Brian M Downing
The Civil War continues to be contested a century and a half after Lee handed his sword to Grant. A sterner president might have treated harshly, though not unjustly, with the defeated generals and politicians. Very harshly. The gallows would have suited many. They were traitors to their nation who cost some 620,000 lives. Their high-minded assertions of states’ rights were only a sanctimonious defense of slavery – similar to what Johnson said of the scoundrel’s last refuge.
Their land should have been distributed to freed slaves and Confederate enlisted personnel. The South would have been better off without a latifundist caste dominating politics and culture. America as a whole might be better today for it.
Thirty years after Appomattox, southern towns and cities erected statues of Confederate figures. It was not a reassertion of secessionism. Even many stalwarts came to see defeat as part of God’s will. Few Union veterans would have readily supported the construction of monuments to Lee and company, but many came to see it was well-intentioned effort to heal the wounds of war by commemorating the struggle and restoring pride. After all, aging soldiers from both sides were shaking hands at battle sites and reunions by then.
When the US entered the First World War in 1917, Washington feared conscription would be violently opposed, especially in the South. It wasn’t. Men showed up for induction and went off to France. Many of them trained in new installations named after Confederate officers. It was a calculated effort to put the rebellion in the past and devote attention to the Great War. More installations were named after Confederates in the 1940s.
During WW2 and especially amid the Korean War, the military was integrated, albeit grudgingly and slowly. Northerners and southerners, whites and blacks, men and women, served together, ate C Rations side by side, and endured unimagined hardships. They took basic training at Jackson, armor crews trained at Hood, special forces and paratroopers came out of Bragg.
Only a handful of history buffs know the names John Bell Hood and Braxton Bragg. The forts became symbols of a new military and nation. But that’s been largely undone. The last two weeks may have been the most divisive period since 1968. We seem headed back in time.
My last duty station was Fort Meade. The name should be safe, but someone might get the idea that George wore grey at Gettysburg. After all, the Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment has been vandalized. Woke doesn’t mean educated.
© 2020 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to Susan Ganosellis.