Letter: Confederate statues distort history

A recent letter writer disparaged the "pious rectitude" of those who favor removing statues of Confederate heroes, blasting removal as the "eradication of Southern history." As a professional historian and a 10th generation Southerner, I am writing to offer a different interpretation.

In my view, Confederate monuments blatantly distort history. They sanctify the defense of slavery as a just and noble cause, and they served the post-Civil War effort to reinstitute white rule throughout the South. That effort to reinstitute white rule also used massive violence against African-Americans.

In the 1870s, when Yankee troops withdrew and Reconstruction withered, the white establishment launched what has been called "the last battle of the Civil War." (For the grim details, see the excellent book "Redemption" by Nicholas Lemann.) Thousands of blacks across the South were murdered in this coordinated campaign.

Here in South Carolina, Wade Hampton, the white supremacist Confederate general and later governor and U.S. senator, still has his giant equestrian statue on the Statehouse grounds. No mention is made of his role in destroying black rights, including the right to vote. Hampton's statue is joined on the Capitol lawn by that of Gov. Ben Tillman, who was a principal instigator of the killing of blacks.

If our aim is to preserve an honest history of the South, Tillman's statue should be accompanied by a plaque saying something like: "Tillman was elected by a whites-only franchise and was a violent racist who boasted about personally murdering black citizens."

Raymond Dominick

This story was originally published January 9, 2016 at 7:51 PM with the headline "Letter: Confederate statues distort history."