Eleanor Holmes Norton contributes to the panel (Photo: Karen Elliott Greisdorf)

Distinguished historians of the Civil War and its aftermath spoke on “Healing the Wounds of History: North-South, Black-White” at a special forum in Washington, DC, on December 12. “We want to explore how the wounds of history are playing into the political polarization;” said former diplomat Joseph Montville, the moderator, noting that “resentment is very much alive in Congress today.”

David Blight of Yale University, Edward Ayers, president of the University of Richmond, and Frank Smith, the founding director of the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum in Washington, DC, spoke in the context of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War. They were joined by Donald Shriver, president emeritus of Union Theological Seminary in New York, and Eleanor Holmes Norton, the US Representative for the District of Columbia. The forum was sponsored by the Conflict Prevention and Resolution Forum at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced international Studies.

David Blight said that both “healing and justice” were needed after the Civil War, but reconciliation between North and South was achieved at the cost of the “re-subjugation of those who had been enslaved.” He quoted Robert Penn Warren’s writings on “The Great Alibi,” whereby the defeated South justified the cause of the Confederacy and promoted the “lost cause tradition.” This was matched by the North’s “Treasury of Virtue,” the belief in its righteousness in saving the Union and ending slavery and the bolstering of Yankee pride. “We think in myths, we live in myths. Myths are the great stories we want to believe, the narratives that explain our present,” said Blight.

Edward Ayers asserted, “reconciliation will have to be built by hand and conversations one by one. Richmond is at the center of this history…If the nation is to be healed it needs places like Richmond as well as Washington, Baltimore and New York to take responsibility for our history.” The centennial of the Civil War in 1961 followed closely on Virginia's leadership of Massive Resistance against school integration and passed “with no mention of black people at all.” This was ironic, said Ayers, since it coincided with the civil rights struggle. In contrast, the commemorations around the sesquicentennial in Richmond have been much more honest and inclusive and took place after years of work by many organizations, including Hope in the Cities.

The African American Civil War Memorial

“This is not just the 150th anniversary of the war, but it marks the end of perpetual bondage of four million people. We had to talk about how these two things are related…People are hungry to talk about this in constructive ways,” Ayers concluded.

Panelists emphasized that historical documents in southern states show conclusively that they fought to maintain slavery. Slavery was so central to the economy that it “could not end without a war,” said Frank Smith. Large numbers of slaves freed themselves and joined the Union army. The museum lists the names of 209,145 African American soldiers and their white officers.

Donald Shriver, responding to the panel, said he wished America’s public rhetoric “matched better the historical record.” He suggested several criteria that might help:

• Respect for the cost of the war to both sides. A lot of wealth went down the drain when southern plantations were destroyed. “The South is very conscious of its loss but sixty percent of the dead were Northerners.”
• Respect for the benefits of victory of the North. “To be glad that your opponent won is hard. I look forward to the time in 2013 when the governor of Virginia will celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation for all its citizens.”
• The importance of “honest ambivalence about the loyalties that shaped the past.” General Grant had said, “I feel sick and depressed at the downfall of this foe who fought so long and so valiantly for this cause that was one of the worst that anyone could ever have fought for.”
• More respect for compromise which may require “giving up something dear but not invaluable in order to achieve something that is invaluable.”
• We have difficulty in “combining pride and shame.” Richmond is showing the way with the American Civil War Museum at Tredegar and Arthur Ashe’s statue on Monument Avenue.”
• Repentance by North and South for what happened to African Americans following Reconstruction, “the most disgraceful era, where with the connivance of politicians of both sides,” they were “subjected to something akin to slavery.”
• “If more Americans could say that slavery was a national institution it would be liberating for a lot of people.”

Eleanor Holmes Norton, said her great-grandfather literally walked off a slave plantation and came to Washington. She also noted that very soon after World War II Germany and Japan became our allies. “Healing from a civil war is gradual. The enemy does not go away; he is one of you.” Healing only began with the passage of civil rights legislation. “Attitudes could not have changed without the civil rights laws. Nothing could have promoted healing without that.”

Frank Smith, who was an activist with the civil rights movement and who served on Washington DC’s city council, was adamant that times have change for the better as a result of legislation. This promoted a question from the audience: Can you change the histiography before you change the politics? Or can you shift the narrative in such a way that it shifts politics?

Blight reasoned that the civil rights movement grew in large measure out of narrative. Today, he said, the revolution in scholarship about race and the change in text books is “changing the mental landscape.”

In a helpful reminder about the topic’s relevance in today's heated political climate, Donald Shriver concluded, “A healthy democratic culture is one where people listen to each other’s stories and bear those stories in mind when they go to the polls.”

The forum was co-sponsored by The American Civil War Center in Richmond; The John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation in Tulsa; and the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum in Washington, DC.