Not just a lost cause, but a cause that deserved to lose

Writer William Faulkner, a Nobel Prize winner, was born in Mississippi in 1897 and grew up surrounded by the legacy of the Civil War. As a youngster, he met men who fought in the war and heard tales of the old South before the war. As a man, he applied his imagination to his childhood experience. At one point, he wrote,

"For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances..."

On that July afternoon in 1863, Pickett’s charge was about to unfold at the Battle of Gettysburg, the high water mark of the Confederacy. And the prototypical boy is dreaming, willing, praying — let it be, let Gen. Pickett stand down, let Pickett, James Longstreet and Robert E Lee, off stage, fight again another day and gloriously win the war.

Now this beautiful quote is from a novel, Faulkner's primary art form, not from an under-oath statement to a court about his considered view of American history or for that matter George Pickett's "long oiled ringlets." And Faulkner doesn't have to tell the reader that "Every Southern boy fourteen years old" is white.

The myth of the “Lost Cause,” which the imaginary boy has embraced, has a “Whites Only” warning attached. And what African American of any age would dream of an alternative outcome to Pickett’s charge? An imaginative black Southern boy might hear the cannons roar, the rifles crackle, the smoke roll as Pickett’s men move forward, and deliver an order to the men in blue awaiting them: “Pour it on.”

Fort Pickett, in Virginia, is one of a number of army bases named for confederate generals. Far better known are Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort Hood in Texas and Fort Polk in Louisiana, named for generals Braxton Bragg, John Bell Hood and Leonidas Polk. Many Americans, of all colors, believe it’s long past time to rename these facilities, ending this military tribute to rebellion and slavery.

Logic is a poor guide to understanding why American military bases were named for generals who turned on their country. These generals handed back their commissions in the United States Army before joining the Confederacy. They were defending a breakaway slave nation. They applied their military skill to a war that killed hundreds of thousands of their countrymen. A war to ensure the continued bondage of black Americans.

After the war, Reconstruction of the south and reconciliation followed. Reconciliation eventually included naming bases for Confederate generals such as Pickett, who died in 1875. The naming of Fort Pickett dates back to World War II. My lifetime, more or less.

George Pickett’s enshrinement in the pantheon of American heroes after attempting to destroy the United States is an example of stolen glory — stolen from those Union men and officers who died saving the union.

The honor paid Pickett and his fellow generals by the entire country, not just the South, is a form of political correctness, thoughtless deference to the sons and daughters of the Confederacy — lest they be uncomfortably reminded that their ancestors, no matter how honorable they may have been privately, fought not only for a lost cause but a cause that deserved to lose.

Faulkner, who died in 1962, spent most of his life in Oxford, Mississippi, surrounded by the past, slavery and its aftermath. This led him to muse, “The past is never dead. It is not even past.”

George Pickett’s name should not be erased from history. But it should be erased from Fort Pickett. The same for Generals Bragg, Hood, Polk and the rest. The past is never dead, but our understanding and appreciation of it can change.

Michael Carey is an Anchorage Daily News columnist. He can be reached at mcarey@adn.com.

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