A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
The debate over Helena’s monument honoring Confederate soldiers now has two threads: (1) the monument’s historical accuracy and purpose, and (2) whether renaming, modifying, or removing the monument would dishonor the Helena citizens who approved the monument and then kept it in place for 99 years.
There’s pushback, reports Montana Cowgirl, from Lewis and Clark County’s heritage preservation officer, Pam Attardo, and from Helena’s mayor, Jim Smith. And, reports Don Pogreba, in an excellent post at Intelligent Discontent, there’s also pushback from the Helena Independent Record.
Attardo, noting that the monument is on the National Historic Preservation Register, argues in a letter to the Helena Independent Record, that:
When we remove all traces of the losing side of the Civil War, they disappear from history like the war never happened, and its lessons become erased from our collective memory. It’s then that history can be in danger of repeating.
Smith, in a memorandum to Helena’s city commissioners, argues:
Fundamentally, I believe we ought to be very careful before we start obliterating history. That is what totalitarian regimes do. At the height of the French Revolution all references to the ‘Ancien Regime’ (the Old Regime) were obliterated: among other things the very days of the week and the months of the year were renamed. Following the Russian Revolution all traces of the Romanov dynasty and the Czars were removed from the public square. Same in China during the Cultural Revolution. It’s going on today in the Middle East and Central Asia, as all traces of Bhuddist and Hindu culture are being destroyed.
Once this begins — with a Fountain in Hill Park — where will it lead and where will it end?
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The fact is the Fountain in Hill Park has not been a divisive symbol in this community. There is no need to make it one.
Attardo’s and Smith’s arguments are intellectually dishonest. They knock down straw men. No one has suggested removing all traces of the Confederacy. No one has suggested obliterating history.
But two city commissioners, Andres Haladay and Katherine Haque-Hausrath, have suggested renaming the Confederate memorial, and as I understand their proposal, adding signage explaining its role in whitewashing Confederate history.
By proposing these changes, Haladay and Haque-Hausrath not only are starting a discussion that could be divisive, they;re implicitly impugning the good judgement of Helena’s leaders for the last 99 years. Smith would rather they let sleeping dogs sleep.
Smith also seems unaware of how the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and others, whitewashed the history of the Civil War, which southern states started to preserve slavery.
After the south lost the war, and the union was preserved, the south’s apologists recognized they could not make heroes of the Confederate politicians and armies as defenders of slavery. That itself was a lost cause. Instead, ignoring the appalling defenses of slavery in the southern states’ declarations of secession, they claimed the war was about states’ rights and defending the genteel Christian virtues of the antebellum south.
And, they claimed that the valor of the men in combat was what really counted: Confederate soldiers were just as brave and honorable as Union soldiers, thus placing the men who fought to preserve slavery on the same moral plane as the men who fought to preserve the Union. Causes come and go, but courage is universal and forever — therefore, never forget how courageous the men in gray were.
That’s the purpose of Helena’s monument to Confederate soldiers: asserting that the Confederate soldier’s courage and sense of honor transcend the morality of the cause for which he fought. It’s a seductive argument, for courage is a virtue. But what the Confederacy was — a rebellion by traitors and fools — and what it fought for — the preservation of slavery — cannot be justified by the bravery of its military.
Helena’s previous leaders failed to make that clear. Helena’s current leaders must set the record straight.
I would replace the fountain with a plaque reading:
Here stood a monument to treason and the Confederate soldiers who killed fellow Americans to preserve slavery. Those soldiers were brave, but wrong. They brought upon the south and themselves shame, not honor. Let us never forget who they were, the awful things they did, and the bad judgement exercised by the leaders of Helena who permitted that monument to be placed on public land.
Correcting the historical record, a moral duty of a community, won’t be easy in this case. Having the monument on the National Historic Register makes modifying or removing it more difficult. I hope Helena finds the moral courage and political will to correct a serious mistake made a century ago by the men then running the city.