Time to Bury the “Lost Cause”

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has declared April Confederate History Month. His original seven-paragraph proclamation was full of paeans to grey-clad heroes but nowhere mentioned the agonies of slavery. This understandably offended African Americans, and McDonnell spent a day or so getting beat up in the media.

The governor quickly apologized for the omission and added a new strongly worded “whereas” to his proclamation that called slavery an “evil and inhumane practice that deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights.” Good for McDonnell. He did the right thing.

Or, at least, partly the right thing. Because now his proclamation on one hand lauds Confederate heroes and, on the other, condemns the “peculiar institution” that—directly or indirectly—they were fighting to protect.

This begs the question: Why call it “Confederate History Month”? Why not “Civil War History Month”? Didn’t thousands of Virginians also fight for the Union? Wouldn’t that be a better way of achieving McDonnell’s goal of boosting Civil War tourism in Virginia?

The answer lies in another strand of history. Back when plenty of Confederate veterans still lived, southern states held Confederate Memorial Days, complete with parades, speeches and picnics. They were festive holidays that kept southern patriotism—and southern racial animosities—alive and well. This proclamation is a distant echo of those times.

The Confederacy is dead. Its veterans are dead. But the fight over how the Confederacy is remembered hasn’t ended. Some still insist that the heroism of its soldiers imbued the Confederacy with a kind of nobility. Perhaps. But that seems to be missing a larger point.

Simply put, a government created specifically to defend and promote an “evil and inhumane practice that deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights” really does not deserve to be honored with any proclamations or special months. On the other hand, the war that brought that government down clearly needs to be better remembered.

Next year, why not try Civil War History Month.