On Confederate symbols

By Sally Jenkins
June 26 at 8:26 PM

... In 1868, Union general George H. Thomas described better than any modern commentator why the retelling of the Civil War became so contested and how a symbol of racist tyranny like the Confederate battle flag could be romanticized and tolerated at statehouses in the first place:

“The greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of liberty .?.?. suffered violence and wrong when the effort for Southern independence failed,” he wrote. “This is, of course, intended as a species of political cant, whereby the crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of the rebellion might go down in history hand-in-hand with the defenders of the Government, thus wiping out with their own hands their own stains.”

It was a form of self-forgiveness, Thomas said. And Northerners colluded, partly from lack of will, and partly because the nation was weary of strife and carnage. As historian and Time magazine writer David Von Drehle described it, “For most of the first century after the war, historians, novelists and filmmakers worked like hypnotists to soothe the posttraumatic memories of survivors and their descendants.” Pro-South historians such as J.G. Randall contended the war was avoidable and placed blame for it squarely on abolitionists with their lunatic “reforming zeal” and lack of “toleration” and “human values.”

Abolitionists were the intolerant ones lacking in human values? This was taught and is still insinuated today. Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner was beaten within an inch of his life on the floor of the Senate by South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks over an anti-slavery speech. Yet Sumner is routinely treated as the uncompromising, charmless pedagogue, while Brooks is an interesting young hothead. Jefferson Davis ran what was essentially a totalitarian state: He imposed martial law on Richmond in 1862, and citizens who harbored Union sentiments or who refused to volunteer for regiments were clapped in irons and had their homes burned. Yet it is Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus we dwell on ...


http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-confederacys-ugly-history-cannot-be-painted-over/2015/06/26/f4443a8e-1c28-11e5-bd7f-4611a60dd8e5_story.html