Statue debate should show "hatred toward none"

A recent PBS/NPR/Marist poll showed that 62 percent of Americans want Confederate monuments to remain standing as historical monuments.

After the Civil War, the South was in ruins and there was no money to construct monuments. Dr. Joan Waugh of UCLA, speaking of the South, said, "What money there was for monuments was spent on cemeteries." Dr. Eric Foner, history professor at Columbia University, New York, said, "People weren't putting up monuments."

Most Confederate monuments were installed between 1880 and 1920 even though some were much earlier. There were also Confederate statues erected to assert white supremacy during the Jim Crow period. Dr. Waugh believes these monuments should not be torn down but put in context and used as a teaching tool.

Some Confederate monuments speak of individuals fighting for their homeland because the Civil War was fought in the South. We must realize that only 26 percent of the South owned slaves. Confederate statues of Robert E. Lee speak of a man torn between commanding the Union army and fighting against his countrymen. They also depict one of the most respected generals of the Civil War.

Confederate monuments remind us all of a nation that was locked in civil war and a president who wanted to restore the Union. Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, after the Battle of Antietam, that declared slaves in the states of rebellion forever free. There are 96 monuments at Antietam, which are mostly Union because Confederacy veterans couldn't raise the money to build monuments. Confederate monuments also remind us of the carnage of slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, hatred, bigotry and racism.

Abraham Lincoln said in his Gettysburg Address, November of 1863, "All men are created equal." Also, in his second inaugural address, Lincoln spoke the words that are enduring and need to be our nation's refrain. He said, "With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds ... to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

As a nation we need to move beyond the hurts of the past and bind up the nation's wounds, seeking peace among ourselves. Taking down Confederate monuments will not do this for our nation. What little satisfaction it brings will be fleeting and we'll still be left with hatred and racism. Let these monuments remind us of both the awfulness and the virtues of our history and let us also learn from both. Perhaps as Lincoln implied, we need God's intervention so that we may have hatred toward none and love for all.

Terry Stewart

Springdale

Commentary on 09/07/2017

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