the statues that need to stand

Cue Sam Cooke:

Don’t know much about history
Don’t know much about biology
Don't know much about a science book,
Don't know much about the french I took
But I do know that I love you,
And I know that if you love me, too,
What a wonderful world this would be

So while that melody’s jangling in your head, just think on this: that song, from the 1960 album “The Wonderful World of Sam Cooke,” is now sixty years old.

My buddies in Rockwood High School loved this number, and deployed it to justify their passive-aggressive inattention during Mr Greg’s American History class.

American history is hard in high school, and gets harder as years go by. The difficulty is not so much in having to learn more dates and details. The increasing difficulty lies in the “disappointment of myth.” 

As the grades get higher and the books get thicker, the hapless student finds out that a lot of pretty stories one learned early on turn out to be only pretty and probably not all that true.

It is unlikely that six-year-old George Washington chopped down a cherry tree. And it is unlikely that the first President threw a silver dollar across the mile-wide Potomac (what is more likely is that he threw a piece of slate across the much narrower Rappahannock near his childhood home).

These “unlikelinesses” are indeed disappointing. Still, these stories remain “mythical.” What remains underneath these stories is the unchanging truth of the heroic virtues of George Washington, which should not be in doubt. Washington, unlike many politicians, does not demoralize the historian. He becomes more complex as more details of his life are discovered -- but these added complexities enrich his story.

It turns out that he wasn’t the greatest battlefield tactician (he was a far better strategist), but he was a great leader in adversity. He was a unifier and inspirer. A tall and dignified figure, he encouraged virtue and discipline, quiet and steadfast determination.

But he was also a slave-owner. This is a fact, and it is a grave disappointment. At the time of his death in 1799, the population of enslaved persons at Mount Vernon was 317.

It is often said that those were different times then, and so he shouldn’t be judged by modern ethical conventions.

But morality -- the awareness of right and wrong -- is not something that evolves. If humanity is made in the image of God, then indeed, “all men are created equal” -- and must be treated so with equity by American justice. In the Bible, slavery is recognized as an unfortunate social reality, but it is not condoned. The Judeo-Christian tradition was first in antiquity to recognize slavery as a horrible, cancerous thing. Thusly, this same sense of its inherent wickedness echoes all throughout American history, despite America’s painfully long accommodation of its “peculiar institution.”

So the first President might be an inspiration in many virtues, but he cannot be excused for his participation in an evil institution. 

This is an example of why history is hard. History might be buoyant at times, but more times than not it is burdensome. This is true of all history, even Church History, which in particular is usually "idealized." This single fact makes singing “I don’t know much about history” so appealing.

But growing up demands wrestling with history as it is, not as what one would like it to be. Adult history is a lot more complicated than movies like “Gone With the Wind” or reveries like “The Lost Cause.” These pretty stories of bygone days are romantic, and talk about pain and loss: but the problem is that they don’t tell the whole story -- they don’t talk about everyone’s pain, and they ignore a greater part of the loss. 

The burden of disappointing facts will come: but then will come the buoyancy. In adult history, the order of fairy-tale-then-disappointment is reversed. In the grownup telling, first the disappointing details raise their ugly heads like the Lernean Hydra, but then surprisingly comes expanded possibilities and horizons, hope and healing.

It is true that “you can’t heal until you see the hurt.” But there is indeed healing after the whole hurt is recognized. As the Book of Psalms says several times, “In the evening may come weeping, but joy comes in the morning.”

I think this deep poetic sensibility ties together the rhetoric of two great adversaries: adversaries at least until April 9, 1865 -- a date which concluded four long horrible years of destruction, disappointment, and despair. 

A few months after the Battle of Gettysburg, on November 19 1863, President Abraham Lincoln spoke at the dedication of the cemetery for thousands of soldiers slain. Haggard, pale, and obviously ill (probably from prodromal smallpox), he tried to describe how the nation could go on after such horrors, such sacrifice, such pain:

“ … that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The true memorializing of the historic truth -- the buoyancy and the burden -- of the Civil War and the aftermath of slavery, lies not in statuary or monuments, but in “a new birth of freedom.” 

General Robert E Lee agreed. In 1866, he expressed a similar sentiment about the erection of Confederate statuary: “I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.”

The Civil War, or if you will, the “War of Northern Aggression” -- no matter what you call it -- was a four year holocaust of thousands and thousands of American young men. On the other hand, American slavery was a four hundred year long holocaust of literally millions of black men, women, and children, all made in the image of God and should have been treated so. Racial prejudice and injustice, both systemic and individual, are as General Lee writes, “sores of war,” “marks of civil strife” that must be recognized, healed and repaired.

If statues are necessary memorials, there is not enough room in this county, or indeed the entire country, for enough statues to stand for Americans who’ve suffered and died -- especially enslaved Americans.

Carrying the burden of history, as we all do, we can with buoyancy resolve to an “increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.”

You and I, with such buoyancy of moral devotion, are the real statues that need to stand. 

And move.

Comments

[Hayesstw]

Well said.

I can't quite make up my mind on statues -- sometimes I think one thing, and sometimes another, but every Sunday we read that "The face of the Lord is against evildoers; to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth" and then I think perhaps they should go.

But I'm an evildoer too, and perhaps at my funeral they'll sing "Memory eternal".