Arak Journal

Contemporary Impact of the Fates of Confederate Officials

By Gillian Crawford

In November of 1865, Captain Henry Wirz was cemented in United States’ history as the only Confederate soldier to be both tried and executed for crimes committed during the Civil War.  A Union-dominated court determined his sentence: he was to pay with his life for the monstrosity that was Andersonville Prison, arguably one the most notorious war prisons of the Civil War.  Nearly 13,000 Union prisoners of war died in Andersonville, merely from the heinous conditions that included starvation and exposure.  However, according to Wirz and his defense, he was simply operating under orders from his superiors, and the conditions of the prison were out of his control, as they were delegated to other members of the prison staff. Wirz can be painted today as a “pawn of a broken prison system,” as the verdict of the trial was arguably based on heightened tensions and a desire to hold someone accountable for the deaths of so many Union affiliates (Wheeler, 2015).  Regardless, this trial brings up an even more important and controversial question about how the United States handled the Confederates post-Civil War: Why would a captain following orders receive the death penalty, while many prominent leaders of the Confederacy, like the president, have statues in state buildings and monument parks today?  In the pursuit of unity in a deeply divided country, the United States opted to pardon figureheads of the Confederacy to help heal the wounds of the country rather than implicate them for their rebellion, and this decision is still affecting Americans today.

Historical Background

Before his assassination, President Lincoln set a precedent for how ex-Confederates were to be treated.  One southern delegate remarked to Lincoln in a private correspondence, “according to your view of the case we are all guilty of treason, and liable to be hanged?We suppose that would necessarily be your view of our case, but we never had much fear of being hanged while you were President,” (Franklin, 2016).  It seemed that anyone who was fond of Lincoln knew it was in his nature to seek unity through forgiveness rather than through hard punishment, and he did not stray from this characterization when dealing with the charges for treason.  He instituted “a generous program of amnesty for ex-Confederates? [and he] offered pardon to all who took an oath of loyalty to the United States.”  He even allowed those who were exceptions to this pardon, like officers and those who resigned from United States governmental positions to file an “application for amnesty,” (MacDonnell, 1994).  This decision, even today, seems lenient toward those who openly committed treason against the United States; however, Lincoln saw it as an avenue to bring the country back together in the spirit of forgiveness.

Lincoln knew that the Confederacy was not a normal rebellion, commenting that it was “too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings,” (Franklin, 2016). He believed that military tactics were not needed to mend the division caused by the Civil War; instead, he opted to ease tensions diplomatically by pardoning ex-Confederates.  After Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson aligned with the former president’s philosophy by also pardoning those convicted of treason, to the point where many in Congress believed that he held sympathies towards the southern cause.  To try to prevent Johnson from allowing Southern views to tear apart the progress made towards reconstruction, Congress included in section 3 of the 14th amendment that all those who had “sworn an oath to the Constitution and later rebelled” could not run or hold office.  However, this did not stop Johnson from pardoning the rest of the higher-ranking Confederates and restoring their citizenship in his final act as president (MacDonnell,  1994).  Although these actions were taken by the leaders of the United States in hopes of reconciliation and unity, when we examine the cases of high-profile Confederates Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, it becomes clear that this resolution was only temporary.  It’s negative results, which are presenting themselves through white supremacy and violence, have come back to haunt Americans more than150 years later.

Prominent Confederates

Surprisingly, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, was not looking for a position of power after deciding to be a part of the secession from the Union.  According to the Civil War Trust (2017), Davis would have rather been a military commander for the Confederacy, yet he was selected for the position of president due to his previous congressional experience and moderate take on the direction of the new country.  After the Confederacy had been defeated, Davis looked to take refuge in a sympathetic country such as England or France to avoid the punishment that would inevitably come from the Union; however, he was captured by the 4th Michigan Calvary and spent two years in jail.  He was never tried for his crimes – he was actually confined to prison for an indeterminate amount of time – until a group of northerners paid his bail, setting him free to face no further repercussions.  He had trouble finding and keeping jobs, due to his portrayal by Union media, so he retired and wrote The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (History.com).  Despite his prominent position as president of the Confederacy, it is curious that Davis’ punishment lacked the severity of Wirz’s, who was merely a captain.

Through the monuments that are still standing today, it seems that the United States government actually praised Davis for his abandonment of country, and he is just one among a slew of Confederate government and military officials who have received this treatment

Despite his initial aversion to taking on the role of president, it is clear through his statements and actions after the Civil War that Davis was still largely in support of the Southern cause, believing that the Confederacy was a separate nation from the United States, “until the day he died,” (Franklin, 2016).  He refused to pledge an oath of allegiance to the United States in order to gain back his citizenship, which may have been the reason why he could not hold a job again even after the aftershocks of the war had ended. He firmly believed in the dogma of the Confederacy.  However, he did state, the year before his death, that Mississippians should “lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling, and make [their] places in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished ? a reunited country,” (“Jefferson Davis,” 2017).  It is curious that, despite his refusal to seek absolution after the war, Davis still has monuments scattered across America, especially in the South.  In Richmond, on Monument Avenue, there still stand memorials to both Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee; and in Fairview, Kentucky, the second highest obelisk in the world stands, modeled after the Washington Monument, and it pays tribute to Davis’ birthplace (Ewell, 2015).  Through the monuments that are still standing today, it seems that the United States government actually praised Davis for his abandonment of country, and he is just one among a slew of Confederate government and military officials who have received this treatment.

Although Jefferson Davis was the figurehead of the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee, arguably the most famous Confederate general, was just as or even more well known and beloved by both the United States and the Confederacy.  Despite this contrast, like Davis, Lee had little or no consequences delegated to him – he actually has been memorialized and revered as one of the greatest military leaders in the history of the nation. The only documented repercussion for his actions occurred on February 14, 1866, when Lee was required to appear at the Union capital to “be grilled by a committee dominated by Radical Republicans determined to publicize evidence of atrocities committed by former Confederates against freed slaves and pro-Union southerners” (Carlson, 2015). This could have created an atmosphere that was much like Wirz’s trial, but instead, it ended with a vastly different conclusion.  During the pseudo-trial, he revealed very little about the feelings of former Confederates towards the Union, and he also kept relatively quiet about his own views.  He stated that he did not think that African Americans were qualified to vote, as they were not informed and intelligent enough at the time, because of their enslavement and lack of education. Although an outlandish idea now, this was the general consensus of the public at the time, so Lee’s views did not tarnish his honor. This instance was the only time that he had to testify about his viewpoints and involvement in the Confederacy (Carlson, 2015).

Lee was different from Davis because he showed his honor and respect for the United States during and after the war.   Lee had surrendered to Union troops at Appomattox in April of 1865, and until the time of his pseudo-trial, he experienced little retribution, despite being one of the most well-known generals of the Confederacy, even becoming president of Washington College during the time since (Carlson, 2015).  Why was his fate so different from Davis’?  His ability to bolster his career further after the Civil War compared to Davis’ hardships may have been due to his more muted defiance of the Union.  For instance, instead of fighting a gruesome and animalistic fight at Appomattox, Lee acknowledged defeat graciously and decided to respect the lives of both of the armies involved by preemptively surrendering (MacDonnell, 1994).  He also decided to respect and adopt the direction of the country post-Civil War.  Lee later advocated emancipation in Virginia (Carlson, 2015), and even declared slavery to be a “moral and political evil,” despite the fact that he himself was a former slave owner (Desjardins, 2017).  He later “publicly decried southern separatism,” having no problem taking an oath of allegiance to the United States (Desjardins, 2017).  Later on, President Theodore Roosevelt praised Lee, saying that he was “the Confederacy’s greatest general?[and] a hero for all Americans” because his demeanor and diplomatic actions throughout earned him so much respect in both the North and South after the war (MacDonnell, 1994).

Both the names “Jefferson Davis” and “Robert E. Lee” are immediately connected with the Confederate States of America, yet to this day neither one has been harshly reprimanded for this association.  During the time period, it was believed that the best way to reconcile the scar that was separating America into the North or the South to bring back unity between the two was to forgive rather than punish.  This ideal was later utilized in the time period following the Vietnam War and the Watergate Scandal, as the United States was again experiencing a heightened state of division.  There was much controversy over the total pardon of Richard Nixon for his role in Watergate, while many Americans were still being prosecuted for evading a draft to a war to which they felt morally opposed.  President Gerald Ford looked to history, and found a solution to the debate in President Lincoln’s actions after the Civil War.  Ford proposed an avenue to clemency for those who had evaded the draft because of the precedent set by Lincoln over 100 years earlier.  Due to the emphasis on history, both cases of the aforementioned Confederates were brought back into discussion in Congress, and, once again, in the spirit of reconciliation, both deceased men received a form of amnesty for their part in the Civil War.  In 1975, full citizenship, including the right to hold office (previously denied by the 14th Amendment) was granted to Lee by Ford, and in 1978 President Jimmy Carter implemented a similar pardon for Davis (MacDonnell, 1994).  Through both of these decisions, the United States experienced a form of healing as the country as a whole decided to put their differences behind them in order to pursue a greater purpose.

Contemporary Impact

By completely absolving these men, and many others, of their crimes against the United States, the country achieved a higher degree of unity. However, this decision has negative consequences that are appearing in recent times.

By completely absolving these men, and many others, of their crimes against the United States, the country achieved a higher degree of unity. However, this decision has negative consequences that are appearing in recent times.  In 2015, the aforementioned Jefferson Davis statue on Memorial Avenue had “Black Lives Matter” spray-painted onto it (Ewell, 2016), and many similar instances of vandalism have since occurred, especially after many Virginians’ calls for removal were ignored, and when post-election anti-Trump protests took place in the area (Newsome, 2017).  Why, over 150 years after the Civil War, is there an explosion of violent and overt controversy over inanimate statues?  Recently, and arguably since their conception, the use of Confederate symbols has been linked with White supremacists and neo-Nazis, as displayed in August of 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia.  The demonstration of White supremacists and the following backlash by movements such as Black Lives Matter resulted in the death of one woman, and, according to Linda Desjardins of PBS (2017), it all started over the city’s plan to remove a Robert E. Lee statue.  The city council voted not only  to remove the statue, but to rename the park it was located in (Newsome 2017).

The aforementioned general, Robert E. Lee, had something to say about this in his own time. “I think it wiser?not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered,” said Lee regarding Confederate memorials (Desjardins, 2017).  He believed that by refusing to erect these types of statues, it might have helped to expedite the healing process of the United States and also stop a perpetuation and radicalization of Confederate ideals in the future.  “I don’t think that means he would have felt good about the people who fought for the Confederacy being completely forgotten,” said Jonathan Horn, the author of the Lee biography, “but he didn’t want a cult of personality of the south,” (Desjardins, 2017).  It seems that Lee predicted the future, as the appropriation of symbols of the Confederacy has now become a trademark of the small sect of radical White supremacists that have been making recent headlines.

Throughout the years, Confederate statues have been repurposed by White supremacists; however, it is important to remember the value of the statues as pieces of history.  From a historian’s or art conversationalist’s point of view, these statues are very valuable because of their age and because of the people who created them.  According to Robin Pogrebin and Sopan Deb of the New York Times, ” [historic preservationists] saw the removal of the monuments as precipitous and argued that the widening effort to eliminate them could have troubling implications for artistic expression,” (2017).  Along with the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Confederate statues and memorabilia have been rapidly expunged from public areas after a race-driven crime occurs.  However, removing Confederate statues and symbols has not and will not make a significant impact on racial climates, as racial violence and white supremacist advocacy has continued regardless.  By simply removing a symbol, one cannot erase an ideal that has become so deeply ingrained.  Why, then, are many citizens so adamant about their removal

Artist Adam Pendleton is one among many who believe that monuments should be taken down for good.  In an interview, Pendleton says that ” [the monuments] memorialize a very dark period in American history.  We’re talking about a monument when people were enslaved.  It’s the opposite of everything America is supposed to stand for.  Get them down,” (Pogrebin & Sopan, 2017). While many, including Pendleton, are disturbed by this part of United States history and how it is being brought back into the limelight now, there is no way to rewrite or change it.  Horn, who wrote the Lee biography, followed his earlier statements about Lee’s thoughts on Civil War memorials by saying, “you have to ask why [he would remove them]. He might just want to hide the history, to move on, rather than face these issues,” (Desjardins,  2017).  Alfred L. Brophy, the Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, disagrees with Lee and Pendleton over the removal of these memorials.  He believes that Confederate statues still serve a purpose in the current day, and he argues that the public would be doing themselves a disservice if they were to obliterate them.  “My initial thought is that removing these monuments leads to forgetting,” Brophy said,  “We need to be aware that people in power?thought it was appropriate to celebrate slavery and Jim Crow,” (Newsome, 2017).  Brophy acknowledges that history cannot be changed under any circumstances, even if it is a part of history that is horrible and goes against current American ideas of freedom and liberty.  According to this line of thinking, it is important to learn from past mistakes and have these monuments serve as a reminder that as a society, Americans must keep similar situations from happening again.

Conclusion

Is now the time for the United States to follow Lincoln’s precedent once again and forge another compromise?  Some argue yes:  although the Confederate symbols have become widely used to symbolize White supremacy, for some they have come to symbolize heritage and  have a great historical significance.  Many argue that the solution is to put them in museums, and two of these people include the direct descendants of the Confederacy’s Vice-President, Alexander Stephens. Stephens’ great, great, great, grand-nephews Brendan and Alexander Stephens believe that the Confederate’s statue in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall should be removed because the Hall is a place of work and learning. They believe the statues should be placed somewhere where its meaning is given more clarity as a piece of history ? not as something to be memorialized now (Suggs, 2017).  Putting Confederate statues in museums would not make them disappear; however, it would change the context of how they are currently displayed.  “These are statues on pedestals, and when you place something on a pedestal you’re putting something in a position to worship it?it’s appropriate to re-examine them and to change their context,” says Joshua David, the president and chief executive of the World Monuments Fund (Pogrebin & Sopan, 2017).   As great a compromise as this might seem to be? it arguably still preserves the historical integrity of the statues while removing them from their positions as memorials ? some still disagree about this option. “The meanings and the history that we are able to draw from them in a different site, especially a sort of sanitized site like a museum, are not going to be the same?. That’s a historical loss,” says Michele H. Bogart, a professor at Stony Brook University (Pogrebin & Sopan, 2017).  Regardless of one’s opinion on the subject, it is hard to imagine that all this controversy, racial tension, and the focus on hate groups can be traced back to a decision that, in its time, helped to bring the country back together after being divided.

In the time of Lincoln’s presidency, racism and slavery were commonplace and generally accepted in the United States. The South was merely the part of the country that reaped the most benefit from it.  Therefore, when deciding to pardon Confederate leaders in the pursuit of unity, Lincoln had no idea that the consequences would still influence racial tensions in 2017 and beyond.  By giving amnesty to those who openly committed treason against the United States, the South was able to memorialize those who were disloyal to the country, and generations of people have been raised to idolize the Southern rebellion.  However illogical this may seem, many people have come to associate Confederate symbols with heritage, while many others associate it with white supremacy and racism.  This has led to a controversy that dominates media all over the country, causes violence, and is dividing America in a manner that is eerily similar to the division in the time of the Civil War.  Is it in our best interest to forge yet another compromise in favor of a heightened sense of unity now, despite future consequences, or is it appropriate to address the situation in a manner that finally puts an end to racial backlash in America?  A decision to promote unity is once again in the hands of the leaders and citizens of the United States, and their actions have the power to impact political climates of those living in America over a century from now.

Works Cited

Carlson, P. (2015, February). Robert E. Lee Faces Congress. American History, 49(6), 24+. Retrieved from go.galegroup.com/.

Desiardins, L. (2017, August 15). Robert E. Lee opposed Confederate monuments. Retrieved from https://pbs.org.

Ewell, Z. (2015, July 31). In memorial: monuments dedicated to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Retrieved from Newsmax website: www.newsmax.com.

Franklin, R.E. (2016, August 8). Why Abraham Lincoln refused to respect Jefferson Davis. Retrieved from Owlcation website: https://owlcation.com.

History.com Staff. (2010). Jefferson Davis captured. In This Day in History.Retrieved from http://history.com/.

History.com Staff. (2017) Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation. In This Day in History. Retrieved from: www.history.com.

Jefferson Davis. (2017). Retrieved from Civil War Trust website: https://www.civilwar.org.

MacDonnell, F. (June 1994) Reconstruction in the Wake of Vietnam: The Pardoning of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. Civil War History, 40(2), 119-133. web.b.ebsco.host.com/.

Newsome, M. (2017, April 25). Is removing Confederate monuments like erasing history Retrieved from NBC News website: www.nbcnews.com.

Pogrebin R., & Sopan D. (2017, August 18). Trump aside, artists and preservationists debate the rush to topple statues. Retrieved from The New York Times website: www.nytimes.com.

Suggs, E. (2017, August 24). Descendants of Alexander Stephens want his statue out of U.S. capitol. The Atlanta Journal Constitution. Retrieved from www.ajc.com.

Wheeler, L. (2015, November 10). 150 years ago today, Andersonville prison commander Capt. Henry Wirz was executed. The Washington Post. Retrieved from www.washingtonpost.com/.

Paper Prompt

ARAK STATEMENTS
John F. Jebb
June 2018
RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT
Select an issue from one or more of our texts, and develop a view of the issue
from research in the field.
Use at least ten (10) sources from the field, especially sources from multiple
databases. Indeed, the sources should reflect a mix of books, popular
periodicals, scholarly journals, and web sources. Submit a source package with
your final essay.
The final essay should be around ten (10) pages of text (and may go longer).
After the text, include the revised annotated bibliography.
Steps in the Research Project
Week #8 ? Conference for the topic
Week #10 ? Submission of bibliography
Week #11 ? Revised bibliography with annotations
Weeks #11-12 ? Oral presentations: submit a three-page outline on your day,
and visit to confer about the outline after the presentation.
Week #11 ? Draft for the Writing Fellows
End of Week #12 ? Due date for the Essay and Source Package