TO THE EDITOR:
I am writing in response to a recent letter by Edwin Yoder that was published complaining of the “forces of historical correction.” I sympathize with Yoder’s desire to make it clear that one can honor the Confederate dead without therefore honoring slavery, but I feel the need to point out that he appears to have participated in the very historical revisionism that he decries.
Yoder claims that General Lee, a “great Virginian,” hated slavery. Unfortunately, the historical record appears to indicate a very different Robert E. Lee than that which Yoder has imagined. Lee inherited his slaves and was required, by the terms of that inheritance, to release them as quickly as practical, but in any case within five years. He did release those slaves when required, but only after challenging the will in court in an attempt to keep them longer. He also wrote in a letter that “the blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa... the painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race.”
Yoder also perpetuates the myth that the majority of Southerners, because they did not own slaves, did not benefit from the institution of slavery and did not fight to preserve it. He ignores that poor whites in the South aspired to own slaves, benefited directly and indirectly from the labor of slaves, and could rent the labor of slaves from their owners. These facts were even acknowledged by Southern writers of the time; they are not a revisionist invention.
I do not intend to take a stance here on what, if anything, should be done with or about Silent Sam. My statements above should not be taken as an endorsement or as a condemnation of the statue or its presence on this campus. But I must insist that the conversation occurring be informed by a solid understanding of the historical facts. Yoder’s complaints of historical revisionism are unjustified. He is entitled to his own opinion on Silent Sam, but he is not entitled to attempt to pass off discredited pro-Confederate myths as if they were fact.
Chase Hawisher
