Moses and Abraham

The Naming Commission says the following about the Confederate Memorial at Alington National Cemetery:

“The memorial offers a nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery.”

To buttress their point about slavery they write:

“Two of these figures are portrayed as African-American: an enslaved woman depicted as a ‘Mammy’, holding the infant child of a white officer, and an enslaved man following his owner to war.”

This sentence demonstrates the agenda of the report. It is written in the proper 21st century language meant to demean and inflame. Here is how an objective sentence might have appeared.

Two of the figures were slaves. A woman holding the child of a Confederate army officer, and a man following his master to war.

They use the word enslaved twice and what is with mammy capitalized and in scare quotes? This was designed to be a no-nonsense Department of Defense review and we end up with propaganda. Are there no serious people left in the military or in Congress?

Slavery existed in the Confederacy and in the United States during the war. Many slaves fled and joined the Union war effort. Some paid the ultimate price as proud members of the United States Colored Troops. Others stayed and some were loyal to the South and even to their masters. These are facts. You don’t have to be steeped in the history to see it. It is human nature and common sense.

The Naming Commission reckons the depiction in Moses Ezekiel’s art is “highly sanitized” and echoes the dreaded Lost Cause mythology. This is their argument to call for its destruction. Most memorials or monuments put people or events in the best possible light.

I don’t recall Lincoln’s white supremacy and violations of the Constitution on display at his memorial.