BLAME IT on Southern pride.
Look at it as a slight resurgence of that "Southern aggression." Whatever the reason, though, a recent proposal to erect a statue of one of America's most hallowed presidents, Abraham Lincoln, in Richmond aggravated more than a few residents south of the Mason-Dixon line. The controversy surrounding the planned memorial is only symptomatic of the continuing perception of a rift between the North and South and a counterproductive insistence on fusing past with present regardless of the passage of time.
In December, the United States Historical Society announced its plan to commission a statue of Lincoln and place it in Richmond, the capital of the long-defunct Confederacy. More specifically, the USHS selected the locale of the future statue as the Tredegar Iron Works. A key munitions center for the seceded South, Tredegar now is incorporated into the Richmond National Battlefield Park Civil War Center under the supervision of the National Park Service. The USHS, a non-profit historical educational group based in Richmond, would like to unveil the statue on April 5 of this year, the same day that Lincoln visited the charred Confederate capital in 1865.
Models of the proposed monument already exist. The statue depicts Lincoln sitting on a bench with his arm around his beloved son Tad, who celebrated his 12th birthday with his father while in Richmond. To commemorate the specific date, a copy of the Richmond Whig dated April 5, 1865, lies folded next to the wearied president.
The statue sounds benign enough. After all, we are now the United States of America -- not to mention the fact that the Civil War ended 138 years ago. But faster than you can say Emancipation Proclamation, the plan had proponents of the Old South up in arms, attacking the well-intentioned philanthropy of the USHS.
A favorite phrase tossed around in the past few weeks by opponents of the statue is some variation of the idea that such a monument presents "a slap in the face to the South." What South? Yes, it's a convenient geographic label to refer to a region of the nation on the weather map, but the South as a separate political entity no longer exists. Saying otherwise is tantamount to persisting that Russia and Eastern Europe still be grouped into the USSR. The Confederacy dissolved almost a century and a half ago, and it's about time for people to come to terms with that. Therefore, the slap that Southerners assert they are smarting from comes more from their own overwhelming obsession with the past rather than a life-sized statue of a president.
Another ludicrous hyperbole vocalized by those who claim to stand for Southern history compares a statue of Lincoln in Richmond to a hypothetical one of Osama bin Laden in New York City. Not only is such a comparison grossly exaggerated, it is also unbelievably insensitive to use the victims of Sept. 11 as pawns in a wholly unrelated -- and much less significant -- situation. Lincoln was president of all Americans and in no way whatsoever deserves a comparison to a sadistic terrorist.
The organization Sons of Confederate Veterans has voiced some of the strongest opposition to the statue. The Rebels doth protest too much, however. Just this past week, the group led a celebration honoring Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in the state capitol. Considering the fact that their activities are thus practically state-sanctioned, they should be mature enough to let the USHS sponsor a monument and put it wherever it so chooses.
Others who oppose the statue of Lincoln might say his visit is so insignificant that it does not even merit a visible tribute. Let's turn that around, though. If it is in the end merely no more than a blip in the history of the Civil War and its repercussions, then the opposition to the statue should be just as moot.
When Mr. Lincoln does finally come to Richmond, there's hardly a chance of him overshadowing his illustrious Confederate counterparts. Monument Avenue, a popular thoroughfare of the city, runs right through downtown Richmond and boasts multiple statues of Southern heroes. Among others stand the grand likenesses of Lee, Jackson, Jeb Stuart and Jefferson Davis. It's not as if Lincoln will be the sole representative in depicting Richmond's storied history.
An inscription on a granite capsule behind the statue will read, "To Bind Up the Nation's Wounds." It will not read, "Hang the Rebels," or "Haha, you lost, we won." Critics of the plan needlessly rub imagined salt in their own invented wounds, and it's now necessary for them to return to 2003. So bring on the groundbreaking and ribbon-cutting, and allow the USHS to carry Lincoln back to ol' Virginia.
(Becky Krystal is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. She can be reached at bkrystal@cavalierdaily.com.)
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