Benedict Arnold

Benedict Arnold began the American Revolutionary War on the Patriot side as a captain in the Connecticut Militia.  In April of 1775, his company assisted in the seige of Boston.  In May of 1775, he helped Ethan Allen to capture Fort Ticonderoga.  In December of 1775, Arnold participated in the ill-fated attack on the City of Quebec.  For his efforts there, he received a commission as a general in the American Army.  In October of 1777, he was heroic in the decisive victory over the British at the Battle of Saratoga.  When the British withdrew from Philadelphia in June of 1778, General George Washington appointed Arnold as the military commander of the City. 

It was around that time that Arnold started to have misgivings about his choice of sides in the war.  He began a secret correspondence with Major John Andre, the British spy chief.  In August of 1780, Washington appointed Arnold as the Commandant of West Point, a commanding plateau on the west bank of the Hudson River, 55 miles north of New York City.  In this capacity, Arnold offered to turn the fort over to the British, for a price.  Andre confirmed they would pay him twenty thousand pounds.  Two hundred, thirty-five years ago tomorrow, September 21, 1780, Arnold and Andre met to discuss the final arrangements for the turnover of West Point.  Two days later, while attempting to return to British-held New York City, Andre was captured by American forces.  On his person were documents that incriminated Arnold.  Hearing this, Arnold himself escaped to New York City and became a general in the British Army.  After the war ended in 1783, he moved to England where he died in 1801.

Today, there are no statues of Benedict Arnold in the United States.  For two hundred and thirty-five years his name has been vilified as synonymous with the word traitor.  He was a patriot who fought for American independence and then fought against the united States of America.  Similarly, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and other leaders of the rebellious Confederate States of America were once loyal Americans who fought against the United States of America and thus became traitors.  However, unlike Arnold, today there are statues and monuments to these men in the United States.  Why the difference?

The American Revolutionary War was waged because of a desire by some in the British North American colonies for independence.  At the end of the war, the losers, those colonists loyal to the British crown, plus some freed slaves and Hession soldiers hired to fight for the British, emigrated to Canada or Great Britain.  They knew they would be unwelcome in the newly independent American States plus they had little desire to live under a new and untested form of government.  The slaves would be returned to their masters. 

The Civil War was waged because of a desire by the rich and powerful slave-owners in the South to create a nation in which African slavery would be protected and made permanent.  At the end of the war, the losers, the white Southerners who fought for and supported the rebellious Confederate States of America, mostly stayed put.  (A small number did emigrate to Mexico and Brazil.)  For about twelve years, until 1877, they endured what was called Reconstruction.  During this period, the States that had seceded were under the rule of the United States Army.  It organized local elections which permitted former slaves (freedmen) to vote.  On the other hand, whites who held leading positions in the Confederacy were barred from voting and could not hold public office.  Coalitions of freedmen, northerners who emigrated to the South (carpetbaggers), and southerners who supported Reconstruction (scalawags) cooperated to form state and local governments. 

As a result of the disputed presidential election of 1876, the new US President Rutherford B. Hayes ended Reconstruction after he was inaugurated in January 1877.  The US Army was withdrawn and the South came under the exclusive rule of white southerners.  “Following continuing violence around elections as insurgents worked to suppress black voting, the Democratic-dominated Southern states passed legislation to create barriers to voter registrations by blacks and poor whites.”  As a result, the new white power structure mandated a system of legal segregation of the races in all public facilities, known as Jim Crow laws.  In theory, it was supposed to be separate, but equal.  But in reality, “conditions for African Americans were consistently inferior and underfunded compared to those available to white Americans.”  This period of legal segregation and voter suppresion continued until the 1960s.

It was during this period (1877-1965) that the white southern establishment developed a narrative (alternative history) that told a story favorable to the white southern “lost cause.”  This made the actions of their ancestors who participated in the Civil War for the South more palatable.  According to the narrative, the Civil War was not about slavery.  It was about the desire of the South to be free and independent, in a similar manner that the thirteen British colonies had wanted to be free and independent in 1776.  Unfortunately in my view, this narrative has taken hold in the white Southern community.  The Civil War, the heroes of that war, and the Battle Flag of the Confederacy have all come to represent southern pride, southern culture, and southern tradition.  Sometimes it is not the victors who write the history.  Sometimes, the losers, because they have the political power, write the history.

To be fair, 95% of white Southerners did not own slaves and four of the States (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas) only seceded after President Lincoln ordered Federal troops to go to the South to suppress the “rebellion,” as it was called by him.  Presumably, those States felt that secession was a legitimate option, but its suppression by force was not.  I would prefer that the descendents of those 95% of white Southerners realize that their non-slaving owning ancestors had been misguided by the slaving holding elite.  They fought bravely in the Civil War, but they fought on the wrong side of history.      

On the other hand, as I stated above, the powerful elite in 1860, all slave owners, opted for secession in order to protect slavery (read the Confederate Constitution).  They were able to convince the other 95% of white southerners who did not own slaves to support secession because (1) it was in their economic interest to support slavery (“Cotton is king”), (2) it was in their social interest to support slavery (at least you are superior to a slave) and (3) they needed to protect their women from the invaders from the North.  However, just as in the Revolutionary War, it was not a unanimous decision to secede.  In western Virginia, western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and northern Alabama, where yeoman farmers were strong and slavery almost did not exist, the majority favored staying in the Union. 

It was also during this post-Reconstruction period that statues, monuments and memorials were constructed throughout the South to remember the heroes of the Confederacy, many of whom owned slaves.  The African American community in the South, descendents of those held in slavery, was powerless to do anything about it, until now.  Recently, the Battle Flag of the Confederacy, which had flown over the State of South Carolina Capital, was taken down.    

Silent Sam, a statue of a symbolic Confederate soldier (who fought against the United States of America), was erected on The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus in 1913.  In 1924, a gigantic sculpture of Confederate General Robert E. Lee (a slave-owner) leading a column of his soldiers (who fought against the United States of America) was completed on the side of Stone Mountain, Georgia.  In 1933, a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis (a slave owner) was erected on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin.  There are hundreds, if not thousands more, throughout the South.

What would we think if some German people started to talk nostalgically about their history from 1933-1945?  What if they started waving the Nazi flag as representative of German culture, pride, and tradition?  What if they built statues of some of their heroic leaders from that period?  I think we Americans would be shocked and dismayed.  Similarly, I am appalled when I see Silent Sam in McCorkle Park in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, my once and future home.