We Honor Reconciliation

 From Crisis:

War as fratricide is the most terrible of wars. The aftermath of the Civil War had the states that had seceded from the Union practically governed as conquered territory. Reconciliation was what was necessary, and it was a kind of cultural experiment. The South had lost, but was allowed to venerate its dead and its leaders. The romantic myth of the Lost Cause was no doubt part of the effort to remember and record, but it might not have been the principal element. The historic memory of the tremendous pain and destruction caused by the Civil War required something more than bitter recrimination or amnesia. The communities could remember their leaders as symbols of their identity with the past. The hero-worship was at times excessive, as most political movements are, but figures from history speak of continuity and not condemnation. Setting up statues or writing novels about the past was much better than pitched battles where brother sometimes met brother on the blood-soaked soil.

The attachment some feel for the Confederate symbols does not always equal racism. It inspires those who don’t always love a winner. Matthew Arnold famously criticized his alma mater Oxford by calling the university, “Home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names and impossible loyalties.” There is a definite appeal to the imagination in sympathizing with the losing side. Look at Euripides’ The Trojan Women. (Read more.)

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