Remove the statues if you must, but leave history alone

I have a lot of thoughts about what happened in Charlottesville last Saturday and none of them is good. First off, there’s the reaction of faux-president Donald Trump to the violent attack by white supremacists on peaceful protesters and the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, who was mowed down by a car driven by a Hitler-loving racist.

Not until the third day was Trump able to mouth the words “KKK,” “white supremacists” (which he mispronounced) and “racists” in the same sentence, and then only after he was so widely criticized that he was forced to say something, so he read some words that someone else wrote for him and quickly ran away.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

There was the comment by former KKK Grand Dragon David Duke, who told a reporter that he and his “white is right” terrorists were “fulfilling the promises of Trump” and “taking their country back.” TV networks intercut that with clips of Trump during the campaign, claiming he didn’t know who David Duke is. Well, I’ve known about David Duke for most of my life, so I’m writing that off as just one more Donald Trump lie.

But that’s not what I want to talk about, either. 

What I really want to say is this: The riot in Charlottesville started over plans to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from government property. In its aftermath, some people want to tear down statues in North Carolina and Kentucky, among other places, and there’s even concern about a Stonewall Jackson monument in Charleston, WV.

The truth is, you can tear down every statue of a Confederate soldier from Vicksburg to Gettysburg but you won’t change the history that goes with them…and I don’t think we should try. You can’t erase the Civil War by ripping General Lee off his pedestal in front of the Buggknuckle Courthouse or the Craptahatchee City Hall.

I’ve been to Gettysburg and I’ve read the history that was created there. I’ve seen the wheatfields and the Devil’s Den and the hills above Pickett’s Charge, and I’ve seen the statues of Union and Confederate soldiers who fought there. I’ve been to Harper’s Ferry and I’ve been inside the engine house where John Brown was captured, and I’ve seen the Burnside Bridge at Antietam and walked on ground that I’m sure was once covered in blood.

You can’t go to those places and not be touched by the enormity of it all.

Closer to home, you can’t change the fact that Stonewall Jackson was a prominent general in Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, or the fact that he was born in Clarksburg, now in West Virginia, and is memorialized by a statue in front of the Harrison County Courthouse there. You could tear down the statue, I suppose, and change the name of Stonewall Jackson Lake and Stonewall Jackson Dam and Stonewall Jackson Middle School… but you can’t erase the legacy of Stonewall Jackson or his place in American history.

Frankly, it doesn’t bother me that Stonewall Jackson sits atop his horse in front of the courthouse in Clarksburg. After all, he was born there and he was a famous general during the Civil War. Those are true facts and I can live with them. I’m more offended when I see a confederate flag in the window of a pickup truck with a gun rack behind the seat, NRA stickers on the bumper and a Trump hat hanging from the mirror. 

But I can also understand that some people are offended by monuments to people they consider to be traitors to America and representatives of the wrong side of a war fought over the right to own slaves. If they want these statues moved from public property, that’s okay with me, too. Put them in museums or on private land or in the cemeteries where these people rest. Just don’t rip them down with chains and drag them off to a junkyard some place while pretending that Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee never lived.

That’s what's known as revisionist history…and I am not a fan.

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As a side note, Paul Prather, a contributing columnist for the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, says in a recent article that Robert E. Lee would have supported the removal of his statues from courthouses and other government buildings. “He would have told the supremacists to shut up and go home, although he would have phrased it more politely," Prather wrote. "He would have told Charlottesville officials to remove his statue.”

Prather also had some advice for the white supremacists who started the brawl in Charlottesville: “The Civil War ended 152 years ago. The Confederates lost. World War II ended 72 years ago. The Nazis lost. You’re on the wrong side of history. Move on.”