JEB Stuart was a general in the Confederacy during the Civil War. Recently, under community pressure, the Fairfax County School Board agreed to change the name of the school by 2019. This reminded me of the recent removal of monuments and memorials of Confederate historical figures in New Orleans, and indeed the movement to whitewash the Confederacy from American history. It is a movement I find frightening and antithetical to the very principles of our free society.
Don't get me wrong. I was born and raised in Philadelphia. From my perspective, we won the Civil War. Indeed, the Philadelphia public school system didn't sugar coat things in the 1970s and 80s. We were taught that the Civil War was fought to end slavery. Period.
And as I chose to go to college in Miami, I was warned about speeding in the South. They never stopped fighting the Civil War I was told. If you get caught in South Carolina or Georgia, don't dare crack a joke about General Sherman with the state trooper. You'll find speeding escalating to a full body cavity search.
Being the somewhat defiant thinker that I am, the stories of my youth of how some people in the South have never stopped fighting only made me want to go to a Civil War museum in Georgia one day, sporting a Sherman t-shirt so that when a tour guide started talking about Northern atrocities, I could start changing "North! North! North!"
When I moved to Northern Virginia, then, I was somewhat shocked when I learned that the annoying statue in the middle of Washington Street in Old Town Alexandria was dedicated to the Confederate soldiers who left Alexandria when the Union occupied the city as a buffer against Washington. I was more shocked to learn that residents of the city had proudly resisted its removal, even if, quite frankly, it's a traffic hazard.
But the Civil War is part of our collective history as Americans. And while we like to forget about it, the Union was no beacon of morality both during and after the Civil War. While I joke about General William T. Sherman, the fact is that the burning and destruction of towns behind him as he drove to Savanah would be considered a war crime today. The impeachment of Andrew Johnson cemented an official US Government policy of punishing the South through the harshness of Reconstruction. While my family may stem mostly from late 19th and early 20th Century immigrants, many families in the South were direct descendants of people who suffered through "Northern atrocities." To them, the erection of memorials to Confederate figures was an act of political expression against perceived oppression.
Which is why I oppose removing any and all references to the Confederacy. The drive reminds me of the Thought Police from George Orwell's masterpiece 1984. Those in charge get to force their point of view on everyone else, and punish wrongful thought. The problem is that we have a First Amendment to protect against that. It may very well be offensive to me that people want to honor Confederate generals and waive their Confederate battle flags. But offensive political expression is exactly what the freedom of speech is supposed to protect. Perhaps if a school continues to go by the name of JEB Stuart High School, that shows me that I am free to continue to call for the removal of Donald Trump from office.
One of the problems we face in modern American society is increased polarization. That is, we have large segments who believe their view is the right view, the only view that should be permitted. Make no mistake, it is a problem on both the left and the right.
In this regard, perhaps we should take a lesson from Quebec. There, in the Plains of Abraham, is a memorial to both Generals Wolfe of the British and Montcalm of the French. It is one of the few places where both the winner and loser of a battle are memorialized. It is a symbol of how two very different people, somehow put aside their past animosities and learned to live with each other in peace.
William J. Kovatch, Jr.
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