You may or may not have known that last Monday marked the Civil War's beginning exactly 150 years ago. The shadow of our domestic war, with all of its atrocities, still hangs over the country to this day, and regional commemorations are representative of our wavering over how to remember Civil War history. Some chose to over-emphatically celebrate the war while others simply recognized its abstract occurrence on a timeline. Either is a disservice to our history and our future.
Beyond a presidential proclamation and an Associated Press headline, I have noticed next to no commemoration of the Civil War's sesquicentennial on a national scale. This is surprising, considering that traces of the war's impact are still relevant so many years later. Issues of racial inequality and states' rights are regularly debated in present-day politics. Some controversies clearly evoke the Civil War in our memory when the confederate flag is flown over a statehouse or a defiant governor casually threatens secession, the connection to the war is undeniable.
For all of the discord, there is a divergence in celebration across the country. Former confederate states created Civil War commemoration commissions as much as two years in advance of the sesquicentennial. Massachusetts, on the other hand, only formed one last month with little fuss, despite having sent more than 150,000 soldiers into battle. Commemoration events in the North are much more low key and not nearly as well attended as their counterparts in the South.
The regional divergence goes beyond the details of event planning. The Northern and Southern populations of the United States reflect on Civil War history differently. The general sentiment of Southern celebration, with its battle reenactments and political cries of anti-establishment independence, fail to focus on central aspects of the war that have impacted the post-war South. Yet for all historical inaccuracies in the South, the North's celebration is even more unsettling. The North pays very little attention to its victory and its sacrifices to achieve that victory. I am not accusing today's Northerners or Southerners of eradicating the memory of slavery or the bloody battles as if they never happened. Rather, it appears that one commonality of Northern and Southern commemoration is the endemic problem of choosing to forget uncomfortable Civil War issues, viewing them as remnants of the past that have no impact on our nation today.
The North's aversion to commemoration could be attributed to the very fact that the Civil War's effects are still with us 150 years later. Steven Mintz, professor of history at Columbia University, told the Associated Press that Northern commemoration of the Civil War means "revisiting [the Northerners'] own unsolved, uncomfortable issues like racial inequality after slavery." The former states of the Confederacy forget more selectively while maintaining their Southern gentleman pride that has proven so useful in politics. Some Southern conservatives even flaunt the confederate flag as a symbol of dignified rebellion to celebrate states' rights. While such views are reasonable, ignoring the social sensitivities and ramifications of using a symbol that is still associated with racism and slavery exhibits the lack of attention given to Civil War history.
That history ultimately weighs heavily on our nation's shoulders in part because it converges upon the definition of American identity. The Civil War was a fight for American principles. The nature of our Civil War commemoration might not ever be resolved because a singular American identity is an unattainable illusion, but we can still commemorate as a unified people. What's important is that we not consider our divisions and debates as "leftovers" from the Civil War that must be swept under the rug in order to artificially mend centuries of division. We must choose to remember and face our troubled past.
When the Civil War centennial was celebrated in 1961, the United States was in the heat of a civil rights struggle. The nation was caught in a debate where Civil War history was all too relevant to ignore. Even though we have significantly progressed in the last 50 years, Monday's sesquicentennial was a lost opportunity to come together and directly address issues that fade in the background any other day. Here's to the approaching bicentennial, with the hope that we will not just look backward but use it to move forward collectively.
