Abraham Lincoln is coming to Richmond, Va., and the Rebel army is mobilizing to stop it from happening. This is not a lost headline from a recently uncovered dispatch from 1863. It is a current event in 2003.
The United States Historical Society has decided to donate a life-sized statue of Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad to the Richmond National Battlefield Civil War Visitor Center, located on the grounds of the old Tredegar Iron Works. The statue commemorates Lincoln’s visit to Richmond in April 1865, hours after the Rebels high-tailed it out of town. Although the statue’s inscription will read, “To Bind Up the Nation’s Wounds,” some feel that it has only re-opened a few.
Modern-day Confederate groups are outraged, as they normally are whenever anything anywhere happens. Brandon Bowling, the Virginia commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, has called the statue a “not-so-subtle reminder of who won the war.”
To borrow a line from my junior high days: Well, duh! Perhaps Bowling and his ilk would prefer a statue that leaves visitors believing that the war ended differently. One of his compatriots has suggested a statue of a Union and Confederate soldier shaking hands, which would imply neither victory nor defeat for either side. Historian William E. Dodd observed that these groups demand that the only interpretation given is that the South was altogether right in seceding in 1861 and that the war had nothing to do with slavery or black people. What’s truly pathetic and sad is that Dodd made these observations nearly 100 years ago. My, how times change.
Perhaps the statue is a “not-so-subtle reminder of who won the war” because Bowling and his ilk need such a not-so-subtle reminder. Perhaps we all need a reminder. Victory in the Civil War was not achieved by the North alone. After all, the Union Army marched into battle carrying a flag with 33 stars, not 22.
It was achieved by the armed forces of the United States of America. In that force, there were nearly 220,000 white and black troops from each one of the 11 states that made up the Confederacy. This number does not include paramilitary, guerilla or resistance groups, which were frequent in places like the Appalachian Mountain regions, the border states and places like Winston County, Ala.; Winn Parish, La.; and Jones County, Miss., nor does it include native-born Southerners who fought in Northern regiments.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that two-thirds of the Native-born Southern officers in the United States Navy in 1861 stayed in the United States Navy. Among these, was Adm. David Farragut, whose fleet was captured in Mobile Bay in 1864. Historian James Loewen stated, “The war was fought not just between North and South, but between Unionists and Confederates” in the South.
Lincoln bore the burden of keeping his country together at a time when men of lesser ability would have let it commit suicide. That burden eventually cost Lincoln his life as he was assassinated by a Confederate loyalist who couldn’t accept the outcome of the war (sounds eerily familiar, huh?). Because he bore that burden until the day he died, Lincoln’s statue is appropriate anywhere in the United States, including the South, and most especially in Richmond, Va.
Tony Odom is a graduate student in the history department.