On the Civil War general we idolize—and the other one we
should.
This blog might make it seem as if
I’m immune to the processes of buying into simplifying narratives, of
forgetting or ignoring certain complexities and realities in favor of more
black and white or appealing histories and stories, that I spend a lot of time
writing about here. Well, I’m here today to tell you that the truth is quite
the opposite—in many if not most of these cases, I’m aware of the power of the
existing narratives precisely because they’ve significantly influenced me in
one way or another, and my attempts to push back against them, to highlight the
events and figures and texts and stories that they elide or subsume, are thus
for my own continuing benefit at least as much as they are for any and all
audiences who might find and read this blog. And for no topic does that apply
nearly as fully as it does for today’s starting point, the
deification of Robert E. Lee.
I grew up in a town that—like many
in the South I’m sure—had a park and statue
honoring Lee, so maybe my childhood affection for the General began with
simple osmosis. But as I started to become a hard-core Civil War buff in my own
right, that affection only grew—partly because the guy just plain knew how to
win battles (especially compared to those morons and buffoons who led the Union
Army right up until Grant; if you can feel any affection for McClellan, you’re
a better buff than I), but also because of that sense of a thoughtful and
sensitive and impressive personality and character existing alongside the
tactical genius. This was the man who, the story goes, in looking over the
aftermath of Fredericksburg, a Confederate victory but also one of the bloodier
battles in which he participated, famously remarked that “it is
well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of it.” And even as
I got older and more cognizant of the evils for which the Confederacy stood
(and the more subtle but perhaps even more evil forces that had contributed
greatly to commemorations of the Confederacy and its leaders after the War), I
still for many years fully endorsed the narrative of Lee as a reluctant
Confederate, one who disagreed with the cause and hated fighting against his
old West Point comrades but who couldn’t turn his back on the Virginia that was
his home and homeland in every sense.
There’s some truth to that narrative,
without question. But as I researched (for a couple chapters in my
dissertation/first book) the late 19th century rise of a Southern
version of both the Civil War and American history more generally (what came to
be known in part as the
Lost Cause narrative and in part as the plantation
tradition), I began to learn about just how much that rise coincided with
the deification of Lee, with Southern mythmakers figuring out how to frame the
man to make him not only palatable for national audiences, but in fact a hero
who could help the nation elide the slavery and race-related sides to the Civil
War almost entirely. And at the same time, I learned much more about one of
Lee’s fellow Confederate generals (and in many ways his second-in-command), James Longstreet, a man
whose political and social perspectives and opinions underwent dramatic
transformations in the post-bellum years, leading him to embrace not only
Reconstruction and the Republican Party of Lincoln but also equal rights for
African Americans. All of those changes, along with Longstreet’s explicit
criticisms of Lee in conversations and speeches and then published writings
during this period, made him an easy target for the
Lost Cause chroniclers, a figure whose demonization could parallel Lee’s
deification very fully and successfully. And I’ll be the first to admit that
the two processes worked, even 100 years after the fact; young devotee of
everything Civil War-related that I was, I knew and liked a lot about Lee, and
thought of Longstreet mostly as the guy whose mistakes greatly contributed to
the Confederacy’s turning-point loss at Gettysburg.
The identities and lives of both
men don’t, of course, fit any more perfectly into a flipped hierarchy than they
did into the Lost Cause’s one. Lee was indeed thoughtful and did have his
issues with secession, although he was also (among other flaws) deeply elitist
about class and status; Longstreet was clearly a prickly and difficult person
in many ways, although he was also (among other strengths) one of the most
well-read and intelligent American military leaders of any era. So the main
lesson here is, as always, that we need to look back into the histories and
texts and identities ourselves, rather than accepting the narratives that have
been created and recreated for so long; and the parallel lesson here is, very
clearly I hope, just how much that process impacts and continues for me as
well.
May Recap tomorrow,
Ben
PS.
What do you think?
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