Highlighted Major Speeches
Remarks at the Confederate Memorial
June 3, 1990
This
is by no means my first visit to this spot.
The Confederate Memorial has had a special place in my life for many
years. During the bitter turbulence of the early and mid1970's I
used to come here quite often. I had recently left the Marine Corps
and was struggling to come to grips with my service in Vietnam, and
with the misperceptions that seemed rampant about the people with
whom I had served and what, exactly we had attempted to accomplish.
And there were many, many times that I found myself drawn to this
deeply inspiring memorial, to contemplate the sacrifices of others,
several of whom were my ancestors, whose enormous suffering and
collective gallantry are to this day still misunderstood by most
Americans.
I used to walk the perimeter of this monument, itself designed by a man who had fought for the Confederacy and who, despite international fame as a sculptor, decided to be buried beneath it, and I would comprehend that worldwide praise can never substitute for loyalties learned and tested under the tribulations of the battlefield. I would study the inscription:
NOT FOR FAME OR REWARD, NOT FOR PLACE OR FOR RANK, NOT LURED BY AMBITION OR GOADED BY NECESSITY, BUT IN SIMPLE OBEDIENCE TO DUTY AS THEY UNDERSTOOD IT, THESE MEN SUFFERED ALL, SACRIFICED ALL, DARED ALL, AND DIED --
words written by a Confederate veteran who had
later become a minister, and knew that this simple sentence spoke
for all soldiers in all wars, men who must always trust their lives
to the judgment of their leaders, and whose bond thus goes to
individuals rather than to stark ideology, and who, at the end of
the day that is their lives, desire more than anything to sleep with
the satisfaction that when all the rhetoric was stripped away, they
had fulfilled their duty -- as they understood it. To their
community. To their nation. To their individual consciences. To
their family. And to their progeny, who in the end must not only
judge their acts, but be judged as their inheritors.
And so
I am here, with you today, to remember. And to honor an army that
rose like a sudden wind out of the little towns and scattered farms
of a yet unconquered wilderness. That drew 750,000 soldiers from a
population base of only five million-less than the current
population of Virginia alone. That fought with squirrel rifles and
cold steel against a much larger and more modern force. That saw 60
percent of its soldiers become casualties, some 256,000 of them
dead. That gave every ounce of courage and loyalty to a leadership
it trusted and respected, and then laid down its arms in an instant
when that leadership decided that enough was enough. That returned
to a devastated land and a military occupation. That endured the
bitter humiliation of Reconstruction and an economic alienation from
the rest of this nation which continued for fully a century,
affecting white and black alike.
I am
not here to apologize f or why they fought, although modern
historians might contemplate that there truly were different
perceptions in the North and South about those reasons, and that
most Southern soldiers viewed the driving issue to be sovereignty
rather than slavery. In 1860 fewer than five percent of the people
in the South owned slaves, and fewer than twenty percent were
involved with slavery in any capacity. Love of the Union was
palpably stronger in the South than in the North before the war --
just as overt patriotism is today -- but it was tempered by a strong
belief that state sovereignty existed prior to the Constitution, and
that it had never been surrendered. Nor had Abraham Lincoln ended
slavery in Kentucky and Missouri when those border states did not
secede. Perhaps all of us might reread the writings of Alexander
Stephens, a brilliant attorney who opposed secession but then became
Vice President of the Confederacy, making a convincing legal
argument that the constitutional compact was terminable. And who
wryly commented at the outset of the war that "the North today
presents the spectacle of a free people having gone to war to make
freemen of slaves, while all they have as yet attained is to make
slaves of themselves."
Four
years and six hundred thousand dead men later the twin issues of
sovereignty and slavery were resolved. A hundred years after that,
the bitterness had vented itself to the point that we can fairly say
the emotional scars have healed. We are a stronger, more diverse,
and genuinely free nation. We are also a different people. As we
gather here to commemorate the most turbulent crisis our country has
ever undergone, it's interesting to note that a majority of those
now in this country are descended from immigrants who arrived after
the war was fought.
And so
those of us who carry in our veins the living legacy of those times
have also inherited a special burden. These men, like all soldiers,
made painful choices and often paid for their loyalty with their
lives. It is up to us to ensure that this ever-changing nation
remembers the complexity of the issues they faced, and the
incredible conditions under which they performed their duty, as they
understood it.
I'm
pleased that many friends and members of my own family are here with
me today, including my wife, whose family was in Eastern Europe
during the War between the States but who herself served in Vietnam
and whose father fought on Iwo Jima. And I would also like to say a
special thanks to my good friend Nelson Jones for sharing this day
with us. Nelson is a fellow Marine, a fellow alumnus of both the
Naval Academy and the Georgetown Law Center, and like so many others
here a child of the South. The last twenty five years in this
country have shown again and again that, despite the regrettable and
well-publicized turmoil of the Civil Rights years, those Americans
of African ancestry are the people with whom our history in this
country most closely intertwines, whose struggles in an odd but
compelling way most resemble our own, and whose rights as full
citizens we above all should celebrate and insist upon.
But
more than anything else, I am compelled today to remember a number
of ancestors who lie in graves far away from Arlington. Two died
fighting for the Confederacy -- one in Virginia and the other in a
prisoner camp in Illinois, after having been captured in Tennessee.
Another served three years in the Virginia cavalry and survived,
naming the next child to spring from his loins Robert E. Lee Webb, a
name that my grandfather also held and which has passed along in
bits and pieces through many others, such as my cousin, Roger Lee
Webb, present today, and my son, James Robert, also present. And
another, who fought for the Arkansas infantry and then the Tennessee
Cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest. And, to be fully ecumenical,
another, who had moved from Tennessee to Kentucky in the 1850's, and
who fought well and hard as an infantry Sergeant in the Union army.
We
often are inclined to speak in grand terms of the human cost of war,
but seldom do we take the time to view it in an understandable
microcosm. Today I would like to offer one: The "Davis Rifles" of
the 37th Regiment, Virginia infantry, who served under Stonewall
Jackson. one of my ancestors, William John Jewell, served in this
regiment, which was drawn from Scott, Lee, Russell and Washington
counties in the southwest corner of the state. The mountaineers were
not slaveholders. Many of them were not even property owners. Few of
them had a desire to leave the Union. But when Virginia seceded, the
mountaineers followed Robert E. Lee into the Confederate Army.
1,490
men volunteered to join the 37th regiment. By the end of the war, 39
were left. Company D, which was drawn from Scott county, began with
112 men. The records of eight of these cannot be found. 5 others
deserted over the years, taking the oath of allegiance to the Union.
2 were transferred to other units. of the 97 remaining men, 29 were
killed, 48 were wounded, 11 were discharged due to disease, and 31
were captured by the enemy on the battlefield, becoming prisoners of
war. If you add those numbers up they come to more than 97, because
many of those taken prisoner were already wounded, and a few were
wounded more than once, including William Jewell, who was wounded at
Cedar Mountain on August 9, 1862, wounded again at Sharpsburg
(Antietam) on September 17, 1862, and finally killed in action at
Chancellorsville on May 3, 1863.
The
end result of all this was that, of the 39 men who stood in the
ranks of the 37th Regiment when General Lee surrendered at
Appomattox, none belonged to Company D, which had no soldiers left.
The
Davis Rifles were not unique in this fate. Such tragedies were
played out across the landscape of the South. To my knowledge, no
modern army has exceeded the percentage of losses the Confederate
army endured, and only the Scottish regiments in World War One, and
the Germans in World War Two, come close. A generation of young men
was destroyed. one is reminded of the inscriptions so often present
on the graves of that era: "How many dreams died here?"
There
are at least two lessons for us to take away from such a day of
remembrance. The first is one our leaders should carry next to their
breasts, and contemplate every time they f ace a crisis, however
small, which puts our military at risk. it should echo in their
consciences, from the power of a million graves . It is simply this:
You hold our soldiers' lives in sacred trust. When a citizen
has sworn to obey you, and follow your judgment, and walk onto a
battlefield to defend the interests you define as worthy of his
blood, do not abuse that awesome power through careless policy,
unclear objectives, or inflexible leadership.
The
second lesson regards those who have taken such an oath, and who
have honored the judgment of their leaders, often at great cost.
Intellectual analyses of national policy are subject to constant
re-evaluation by historians as the decades roll by, but duty is a
constant, frozen in the context of the moment it was performed. Duty
is action, taken after listening to one's leaders, and weighing risk
and fear against the powerful draw of obligation to family,
community, nation, and the unknown future.
We,
the progeny who live in that future, were among the intended
beneficiaries of those frightful decisions made so long ago. As
such, we are also the caretakers of the memory, and the reputation,
of those who performed their duty -- as they understood it -- under
circumstances too difficult for us ever to fully comprehend.
