History exists. One cannot deny our history. Instead, we should read history, teach history, learn from history, and decide whether the lessons of history should be repeated or rejected. General Robert E. Lee urged the nation to move beyond the sorrowful period of the Civil War and discouraged the erection of statues in his honor. Nevertheless, statues were erected here and there to honor his leadership and in memory of the thousands who fought and died. In the North, statues also were erected to honor worthy heroes and leaders and to remember the fallen. Consider visiting the beautiful historic city of Galena, Illinois, site of Ulysses Grant’s home sometime! Visit Williamsburg, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and the thousands of other places along this nation’s roads and byways where people stood and fought for some belief.
We need historic sites and markers, statues, books, flags, monuments, holidays, and commemorative events to teach us about ourselves. It’s almost a biblical truth. Study the Old Testament and note various occasions when a pile of stones were heaped together “to serve as witness” to what happened in such a place.
Why should people who “don’t like a certain history” be allowed to get away with violent acts such as tearing down statues or destroying historic sites? It’s crazy. Why are we letting them pull down “stones of remembrance?”
We cannot deny what happened, right or wrong, but should we revise history? Erase history? It might be something the Germans would want to do about the Holocaust. It might be something the Italians would want to do about Mussolini’s tactics. Or the Russians might want to erase the era of Stalin’s regime. What about upstanding Americans who fought our Native American Indian brothers. Consider the Battle of Wounded Knee, the Battle of Little Bighorn, and meditate on Chief Seattle’s sorrowful words, “There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away....Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to restrain them. Thus it has ever been….”
Given those words, it is ever more important that we teach history to our children… in our schools and in our homes. We must teach restraint, common sense, good will, courtesy, as well as a commitment to arms. There are many situations we would do differently now that we look back and reflect. We must share the stories of our families with our children. We must tell them the stories of our nation.
I demand that history be a required subject in our schools! Some history is humorous, some down-right boring, but most events we remember were tragic events of anger or desperation. Ideally history should be taught by someone like retired history teacher David Dew of Fort Wayne, IN, who can make the facts of history as dramatic and exciting as any mystery or thriller.