How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

by Clint Smith

Douglass remained a fierce critic of the Lost Cause in the immediate aftermath of the war and over the course of the rest of his life. In 1871, he spoke with great fervor about the danger of forgetting why the war was fought: We are sometimes asked, in the name of patriotism, to forget the merits of this fearful struggle, and to remember, with equal admiration, those who struck at the nation’s life, and those who struck to save it—those who fought for slavery, and those who fought for liberty and justice. I am no minister of malice. I would not strike the fallen. I would not repel the repentant; but may my right hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I forget the difference between the parties to that terrible, protracted, and bloody conflict. In 1931, W. E. B. Du Bois attacked the decision to erect Confederate monuments as ahistorical and irresponsible: The most terrible thing about War, I am convinced, is its monuments—the awful things we are compelled to build in order to remember the victims. In the South, particularly, human ingenuity has been put to it to explain on its war monuments, the Confederacy. Of course, the plain truth of the matter would be an inscription something like this: “Sacred to the memory of those who fought to Perpetuate Human Slavery.” But that reads with increasing difficulty as time goes on. It does, however, seem to be overdoing the matter to read on a North Carolina Confederate monument: “Died Fighting for Li...

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