Finally: acknowledging an important part of the story.

A columnist raises an important point about the memorials to ex-Confederates.

Please note that very important prefix: "ex-."

Now, there is no question that some of the memorials can be shown to be upraised middle fingers to Reconstruction. Some were indeed erected with bad intent, part of a celebration of the racist caste system which triumphed in the wake of the Union no longer having the energy to insist upon the principles of Reconstruction after Grant left the Presidency.

But.

The over-looked reality of the "TRAITORS!" howling from people whose disdain for Johnny Reb also clearly embraces Billy Yank involves two important factors:

First, none of the victorious Union leaders wanted treason trials. The men who had bled and watched comrades die in windrows across five Aprils tried not a single Confederate for treason. Ultimately, not even for Jeff Davis, and it took decades for him to encourage Southerners to be good Americans in the reunited republic--but even he did, however long it took him. The wisdom of the men whose determination broke the Confederacy into flinders and burned large parts of it to literal ash chose to spurn the gallows as justice.

Which moves me quickly to point two:

With a tiny number of exceptions barely worth consideration (google "Confederates in Brazil"), the defeated Confederates overwhelmingly accepted the verdict of the battlefield and embraced reconciliation.

And that was no small matter. Most civil wars feature post-credits scenes of vicious guerilla warfare and/or firing squads that that take years to shut down.

Yes, in the American South, while there was a bloody spasm of Klan violence, such episodes were either smashed to bits or even caused disgust among white southerners, causing its founder to renounce it and preach racial amity himself. All in all, ex-Confederates mourned their defeat and then pieced together lives as part of the re-United States.

Was it perfect? Of course not. Freed men and women were gradually bonded to a second-class citizenship that frequently involved terror and forced labor indistinguishable from slavery, and always denied their full dignity as citizens and human beings. Even white Southern Unionists watched as the Lost Cause erased them from history and turned every state south of the Ohio into Noble States' Rights Dixie.

The Union--which deserves the bulk of the blame for the state of affairs that evolved-- essentially accepted this state because it left the nation a Union. And the Spanish-American War and later the First World War saw that pay dividends as the sons of southern white men rallied to the flag their fathers had once fought against.

And now, a graduate of Washington and Lee University brings the reconciliation dimension to the discussion:

But with the Union victory, Lee submitted to federal authority and set an example of reconciliation for a defeated South. Lee’s post-war leadership of Washington College led the faculty to ask that his name be added to the school’s masthead. One hundred and fifty years later, Washington and Lee University’s faculty want to remove Lee’s name. This would be a mistake.

By accepting the invitation to be president of Washington College, Lee showed white southerners how to accept their defeat and resume their loyalty to the United States. Lee signed the amnesty oath on the same day he was inaugurated as president of Washington College.

As he wrote to the trustees, “It is particularly incumbent on those charged with the instruction of the young to set them an example of submission to authority.” The Confederacy’s greatest hope chose unity over division.

Lee raised money, attracted students from the North and South, reinvigorated the Honor Code, built a chapel, and enforced a policy against student misconduct that applied both off and on campus. He restored a ravaged college to financial solvency, annexed a law school, instituted new majors in journalism and business, and began instruction in modern languages.

In doing so, Lee set the course for the institution’s current status as a world-class university. Simply put, my school’s identity does not celebrate the Confederacy but champions an elite, liberal arts education that teaches students of diverse backgrounds and perspectives to think, do good and equip others to do the same.

By leading Washington College for the last five years of his life, Lee followed in George Washington’s footsteps by working toward national unity and “the healing of all dissensions.” To be sure, he achieved notoriety by turning down Lincoln’s offer to defend the nation established by Washington.

Lee instead chose to lead rebel forces in an effort to dissolve the American union. But in the final act of his life, he sought to heal, not divide. “I think it the duty of every citizen,” Lee told the trustees, “in the present condition of the Country, to do all in his power to aid in the restoration of peace and harmony.”

We have to figure out what kind of nation we want to shape in these tumultuous times.

Do we want one whose notions of justice demand constant atonement for sins but forever withholds forgiveness?

Or do we want one that holds out the hope of civic redemption and points to the better angels of our nature, suggesting that the repentant have something to teach as well?