This week we begin with this article from Florida, telling us how lying racists in the state legislature are staging a backlash against truth in history by forbidding any contextualization of monuments that would highlight the fake history inherent in them. “Legislation in the House and the Senate would protect monuments of war from not just defacement and removal but attempts to offer historical context. The ‘Historical Monuments and Memorials Protection Act’ (HB 1607) was filed in the House by Rep. Dean Black, a Jacksonville Republican. It is the House companion to SB 1096, filed last month by Sen. Jonathan Martin, a Republican from Fort Myers. ‘We must defend and learn from our history,’ Black told Florida Politics Tuesday. ‘This includes protecting historic monuments across the state of Florida. I’m proud to introduce this important bill in the Legislature and look forward to finally canceling ‘cancel’ culture!’ The legislation would seemingly stifle controversies about confederate monuments, such as the one in Jacksonville, that have percolated for years. The bill would encompass historical depictions represented in the form of a ‘plaque, statue, marker, flag, banner, cenotaph, religious symbol, painting, seal, tombstone, structure name, or display constructed and located with the intent of being permanently displayed or perpetually maintained,’ honoring military or public service, ‘past or present,’ with no exceptions contemplated. Monuments could not be removed, and plaques and signs attempting to put those constructions in historical context would only be permissible if Secretary of State Cord Byrd signs off. Those who remove or damage monuments would pay treble the cost to restore and move them back, with ‘punitive damages’ also possible. Public entities owning the monuments, legal residents of the state, and ‘historical preservation’ groups would stand for civil action under this bill. The bill does allow for moving monuments ‘for construction, expansion, or alteration of publicly owned buildings, roads, streets, highways, or other transportation projects.’ When such a movement happens, the structures must be ‘relocated to a site of similar prominence, honor, visibility, and access within the same county or municipality in which the monument or memorial was originally located.’ The bill would take effect July 1, if signed.”
The U.S.S. Chancellorsville, a guided-missile cruiser, in the Philippine Sea in 2016. It will be renamed the U.S.S. Robert Smalls, after a formerly enslaved mariner who steered a Confederate ship to freedom.Credit…MCS2 Ryan J. Batchelder/U.S. Navy
Next we have this article updating us on the US Navy’s renaming of two vessels with confederate connections. “One night in 1862, as the Civil War raged, an enslaved mariner named Robert Smalls seized an opportunity. When the enlisted crew of a Confederate steamer disembarked for a night of carousing in Charleston, S.C., Mr. Smalls, the ship’s pilot, gathered his family and the other enslaved sailors and their families. He then steered the ship for a dramatic escape past heavy fortifications to Union-controlled waters and freedom. Disguised in a top hat and a Confederate captain’s long overcoat, Mr. Smalls gave the passcodes at each of five Confederate forts and, once past the reach of cannon fire, hoisted a white flag of sewn-together bedsheets that his wife Hannah had made — delivering the ship to Union forces. Mr. Smalls and the crew had lined the bottom of the boat with explosives to detonate rather than be recaptured and face execution. Now Mr. Smalls will be immortalized on a U.S. Navy warship named after him, as will Marie Tharp, a pioneering ocean geologist. Both are receiving broader recognition under a Pentagon program to rid military installations and other property of Confederate ties. The Naming Commission, a committee created by Congress in response to a public backlash against Confederate memorials in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd, identified two ships to be rechristened in the Navy’s fleet. One, a warship deployed in the waters off Japan, called the U.S.S. Chancellorsville after the Confederate Civil War victory in Virginia, will be renamed the U.S.S. Robert Smalls. The other, a Pathfinder-class oceanographic survey ship called the U.S.N.S. Maury, was named after Matthew Fontaine Maury, a U.S. Navy commander who resigned in 1861 to join the Confederate Navy during the Civil War and who is known as “Pathfinder of the Seas” for his work charting the global paths of ocean currents. It will be rechristened the U.S.N.S. Marie Tharp, after the ocean cartographer, who helped document the phenomenon of continental drift. … The ships were renamed after two people who ‘have historically been overlooked, but leveled significant impact on not just our Navy, but also the nation,’ Mr. Del Toro said in emailed comments to The New York Times.”
Marie Tharp aboard the U.S.N.S. Kane as it traveled over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in 1968.Credit…AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Gift of Bill Woodward, USNS Kane Collection
The article continues, “The eponymous oceanographer, Ms. Tharp, was pioneering in her field, creating the first scientific maps of the Atlantic Ocean’s floor and helping to shape the U.S. military’s understanding of plate tectonics and continental drift, with some of her research funded by the Navy. Born in 1920, Ms. Tharp took advantage of a change in university admissions allowing women to enroll during World War II to receive an education that until then had been restricted to men. Ms. Tharp and a colleague studied sonar data taken from the research vessel of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Atlantis, to create highly detailed seafloor profiles and maps. Ms. Tharp noticed a cleft in the ocean floor that she hypothesized to be a rift valley that ran along the ridge crest and continued along the length of its axis, which she posited (and was later proven) to be evidence of continental drift. ‘I had a blank canvas to fill with extraordinary possibilities, a fascinating jigsaw puzzle to piece together: mapping the world’s vast hidden seafloor,’ Ms. Tharp wrote in a book about the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, where she once worked. ‘It was a once-in-the-history-of-the-world opportunity for anyone, but especially for a woman in the 1940s.’ The significance of her contributions would become evident as research in her field continued over the decades, others said. ‘For most of her working career, her contributions weren’t really celebrated. Her intellectual contributions were discounted,’ Maureen Raymo, dean of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said, even though her ‘evidence of sea floor spreading was probably the biggest scientific revolution of the 20th century, certainly in earth sciences.’ The vessels’ renaming is part of a broader Pentagon project to grapple with a legacy that for more than a century has paid homage to Confederate victories and leaders.”
The former USNS Maury has been re-named in honor of Marie Tharp. Corbis via Getty Images
According to the article, “Naming Army bases and other military property, and erecting monuments and memorials, to honor the Confederacy was part of a campaign by the children of Confederate soldiers ‘to reimagine their fathers as not the villains of a treasonous war for slavery but instead for the Southern way of life,’ said Michel Paradis, a lecturer at Columbia University. President Woodrow Wilson, an ardent segregationist, saw granting the requests to honor Confederate soldiers as a good way to rally support among his southern base during a draft for World War I, Paradis said. … Mr. Del Toro said both Mr. Smalls and Ms. Tharp were among people whose work was worthy of historical recognition. ‘Last year I visited Robert Smalls’s home and I knew his courageous endeavors in the face of the most harrowing scenarios, for me, made him the right choice for the renaming of the former U.S.S. Chancellorsville,’ Mr. Del Toro said. ‘Marie Tharp, as a pioneering oceanographer who had her work dismissed for most of her career, was also the right candidate for the renaming of the former U.S.N.S. Maury, a ship tasked with continuing her life’s work,’ he added. Many of the Confederate names that remain are attached to Army posts, Professor [Ty] Seidule said, because the Civil War was largely fought on land. ‘When the posts were being named in World War I and World War II, and the South was a one-party apartheid state, they would name them for people in their local community, these Confederate soldiers,’ he said. ‘It’s not just about getting rid of names. Whom you choose to honor is who you value,’ he added. ‘I would be incredibly proud to serve on the U.S.S. Robert Smalls.’ “
Next, we have this article about two lakes in Georgia. “Federal officials are pausing a plan that could lead to new names for Georgia’s Lake Lanier and Buford Dam after locals objected to changing the monikers of landmarks now named for Confederate soldiers. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a statement Friday announcing the pause pending further guidance from the Department of the Army. U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, a Republican who represents much of northeast Georgia, said he called the Corps of Engineers Friday to express opposition. He said the pause is a ‘a tremendous victory’ and that ‘renamings would have attempted to rewrite history, impose massive burdensome costs on our community, and create unnecessary mass confusion.’ ” As usual the racists opposing renaming lie by claiming it’s an attempt to rewrite history instead of what it is, removing honors for traitors against the United States for the purpose of protecting slavery and replacing them with Americans who truly deserve honor in this country.
The article continues, “Lake Lanier is an enormous reservoir spanning almost 58 square miles (150 square kilometers) and impounding the Chattahoochee River northeast of Atlanta. It was named for poet Sidney Lanier when it was built after World War II. Lanier served as a private in the Confederate army and later wrote ‘Song of the Chattahoochee,’ a poem about the river. Buford Dam is named after the nearby town of Buford, which takes its name from Lt. Col. Algernon Sidney Buford, who served in the Virginia militia during the Civil War. The Georgia town is named after Buford because he became president of a railroad that helped create the town after the war. Hours before announcing the pause in the renaming process, The Times of Gainesville reported that the Mobile District of the Corps of Engineers sent out a news release and unveiled a website seeking input and aiming to pick new names by year’s end. The corps said it was following a 2021 federal law which governs renaming military bases christened for confederates, including Georgia’s Fort Gordon and Fort Benning. Fort Gordon is becoming Fort Eisenhower, while Fort Benning is becoming Fort Moore. The Mobile District said it will continue to solicit public comment about new names for the lake and dam, but said choosing them is up to Congress. U.S. Rep. Austin Scott, a south Georgia Republican who was a member of the commission that suggested new military base names, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the commission never intended for Lake Lanier to be renamed. Officials in the Gainesville area also oppose the change. Clyde Morris, a board member with advocacy group Lake Lanier Association, told The Times on Friday that connections between the Confederacy, Lanier and Buford are ‘really too remote’ to justify changing the names, saying each man is better known for something other than their time in the military.”
Monument to Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire, Richmond
Finally, there’s this article by a descendant of Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire, Stonewall Jackson’s physician. “What do you do when your family tree contains so many Confederates and white supremacists, you can’t decide which one to write about first? I’ll start with one of the more well-known ones, at least to Civil War buffs. Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire, my great-grandfather, was perhaps one of the architects of the South’s “Lost Cause” narrative. I recently discovered that he wrote a book, “The Confederate Cause & Conduct in the War Between the States,” published in 1907. His coauthor was George L. Christian. There was a Christian at my high school in Virginia who Mom told me was my third cousin. … McGuire, my mother’s maternal grandfather, was a Confederate army surgeon in the Civil War. He was Gen. Stonewall Jackson’s personal surgeon. He amputated Jackson’s arm, which has its own gravesite somewhere out in the Virginia countryside. There’s a monument to my great-grandfather, a statue of him seated with his long legs crossed — he was very tall, well over 6 feet, like my brother — hands clasped in his lap, a faraway look in his deep-set eyes below bushy eyebrows, a thick mustache below his patrician nose. … Great-grandfather’s monument is one of several prominent Virginians who sit in front of the Governor’s mansion in downtown Richmond, next to the beautiful state capitol designed by Thomas Jefferson. He was a young man during the Civil War, in his twenties. The monument was constructed after his death in 1900 to honor his many contributions, including founder of hospitals in Richmond. Recently Virginia Commonwealth University removed his bust from the VCU campus and renamed McGuire Hall — they were washing themselves clean of the Confederacy. My cousins wrote an oped in the Richmond Times Dispatch in August 2020 acknowledging their support for removing him from his pedestal in Richmond history — literally and figuratively. They also said they hoped he would be remembered for the fullness of his life. ‘Arguably the most significant legacy of McGuire was his groundbreaking work to humanize war and redefine how captured military doctors and nurses should be treated in wartime,’ they wrote. But, they said, ‘the family understands that statues and buildings honoring Confederate leaders have caused pain to fellow Americans and we support the removal of the McGuire memorials.’ “
The article goes on to say, “Great-grandaddy and Mr. Christian wanted to make sure that Civil War history would be remembered ‘properly.’ It was 30 years or so after the end of the war and they were worried that Southern children were being indoctrinated with a false, Yankee narrative. They were getting the wrong idea about slavery being the cause of the national conflict, about the base nature of the Confederate cause. So he and Mr. Christian tried to set the record straight. About states’ rights and Christian honor and duty. The book begins with a section entitled ‘Slavery Not the Cause of War,’ where McGuire does a thorough job tracing the sectional conflict all the way back to the Revolution. He lays out the myriad disagreements between northern and southern states since the Constitution was ratified. He points to the sins of all Americans, not just Southerners: ‘The good people of New England shared our Southern guiltiness.’ McGuire’s chief concern is examining the history textbooks taught in Southern schools. He argues they are too one-sided: they all say that the Union cause was pure and selfless while the South was completely in the wrong; the only cause of the war was slavery; and the North’s chief aim was the emancipation of Southern slaves. It’s difficult to read some of my great-grandfather’s views. He shows his absolute prejudice when he refers to ‘giving suffrage to the blacks’ as ‘an act of war…it was indeed conceived in iniquity and born in sin.’ But some of his arguments are worthy, or at least interesting to read. When he maintains that when Virginia joined the Union, it did so ‘as a condition of right to withdraw,’ he reveals to our modern minds how important states’ rights were to many people before (what my mother was taught to call) ‘the war between the states.’ He also goes into detail about Southerners who contemplated how to free the slaves. While he disregards the central place of slavery in the discord between North and South, his argument for a more complex, more nuanced education for children is laudable.” But he’s making an argument with fabrications and half-truths.
The writer tells us, “I stumbled across Great-Grandfa’her’s book while researching him online. My mother never mentioned, nor probably was told about, his writings. I was horrified, but somehow not surprised, to see that some have said that he was a leader in the eugenics movement. In an 1893 ‘open letter’ published in the Virginia Medical Monthly, Dr. McGuire asked for ‘some scientific explanation of the sexual perversion in the negro of the present day.’ He also wrote the introduction to The Old Plantation: How We Lived in Great House and Cabin before the War, written by James Battle Avirett. Mr. Avirett dedicated his book to ‘the memory of the old planter and his wife — the only real slaves on the old plantation of many overgrown children.” It sickens me to know that my great-grandfather heartily agreed about who the ‘real slaves’ were. ‘Public opinion from the lakes to the gulf is voicing American utterance as to the superiority of the Caucasian race,’ he wrote in his introduction to The Old Plantation. He refers to ‘a race inferior both from heredity and servility.’ It’s chilling that, in 1901, when this book was published and lynchings were at their height, Dr. McGuire felt that white people across the US, ‘from the lakes to the gulf,’ were finally vindicating Confederate views. Certainly there were Southerners whose patriarchal sense of duty to people who cooked their food and raised their children engendered a warmth of feeling towards them. But going so far as to write that ‘the Negro of the South today knows that when in trouble his best friend is his old master or his children’ is ludicrous.”
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The U.S.S. Chancellorsville, a guided-missile cruiser, in the Philippine Sea in 2016. It will be renamed the U.S.S. Robert Smalls, after a formerly enslaved mariner who steered a Confederate ship to freedom.Credit…MCS2 Ryan J. Batchelder/U.S. Navy
Next we have this article updating us on the US Navy’s renaming of two vessels with confederate connections. “One night in 1862, as the Civil War raged, an enslaved mariner named Robert Smalls seized an opportunity. When the enlisted crew of a Confederate steamer disembarked for a night of carousing in Charleston, S.C., Mr. Smalls, the ship’s pilot, gathered his family and the other enslaved sailors and their families. He then steered the ship for a dramatic escape past heavy fortifications to Union-controlled waters and freedom. Disguised in a top hat and a Confederate captain’s long overcoat, Mr. Smalls gave the passcodes at each of five Confederate forts and, once past the reach of cannon fire, hoisted a white flag of sewn-together bedsheets that his wife Hannah had made — delivering the ship to Union forces. Mr. Smalls and the crew had lined the bottom of the boat with explosives to detonate rather than be recaptured and face execution. Now Mr. Smalls will be immortalized on a U.S. Navy warship named after him, as will Marie Tharp, a pioneering ocean geologist. Both are receiving broader recognition under a Pentagon program to rid military installations and other property of Confederate ties. The Naming Commission, a committee created by Congress in response to a public backlash against Confederate memorials in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd, identified two ships to be rechristened in the Navy’s fleet. One, a warship deployed in the waters off Japan, called the U.S.S. Chancellorsville after the Confederate Civil War victory in Virginia, will be renamed the U.S.S. Robert Smalls. The other, a Pathfinder-class oceanographic survey ship called the U.S.N.S. Maury, was named after Matthew Fontaine Maury, a U.S. Navy commander who resigned in 1861 to join the Confederate Navy during the Civil War and who is known as “Pathfinder of the Seas” for his work charting the global paths of ocean currents. It will be rechristened the U.S.N.S. Marie Tharp, after the ocean cartographer, who helped document the phenomenon of continental drift. … The ships were renamed after two people who ‘have historically been overlooked, but leveled significant impact on not just our Navy, but also the nation,’ Mr. Del Toro said in emailed comments to The New York Times.”
Marie Tharp aboard the U.S.N.S. Kane as it traveled over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in 1968.Credit…AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Gift of Bill Woodward, USNS Kane Collection
The article continues, “The eponymous oceanographer, Ms. Tharp, was pioneering in her field, creating the first scientific maps of the Atlantic Ocean’s floor and helping to shape the U.S. military’s understanding of plate tectonics and continental drift, with some of her research funded by the Navy. Born in 1920, Ms. Tharp took advantage of a change in university admissions allowing women to enroll during World War II to receive an education that until then had been restricted to men. Ms. Tharp and a colleague studied sonar data taken from the research vessel of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Atlantis, to create highly detailed seafloor profiles and maps. Ms. Tharp noticed a cleft in the ocean floor that she hypothesized to be a rift valley that ran along the ridge crest and continued along the length of its axis, which she posited (and was later proven) to be evidence of continental drift. ‘I had a blank canvas to fill with extraordinary possibilities, a fascinating jigsaw puzzle to piece together: mapping the world’s vast hidden seafloor,’ Ms. Tharp wrote in a book about the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, where she once worked. ‘It was a once-in-the-history-of-the-world opportunity for anyone, but especially for a woman in the 1940s.’ The significance of her contributions would become evident as research in her field continued over the decades, others said. ‘For most of her working career, her contributions weren’t really celebrated. Her intellectual contributions were discounted,’ Maureen Raymo, dean of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said, even though her ‘evidence of sea floor spreading was probably the biggest scientific revolution of the 20th century, certainly in earth sciences.’ The vessels’ renaming is part of a broader Pentagon project to grapple with a legacy that for more than a century has paid homage to Confederate victories and leaders.”
The former USNS Maury has been re-named in honor of Marie Tharp. Corbis via Getty Images
According to the article, “Naming Army bases and other military property, and erecting monuments and memorials, to honor the Confederacy was part of a campaign by the children of Confederate soldiers ‘to reimagine their fathers as not the villains of a treasonous war for slavery but instead for the Southern way of life,’ said Michel Paradis, a lecturer at Columbia University. President Woodrow Wilson, an ardent segregationist, saw granting the requests to honor Confederate soldiers as a good way to rally support among his southern base during a draft for World War I, Paradis said. … Mr. Del Toro said both Mr. Smalls and Ms. Tharp were among people whose work was worthy of historical recognition. ‘Last year I visited Robert Smalls’s home and I knew his courageous endeavors in the face of the most harrowing scenarios, for me, made him the right choice for the renaming of the former U.S.S. Chancellorsville,’ Mr. Del Toro said. ‘Marie Tharp, as a pioneering oceanographer who had her work dismissed for most of her career, was also the right candidate for the renaming of the former U.S.N.S. Maury, a ship tasked with continuing her life’s work,’ he added. Many of the Confederate names that remain are attached to Army posts, Professor [Ty] Seidule said, because the Civil War was largely fought on land. ‘When the posts were being named in World War I and World War II, and the South was a one-party apartheid state, they would name them for people in their local community, these Confederate soldiers,’ he said. ‘It’s not just about getting rid of names. Whom you choose to honor is who you value,’ he added. ‘I would be incredibly proud to serve on the U.S.S. Robert Smalls.’ “
Next, we have this article about two lakes in Georgia. “Federal officials are pausing a plan that could lead to new names for Georgia’s Lake Lanier and Buford Dam after locals objected to changing the monikers of landmarks now named for Confederate soldiers. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a statement Friday announcing the pause pending further guidance from the Department of the Army. U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, a Republican who represents much of northeast Georgia, said he called the Corps of Engineers Friday to express opposition. He said the pause is a ‘a tremendous victory’ and that ‘renamings would have attempted to rewrite history, impose massive burdensome costs on our community, and create unnecessary mass confusion.’ ” As usual the racists opposing renaming lie by claiming it’s an attempt to rewrite history instead of what it is, removing honors for traitors against the United States for the purpose of protecting slavery and replacing them with Americans who truly deserve honor in this country.
The article continues, “Lake Lanier is an enormous reservoir spanning almost 58 square miles (150 square kilometers) and impounding the Chattahoochee River northeast of Atlanta. It was named for poet Sidney Lanier when it was built after World War II. Lanier served as a private in the Confederate army and later wrote ‘Song of the Chattahoochee,’ a poem about the river. Buford Dam is named after the nearby town of Buford, which takes its name from Lt. Col. Algernon Sidney Buford, who served in the Virginia militia during the Civil War. The Georgia town is named after Buford because he became president of a railroad that helped create the town after the war. Hours before announcing the pause in the renaming process, The Times of Gainesville reported that the Mobile District of the Corps of Engineers sent out a news release and unveiled a website seeking input and aiming to pick new names by year’s end. The corps said it was following a 2021 federal law which governs renaming military bases christened for confederates, including Georgia’s Fort Gordon and Fort Benning. Fort Gordon is becoming Fort Eisenhower, while Fort Benning is becoming Fort Moore. The Mobile District said it will continue to solicit public comment about new names for the lake and dam, but said choosing them is up to Congress. U.S. Rep. Austin Scott, a south Georgia Republican who was a member of the commission that suggested new military base names, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the commission never intended for Lake Lanier to be renamed. Officials in the Gainesville area also oppose the change. Clyde Morris, a board member with advocacy group Lake Lanier Association, told The Times on Friday that connections between the Confederacy, Lanier and Buford are ‘really too remote’ to justify changing the names, saying each man is better known for something other than their time in the military.”
Monument to Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire, Richmond
Finally, there’s this article by a descendant of Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire, Stonewall Jackson’s physician. “What do you do when your family tree contains so many Confederates and white supremacists, you can’t decide which one to write about first? I’ll start with one of the more well-known ones, at least to Civil War buffs. Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire, my great-grandfather, was perhaps one of the architects of the South’s “Lost Cause” narrative. I recently discovered that he wrote a book, “The Confederate Cause & Conduct in the War Between the States,” published in 1907. His coauthor was George L. Christian. There was a Christian at my high school in Virginia who Mom told me was my third cousin. … McGuire, my mother’s maternal grandfather, was a Confederate army surgeon in the Civil War. He was Gen. Stonewall Jackson’s personal surgeon. He amputated Jackson’s arm, which has its own gravesite somewhere out in the Virginia countryside. There’s a monument to my great-grandfather, a statue of him seated with his long legs crossed — he was very tall, well over 6 feet, like my brother — hands clasped in his lap, a faraway look in his deep-set eyes below bushy eyebrows, a thick mustache below his patrician nose. … Great-grandfather’s monument is one of several prominent Virginians who sit in front of the Governor’s mansion in downtown Richmond, next to the beautiful state capitol designed by Thomas Jefferson. He was a young man during the Civil War, in his twenties. The monument was constructed after his death in 1900 to honor his many contributions, including founder of hospitals in Richmond. Recently Virginia Commonwealth University removed his bust from the VCU campus and renamed McGuire Hall — they were washing themselves clean of the Confederacy. My cousins wrote an oped in the Richmond Times Dispatch in August 2020 acknowledging their support for removing him from his pedestal in Richmond history — literally and figuratively. They also said they hoped he would be remembered for the fullness of his life. ‘Arguably the most significant legacy of McGuire was his groundbreaking work to humanize war and redefine how captured military doctors and nurses should be treated in wartime,’ they wrote. But, they said, ‘the family understands that statues and buildings honoring Confederate leaders have caused pain to fellow Americans and we support the removal of the McGuire memorials.’ “
The article goes on to say, “Great-grandaddy and Mr. Christian wanted to make sure that Civil War history would be remembered ‘properly.’ It was 30 years or so after the end of the war and they were worried that Southern children were being indoctrinated with a false, Yankee narrative. They were getting the wrong idea about slavery being the cause of the national conflict, about the base nature of the Confederate cause. So he and Mr. Christian tried to set the record straight. About states’ rights and Christian honor and duty. The book begins with a section entitled ‘Slavery Not the Cause of War,’ where McGuire does a thorough job tracing the sectional conflict all the way back to the Revolution. He lays out the myriad disagreements between northern and southern states since the Constitution was ratified. He points to the sins of all Americans, not just Southerners: ‘The good people of New England shared our Southern guiltiness.’ McGuire’s chief concern is examining the history textbooks taught in Southern schools. He argues they are too one-sided: they all say that the Union cause was pure and selfless while the South was completely in the wrong; the only cause of the war was slavery; and the North’s chief aim was the emancipation of Southern slaves. It’s difficult to read some of my great-grandfather’s views. He shows his absolute prejudice when he refers to ‘giving suffrage to the blacks’ as ‘an act of war…it was indeed conceived in iniquity and born in sin.’ But some of his arguments are worthy, or at least interesting to read. When he maintains that when Virginia joined the Union, it did so ‘as a condition of right to withdraw,’ he reveals to our modern minds how important states’ rights were to many people before (what my mother was taught to call) ‘the war between the states.’ He also goes into detail about Southerners who contemplated how to free the slaves. While he disregards the central place of slavery in the discord between North and South, his argument for a more complex, more nuanced education for children is laudable.” But he’s making an argument with fabrications and half-truths.
The writer tells us, “I stumbled across Great-Grandfa’her’s book while researching him online. My mother never mentioned, nor probably was told about, his writings. I was horrified, but somehow not surprised, to see that some have said that he was a leader in the eugenics movement. In an 1893 ‘open letter’ published in the Virginia Medical Monthly, Dr. McGuire asked for ‘some scientific explanation of the sexual perversion in the negro of the present day.’ He also wrote the introduction to The Old Plantation: How We Lived in Great House and Cabin before the War, written by James Battle Avirett. Mr. Avirett dedicated his book to ‘the memory of the old planter and his wife — the only real slaves on the old plantation of many overgrown children.” It sickens me to know that my great-grandfather heartily agreed about who the ‘real slaves’ were. ‘Public opinion from the lakes to the gulf is voicing American utterance as to the superiority of the Caucasian race,’ he wrote in his introduction to The Old Plantation. He refers to ‘a race inferior both from heredity and servility.’ It’s chilling that, in 1901, when this book was published and lynchings were at their height, Dr. McGuire felt that white people across the US, ‘from the lakes to the gulf,’ were finally vindicating Confederate views. Certainly there were Southerners whose patriarchal sense of duty to people who cooked their food and raised their children engendered a warmth of feeling towards them. But going so far as to write that ‘the Negro of the South today knows that when in trouble his best friend is his old master or his children’ is ludicrous.”
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