I had a great Civil War Centennial. I was eight years old in 1961, and my parents took our family on trips to Gettysburg and Antietam and Manassas. I had blue and gray toy soldiers, and Civil War trading cards, and I watched Johnny Shiloh and Johnny Yuma. From this, a life-long interest was born.
Recently I read Troubled Commemoration, an excellent account of the Civil War Centennial by Robert J. Cook, and I learned that I had experienced exactly what the centennial organizers envisioned: an event that promoted tourism and commercial enterprise and, oh yeah, taught a little bit of history as well.
I also learned that people besides me also had a good centennial. Segregationists, for example, were able to turn the centennial of the war into a celebration of the Confederacy. Flying the Confederate battle flag, they used secession as an origination myth for the never-defeated cause of states’ rights, which was the philosophical underpinning of the racist laws and practices they defended.
Another group that had a good centennial were cold warriors, who were able to argue that the America that now led the Free World had its roots in a civil war that left us more unified, and more deeply committed to the defense of global freedom — a perfect metaphor for the former antagonists of World War II who were now standing together against communism in western Europe. As for which side held the moral high ground in 1861, the cold warriors were agnostic.
Others didn’t have such a good centennial. When the national Civil War Commission scheduled its first assembly in Charleston in April 1961, Madaline Williams, an African-American member of New Jersey’s Civil War Centennial Commission, was told that she wouldn’t be able to stay with the rest of the delegation at the segregated hotel where the events were being held. Several northern delegations threatened to boycott the event, but the hotel management did not relent, and no state or city officials intervened. “We are surprised that a colored woman would not want to stay at a hotel for colored people,’’ wrote one newspaper. Finally the Kennedy administration stepped in and moved the event to a naval base in Charleston, where facilities were integrated.
Nor did the Emancipation Proclamation have a particularly great centennial. Political leaders in the south made it clear that this great moral landmark had no business being mixed up with a commemoration of the Civil War. So the proclamation had its own ceremony, one that put it in a Cold War context. It was cast as pivotal moment in the cause of global freedom, as something more meaningful in 1962 to Third World people who were emerging from colonialism and who had to choose between east and west, than to black Americans who were fighting for their civil rights. No African-American speakers were even part of the program until Thurgood Marshall, then a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, was added at the last minute. A late scheduling conflict prevented President Kennedy from attending.
The only comfort that comes from reading Cook’s book is the realization that thanks to the struggles of so many of our fellow citizens, we live in a much better country today. But 50 years later, as we enter the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, we must realize that for those of us who care about history and this particular event, work still remains to be done. There remains a basic ignorance about the Civil War, an ignorance that fosters myths and fabrications, and deforms our understanding of ourselves.
For example, when asked about the cause of the war, far too many people will say that there were many reasons. Slavery was one; states rights, tariffs and northern aggression were others. This is sad, because when you read the words spoken by the leaders of the rebellion, when you read their secession ordinances, there is only one reason: slavery — the preservation of slavery, the extension of slavery, the expansion of slavery.
Six hundred thousand Americans did not die for anything as nebulous as states rights or tariffs. They died because slaveholders wanted to preserve their human property and expand their slaveholding empire, and they were willing to demolish the union and bring tragedy to nearly every family in this land in order to protect their right to own human beings.
And still some people ignore the facts. Last December, 400 people attended a Secession Ball in Charleston; a spokesman said that slavery was an abomination, but that they were honoring people who stood up for their freedom.
In January, Congress began its session by reading the Constitution, but omitted the part where slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person. Later, Rep. Michele Bachman said that when people came to America, “It didn’t matter the color of their skin, it didn’t matter their language, it didn’t matter their economic status. … Once you got here, we were all the same. Isn’t that remarkable?’’
What would be remarkable, what would make this a great sesquicentennial, is if people stopped entertaining delusions about the terrible origins of this terrible war.
(This piece appeared today in The New York Times.)