I grew up to understand that slavery was horrendous and the Civil War a slaughter house, and one of the most noble moments in American history occurred when Grant said to Lee, “Keep your sword.” The bloodletting was done with, the slaves were freed, and the task ahead was to reconcile north and south, which meant the white people who’d hated each other. And so America did. In the decades ahead, the battles pitting Blue forces against Gray would be college all-star football games.
Just as northerners discovered to their exasperation that they couldn’t tell African-Americans who their leaders should be, today it’s not our place to say to southerners what monuments belong in their town squares. But we’re not disinterested bystanders. Those are our town squares too. The myth of the Lost Cause has had too much impact on all Americans everywhere for the most tangible evidence of it to be eradicated. I don’t want Robert E. Lee reduced in popular history to the two-dimensional role of treasonous slave-owner, but how can we ponder his complexities and contradictions if he’s nowhere we can see him? Do we clean up history when we remove it? And why would we want to clean it up? My wife calls the task she and I turn to the night before the cleaning service comes a “phony cleaning.” Is this statue removal a phony cleaning? It tidies up southern history but it doesn’t touch the grease stains.
