Published: September 03, 2009 08:54 pm      

What would they say, if we could ask them

I was on the phone recently with a fellow from Tennessee who had been looking for information about a soldier from Cumberland who served with his uncle in Vietnam.

That wasn’t all we talked about, and I told Whittling Joe that two of my friends and I go to Gettysburg a couple of times a year to do what we call “living history.”

Mark and Gary dress as Union lieutenants with the 20th Maine, and one of these days I’m going to buy what it takes to portray a first sergeant so I can have some authority when I tell people about Civil War-era artillery, a subject I already know a little about and am continuing to study.

“That’s the same thing we do!” said Whittling Joe. He and his buddies go around to Civil War battlefields in the uniforms of Confederate soldiers.

When I told him one of my relatives is buried in two places, he laughed and said that each time they’re in the neighborhood, they visit the graves of Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. Jackson and pay their respects to the generals. Jackson lost his left arm to friendly fire at Chancellorsville and died of pneumonia several days later. He and his arm rest separately.

A couple of days later, I remembered that a few months ago when Gary and I went to Gettysburg, we spent a half an hour or so at the 20th Maine Monument talking to some guys from Tennessee.

They told us that for many years, there had been considerable resistance to the idea of placing monuments and memorials to Confederates like Lee, Jackson, James Longstreet, J.E.B. Stuart and others at national battlefield sites in the north.

We are told that history is written by the winners; the same must also be said of the ability to honor the losers.

After I remembered this chance encounter, I thought to myself: Wouldn’t it be a kick in the (beast of burden) if Whittling Joe and Uncle Carl were among the guys we talked to? Even if those two weren’t present, it’s possible they were known to the men we met.

It’s tempting to go into our newspaper archives, retrieve some of the stories and letters to the editors we’ve printed about the Confederate Flag controversy that probably will never be laid to rest in these parts, and e-mail them to my new friends — then to hear what they might have to say.

Some folks see the Confederate Flag as a symbol of slavery, oppression and bigotry. Past and present events and circumstances considered, I can’t say that I blame them. There are beyond doubt people who display the Confederate Flag for purposes that are less than honorable and decent.

However, Whittling Joe, Uncle Carl display it because it’s part of their southern heritage and probably would disagree that it’s a symbol of hatred and racism.

Some show the Confederate Flag today as a protest against what they perceive as the federal government’s excesses, the unwarranted burdens it imposes and the restrictions it places upon what they consider the rights guaranteed to them as Americans by the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Such people might say, “Our forefathers saw it coming and tried to free themselves from it, and they were right.”

My cousins H. Camillus Heironimus, Robert Heironimus and Simon Goldsworthy fought under the Confederate Flag — as did cousin Thomas Jackson, who more often is referred to these days as “Stonewall” (a nickname he despised, saying it should be applied to his men, instead).

Other than Jackson, only Robert Heironimus rose as high as the rank of first sergeant. The others were privates and corporals. It’s likely they were farmers and laborers who owned no slaves.

Jackson himself was a devout Christian and the product of a society that believed God sanctioned the institution of slavery and felt that slavery was necessary and appropriate for its survival and prosperity. Jackson’s family owned slaves, but he defied convention and the law to teach some of them how to read and write.

My cousins George, John, Joseph, Samuel, Thomas and William Goldsworthy, and Walter Heironimus, fought under the Union Flag.

Some of these men were on opposing sides at Chancellorsville, Cold Harbor and The Wilderness. All but Jackson survived. Samuel Goldsworthy lived to be a ripe old age, retiring to Arizona, where he was one of 22 Union veterans honored in Prescott’s 1909 Memorial Day parade. Surely, there were others I may never know about.

Ulysses S. Grant had been general-in-chief of the Union Army. His pallbearers included two former Union generals, William Tecumseh Sherman and Phil Sheridan, and two former Confederate generals, Simon Bolivar Buckner and Joseph Johnston. Other former Union and Confederate officers rode together in the same carriages during Grant’s funeral procession.

What if we were we able to ask those men and my cousins what they thought about the Confederate Flag and the cause it represented?

I suspect their answer might go something like this:

“That issue was settled long ago ... not to the satisfaction of all, but settled it was, and in the most terrible manner.

“What’s important is that in spite of our many differences, we’re all Americans now, and we have enemies from whom there is far more to fear than we have to fear from each other.

“Dishonor us not by using our legacy as a means to create divisiveness, or to reopen a wound that we cauterized with our fire and our steel and dressed with our blood and our tears.

“Remember us, instead, for making possible all that you are today.”