Trump Tweets, Confederate Statues, and Our Three Cats

When Moses saw that the people were running wild (for Aaron had let them run wild, to the derision of their enemies), then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Come to me!”
Exodus 32:25-26

Once upon a time in our family we had three cats.

Their given names were Duster, Longfellow, and Wamba.

Their nicknames were General Lee, General Longstreet, and the Gray Ghost, Colonel John Mosby. Since they were gray there was some logic to naming them after Confederate officers. Duster, always looked dignified with his long gray fur and a beautiful white patch from his chin down his chest that reminded us of Lee’s beard. Wamba was fast and elusive and somewhat of a guerrilla fighter, so Gray Ghost seemed to fit. And Longy had to be Longstreet.

The nicknames came into being when we were reading “The Killer Angels,” Michael Shaara’s brilliant historical novel about the Battle of Gettysburg.

We were reading the book because of an interest in Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who left his position as a professor of Rhetoric and Revealed Religion at Bowdoin College to volunteer for the Union Army. At Gettysburg he led the Twentieth Maine Volunteers to hold the extreme left flank of the Union line against repeated Confederate assaults. Chamberlain’s leadership saved the day, and the battle, and possibly the war itself.

Chamberlain was our hero, but General James Longstreet was the most sympathetic character. Shaara portrays him as a pensive and deeply devout man, shaken by the loss of three children who died in rapid succession in an epidemic of scarlet fever in 1862. He was also a brilliant general who tried in vain to dissuade Lee from ordering Pickett’s disastrous charge.

The nicknames took hold without any conscious decision on our part. They were gray guys and of course they were Confederates.

But when I think about it, it is odd that we did not think it odd at the time.

We were the unlikeliest people to indulge in southern nostalgia.

Elaine and I are Yankees. I am named after my great-great-grandfather, William Crowell Gibbs, who was a Lieutenant Commander in the Union Navy, served under Admiral David Farragut and lost an eye in the Battle of Mobile Bay. And Elaine’s great-grandfather, who was not old enough to fight in the Civil War, was part of reconstruction. He went south after the war to teach former slaves on Wadmalaw Island in South Carolina.

We grew up on Civil Rights. We know about systemic racism. We understand white privilege. And anyone who reads this blog knows that racism has been a frequent topic.

But still.

We named our cats after Confederate war heroes.

Which goes to show how deeply the romanticism of the Civil War is embedded in our national psyche.

I was meditating on all of this as I considered the matter of Confederate Statuary. When the President called the statues part of our culture and history, he was only partly wrong. His advocacy against removal of the monuments was wrong and insensitive. But he was right in his observation. Unfortunately, the statues are part of our history and they remain part of our culture. The myth of the “Lost Cause” which says that the Civil War was not really about slavery, is alive and well. We may be against racism, but we still love “Gone with the Wind.”

But there’s more to our family story

In our little gray trinity, I was surprised to learn that both Longstreet and Mosby became Republicans after the war. They actively supported the reunited Union and each served in the government.

Longstreet’s work after the war was particularly significant. He moved to New Orleans where he played a key role in government and civilian endeavors.

His biography in “The Civil War Trust” views his post war years through a hazy mist of Civil War romanticism:

“In 1867, the New Orleans Times asked several leading citizens to comment on the newly passed Reconstruction Acts. Unwisely, Longstreet suggested that Southerners support the Republicans. . . He supported Grant for president, and when elected, Grant nominated Longstreet to be the Surveyor of Customs for the Port of New Orleans. For this last betrayal of the South he was labeled a ‘scalawag.’”

Longstreet became the target of “Lost Cause” advocates such as Jubal Early, William Pendleton, and Rev. J. William Jones among others. They were so outraged by his support for black suffrage and his willingness to command a biracial force against an uprising of white supremacists that they tried to smear his war record and blamed him for the Southern defeat at Gettysburg.

One of the monuments that the city of New Orleans now proposes to remove is dedicated to the white supremacists that General Longstreet put down in 1874 with an African American militia. It would be fitting to replace that monument with one that honors Longstreet, not for his Civil War exploits, though they were extensive, but for the service he rendered to his country after the war.

Mr. Trump is right that the Confederate statues are part of our history and culture. But we need to reclaim that history from the romantic imagery of the Lost Cause and recognize it for the evil that it was.

William Faulkner wrote, “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.”

In this case, it is long past time to let go of the past. We cannot and should not forget it. But we should stop celebrating it.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.