does not begin to unravel the complexity of the issues. One of my signature lines below quotes J.P Hartley's prescient opening words to his novel The Hireling - "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." It is a bit of wisdom some of the current offended classes might consider. Judging any historical period by the standards of the present is an exercise in ignorance. It would be the same as condemning Rome and all of Western Civilization because of Rome's slave-based economy. A belief to which I am sure some uneducated neo-Marxist is happy to subscribe.
In fairness to the South, it went through a period of occupation and "reconstruction" unknown to the rest of the country. It left the region destitute, a condition from which it never fully recovered until WWII. My mother, who is 93, clearly remembers her great uncle Paul who was a young infantryman in the Army of Northern Virginia. Another ancestor, William Barksdale, fell mortally wounded leading a Brigade of Mississippians which broke a Union Corps on the second day at Gettysburg. For many, pride in those ancestors and in their sacrifice was about all they had left. Remember, one in four Confederate soldiers never returned home. And so the war retained an immediacy and bitterness which lingered for generations. And none of that had anything to do about slavery, but everything to do about the post-war subjugation of a region and a people. A lot of monuments did indeed go up after WWII - in part as a reaction to desegregation, but also because for the first time since Appomattox, the states could afford them.
Slavery, was indeed a central causative reason for the war. But you will find no period accounts of a Southerner fighting for slavery - anymore than a few abolitionists were fighting for the North in order to free the slaves - at least until after 1862. Period correspondence is full of a clear understanding that slavery was not a sustainable institution. It is interesting to note that 90% of Southern soldiers were not slave owners. And those independent minded yeoman farmers surely weren't dying in the tens of thousands at the behest of a plantation class. But it was an issue that the Southern States were determined to resolve on their own and in their own good time. Secession, and the determination of Lincoln to hold the country together, quickly escalated into all out war. There is nothing defensible about the institution of slavery - the sugar plantations of Louisiana were particularly ugly places. But you will find no legitimate historian who believes that slavery would have lasted more than another decade or so - certainly not into the 20th century. Who knows what form the region would have taken - South Africa and apartheid represents one extreme - Brazil, the other.
I think the US Army had done better than most of the country in reaching an understanding with this complex past. It claims all the soldiers from that terrible war as part of its heritage. The battle streamers of those campaigns which fly on the regimental colors of units which participated and the Army flag itself are each blue and gray. Cadets study the biographies and tactics of Lee and J.E.B Stuart as closely as they do Grant and Sherman. Our light tank in WWII was the Stuart - our medium was the Sherman. The Army honors Chancellorsville just as devoutly as Gettysburg. When Fort Hood, near Killeen, TX , was created shortly before WWII, it was only natural to name it for Texas's greatest soldier - John Bell Hood who initially commanded Lee's Texas Brigade. I think an appropriate act of inclusiveness by an institution that is the closest thing I know to a true meritocracy. It is a concept that the newly aggrieved thought police should consider. Of course, the SPLC is demanding the post's name be changed.
I think what bothers me most about the current frenzy - other than its ignorance of American history - is this almost Maoist insistence on collective "correct" thought. Anything, even slightly off the proper script is met with not just ridicule, but even violence. Does anyone really doubt the more radical of these nihilists would be perfectly comfortable consigning their enemies to re-education camps or worse? Collective outrage against our Southern history is a subset of that general assault upon American traditions - not Caucasian traditions - but American ones. We in the hunting community are targets of it as well.
If a community decides to remove a memorial object from its community - fine. It was the community that placed it there to begin with. But where does it stop? Should we dig up the Confederate war dead from Federal cemeteries (including a group in Arlington placed their by their Union adversaries). It is past time for the majority of good people in this country to bring this nonsense to a stop.
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