Decoration Day

A friend of mine - a Northern Virginia attorney and conscientious liberal - is starting a campaign to remove the statue of a Confederate infantryman from outside the courthouse in one of NoVa's exurban counties.

  

His argument, as I understand it, is that some of his clients feel intimidated when they see that statue standing outside the courthouse in which they are about to face trial.

While I have the greatest respect for my friend, I cannot bring myself to support his latest crusade - nor to feel much sympathy for any client who is such a quivering mass of gelatin as some of his seem to be.

A statue of a Confederate soldier is, after all, just a chunk of stone.  Fifty years ago, brave men and women had to walk past such lifeless monuments on the way to face living white judges and all-white juries whose daddies and granddaddies had been actual Confederate soldiers - and who were absolutely determined to re-create the Old South in the middle of the 20th century.

We've come a great long way since then, as even the most timorous defendant must know.

Besides, a weathered, old statue of a Confederate soldier - an infantry grunt - is hardly a statement about race.  It is, primarily, a statement about courage and self-sacrifice - as all soldiers' memorials should be.  Admire the cause or deplore it, the millions of men (and more than a few women) who wore blue or grey fought for what most soldiers fight for - their comrades and their homes.

Most of the men, North and South, who made the war possible were too old - or too "important" - to risk their own lives on the battlefield.

There is a troublesome nostalgic tendency among modern liberals.  They love to wade  about in their imagined guilt for past injustices in which they played no part.  They glory in the struggles of the Civil Rights movement and the anti-Vietnam war movement, when issues seemed clear-cut.

It's so much easier than working up the energy and courage to confront modern challenges, such as building an educational system which provides every child with - not just an equal education - but a good one.

Or reining in the absolute corporate dominance of every aspect of our political system.

Or doing something serious about the gathering storm of global climate change.

My friend's campaign against the old Confederate statue seems to me an evasion of this type - and a plain waste of time.

Still, as it is Memorial Day - a holiday which had its beginning as a celebration of those who died in the Lost Cause - this might be the right time to propose something a bit more useful than pulling down a statue.

How about putting one up, instead?

For some years now - ever since I read a biography of the man - I've wished to see a new equestrian statue on Monument Avenue, honoring a gentleman who was -  yes - a white Virginian and a general who rose to prominence during the Civil War.

Indeed, there are serious military historians who rank him as the best of an outstanding generation of strategists and battlefield commanders.

His name was George H. Thomas.  His troops called him "Pap".  Admirers called him "the Rock of Chickamauga". 

Civil War buffs will immediately recognize the symbolism of adding Thomas to Monument Avenue's ranks.  Thomas, a native of Virginia's Southampton County and the son of a slave-holding family, fought for the Union. 

In 1861, Thomas - an active-duty officer since his graduation from West Point - faced the same choice which confronted his good friend and professional colleague, Robert E. Lee.  But Thomas arrived at a different decision.

He honored the oath he had taken upon joining the United States Army.  Enduring the suspicion of his fellow Union officers - to say nothing of the icy silence of his family, which disavowed him - Thomas stolidly performed whatever duty was assigned him.

In January, 1862, Thomas won the Union's first major battle, at Mill Springs, in Kentucky.  

His stand at Chickamauga, in 1863 - when his commander had fled the field - won him fame and promotion to the command of the  Army of the Cumberland.  His victory at Nashville, late in the war, destroyed General John B. Hood's army, removing it permanently from the field.

Unlike other commanders, Thomas preferred to spare the lives of his troops.  Through careful preparation, excellent logistical planning, and maneuver, he won victories without sacrificing lives unnecessarily.  This characteristic is often put forward to explain his chilly relations with his commander, U. S. Grant, who showed no such concern.

I admit it's a strange fancy, the idea of putting a Union general on Monument Avenue.  But if old-school liberals mush waste time on something, a statue to Thomas would be a better use of it than "disrespecting" an anonymous Confederate foot-slogger standing outside a courthouse.

Besides, it would - in a tiny way, at least - deal with something relevant.  A new traffic circle - replacing a set of traffic lights - would make a small contribution to reducing our profligate use of fossil fuels.

And that would, in itself, be memorable.