Below The Beltway

Today’s Washington Post has an interesting article on the changing legacy of Robert E. Lee on the 200th anniversary of his birth:

Today, the United Daughters of the Confederacy plan to fly a Confederate flag on Washington Street in Alexandria, on the statue of a rebel soldier who faces South. The Virginia Sons of Confederate Veterans will gather for dinner in Richmond to honor the man they hail as “one of the greatest Americans.”

It’s the 200th birthday of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general who is revered by some and reviled by others. Commemorations and protests are planned across Virginia and other Southern states, proving that more than 140 years after the end of the Civil War, Lee is still a pivotal, controversial and complicated figure in American history and continuing race and culture wars.

In Virginia, where Lee was born, fought in the Civil War and died — no matter whether he’s viewed as a hero who fought brilliantly and valiantly for state’s rights or as a traitor bent on protecting his state’s right to own slaves — his legacy looms large. Lee highways crisscross the state, including in the Washington region, Lee bridges cross rivers, high schools are named for him and the phone book lists hundreds of Robert E. Lees.

But beyond the heat and noise created by Lee’s 21st-century defenders and detractors, there is a new move to reevaluate Lee and his legacy.

The premise of the new look is perhaps as controversial as Lee’s image: As the South has become more racially and ethnically diverse and has prospered economically, perhaps the South doesn’t need Lee so much anymore. Or at least not in the same way. Perhaps it is time to let him pass from marble icon and touchstone of white Southern identity into the annals of history as a charismatic and important human figure.

“Now there are all sorts of other ways in which Southerners identify themselves — Salvadorans, Mexicans, Asians — [and] the politics and economics of the region are no longer based on white supremacy,” said W. Fitzhugh Brundage, a historian at the University of North Carolina and a member of the Society of the Lees of Virginia. “It makes all the sense in the world that for more and more Southerners, Robert E. Lee is just a footnote.”

I can already hear the cries of outrage coming from the ranks of the dedicated adherents to the “Lost Cause” over this one, but I think the author has a point.

J. Holt Merchant, remembers growing up in Virginia when few people questioned Lee’s heroic stature as the “Last Gentle Knight.”

“But the days when William Faulkner could say that any Southern boy, any time he wanted to, could conjure up images of Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg and relive it for himself, are gone. Life’s not like that anymore, and it’s probably just as well,” Merchant said. “Changes in demography, geography, wealth and sophistication have led us to pay attention to other things. As life has gotten better for Southerners, they’ve been able to look to the present and the future and not hang on to the past quite so passionately.”

I’m not a Southerner, but it seems like this makes sense. Hanging on to some idealistic vision of the South as it might have been doesn’t make sense any more given the way the world is. Adapting to change may not be easy, but, in the end, it’s better than the alternative.