To simple-minded critics trying to score cheap political points, the statues and monuments are all about “racism” and “white supremacy.”
To historians with a deeper and more profound understanding, it is all about recognizing the debt that we owe our ancestors.
Is there any good or legitimate reason to honor and celebrate soldiers who fought for the South in the Confederate States Army? Or is doing so simply a reflection of “racism” and “white supremacy”?
This is the crux of the issue that hangs over the movement to remove Confederate War memorials and statues.
To modern-day political and cultural elites, the answer is obvious: Because the Civil War was fought over slavery, racism and white supremacy necessarily impugn the Confederates. Nothing more need be said. The monuments and statues must go.
When we celebrate Confederates, we do so because of their racism. By contrast, when we celebrate other great Americans, from Jefferson to Theodore Roosevelt, we do so despite their racism. That’s a crucial distinction that should not be lost in the heat of the moment.
Boot is a military historian who has written some fine works of military history. But the distinction that he draws here is ludicrous, utterly ahistorical, and in defiance of all reason.
In fact, Boot should know better than most why there is and ought to be an honored place in the pantheon of American history for the Southern soldiers of the Confederacy and why we ought to honor them with statues and memorials.
Martial Valor. The reason, obviously, has nothing to do with racism and white supremacy. Instead, it has to do with the courage, skill, valor, and tenacity of the Southern soldiers.
Their boldness, bravery, and derring-do against a larger, better-equipped, and more plodding Union Army determined to unimaginatively grind them into extinction was truly laudatory and heroic.
Indeed, as James Webb points out in his superb book, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America:
The Southern army was a living thing emanating from the spirit of its soldiers—daring, frequently impatient, always outnumbered, often innovative, relying on the unexpected, and counting on the boldness of its leaders and the personal loyalties of those who followed.
The Northern army was most often run like a business, solving a problem. The Southern army was run like a family, confronting a human crisis.
The South, Webb explains,
saw 90 percent of its adult male population serve as soldiers and 70 percent of these became casualties, some 256,000 of them dead, including, astoundingly, 77 of the 425 generals who led them.
The North, by contrast, lost 365,000 soldiers and 47 of its 538 generals, a casualty rate in each case less than half that of the South.
The men of the Confederate Army gave every ounce of courage and loyalty to a leadership they trusted and respected, then laid down their arms in an instant—declining to fight a guerrilla war—when that leadership decided that enough was enough.
Slavery. But weren’t the Southerners fighting for an evil cause, slavery, and doesn’t that necessarily mean they dishonored themselves and are unworthy of our respect and admiration?
In a word, no. As Boot well knows, one of the main tasks of an historian is to understand the actions of historical figures through their eyes and within the context of their time.
While it is indisputably true that the Civil War was fought over slavery, it is equally true that the vast majority of Southerners did not own slaves and did not see themselves as fighting on behalf of slavery.
In fact, less than five percent of Southerners owned slaves; and, according to historian John Hope Franklin (quoted by Webb):
Fully three-fourths of the white people of the South had neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery or the plantation system.
“To tar the sacrifices of the Confederate soldier as simple acts of racism, and reduce the battle flag under which he fought to nothing more than the symbol of racist heritage,” Webb writes, “is one of the great blasphemies of our modern age.”
Resisting Aggression. “Why, then, did he [the Southern soldier] fight?”
Again, Webb explains:
It might seem odd in these modern times, but the Confederate soldier fought because, on the one hand, in his view he was provoked, intimidated, and ultimately invaded, and, on the other, his leaders had convinced him that this was a war of independence in the same sense as the Revolutionary War.
For those who can remove themselves from the slavery issue and examine the traits that characterize the Scots-Irish culture, the unbending ferocity of the Confederate soldier is little more than a continuum.
This was not so much a learned response to historical events as it was a cultural approach that had been refined by centuries of similar experience.
The tendency to resist outside aggression was bred deeply into every heart—and still is today.
For readers unfamiliar with what Webb means here, he is referring to the historical experience of the Scots-Irish. They had been fighting for centuries dating back to Roman times, when their Celtic ancestors refused to submit to Roman conquest, choosing instead to “die on the battlefield with sword in hand.”
The Scots-Irish eventually made their way to America, where they retained a ferocious sense of independence, pride and self-sufficiency. And, because of their distinguishing warrior ethos and history, they formed the backbone of the U.S. military, from the time of the American Revolution through the Civil War and even today.
“The bulk of the Confederate Army, including most of its leaders, was Scots-Irish, while the bulk of the Union Army and its leadership was not,” Webb writes.
“No one but a fool—or a bigot in their own right,” he adds—“would call on the descendants of those Confederate veterans to forget the sacrifices of those who went before them, or argue that they should not be remembered with honor.”
Distinctions. Ironically, Boot prides himself on making “fine distinctions” to determine whether someone should be honored with a statue or memorial.
“The rule of thumb,” he says, “should be that those who contributed a great deal to the development of our country deserve to be recognized, however flawed they were as human beings.”
That sounds reasonable. Yet, Boot seems clueless about the genuinely great contribution to our country made by the Scots-Irish and other white Southerners who fought in the Confederate Army.
Their contributions—to the American military specifically to American culture more generally—were and are, as Webb well describes, deeply felt and long-lasting.
Evil. Moreover, although he prides himself on making “fine distinctions,” Boot makes no distinction between the American South and Nazi Germany. Both are evil, he says.
But of course, the United States is not now and never was Nazi Germany, and the American South was and is part of the United States.
There are, needless to say, huge differences, ideologically and morally, between a country (Nazi Germany) engaged in genocidal world conquest and a region (the American South) seeking to resist (Northern) domination and retain its independence while holding on to an institution (slavery) that had been practiced and accepted for millennia, worldwide and since ancient times.
This is not to suggest that slavery was anything less than an abomination. Instead, it is to say that historical perspective, context, and understanding are necessary, important and required—and Boot, an accomplished historian, should understand this.
As Webb points out:
The greatest disservice on this count has been the attempt by these revisionist politicians and academics to defame the entire Confederate Army in a move that can only be termed the Nazification of the Confederacy…
The syllogism goes something like this: Slavery was evil. The soldiers of the Confederacy fought for a system that wished to preserve it. Therefore they were evil as well, and any attempt to honor their service is a veiled effort to glorify the cause of slavery…
It goes without saying—but unfortunately it must be said—that morality and decency were traits shared by both sides in this war, to an extent that was uncommon in about any other war America has fought.
Webb quotes the esteemed historian Henry Steele Commager:
The men in blue and gray… had character. They knew what they were fighting for, as well as men every know this, and they fought with a courage and tenacity rarely equaled in history…
Both people subscribed to the same moral values and observed the same standards of conduct. Both were convinced that the cause for which they fought was just—and their descendants still are.
In short, we can argue about the merits of this or that particular statue or memorial. However, there should be no doubt that the men who fought for the South in the Confederate Army deserve our respect and admiration.
They deserve to be honored, commemorated and memorialized. And a country that appreciates its inheritance and recognizes the sacrifices of generations past should understand this.
Feature photo credit: Jim Webb (left) via Politico and Max Boot (right) via the Washington Post.