In Defense of American History and Heroes
by Daniel Mallock (September 2017)
50th Anniversary, Battle of Gettysburg, Union and Confederate Veterans Greet Each Other at the Scene of Pickett’s Charge, 1913
What does a nation without heroes look like?
There are those among us who demand that our heroes must be stainless, and anyone who falls short of the as-yet-unpublished standards of what a hero is must be expunged from the public landscape and therefore finally from the national memory.
—the name glyphs of leaders out of favor with the then living generation chipped away. You can see them obliterated from obelisks, and the smashed ruins of their statues. The purpose of the destruction of public records and public memorials is to remove people and events from history, for the benefit of the present generation’s peccadillos only. Stalin did not stop at obliterating just statues from history.
There is no consideration of honor to the past or obligation to the future among the people who destroy our history—it is nothing short of the tyranny of the living. Destruction of the past is an act of theft and thoughtlessness against the future, and worse.
Destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban, Afghanistan. (Source)
The Taliban famously did this to the Bamiyan Buddhist statues in Afghanistan several months before the 9/11 Islamist terror mass murder atrocities in the United States. The Taliban used explosives to blow up those famous world-significant statues to the horror and chagrin of the entire civilized world. The history of history destroyers is long and ugly.
Still from: Youtube video of the mob destruction of the Confederate memorial, Durham, N.C., August 14, 2017.
—Confederate soldiers were not Stalinists, Leninists, or Nazis and we are now only in a revolutionary situation in the view of the revolutionary extremists who commit these acts (and those who cheer them on).
These were Americans fighting and dying in a now long dead but not at all forgotten war between the states. Durham is certainly not the only city affected by the revisionist mob destruction of American history whose subtleties, nuances, complexities, and contradictions, disturbing though they sometimes are, are neither appreciated nor understood by them. The Confederate soldiers were Americans, they are our forebears, whatever your view of the Confederacy or of the Civil War. Civil War history is American history. We are proud of our Civil War boys in blue and gray, disturbed by them, in awe of their accomplishments and sacrifices, and inspired by what they did.
Nancy Pelosi’s father understood this well. During his tenure as mayor of Baltimore, her father spoke these words at the dedication of the Lee-Jackson memorial in that city in 1948. From father to daughter or son, so much can change.
Gettysburg Reunion, 1938.
In a famous letter to James Madison of September 6, 1789, Thomas Jefferson set out a radically new viewpoint of how he believed the living generation should relate to those who preceded them.
Confederate Cemetery, Carnton, Battle of Franklin, Tennessee (source)
Confederate Cemetery, Carnton, Battle of Franklin, Tennessee (source)
Death site of General Patrick Cleburne, Battle of Franklin, Tennessee (Dan Mallock)
The decoupling of the living generation from the past, the abandonment of all obligations to the past, to history and to the truth of what history is and means, is at the foundation of the failure of the Jacobins during the French Revolution. When the living feel no obligations to the past, the nation is adrift in dangerous waters.
This radical decoupling of the living generation from the past was at the core of the failure of their utopian, idealistic revolt against monarchy in France which devolved to mass political murder, civil and international war. After the guillotines, after the implosion of the revolution there, the monarchy in France was restored.
In the United States now some among us, loud, bitter, denialist, and angry have taken up the Jacobin cudgel of absolutism, intolerance, and utopianism.
The logic of the destruction of Civil War Confederate monuments for their association with the despicable slave system (all people of decency agree that the slave institution was despicable) must lead to Jefferson and Washington and many others. It has already begun.
In this current environment of extremism, ignorance, and intolerance every member of the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention must be seen as tainted by association. The twisted logic of the history-killing mob must then be that every founder must be condemned as unworthy of remembrance and jettisoned.
Many of the present generation cannot face nor reconcile the enormous contradictions of our history and those of our heroes great and minor. That previous generations were successful in comprehending and appreciating the fact that our history is not stainless and our heroes flawed is not relevant to them.
With the defeat of the Confederacy came the end of the slave system. The defeated South was brought back into the Union, and Confederate and Union soldiers built bonds of brotherhood and welcome as the country reunified after the nightmare of the war. This post-war era of forgiveness, reunification, and national rebirth, as shown so clearly in the photographs accompanying this article, is now being overturned by the tyranny of the living generation.
75th Gettysburg Anniversary, 1938 (source)
These lessons of forgiveness and reunification are now forgotten to the detriment of all Americans living and dead and those yet born.
Memorial to Union officer and mortally wounded Confederate General Lewis Armistead on the field of Gettysburg. (source)
The great challenge to Americans is that we have no choice but to embrace the contradictions of our history, of our heroes, and accept the simple and obvious truth that they were not perfect. There can be no standard of perfection demanded of anyone by anyone, there can only be an openness to learn the lessons of the past and give honor and remembrance to those who paid staggeringly high costs fighting and dying for what they believed in.
Monument to Sergeant Richard Kirkland (CSA), giving wounded Union soldiers water and aid on the battlefield after the Battle of Fredericksburg, 1862. (Source)
The greatness of our people and of our heroes resides in the fact that we can learn and we do learn. We have come a long way since 1861.
The monuments of the boys in blue and gray are stark reminders to us of sacrifices, bravery, courage, honor, error, and bitter, painful lessons learned. These were all left by the then living generation of Americans as a reminder to us and those who follow us of the lessons they learned so that we who followed them would never forget.
Can there be now any American heroes at all when the standard is perfection? Are there any humans living or dead who can meet this standard? There are none.
Every American statue and memorial is now at risk because none represent perfection.
What does a country look like without heroes? A country without heroes is a building without foundations, a house with a shattered middle that cannot stand.
Our heroes tell our national story—they illustrate our victories, our defeats, and the sacrifices that our people are willing to make for their friends, their fellow citizens, and for our country.
The great contradiction that the United States was founded by slave holders is now an impossible one for many on the political left to accept. That this is the painful truth of our country’s founding is irrelevant to them.
Our obligation as the present living generation is to forever appreciate where we have been and how far we have come, the sacrifices made and the lessons learned. This is the demand that history places upon us, and upon those who will follow us.
Recumbent Robert E. Lee, Lee Chapel, Washington and Lee University (Dan Mallock)
All American heroes of the past are now at risk from the absolutist mobs of angry history destroyers and denialists who obstinately refuse to resolve the contradictions of American history.
Monticello with their torches and pitchforks?
Monticello (Kendra Mallock)
Jefferson Memorial (Dan Mallock)
Mount Vernon (Dan Mallock)
When do we retreat from the precipice of the destruction of our foundations and admit the truth—that our forebears were not perfect and neither are we, and that our temporary status of the “living generation” does not give us the right to obliterate what we owe to the future, that is, our heritage and national story.
These places, these people, their mistakes and their accomplishments are all part of our history and our heritage. Their destruction is an irreparable loss to the nation now and to the future, it is a national disaster.
What does a country look like that has no heroes? What does a country look like that can have no heroes? These are rhetorical questions.
“Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it” so goes the famous saying. More pertinent to us now: those who destroy their own history do not know of what they are made and condemn the future to ignorance.
Gettysburg Peace Memorial (source)
Peace Monument/Civil War Sailor Monument, Washington, DC (source)
Battle of Nashville Peace Monument (source)
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Daniel Mallock is a historian of the Founding generation and of the Civil War. He is the author of Agony and Eloquence: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and a World of Revolution.
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