Gettysburg -- Learning from the Past Is Better than Trying to Erase It

Today, we commemmorate the Battle of Gettysburg, which ended with the decisive Union victory at Cemetery Ridge on 3 July 1863, quashing further Confederate attempts to march armies north into Pennsylvania. General Robert E. Lee commanded the Confederate troops at Gettysburg. Today, he remains internationally respected as a daring, brilliant tactician, a gentleman who never referred to Northern soldiers as "the enemy" and as a man who opposed secession but felt honor-bound to serve his native state of Virginia. Robert E. Lee was born January 19, 1807 at Stratford Hall, Virginia, and died on October 12, 1870 (aged 63) at Lexington, Virginia. He is buried in Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University, where he served as president. Lee, of the iconic Virginia Lee family, graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he later served as Superintendent. He fought in the Mexican-American War. He rose to the rank of Colonel in the US Army before swearing allegiance to the Confederate States of America and taking command of the Army of Northern Virginia and then of the entire Confederate Army. ~~~~~ It may seem odd to remember the Battle of Gettysburg by talking about Robert E. Lee. We think of the Battle as it was immortalized in President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. The Battlefield itself is hallowed ground for all Americans. And the Civil War is one of America's fundamental collective memories. The Union suffered 365,000 total dead and 282,000 wounded. The Confederacy suffered 260,000 total dead and 137,000 wounded. The casualty numbers represented the loss of 10% of northern men between the ages of 18 and 25, and 30% of southern men between the ages of 18 and 40. So, the Civil War is an historical fact of major proportion, outstripping any other war America has fought. The Civil War is also unique in American history because brothers fought brothers, fathers, cousins and uncles. War prisoners were treated very badly on both sides and those who lived had horrific stories to tell that helped to intensify the north-south divisions. The Civil War also destroyed the South and its way of life. ~~~~~ Dear readers, I don't support the Antebellum Old South and its dependence on the odious practice of slavery and I have never owned a Confederate flag, But, changing the names of streets and parks and schools and tearing down statues of Confederate leaders and Generals -- like Robert E. Lee -- will only increase lingering southern resentments, driving them underground to fester as old wounds that have never completely healed. White Americans who identify with the Union accept this better than African Americans whose history as slaves is of a completely different nature, one that white Americans -- most of whom, I firmly believe, are not racist -- cannot appreciate. But the African Americans of Charleston forgave the racist killer who desecrated their church. They asked South Carolina to remove from Statehouse grounds the Confederate flag that reminds them of slavery's old evil. Their request should be quickly granted. And the South should stop re-fighting the Civil War, glorifying it through a patina of false nostalgia instead of recognizing it for what it was -- the defeat of their political system and the slavery that made it possible. But, neither the Civil War nor slavery -- nor Robert E. Lee -- can be erased from America's memory. That would be nihilistic revisionism at its worst. They must be accepted for what they were -- representatives of an evil that led to a bloody war in which 400,000 Americans and President Lincoln gave their lives to free slaves. Slavery is long over. America survived. The Civil War has much to say about why and how slavery ended. We need to learn what it teaches us about the past so that we can continue to move into the future together. That certainly was Abraham Lincoln's goal, and his eloquent advice is as much for us as it was for those at Gettysburg dedicating the Civil War National Cemetery on November 19, 1863 : "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—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."