What do we after we take the flags down?
The trouble with political purges is that they are never ending. There’s always one more enemy to vanquish, one more foe to defeat, one more idea to clear out of the way. Enough is never enough.
That’s the problem we face, 150 years after the end of the Civil War, in trying to expunge the lingering stench of the old Confederarcy and, by extension, its evil precursors, racism and slavery.
Bring down the Confederate flags from all those state capitol flag poles? That’s a pretty easy one. The reason the Confederate battle flag and its cousin flags representing the states of the Confederacy were run up in the first place was to protest the civil rights movement and to turn a defiant face to the federal government in the early 1960s.
Standing in the school house door in 1963, blocking the lawful integration of the University of Alabama, Gov. George Wallace rhetorically wrapped himself in those flags.
So bring ’em down. By all means, bring ’em down.
Now for the hard part. What should be done about Washington and Jefferson and the other Founders who set us on the road to independence from England and to freedom as we now understand it?
As you know, these two characters as well as many of the other framers of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were complicit in the South’s “peculiar institution” — the buying and selling of human beings.
For that matter, what about Robert E. Lee, the lead Confederate general and long considered a paragon of virtues Americans hold in high esteem — courage, patience and fortitude in the face of tribulation and wisdom, as in knowing when and how to accept defeat gracefully?
A brilliant leader of men, Lee is memorialized at a chapel in Lexington, Va., on the campus of Washington and Lee University, steps away from VMI and the George C. Marshall Museum and Library.
Marshall — Uniontown’s very own general of the Army and Nobel Peace Prize recipient — happened to be one of the countless Americans in the middle of the 20th century who thought the world of Lee.
Marshall admired Lee’s way of deflecting glory. In part, no doubt, it’s why he disliked vain, egotistical men, which explains his trouble with World War II’s peacock-in-chief, Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
Marshall took from Lee the idea that in war the best leadership consists of combining steely determination with empathy for the soldiers bearing the brunt of battle.
Should we, in going after Lee, cast a wary eye as well on the likes of Marshall? Was Marshall a closet racist? It was Marshall, after all, who stood against integration of the military during World War II, saying it was not the time to indulge in social engineering.
And what about FDR’s reverence for Jefferson and his appreciation of Andrew Jackson, another of the early slave-holding presidents?
As for Lincoln — yes, Lincoln — didn’t he once advocate the self-deportation of former slaves to Africa?
And we have not even touched on all the others, such as the historians.
For starters, there’s Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who gave a pass to President Jackson’s maltreatment of both slaves and Indians. The historians, famous and otherwise, who got Reconstruction all wrong are too numerous to mention.
Hey, we could be throwing out the rascals for quite a long time.
Illustrating the conflicts and contradictions we are likely to encounter on the road to political cleansing, let us consider the case of the late U.S. senator from Georgia, Thomas Watson.
Tom Watson, the senator, not the golfer, was a racist. He was also anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic. He cheered from the sidelines when a Georgia mob kidnapped and lynched a Jewish factory boss for the murder of a 13-year-old factory girl, after the convicted man’s death sentence was suspended by the governor.
In 1892, running for re-election to Congress, Watson called for an alliance between white and black voters in the hope of “repealing bad laws and enacting good ones.” Thus would the South emerge from the shadow of slavery and the Civil War.
Well before his election to the Senate in 1920, Watson sensed the need to dial back his view of a biracial political future for the South. He turned against even allowing black men and women to vote.
As I said, Tom Watson was a bigot.
An old-fashioned Southern agrarian populist, Watson was not easily pigeonholed, however.
In 1922, he embraced the cause of Fayette County coal miners — many of whom were Catholic — struggling to join the United Mine Workers, against the determined opposition of the H.C. Frick Coal and Coke Co.
On the Senate floor, just days before his unexpected death in September 1922, Watson reacted to reports that Frick miners were being tossed from their homes for union activity.
“We have the bankers’ union, the manufacturers’ union,” he declared.. “… Why should thousands be thrown into the streets … because some arrogant union of operators refuses to recognize a union of the men who work to make them rich?”
Ten years after his death, Tom Watson was honored with a statue on the steps of the Georgia capitol in Atlanta. The year was 1932 and the Great Depression was raging. Watson was again in favor. The chiseled legend on the statue’s pedestal reads, “A champion of right who never faltered in the cause.”
Now, that can be taken in several ways. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.
Several years ago the statue was removed, it was said, due to the deteriorating condition of the capitol steps, and re-erected in a park across the street.
The bigots protested this banishment to a lesser site. To forestall demonstrations, the removal took place on a day off. Actually, it was a Southern holiday: the day set aside to celebrate the life of one Robert E. Lee.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation” and “Our People.” He can be reached atgrandsalutebook@gmail.com.