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Many historians claim that the U.S. Civil War ended on April 9, 1865 when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Others will claim that the conflict continued until May 26 and the surrender of the last Confederate troops in Texas. They might even stretch to Nov. 6, when the C.S.S. Shenandoah berthed in London and hauled down its flag.
But the historians are wrong. If there's a date for the end of the Civil War, it lies in the future, not the past. The struggle remains very much with us.
We can start at the capital of the Confederacy, Richmond, Va. There are plans to adorn its downtown floodwall with a mural that features famous Virginians.
Among them is that of Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee's picture perturbed Saad El Amin, an African-American who serves on the Richmond City Council. He argued that honoring Lee in this way is also honoring slavery, since Lee fought in defense of slavery.
To a great degree, that is true, although by early 1865, as the Confederacy was collapsing, Lee was willing to consider emancipation if blacks would join his army.
To delve further, the relationship of Lee's generalship and slavery in the South is rich in irony.
In 1862, Union Gen. George B. McClellan launched the Peninsula Campaign with the goal of capturing Richmond. Lee's brilliant maneuvering of his outnumbered army (along with McClellan's slowness and epidemics of dysentery, malaria and typhus among his soldiers) forced McClellan to withdraw.
The Confederacy was thus saved, for a time. But suppose Lee had lost, and McClellan had captured Richmond. Some historians believe that in that case, the Union would have then been cobbled back together, pretty much as it had existed in 1860 -- with slavery still legal and protected in the South. Slavery might well have continued for another generation or more.
But Lee didn't lose in 1862. The war intensified, and
the Federal goal gradually shifted from preservation of
the Union
to destruction of slavery.
Thus it could be fairly argued that Lee is as responsible as anyone for ending slavery in 1865, as opposed to its probable continuance through the 19th century and possibly beyond.
Given all that, Lee's presence on a mural really doesn't say much one way or another about slavery.
We can move on to Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, where the Confederate battle flag still flies over the statehouse, despite the noble effort of former Gov. David Beasley to remove it.
Several civil rights organizations, among them the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, have announced they will boycott South Carolina until that flag comes down.
This is in turn annoys the good ol' boys, who say the flag commemorates the battlefield heroism of their Johnny Reb ancestors, not the cause of white supremacy that they fought for.
This is a specious argument. That flag didn't go up until 1962, during the civil rights struggle, and it was obviously white South Carolina's white way of saying what it thought about Yankee notions like desegregation and public-accommodation laws.
The Rebel brave men
argument will work for just
about any flag -- thousands, perhaps millions, of men
performed heroic deeds and died brave deaths under flags
with swastikas or hammers and sickles.
For my part, I'd just as soon that Congress gave up on
the flag-burning amendment and instead passed a resolution
encouraging the combustion of Confederate battle flags --
or at least the one in Columbia, S.C. There's only one
thing it stands for, and it isn't bravery in
battle.
Here in Colorado, John M. Chivington's name keeps popping up, most recently because his name adorns a chair at the Central City Opera House.
He was the commander in Colorado's two Civil War engagements. In 1862, he led the First Colorado Volunteers to victory against an invading Texas force at La Glorieta in New Mexico. In 1864, as almost all the regular U.S. Army was occupied elsewhere, he led the territorial militia in the Sand Creek Massacre.
Chivington was a hero in the Colorado of his day. The soldier who testified against Chivington at an army court-martial, Capt. Silas S. Soule, was later assassinated in Denver -- and the authorities never bothered to investigate the murder of this troublemaker.
It would be fair if, everywhere there's something that honors Chivington, there's also a memorial to Soule, who paid the penalty for being brave and honorable in Colorado.
Now, if only America will adopt my wise and prudent suggestions, we could finally set a date for the end of the Civil War.
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