I promise you, Confederate history is NOT being erased

Oh my gosh! Look at that man erasing history! NOT.

Quick thoughts on monuments in the news:

So, New Orleans has begun the process of taking down monuments, starting with one that is NOT a Confederate monument (no matter how it has been labeled as such by the media). They are set to remove three others that ARE Confederate monuments in the coming days. I really don’t have the desire to comment much on these types of removals, because I think I have made my position on this very clear in the past.  Simply put, I prefer contextualization and/or counter monuments (which is a powerful way of confronting and challenging the iconography of previous generations in a way that is in itself educational) instead of removal. Yep, you heard me right. I do not think removal is the best way to deal with this.

BUT removing them is NOT “erasing history,” it is an attempt to be honest about it. If I hear or read another person claiming this is an attempt to erase history, I am going to have a full on conniption fit. As I have seen other historians say, don’t worry folks, we are not going to be letting anyone suddenly forget what the Confederacy was and what it stood for, I promise you that. It is what me and a great number of other people are paid to do, and we do it passionately. Research and teaching about the history of the southern confederacy and the Civil War isn’t going anywhere, monuments or no monuments.

So don’t worry, hundreds of Civil War books are going to keep coming out every year, the Civil War is still going to get taught in class, more and more battlefield land is going to be preserved (which has only increased in recent years), and historians are going to keep increasingly getting involved in public history and on social media.

But you say, it is erasing older interpretations about the Confederacy and the Civil War, and replacing them with ones you don’t agree with. Nope. We may be correcting/challenging older interpretations, but we aren’t  erasing them. The fact that people once interpreted the Civil War in the ways reflected in the monuments is not going away either. It too is part of the story, and I can again promise you that historians are not going to let anyone forget how the Civil War used to be interpreted. This is called “historiography,” and every professional historian is trained in it. You can’t be a good historian without learning how events have been interpreted by others, and how that has evolved over time.

In fact, the removal of these monuments only adds to the story that historians tell about the Confederacy and the Civil War. In essence, it is Confederate history continuing to be made today. The removals are now part of a story that will never be erased. So please just stop saying that history is being erased. Just stop it, please.

But as to the removals, regardless of mine or anyone else’s opinions, these decisions are best left to local communities that have the right to commemorate or not commemorate whatever they want to.

Yet there are two things I find funny/hypocritical in the nationwide reaction to New Orleans’ decision. 1) We hear people say that Trump protestors need to “get over it” and move on. Yet the people that say that seem to be the most vocal against these removals, which is ironic given that the placement of the monuments themselves was done by people who couldn’t “get over” their loss in the war. It was their attempt to reframe what it was all about. (The “Lost Cause.”)

And 2) it seems that Republicans are the most vocal against these removals (like this clown pretending to be a southerner and running for governor of Virginia), which is ironic because they are supposedly the champions of letting state and local governments do most of our governing. So shouldn’t we let local governments/communities make their own choices about these monuments? I’m just calling for some consistency,  . . . again.

And while we are on the Lost Cause, yesterday was “Confederate Memorial Day” here in Alabama. Ugh. But I take it as a sign of progress that the ceremony marking the day at our state capitol building was attended by a whopping 150 or so people. Nice. It is a good thing we have these people around to remind us of the Confederacy, since its history would apparently just disappear if they weren’t here to remind us.

 

Lastly for today, and on a different subject: Another news story that is all over the place is that a rare copy of the Declaration of Independence has been discovered in a British archive. Unfortunately, the story is getting blown out of proportion and/or misunderstood by people that are apparently inspired by that stupid Nicholas Cage movie. My local news got it all wrong last night, as has been the case all over social media. This is not an unknown second “original” copy of the Declaration. It is a handwritten copy that was made on parchment in the 1780s, which is rare indeed, but not exactly an original and/or something that should set off conspiracy theories. Researchers believe it was commissioned by James Wilson (who was the signer that was treated so poorly and portrayed so inaccurately in the otherwise awesome musical 1776). How did it wind up in Britain? That seems to be mostly a mystery.

The real beginning of the end of the Lost Cause

Over on Civil War Memory, Kevin Levin has a great “recap of Confederate Heritage Month 2016″ which lists some of the major events this past month associated with renaming, relocating, or removing all things publicly associated with the Confederacy. Meanwhile, one of the hottest TV shows the past month has been WGN’s Underground. It has increased the network’s ratings by 1000%. That’s pretty significant when we realize that this is the first non-mini-series TV show to focus on Antebellum slavery and runaway slaves.

I am relating Kevin’s list and this show together because  I feel that the Lost Cause will only meet its final demise because of public history and pop culture. Academic historians have long dismantled the myth, but this has not fully accomplished the task of reaching the broader public. To a large degree, the Lost Cause was engrained into our collective memory  by public history (monuments and memorials) and pop culture (Birth of a Nation (1915) and Gone with the Wind, etc) and thus that is where it has to be ultimately destroyed. With the Roots remake coming out in a month, the Free State of Jones movie in June, and the movie about Nat Turner’s rebellion, Birth of a Nation (2016) in October, this trend away from romanticizing the Confederacy and the Old South will apparently only gain momentum. And then there is the fact that many historic home sites across the country are increasing their interpretation of slavery by embracing the concept of “affective equality.” As explained here by Nick Sacco: “Affective equality calls for public historians to develop emotional connections and build empathy for all historical persons at a given site in an equal fashion, and not just for the white planter class.”

All of this is very exciting and honestly a bit breathtaking in how much the pace has quickened in just a year. Although academic scholars have been fighting against the Lost Cause in books and classrooms for a couple of generations now, I really believe that all of the public history and pop cultural things above indicate that we are just now finally seeing the real beginning of the end of the Lost Cause. Am I too optimistic?