Living with the Past !

The zeal with which statues of General Robert E Lee are being removed from town squares in the American south seems to be an attempt to rewrite history.  The descendants of the slaves that worked the cotton plantations of that era claim that monuments to the Confederate states are offensive reminders of a war fought to keep them in servitude.

There seems to be an attitude to try and forget that the American civil war ever happened.  The war dead of the winning side are honoured while memorials to the southern soldiers who gave their lives are being put out of sight and their sacrifice disregarded.   General Lee was a hero to the people of the south and now he is being dishonoured.  His place in history belongs in the history books alongside General Ulysses Grant, his counterpoint from the north.

Perhaps the focal point of the American civil war is what happened thereafter.   The industrial north conquered the agrarian south, and yet a hundred years later those emancipated slaves were still denied the vote, segregated in their schools and not allowed to use white only wash rooms or eat alongside whites in restaurants.  That ushered in the " civil rights era " and a new civil war was fought on the streets, with billy clubs and vicious dogs doing battle to preserve segregation.

Strangely, all that was right after we celebrated the end of the second world war.  We imposed " unconditional; surrender " on Germany and Japan and both countries were " occupied ".   We wrote a new Japanese constitution in which future war was forbidden.  Japan openly honours its war dead and its main shrine is heavily criticised because some executed war criminals are interred there.

Germany suffered a division between the victorious west and the encroaching hordes of Communist Russia and the German people were aghast when the crimes of Hitler's Nazis were revealed.  This country has gone to great lengths to preserve the memorials to the Holocaust and safeguard its memory.  Both Germany and Japan are now robust trading nations long removed from the odium of the second world war.

What seems to be forgotten about the American civil war was that the contestants were American citizens on both sides, and when the war ended, the survivors were still American citizens. We may argue about the issues over which the war was fought, but what can not be contested is that both sides fought a noble battle for what they perceived to be the best interests of their American homeland.

There is something unreal in the names of citizens who founded some of America's great institutions being removed from buildings and vilified - because at some time in the distant past they owned slaves.  Some of the founding fathers owned slaves and that was as normal as punishing a servant with lashes for neglect of duty.   We can not apply the customs of the present to the past and extract  retribution for wrong doing.

The American civil war is best left as it was since the last shot was fired.  Each side fondly remembers its dead with reverence and today those battles are re-enacted and the tactics hotly discussed.   Those agitating for the removal of civil war memorabilia are doing their country a grave disservice !