by Donald Smith
God, give me the strength to change what I can, the serenity to accept what I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference.
That’s the “Serenity Prayer,” and those of us who want to see Virginia’s Confederate heritage respected (or at least tolerated) need to say it. Often specifically, we need the wisdom to know what’s possible and what isn’t, and the serenity to accept the changes in our communities and culture that won’t be undone. If we do that, we can focus our efforts on new ways to honor our ancestors and those things they fought for that deserve to be honored (home, community, bravery, dedication to duty and your fellow soldiers, the right to self-determination, etc….)
The first step in solving a problem is admitting you have one. Confederate heritage supporters have two tremendous problems: the Confederacy sought to perpetuate slavery and disrupt the Union. For those two reasons alone, every rational American adult should be glad the Confederacy was defeated. (When I read my “Confederate Veteran” magazine from the Sons of Confederate Veterans, I sometimes wonder if some of the authors and editors are actually sorry the South lost.)
For many Americans, those two problems will act like a breaker switch: they will shut off any willingness to consider, much less agree, that some parts of the Confederate cause might be worthy of respect. I’ll stipulate that, if I were an African-American, I wouldn’t take kindly to a statue of Lee, Jackson, Davis or Stuart at a prominent location in my hometown. Especially if I knew the vast majority of my neighbors felt the same way, and I also knew that the people who erected and respected the statue died or moved away decades ago. Whites are a minority to people of color in both Richmond and Norfolk; the percentage of White-to-Black residents in both cities is roughly equal. If it’s my city now, I would want it to reflect my values. Wouldn’t we all feel the same way?
Many modern-day Virginians don’t feel the same ties to our Confederate past that our parents and grandparents did, regardless of color. To state the obvious: Virginia has changed a lot in the one hundred and fifty-seven years since Appomattox. That’s especially true of our cities, where most of the statues and monuments stand. Cities tend to be more liberal and progressive than rural areas. Many Virginians see Confederate statues as symbols that the state is mired in its past — a past that doesn’t resonate with the majority of Virginia’s city dwellers. The peak years of immigration from Europe were in the late 1800s and early 1900s. That means lots of Virginians have ancestors that came to Virginia over a hundred years ago, and long after the Civil War was over.
Yes, Virginia’s cities have changed — but cities always change. Their populations are always more diverse and fluid than rural areas. The New York City-area church where I married my wife no longer has English-language masses, because the neighborhood is no longer Polish/Italian/Irish. It’s Hispanic. In an episode of The Sopranos, a Mafia boss walked along the streets of the Little Italy neighborhood he grew up in, oblivious to his surroundings as he talked on his cell phone. Ending the call, he looked around, and saw that the stores now had Chinese names instead of Italian. His boyhood home had been absorbed by Chinatown.
Is it really that important if Confederate soldiers and generals are respected in Virginia’s cities? Many of Virginia’s cities — Richmond, Norfolk, Charlottesville -are a mess. High levels of crime, terrible public schools, silly progressive leadership, etc… African-American academics John McWhorter and Glenn Loury recently posted this discussion on Substack about how Chicago is deteriorating. Loury calls it “the Great Unraveling,” the downward cycle of crime and despair now gripping Chicago and its surrounding suburbs.
Sounds a lot like Richmond and Norfolk. A close friend, who grew up out-of-state but now lives in Virginia, remarked how sad it was that Richmond, which had crime under control when she first moved to Virginia, no longer did.
The great moments of Civil War history didn’t happen in our cities. There was no great battle of Richmond or Charlottesville or Norfolk. The great battles, and the sites of great heroism by Virginians, were outside the big cities –Chancellorsville, Manassas, Spotsylvania, and the scattered battlefields of the Seven Days and Jackson’s Valley Campaign. If you want to learn about the Civil War, why go to Richmond? Go instead to one of the many battlefields around the city. Drive down the Shenandoah Valley. Trace the route of Jackson’s flanking maneuver around the Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville.
Why leave statues to Virginia heroes like Lee, Jackson and Stuart in places where miscreants will desecrate them, academics will scorn them, local politicians will scapegoat them as the real cause of the community’s problems, and many well-meaning folk won’t see them as a reflection of their community in modern times? Good generals pick their battles wisely. If they can’t defend the ground they’re on, they move to better ground.
In the 1862 Valley Campaign, Jackson was on the banks of the Potomac River when he heard that Union armies were converging in his rear. Jackson didn’t turn and fight them; he retreated into the Shenandoah Valley, where he had the advantage. In the Western Theater, Joseph E. Johnston built formidable earthworks near the west Georgia town of Resaca and dared Sherman to attack him. Sherman went around his flank instead. Johnston didn’t stay in his earthen forts, where he was now at a disadvantage; he retreated to better ground.
“The past is a foreign country,” said British writer L.P. Hartley. “They do things different there.” They did things a lot differently in Richmond, Charlottesville and Norfolk a hundred years ago than what the current residents do there. That’s life. So, it’s best to send the statues to communities that will honor and respect them. Find better ground.
Donald Smith was raised in Richmond. His mother was born in a house not far from VMI, and family members still live there.
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