Americans once celebrated their history. But no more. Cultural Marxists and “social justice warriors” have succeeded in convincing a generation of American students that U.S. history is nothing but a record of racism and oppression. The recent campaign to remove Confederate monuments is only one battle in an ongoing culture war.
At the time the United States was created, aristocrats held that certain classes and races, “born booted and spurred,” had the natural right to rule over others “born with saddles on their backs.” Slavery was a worldwide phenomenon. Africans were sold into the Atlantic slave trade by other Africans. Few raised moral objections to the practice.
The United States was founded on a different claim: that no one has the natural right to rule over another without the latter’s consent. The Declaration of Independence indicted the divine rights of kings and the claim of aristocrats to lord it over their “inferiors.” It also made the abolition of slavery a moral and political necessity.
The United States inherited the institution of slavery. But as men of the Enlightenment, the Founders — even the slaveholders among them — believed that since slavery was both unprofitable and a relic of barbarism, it was on the road to extinction. With that belief in mind, the drafters of the Constitution compromised on the issue of slavery in order to secure the union necessary to preserve the infant country. But the Founders were wrong. And this is America’s tragedy.
Circumstances rendered slavery profitable in the South, leading its advocates to seek its expansion. And so the war for the soul of America came.
Honorable men chose sides for complicated reasons. Many who chose the Union did so to preserve the Union, not disrupt slavery. Indeed, most Union generals were “War Democrats” who adhered to the formula, “the Union as it was, the Constitution as it is,” i.e. with slavery.
Many who chose the Confederacy did so out of loyalty to their states. Preserving the institution of slavery was the reason the Southern states seceded but it was not necessarily the reason that soldiers took up arms for the Confederacy. Few Confederate generals and even fewer Rebel soldiers were ardent advocates of slavery.
Those attacking the Confederate monuments are engaging in “virtue signaling:” attempting to demonstrate moral superiority on the cheap. Perhaps they should visit the North Carolina memorial at Gettysburg, which portrays four soldiers advancing against the odds as part of “Pickett’s Charge.” They might ask themselves if there is anything that would motivate them to make a sacrifice comparable to that of this Tarheel quartet.
Memorials are not necessarily raised to celebrate but to remember. The Confederate monuments under assault can be seen as cautionary reminders about pride and hubris. One who looks at a statue of Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis might contemplate the lines from Percy Shelley’s sonnet describing a decaying colossus in a vast desert with a pedestal that reads: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings/Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Finally, the war on the Confederate statues is just the beginning. One of the statues that the city of New Orleans has removed is that of P.G.T. Beauregard. He was not a particularly good general but after the war, he repudiated slavery — he never owned slaves — and worked hard to improve race relations. As for Lee, his actions at the end of the war (and after), in opposing continued guerrilla warfare and urging reconciliation, prevented untold misery for the country.
So when will they come for Washington, Jefferson, Madison and the other Founders? It won’t matter that these men founded a Republic based on equal natural rights and consent. It won’t matter that their justification for establishing a Republic made the abolition of slavery a moral necessity. It will only matter that they owned slaves, permitting sanctimonious social justice warriors to somehow see themselves as morally superior to men far greater than they, as they enjoy the fruits of the Republic these men created.
Mackubin Thomas Owens, a monthly contributor, is academic dean of the Institute of World Politics, in Washington, and editor of the journal Orbis.