Remembering History Was Never Their Agenda

Like DeSantis Today in Florida, They Were Always Trying to Re-Write It

Remember the loud wails of protest when the statues and monuments in public spaces honoring the Confederate Generals who waged armed treason against the United States in order to preserve slavery started to come down?

“You can’t erase history!" they cried.

As if they had any interest in accurately remembering the history of the Civil War and the treason, and white supremacy that fueled it. Those statues were, in essence, monuments to white supremacy and an effort to re-write American history by grossly and inaccurately mythologizing it.

Good riddance to them all.

What the “You can’t erase history,” crowd was really bemoaning was the unravelling of the old-Confederacy’s great lie of the post-Civil War era - the myth of the “noble lost cause” of the Confederacy, more than a century after those statues and monuments helped spread and establish it.

Governor Ron DeSantis’ new rules on how Florida schools are to teach school kids about the history of slavery - recasting slavery as some kind of benevolent jobs training program that helped prepare enslaved people for a non-existent job market, is a new effort to sugar coat one of America’s most brutal horrors and to rewrite its history.

The “noble lost cause” peddlers made some pretty absurd claims: one was that preserving slavery in America was the furthest thing from the minds of those who started, fought and lost the Civil War - despite the mountain of historical evidence to the contrary. They’d like us to believe the Civil War was just a little dust up the nation stumbled into after decades of arguing about preserving states’ rights.

The “noble lost cause” myth would like us to believe that the institution of slavery was part of the genteel history of sprawling plantations populated by southern gentlemen and southern belles; a peculiar institution - yes - but one which helped make the antebellum South such a beautiful and peaceful place filled with magnolias and fancy, fun filled cotillions - rather than the cruel and brutal system that it was.

For many years, that false narrative succeeded.

Growing up in Iowa in the 1960s, I saw first hand how successful the “noble lost cause” mythologizers were in selling their lies about slavery and the Civil War.

I spent my elementary school years growing up, first in Des Moines, then in Van Meter, back then a small Iowa farming town best known as the hometown of baseball Hall of Famer Bob Feller.

There was nothing unusual about the politics of either community or the people who lived there.

Yet it was in elementary school, first at Elmwood Elementary in Des Moines, and then in Van Meter, where I first encountered the turbulence of cognitive dissonance about slavery and the great “noble lost cause” myth.

When I was in first grade, George Washington’s and Abraham Lincoln’s birthdays were still celebrated separately, on February 12 for Lincoln, February 22 for Washington. That meant we learned in school that Lincoln freed the slaves before we learned anything about George Washington as we celebrated their birthdays. What we learned about Lincoln, primarily, was that he freed the slaves and abolished the evil, cruel, brutal institution of slavery. Pretty much single handedly as it was told to first graders back then.

Lincoln was indeed a great man who deserved to be celebrated.

But that made things a little dicey for a kid who was a little too prone to think about things when we started learning about George Washington on his birthday. Washington, too, was a great man who did great things, but his story included something Lincoln’s did not - Washington was a Virginia planter who owned and worked a huge plantation, and “owned” slaves - lots of them. Hundreds of them over the years.

I remember raising my hand after the lesson that included Washington’s plantation days to ask a question about Washington and his slaves, especially given what we had just learned two weeks earlier about Lincoln ending the evils of slavery.

Enslaving people just didn’t seem to fit in the life story of a “great” man.

“If George Washington was good and great man, how could he own slaves?” I asked.

The immediate response from my first grade teacher: an uncomfortable throat clearing; a pause; and then reassurance that Washington was indeed good and great, and that his owning slaves wasn’t a big deal because George Washington was one of the “good slave owners.” He was kind to his slaves, and they were happy to work for him.

Oh. OK. That was enough to at least quiet a first grader, if not thoroughly convince him.

I now know, of course, that Washington bought and sold slaves like cattle and when they ran away he worked hard to track them down and return them to his plantation. God only knows what happened to them when they were returned. That’s how slavery worked. Enslaved people were not even considered people and the system was entirely one-sided, exploitive, cruel and brutal.

George Washington and several other founding fathers were part of that system, willingly.

I next encountered the story of George Washington’s “ownership” of enslaved people in fifth grade, when my family lived in Van Meter. We were studying American history when the subject came up again. Once more, the teacher might as well have been talking about Washington’s ownership of a fleet of John Deere green tractors for all the notice that was paid to the fact that he “owned,” bought and sold people with families.

I raised my hand again and asked how Washington could be good and great, but also “own” slaves? I wasn’t trying to pick an argument. I was just trying to understand what seemed to me, at least, a very obvious contradiction.

The answer this time was similar to the one I received four years before: Washington was a “good slave owner.” He was kind to his slaves. They were happy to work for him. And then this new tidbit: When Washington’s slaves worked in the fields, they usually sang as they worked. They enjoyed their work for Washington and loved him.

I was too close to being a teenager to buy that one at face value. But I let the matter drop.

Since then, I have been to Washington’s home - Mt. Vernon - several times. I have seen where Washington’s enslaved workers lived, toiled and now lie buried in unmarked graves. It is clear the relationship that existed at Mt. Vernon between George Washington and the enslaved people who worked his plantation was a simple one: Master and Slave.

Period.

Familiarity may have resulted in other kinds of relationships developing, but the only one that ever really mattered was Master and Slave. Just like on every other plantation that relied on the labor of enslaved people.

The Master always had all the power - the power to buy and sell the enslaved human beings who worked the plantation, to over-work, ill-house, under-feed, and ill-clothe them, even to beat them. The enslaved person - as the infamous Dred Scott decision would state without shame in 1859 - had no legal rights, no protection under the constitution, and was simply put, property, not a citizen.

My teachers in Des Moines and Van Meter were not white supremacists nor unreconstructed Confederate sympathizers. They were good people - Iowans - who grew up in what had been Union territory during the Civil War, just two generations removed from that war - but within reach and under the shadow of the great myth of the “noble lost cause.”

Washington being a “good” slave owner is part of that myth.

There is no such thing as a “good slave owner,” of course, because enslaving people is - by definition - evil. Therefore, the narrative of the life of one of our national heroes - the history of George Washington - must be re-written. He became a “good slave owner” whose slaves loved him and sang in his fields as they they toiled for him in the hot summer sun of Virginia, for no pay.

The same with those Generals up there on those monuments. They led a bloody war of insurrection to preserve slavery. That war cost 600,000 - 800,000 American lives. The statues went up, beginning in the 1890s to recast them as heroes, rather than traitors.

The point of the white supremacists driving the “noble lost cause” myth was always to re-write history, not to help us accurately remember it.

That is exactly what Governor Ron DeSantis is doing in Florida with the new rules about what Florida kids will be taught about slavery in America.

DeSantis continues to defend it.

What he is doing is nothing less than trying to put a white supremacist-friendly narrative back in place. If they can’t put the statues of traitors back up, maybe they can at least put their sugar coated version of slavery back on its pedestal.

Let every American be clear about this: There was no upside to slavery. America ought to run - not walk - away from any candidate for the presidency who thinks there was.