I am pleased to say that our favorite Bear Blogger, Saint Corbinian’s Bear is back blogging again:
Clearly, Mr. Biden has spent his time in isolation threading the needle of the climaxing kulturkampf. His argument argument on which slavery-related monuments should survive, however, was alarming. He pulled the old Reconstruction-era tactic of “waving the bloody shirt.”
The Bear hasn’t dabbled much in politics. He has seen kings and candidates, parties, and whole nations come and go. However, he can’t in good conscience ignore Mr. Biden’s press conference. It was everything we’ve come to expect in this calamitous Year of Our Lord 2020 and worse.
This is not about slavery, the Confederacy, race relations, police brutality, or even the destruction of monuments. In 1861 the Bear was in Rome, licking his wounds after the fall of Gaeta to Garibaldi. Along with His Highness Francis II of the Two Sicilies and his lovely wife Maria Sophia, he was (more or less) the guest of Pope Pius IX. This was his flag, then.
The Bear didn’t even know about your war until 1863, when he met a Confederate envoy who was unhappy with the Pope. If you want to get rid of all your military statues, that’s fine with the Bear, but pass the laws and ordinances. Letting a mob do it is a symptom that America is very sick with something more than COVID-19.
This article is only about whether Biden’s monumental casuistry works. The Bear will not refight your Civil War for you.
It’s All About the Confederacy
It’s not about slavery, after all, Biden argued. It’s about the Confederacy. The Bear admits it has a facile appeal. It does deal with some inconvenient facts, and provides clear rules for mob destruction of monuments. Those are its good points. First, the historical context:
Thomas Jefferson owned no fewer than 600 slaves throughout his life (roughly the same as Jefferson Davis). He was the third president of the United States, which was founded as a slave-owning country. He believed the federal government had no business meddling with state matters such as slavery. He called the Missouri Compromise “a firebell in the night” because he knew any attempt to force the issue would dissolve the Union.
But, while owning so many slaves is lamentable, his monuments will remain safe under Biden because he was not a Confederate. Likewise the now-familiar blacklist that includes George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, Andrew Jackson, etc.
Confederate General A.P. Hill never owned a single slave. The Bear believes it is safe to say that most Confederate soldiers did not own slaves. Still, every Confederate soldier fought for a Confederacy that was determined to preserve itself and its institutions at all cost–and that included slavery.
To put it simply, when the southern states seceded, they took American slavery with them. The big issue of whether they had a legal right to leave a Union they voluntarily joined was decisively settled by the war that followed, and, as a consequence, slavery was ended.
So, it is both correct and incorrect to say “the Civil War was about slavery.” It was certainly the lens that focused regional, cultural, religious and political passions on the ready tinder that lit the fire Jefferson foresaw. That lens is as powerful today as then. All the more reason for an understanding of history, temperate language, and wariness of mob rule.
Enough historical context. This old Bear is not going to be distracted from one question: did Biden articulate a satisfactory distinction for saving some monuments while getting rid of others? To answer that question, the Bear appeals to Abraham Lincoln.
“Traitors”
Remarkably, Biden today did what Abraham Lincoln never did: he publicly called all the Confederates “traitors.” It’s one thing to recognize your past country’s sins; it’s dishonest to blame them all on someone else. In his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln recognized that America as a whole bore the sin of slavery.
[God] gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came… Fondly do we hope–fervently do we pray–that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.
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Lincoln strove to unify his country. He ended that speech–just 41 days before his assassination–with these familiar words:
With malice toward none with charity for all… let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan–to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Lincoln was great because he had the courage to fight for the Union and the wisdom bring Americans back together despite 750,000 dead and half the country devastated. Even the Confederacy’s most implacable foe, General U.S. Grant, was generous to the surrendered Lee and his men. And when the Northern soldiers cheered Lee’s departure, Grant ordered them to stop. His reason: “The Confederates were now our countrymen, and we did not want to exult over their downfall.”
It was a different age, but isn’t it odd that people who never lived through bloody battles like Antietam and Gettysburg are far more bitter than the adversaries who met at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865? The Bear realizes his approach is all wrong. This is 2020, the eclipse of reason. The bitterness and violence isn’t odd at all. It’s tacitly encouraged, openly justified, and allowed to go unchecked. It will get worse as America’s Blue Archipelago implodes.
Confederate Monuments Must Go!
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| Alabama Monument, Gettysburg–Currently Protected |
Biden’s sweeping condemnation of Confederates as “traitors” is inflammatory and divisive at exactly the wrong moment in American history.
Go
here to read the rest. Welcome back my ursine friend.
it’s good to have The Bear back again with his well spoken observations about a world and Church gone mad.
Since we’ve chosen, wittingly or not, to not only forget the past, but to erase it altogether, are we then also choosing to repeat it, in all its tragedy and horror?
Horror yes. In spades. Tragedy no. Because we’ve allowed the people the people whose story gives the Civil War it’s element of tragedy to be erased.
SCB’Ss Lenten Guide is superb.
And yes, it is good to see him blogging again.
Thanks Dale, and soon back in print! And thanks to Donald for the Bear being mentioned in dispatches.