Celebrating Slavery

I noticed recently that the White Republican South has launched a five year official celebration of the Civil War, which they started about 150 years ago. This is roughly the equivalent of Germany hosting a five year celebration of the Holocaust.

Like many others, I tend to let dim the horror that was slavery, when four million people were held in conditions that allowed torture, murder and rape. The viciousness of this crime against humanity stains American history--or it would if we talked about it. For the most part the North is silent, part of the bargain we made when we brought the South back into the union, a major mistake. (Consider what our government would look like today without the South.)

About 40% of our people believe that the South went to war to preserve states' rights, which is almost a half-truth. The South fought to preserve one right, the right to extend slavery into the new states, where the tide was running against them. To build an army, the South initiated the country's first draft, a one-year term for poor farmers that was soon extended to last the duration of the war.

Two of my great-grandfathers, I can say, fought as privates to free the slaves. I doubt if they would have been pleased to see a five year celebration of those who fought for what General Grant called the worst cause known to history.

No doubt the most celebrated rebel will be General Robert E. Lee, a noble-looking slaver, considered at the start of the Civil War to be among the South's ten best military leaders. No one then thought him the best. That honor went to Albert Sidney Johnston, killed at Shiloh. Jefferson Davis called his death "the turning point of the war." It now seems likely that, like Stonewall Jackson, Johnston was shot by one of his own draftees, perhaps by accident.

In any case, Robert E. Lee went on to defeat about eight Union generals, each of them fourth-rate. Lee had no opposition. As a general Lee was active, imaginative, rash and headstrong. When he finally met a second-rate general, Meade, at Gettysburg, Lee got crushed. Once Grant got hold of Lee--Grant won every battle he ever fought--the noble slaver was beaten like a rented mule.

We're going to hear a lot of rubbish about the great Bobby Lee in the next five years. I'm gritting my teeth.