There is the fog of war and there is the fog of peace afterward, each with its own rich murk of misconceptions, misunderstandings, and missed connections.
In the fog of war, as the rockets' red glare fills the air, there may be no telling which army or even platoon is advancing or retreating, winning or losing at the time, or even what this whole engagement is about. In the heat of battle, commanders may lose touch with their troops, or their orders, however brilliant, may not be understood, let alone carried out. The troops in turn may follow their own undisciplined instincts, sometimes even to victory.
Who could have foreseen that the Union infantrymen, ordered to take positions nearer the base of Lookout Mountain, would rush to the top on their own in this Battle Above the Clouds? What madness led the just-defeated Prussians to hold again and again against Napoleon's grand army at Waterloo and change the whole course of the war and history? War is not only hell but chaos, even when it is organized chaos. Its only sure outcome may be the dead and wounded and missing in action.
Then comes the equally confusing fog of peace as the generals fight the war all over again, this time in fusillades of memoirs and volleys of counter-memoirs as all-too-sure lessons are drawn from the conflict, which is now refought not in blood but printer's ink. And its battles resumed on every anniversary of the war or commemoration of its leaders. And the peace is disturbed again.
The latest disturbance of the peace in the not always friendly confines of our own state legislature seems to have ended. For now. A plan to remove R. E. Lee, General, from the official holiday dedicated to his memory and that of Martin Luther King Jr., a hero of a different time and place and color, failed to get out of committee--a second time. Or was it the third? We've lost count. Just as the Confederates failed to take Little Round Top again and again at Gettysburg.
How unlikely are the sites that turn out to be strategic, or at least the hardest to take, in any war, including the war of ideas. According to this year's best-laid plan at the Ledge, the general and his admirers would be given their own separate if not really equally Confederate Memorial celebration someplace else on the calendar, where they wouldn't bother anybody else, the way black folks were kept in their own neighborhoods and business districts when Jim Crow was still in unsavory flower. But that irony tended to be lost on legislators like Nate Bell of Mena, Ark., bless his heart, who seemed under the impression he had come up with an original idea and the perfect solution to the recurrent ill will fanned by those on both sides of the King-Lee holiday and divide who don't like the other's horning in on what they think of as their--and only their--holiday.
A cease-fire may have been declared on this unnecessary front for this year's legislative session, but surely The Hon. Nate Bell or some other equally misguided legislator will be back next time the Ledge is in session on this still twin holiday. There seems to be no end to either history or disputes over how it should be observed, if at all. But any excuse will do to start another gratuitous fight in Arkansas' legislature and circus.
This year's debate and free-for-all featured a number of low points along with, Glory Be, the occasional sensible comment. (Miracles never cease.) The lowest or at least the least relevant contribution to this discussion was made by one of the state's official industry-hunters, who seemed bent on confusing history with a branch of public relations. Or maybe just merchandising. He conceded that he didn't know of any out-of-state CEO or other corporate type who'd marked Arkansas off his list of possible sites for a new plant because we observed Lee's Birthday here, but added that there was no way of telling how many calls were not made about opportunities in Arkansas because of the general and his official state holiday. There ought to be a Latin term for this kind of logical fallacy, such as reductio in nihilum, as in reasoning from nothing. And maybe to nothing.
Strangely enough, their official observance of a holiday dedicated to the memory of Robert E. Lee doesn't seem to have prevented states like Mississippi from attracting their share of new auto assembly plants, or stopped industrial development cold in other states that have official Lee holidays--like Alabama, Georgia and Florida--but maybe the problem here isn't with those states but with our own state's hotshot industrial scout. His idea of attracting industry is to cover up this trace of Arkansas' having chosen the losing side of the late unpleasantness, 1861-65. The way Little Rock decided to change the exit sign on an interstate from Confederate Blvd. to something that might be less offensive to our Northern guests. (There don't seem to be any plans at present to change the name of the Confederate section of the national cemetery.)
But beyond all these distracting disputations, our industry-hunter's "reasoning" would seem the perfect illustration of the New South mentality that confuses the intrinsic value of history with only the extrinsic, in this case whether it'll produce dollars-and-cents. What we have here is the old Arkansas inferiority complex back in all its tawdry glory: It is not enough that we be true to the best of ourselves, which you might think would be challenge enough. No, we must ape the worst in others, worship at the shrine of Mammon and become faux Yankees.
Not that there weren't other low points in this year's needless controversy over the King-Lee holiday. There were those anonymous haters who insisted on confusing General Lee with one of their own, and used the debate over his holiday to gin up a little more racial animus, which is one product no state needs more of.
And there were the historians-as-ideologues who, in discussing General Lee, threw around the word Treason with an abandon that would have embarrassed a Joe McCarthy--as if, by choosing the losing side in the war of the states and brothers, General Lee had been untrue to his country. When of course he had been true to the country he claimed: Virginia.
Forgotten in all this hubbub is that, before the issue was decided by force of arms, there were perfectly legitimate reasons for defending both the Union's and the Confederacy's constitutional theories, however much that observation may pain us old unionists who still thank God that he sent us an Abraham Lincoln when he was most needed. The essence of this still continuing constitutional debate was summed up by the historian Shelby Foote when he noted that, before the Civil War, "it was said the United States are. Grammatically, it was spoken that way and thought of as a collection of independent states. And after the war it was always 'the United States is,' as we say today without being self-conscious at all. And that sums up what the war accomplished. It made us an is."
That's about as fair and concise a summation of what this constitutional debate/war was about as we've ever encountered. And it still holds up despite the ephemeral fireworks at the Ledge every King-Lee holiday. Or should that be Lee-King? Like so many other aspects of this needless quarrel, it really doesn't matter.
Lost in all the fog may be the always present need to forge on with malice toward none, with charity for all, as we all still struggle to bind up the nation's wounds. Peace to all.
Editorial on 02/18/2015