April is Confederate History Month in Virginia

Virginia's Republican governor, Bob McDonnell reinstated Confederate History Month, a decision that has already stirred up controversy. Since history is in the eye of the beholder, and the winners of the conflicts get the honor of writing the history books, I have an interesting perspective on some of this history.

I was raised in upstate New York, and could not have had a more Northern Yankee perspective of the "Civil War." Those bad Southerners went to war with their northern neighbors for the right to own and keep slaves. That was the whole point of the war.

If a lie or a half-truth is repeated often enough and loud enough, people will start to believe it; and after a century, the Northern view is the prevailing view of the Civil War.

After I left home and joined the army, and later married a soldier, I continued my higher education in Germany. By the time I took an American History class, I discovered that there was nothing civil about it. In my textbook, it was called by a more neutral and apropos name - "The War Between the States." I also learned that it was not as simple as the issue of slavery. It was about economic issues and a conflict between the agrarian culture of the South versus the industrial culture of the North. Slavery was really a side issue and as an institution, was on its way out with the invention of the cotton gin and other automated farm equipment.

Then at some point we moved to Virginia, and my children, being products of the public school system in a Southern state learned about "The War of Northern Aggression." I learned that the South just wanted to be left alone by the North, and a lot of what the folks down here were fighting for had to do with States' Rights. (An important issue in view of the current disregard for the Constitution, and worth another look.) I also learned from walking the battlefields and learning the history in the places where much of it took place, that there were many people in the South who had no choice but to get caught up in the war. Their farms and homes were often overrun by an enemy who brought the war to their own backyards. It's difficult to remain neutral in that environment. Many men from some of the Southern states were drafted into service at the point of a gun or with threats to family and property. Most of the people in the South were just family farmers on small farms, not wealthy enough to own slaves. These men were merely defending them and theirs. Slavery was not the thing uppermost in their minds. The heartaches borne by most of these men does not awlays make it into the current narrative about the war.

A profound reminder of the scope of this national tragedy is the annual luminaria of Antietam Battlefield on the first Saturday of December. One candle for every injury sustained by both North and South in a single day's battle. When you stand in the center of the battlefield at dusk and see nothing but lighted bags as far as the eye can see in any direction, the cost to both sides of the conflict hits home.

I am okay with recognizing the men from the South who served in the War Between the States in the state of Virginia.