Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 19, 1990 TAG: 9003162930
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK GILBERT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Such is Ed Shamy's "Stonewall tribute joins two races" (Feb. 23). And what this deals with in part is the fact that Thomas J. Jackson, likely the Confederacy's most famous warrior - if not the most brilliant and "ferocious" (as Shamy says) - "did not wage war to protect slavery."
Well, what's to say here except hallelujah! I've often thought that none but a special few ever knew this (or would admit it if they did know); and not only knew it about Jackson, but likewise about other officers and regular soldiers of the terrible South.
And then there exists some certain black people who are quite aware of Stonewall's sentiments, and so honor him with a memorial of stained glass in their church. This is the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church of Roanoke. The glass shows a Rebel camp by a river, and then is inscribed with the last words supposedly uttered by the general.
And there's more. This "all-black congregation" also honors Jackson for his founding, in 1855, of "the Colored Sunday School at his Presbyterian Church [where] slaves learned to read and write." And for this, "Jackson used his own money."
The column continues, encompassing further irony (seemingly) that includes the church members' ties with the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
However, the point to be made is this: If T.J. Jackson "did not wage war to protect slavery," then why did he (and all the others) wage it?
It has been a question long in contention, and probably propagandized to a point to cause even the true, unbiased scholars of American history to doubt themselves. But perhaps the quickest, easiest answer is to go back some 85 years before the Civil War and review those causes that brought on this country's war with England. From that, there should flow one simple, specific answer - tyranny; one side, threatening force, seeking to rule the other.
That's why the Rebel guns fired on Fort Sumter. That's why Stonewall Jackson threw aside his prof's gown at VMI and rode against the North.
Slavery was one issue. No one I know of - even the most die-hard of Southern patriots - is trying or wanting to deny that. But to stubbornly contend that it was either the solitary or one-and-only prime issue is just as silly and hyperbolic as calling the American Revolutionary War "an armed conflict over the price of tea."
Slavery was wrong, both morally and intelligently. We know that now. And I feel sure that Southerners such as Jackson and Robert E. Lee knew it then (and that Lee knew, as also did Lincoln, in 1860, that slavery was already seeing its last days, and that its total end could and would come without America tearing itself apart).
We can no more erase the happening of slavery than we can any other deplorable instance of history. But those who started it, those who kept it going, those who certainly wanted to keep it going, and then the actual victims themselves are long dead and probably forgetful in their graves.
I'm not saying we should forget. But that the time is way past for laying this and all other injustices born of it to rest, I am saying. There's no gain in it for anyone, black or white, just added racial strife stretching to unnecessary and volatile limits.
I congratulate Shamy for choosing to write this well-done and worthy column, and his employer for printing it.
And I offer salute to the congregation of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. Certainly, the words on their stained glass, that last, delirious utterance from "Ol' Jack," would be a perfect epitaph for the end of all misunderstanding - "Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees."
by CNB