Over the weekend I watched
Gettysburg, the 1993 Civil War epic film about the Battle of Gettysburg. It's one of my most favorite historical films, although at more than four hours long it's really not one I can afford enough time to watch often. But for some reason or another I felt led to see it again.
Maybe I sensed that I was needing to watch it anew. That the time was coming soon to bring it up in conversation. That opportunity comes tonight, after reading how President Donald Trump is restoring the name of seven military bases back to their original names that honored Confederate officers from the Civil War. The bases had been re-named by the Biden administration to be more "neutral" or "politically correct". The venerated Fort Bragg became the vacuous-sounding "Fort Liberty", f'rinstance.
Now, to be accurate about it, the Trump Administration is not directly restoring the original Confederate namesakes. Fort Bragg was originally named after General Braxton Bragg. Fort Bragg 2.0 gets its monicker from Army Pfc. Ronald Bragg, who earned a Silver Star for his actions during the Battle of the Bulge. It's a clever way to re-brand the forts to their first identities. And I think it's a magnificent end-run around an ideology that cares not for the things that matter, like history and heritage.
And honor.
Something that has struck me every time I've watched Gettysburg, which was based on Michael Shaara's richly-researched 1974 novel The Killer Angels. It's how the men of the Union and the Confederacy respected each other. That, despite how they were on opposing sides of a bitter conflict. The Civil War was ultimately founded in the few errors made by the Constitutional Convention: namely the issue of slavery. That manifested itself in time into the issue of states versus federal government, but I greatly digress...
The Civil War was going to happen. It's a wonder it didn't break out thirty years earlier during the Nullification Crisis. But there is not a doubt in my mind that conflict would break out eventually.
But that isn't what the men, and women, on either sides of the fighting wanted. They each wanted the right thing to be done. Unfortunately it took a violent thrashing-out to decide who would determine that. It was an unenviable situation that truly pitted brother against brother, literally and figuratively.
Back to Gettysburg, the film and what it depicts. The officers of each side, and on down to the basic soldiers, don't necessarily hate each other. They didn't in real life either. As I said, they respected each other. How could they not? They had too much nobility. They had too much honor.
If those men could honor each other, I don't see how I can't honor them all, either.
I've heard the screeds: "they were a foreign country fighting America!" "They were traitors!" "They were the losers and we don't pay tribute to losers!" Ad nauseam.
Those things are said by people who have no concept whatsoever of honor. They couldn't care less what honor means. They barely ever use the word at all. "Honor" is a thing almost dying. It seems more fitted for an earlier time, somewhen that doesn't factor in to a world of thoughtless replies and cruel memes.
The men and women of the Confederacy and Union alike, they didn't ask to be drawn into war against one another. They were doing the best that they could with the hand that was dealt them. It was their lot to participate in the very worst of family disagreements. And the men of the Confederacy loved their countrymen no less than the Union loved theirs.
They were admirable, every one of them (okay, except for those like the ones in charge of the prison at Andersonville). They played the parts given them. And after the war, they reconciled. They embraced again. Decades later at the reunion at Gettysburg battlefield, the survivors of Pickett's charge went up the ridge to meet the Union defenders, only this time they met and shook hands and hugged one another.
I really can't see that kind of thing possible among people today. The people of today like bitterness. They thrive on hate. They despise all vestige of honor.
The people who tore down the Confederate monuments in recent years have acted like animals of base instinct. They have no notion of respect for those who came before us in generations past. How could they? Honor is an alien notion to them.
I have no problem whatsoever with a fort being named for a Confederate officer. Or having a Confederate statue erected. Or something like a school named after Robert E. Lee, arguably the most beloved general in America's long and illustrious history. There can be monuments for North and South alike. If the United States federal government came to reward pensions to veterans of both sides, we can still abide by that.
Union and Confederate. Billy Yank and Johnny Reb. The blue and the gray. They both fought with honor. And we can honor them both.
