Honoring the ancestors
The Legal Genealogist is still digging out from under the accumulated email, snail mail and other impacts of being away for three weeks so the return to what passes for normal around here on this blog is getting off to a bit of a slow start.
But I came across a blog post by Beth Wylie yesterday that I want to share… with the hope that it’ll start a conversation that all of us with deep southern roots can join in, respectfully and politely.
Beth’s blog is called Life in the Past Lane, and on May 21, she posted a thought-provoking piece entitled “Southern Heritage. It’s Complicated.”
Boy, does this ever resonate with me…
My mother was born and raised in Texas. Her mother and father were both born in Texas. My grandmother’s mother was born in Alabama and her father in Texas. My grandfather’s mother was born in Kentucky and his father in Texas. And so it goes, all the way back to my very earliest ancestors on this continent. The furthest north my family ever lived before the 20th century was southern Maryland; mine is the first generation even to live north of the Mason-Dixon line.
I grew up spending all of my summers in central Virginia. Walking the red clay dirt roads from my grandparents’ farm to the general store for moon pies and RC Cola. Collecting glass bottles to cash in to pay for sacks of penny candy. Picking bouquets of Queen Anne’s Lace and daisies. Swimming in the creeks.
I spent hours sitting under the trees, by the light of a bonfire, listening to the stories and the songs and the cadence of the south. My grandfather told us the south never lost the Civil War; it just called off hostilities when it ran out of money. But, he assured us, when enough Dixie cups were sold to raise enough money, the fight would be on again…
I am proud of my southern roots. Proud of my southern ancestors. Proud of the life they carved out of the frontier not once but repeatedly as they moved across the south into the southwest. And I honor them for what they achieved.
But I am also aware, as a genealogist, that my southern heritage includes responsibility for the institution of slavery. My ancestors included some who enslaved others. And some who fought against the Union on behalf of the “right” to enslave others.
Balancing those two parts of southern heritage is — as Beth tells us — a complicated matter.
I am not, I cannot be, proud of everything my southern forebears did. I do not, I can not, honor all of their choices.
This isn’t any different for me than my pride in my German heritage — my father was born in Bremen, Germany — but my deep abiding relief that my German grandfather’s side didn’t win in World War I… and that my German cousins didn’t prevail in World War II.
We can honor our ancestors without agreeing with everything they did.
And without putting up, or keeping up, monuments to a losing cause.
Your thoughts?
As a middle aged white male, I’m unconcerned about the history of slavery in th USA. Yes it was bad, but a lot of things in the world are bad. I refuse to be burdened by the acts of my ancestors. They gave me the gift of being in this world and I feel unable to judge people who lived in a time and place that I did not experience.
On the positive side, my family did not live in the USA prior to the 1880’s, so on this particular topic, we are guiltless! They may have done evil to other groups of people in what is now the Ukraine and in the USA after arriving. Let him who is without sin and all of that.
On the negative side, slavery has always existed and is still with us in the world today. It is good to understand the evil of the past, especially when your own blood was involved in it, but we live now and are called to live in the present (a strange comment from a family historian!).
I don’t think it’s a matter of being burdened by the acts of our ancestors as much as it is the contemporary question of how and whether we honor them for their choices… and work today to eradicate the evil all of our collective forebears helped create.
Every post 1492 immigrant to the Americas was a party to genocide of the natives and the destruction of an ecosystem, include the extinction of numerous species. Most immigrants this year will inhabit ground taken by force or deceit.
We are human animals. We conquer, kill, enslave, and destroy. Most human societies have done this across our history. Europeans during the last 500 years had a lot of tools at hand to increase the scale and pace of this behavior, but they were not unique.
We also have the power to do good and create beauty.
Where do we draw the line at the evil our ancestors created? Many people proudly claim royalty in their lineage, but do they worry about the wars and destruction their ancestors were party to?
Southern USA heritage is a good thing. I’ve lived in the coastal South and most are kind, gracious, and giving beyond what is common in other areas of the USA.
Document and acknowledge the past and then move on. Be proud of ancestors that brought you to this point.
I don’t think we DO draw a line. Rejecting evil doesn’t mean moving on and forgetting.
There has been, and continues to be, slavery, genocide etc. in the world, and will likely continue for some time. I had ancestors who were slave owners as well as dirt-poor sharecroppers and farmers. But I also had UK and Irish ancestors who migrated to the northern states of America. They may as well have been slaves by the conditions they endured. I will sympathize but will never apologize for what my slave owners or sympathizers did. If that was the case, everyone would be apologizing for at least one ancestor in their past. Right or wrong, let it go. It is in the past and was an unfortunate event like so many that have occurred over time in the world. Confederate markers are being taken down to erase what happened. “Our” history is being eradicated. Some markers are only memorials for those who died; ALL soldiers were eventually named as veterans of that war and should be remembered.
The issue is not whether they should be remembered, but rather whether they should be glorified with statues in public squares and places.
“southern heritage includes responsibility for the institution of slavery” ?REALLY?. Judy, you need to get your history books out again – The Yankees had slaves just as the Southerners did, and actually profited from importing slaves. So they have a large part of this “institution” called slavery. All of my ancestors are immigrants from colonial days and all are considered to have southern heritage. I am proud of all of my ancestors, who were farmers that worked hard all of their lives and fought not to continue slavery but against invasion from the North against their rights as American Citizens. What is happening today is a continuation of the battle against our rights and not about slavery. I could go on and on, but enough said.
(a) “They did it too!” is not a defense. (b) Anybody who thinks the south didn’t fight to continue slavery needs to carefully re-read the documents and records of that time, starting with the Mississippi Articles of Secession: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institutions of slavery–the greatest material interest in the world… a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”
I don’t see memorial statues and flags as glorifing slavery. I think that they simply represent history and it’s participants. My family is from Central North Carolina. Many of my family members owned slaves. It isn’t for me to judge what they did. I accept it as being apart of our nation’s history as well as my family hertiage. I must admit that I am proud of their courage to stand up for what they believed in, and their conviction to fight to the bitter end for it. I had 9 family members that served in the Confederate Army. Two were killed in battle, and one died months later, of the injuries that he sustained. I do strongly oppose any ban on Confederate flags and the removal of our Civil War memorial statues. We can’t pick the parts of our history that we disagree with, and attempt to conceal or hide it. It took both the good and bad elements of our history to make this nation what it is today.
I suspect you are looking at those memorials and flags from the standpoint of a modern southern — and white — viewpoint. The problem is that the “history” that they are representing is a history that never actually existed — it actually is a rewritten version of the southern cause that was created after the war was lost. To those who were victimized by the brutalities of slavery — and the segregation and Jim Crow laws that followed and that arose in large measure from that rewritten version of the southern “history” — its meaning is very different. I can only think that seeing a Confederate flag or monument must feel very much, to those whose families lived through that brutalization, like seeing a Nazi flag or salute is like to the survivors and families of those lost in the Holocaust.
I agree! Even the “free slaves” had slaves as well as their own ancestors! If what I read in my History Books are correct? Every nationality, race & etc….. had good & bad in them as well as doing good & bad over these many years! We go through good times & bad times! We also have excellent & high morals, as well as evil & low morals, rich & poor, royalty & indentured servant, an owner of slavery as well as being that owner’s slave!
In my eyes everyone has similar heritage (without knowing!) Jan
That’s not the issue. The question is how we handle those ancestors and whether we celebrate the bad things they did.
Judy, you are spot-on. Until 2015 the Confederate flag flew above the SC State House. The day it came down, I wrote this on my Facebook page: “Proud of my state today. All my life I have identified myself as a capital-S Southerner. Members of my family (non-slaveholders, just for the record) fought and died for the Confederacy. Still, I can honor their sacrifice without displaying the flag which carries such a different meaning to so many. Some friends and/or family may disown me but for once I agree with the legislature- it was time to take it down.” I don’t feel responsible for actions my ancestors took, but I absolutely bear responsibility to ensure they aren’t repeated.
Worth repeating: “I don’t feel responsible for actions my ancestors took, but I absolutely bear responsibility to ensure they aren’t repeated.”
My teenage grandson is intelligent and in a good school but the southern roots are deep here in TN. He was inclined to be indignant about the removal of the statues in New Orleans. I pointed out to him that they may belong in a museum as pieces of history but not in the public square as badges of honor. When you start a fight and then lose you don’t get monuments – you get time out and have to make amends.
It really is that distinction between honor and history that sometimes gets lost, isn’t it?
Ditto my New England and Canadian ancestors. They did what they did. The only way I would consider myself responsible is if I would have been there and not stopped them. God gave them free choice. That’s what they chose. I will take responsibility for my actions but not for yours.
I’m not responsible for what my ancestors did, but I don’t glorify things they did that were wrong.
“It’s Complicated” sums up ancestry well, probably for most of us. I doubt that you could find a family tree that does not have complications and embarassments along with all of the good achievements and surprising things to be proud of.
Like you, I have deep Southern roots. Mother family immigrated from England in the 1600s and settled on Long Island. They did not stay there very long before they moved South through NJ to MD and on along the coast to VA, NC, and stopped in East TN for a while. They kept moving and after the Civil War they started west and eventually settled in TX where they remain today.
I always thought my Father’s family were from Germany. They came to American in the late 19th century, settled in PA and remain there today. Complicated. I was working on the paternal line back in th 1980s when my Father said, “I was adopted. My birth parents were from Sweden.” Well, I guess that gets me out of worries about Nzis and slaves but it began a reworking of his tree. I am still reworking. I did, however, discover his birth line in Minnesota. His birth parents came from Sweden only a few years before he was born. They are now my road block but slowly, bit-by-bit, I am learning about them.
Every family story has its twists and turns, for sure.
My mother’s family fought on the side of the North. My father’s family fought on the side of the South. Each side lost family members. Each side fought for what they believed in, and I honor their service and the lives that were lost in that service. I do not think it necessary or appropriate to suddenly start renaming things and removing tributes because some find them politically incorrect. We all have things we find distasteful that others consider perfectly acceptable. We learn to live with it, and that’s part of life.
I don’t think we need to learn to live with things that are deeply divisive, that were erected to memorialize something that never really happened (the post-Civil War southern rewriting of the story).
This is not a debate that either side will ever win. Who are we to change what represents history? I think it is an excellent time to agree to disagree.
“Who are we to change what represents history?” Well, I’d say we have as much right to choose what represents history as the losers in a civil war based on slavery… and perhaps have a better and longer and more humane perspective than those who put those statues up in the first place.
History repeats itself, or so the saying goes. If we wipe out any of our terrible human history then future generations have nothing to refer too, that is a danger we cannot afford. One of the first things Hitler did was wipe out German history, leaving what he liked. Are we going to destroy the ovens at Dachau? Alexander the Great slaughtered thousands of people, yet history books in schools do not tell the story. There are arguments that the civil war was more about states rights than about slavery. There are atrocities down thru history that we all abhor, but look at it, grit your teeth and swear you will never let things like this happen again if its within your power.
I’d never ever suggest we forget the past, Stan. But we don’t have to honor it, or glorify it. As Beth notes, “There’s a reason there are no statues to Nazi leaders erected in Europe, and instead museums and memorials dedicated to the Holocaust.” To remember the past, we have a museum and exhibits at Dachau — not statues to Hitler or Goebbels.
Touche cuz
An important point, Judy, that we can honor ancestors without agreeing with them. Only recently through DNA analysis did I discover a connection to southern ancestors who lived in the South as recently as during the Civil War. Probate records for an ancestor in that line soon before the war showed the value of their estate. The vast majority of the value was in their slaves. This document helps me understand the Civil War. It helps me see the motivation for a society at risk of losing one of the foundations of their economy if slavery is suddenly abolished. I can try to understand their motives. But I do not respect the fact that my ancestors owned human beings.
Interestingly, the first time I came across an ancestor owning slaves was in the North, in Connecticut in the 1700s. It came as a bit of a shock to me. People don’t talk about Northerners owning slaves. But in Connecticut right before the Revolution, a significant amount of the middle class owned slaves. (http://slavenorth.com/connecticut.htm is a good source.) And even when the state did decide to end slavery, it was a gradual process. States in the North gradually emancipated slaves over a number of years. Even they didn’t want the shock of mass emancipation proposed for the South.
My choice is to support organizations that fight slavery in the world today. I do not respect the choices of my ancestors in the North or South to own slaves. But I can honor my ancestors by caring about them enough to learn about them and to try to understand their motivations, faults and all.
I will be talking about the impacts of slavery in the north at FGS in Pittsburgh in late August. It’s a fascinating story.
There is a book “In Praise of Forgetting” by David Rieff that addresses this issue in great detail. It is written in a scholarly way that may detract from its message. Forgive me if I have named this book in a comment to a previous blog.
Rieff’s essential point seems to me to be that reconciliation is more important in most cases than mere remembrance– and it’s hard to argue with that. But reconciliation begins with an honest acknowledgment of underlying causes, and the “Lost Cause” rewriting of history and whitewashing of the southern cause precludes that honest acknowledgment.
My ancestors are teachers. In their day they weren’t teachers, but farmers, laborers, some with far more musical talent than I have. They had life situations to deal with and, through my genealogical research,they have taught me a lot about dealing with life situations. Life and times are different, but there are lessons to be learned. The good part about genealogy is that with all the speculation that goes on – in a variety of arenas – it doesn’t matter what I think, the facts are facts. Their lives were their lives. I’ve been dealing with homesteaders a lot lately. A family with four or five kids is living in a sod house or dugout and papa dies. What’s a mother to do? Whining doesn’t put food on the table or create a return on an investment in the land. My husband has been transcribing some Sedition Act documents from WWI for the National Archives. Let’s just say lessons can be learned about how people have treated each other during the various eras of our history. It saddens me to see the short shrift history gets in the educational process – our ancestors have a great deal to teach us if we are wise enough to listen.
Those lessons from history need to be taught for sure but can be taught without putting statues to the losers in public places.
Rewriting history is a slippery slope for all of us, in all times. The monument creation period is an interesting historical topic. The fervor to remove them will also be seen as historically interesting in the future. What makes it slippery is assuming “we” are right in deciding what history – and the present – is supposed to mean for others.
What we need to get over is the “right” and “wrong” or “winners” and “losers”… “black” and “white” mentality. Sometimes it is difficult for people to let go of their touch stones or what has been safe for them and given them a sense of power. Removing a statue may remove a symbol, but it won’t solve the problem. Again, history and genealogy can help guide us because they are a part of who we are. Change begins with ourselves, our attitudes, our desires.
You can’t begin to change attitudes without a candid appraisal of whether the attitude itself is right, moral and just.
A candid appraisal is fine – but a person’s attitude won’t change until they see a need, candid appraisal or no.
Is Genealogy about change? As a (family) historian, the goal usually is to discover and enlighten as to the events, motivations, places, times of our people. When we use historical conditions for current social purposes, the slippery slope becomes really greased.
It’s certainly about change when what needs to be changed is a rose-colored-glasses view of the past. Historians of all stripes stand in the best position to point out just what the past really was … and what it was not.
My father’s family has been in North Carolina since the mid-1700’s. Some of them owned slaves, particularly in the early period, but by the time of the Civil War, none did. None of my Civil War soldier ancestors owned slaves and I can’t know what their motivations were for fighting; it might have been to defend slavery or more probably that their friends and neighbors were enlisting and they did, too.
But remembering them and acknowledging their service does not mean celebrating it. I don’t have a problem with a monument that remembers the dead who served – you see those in most towns, both North and South. Honoring the cause is something different and not something I support.
Exactly the distinction I draw, Anne: I remember them but I do not honor their choice to rebel.
Amen, Judy! My heart aches for the injustice served upon the human beings owned by some of my ancestors. I didn’t make the unfortunate decisions made by those ancestors, and I certainly do not celebrate the “cause” connected to those decisions.
That’s where I come out on this issue too.
As a Richmonder whose father’s family has been in the city since before 1860, you article is timely. The town to our west has removed Confederate statues. A major tourist street in my city is lined with statues that ‘celebrate’ Confederate leaders. I appreciate your tone Judy and have used the phrase ‘honor not celebrate’ in this discussion with others. I wish there were a monument similar to the Vietnam War memorial for Confederate veterans that honors their service as Americans, but recognizes the somber reality of a lost cause. I’d love for Richmond to replace those statues with others who represent our common shared hope for a better future.
Thanks for joining in the discussion. It’s comments like these that move us all towards that common shared hope.
Even as a child, at the time of the Civil War Centennial, I always wondered why all the monuments in the South were about the Civil War & never about the Revolutionary War that gained this country its freedom. Nearly half the war was fought in the Southern states after all.
I came to the conclustion that Southerners didn’t want to admit that not all people were freed when the British left… Then they would haver to acknowledge that they hadn’t extended freedom’s progress (ballots, education, land ownership, etc) to all their inhabitants on the same basis.