The Chief’s Corner, Charles R. Bowery Jr.

Army History ^ | Fall, 2020 | Charles R. Bowery, Jr.

[GreyFriar]

I n the wake of the deaths of George Floyd and other people of color, America continues to undergo a reckoning with our nation’s original sin: racism and white supremacy. Recent events have laid bare the brutal truth that systemic inequalities and state-sanctioned violence have continued to oppress people of color in our country. In the midst of this national conversation, the history of the United States Army has come front and center, largely because of the Army’s experience in the American Civil War. By May 1861, sixty-five of eighty-six southern West Point cadets had followed their seceded home states out of the Union. At the start of the war, there were 824 officers on the Army’s active list. Of the 296 who resigned their commissions out of sympathy for their southern home states, 184 fought for the Confederacy as officers. Out of some nine hundred West Point graduates then in civilian life, ninety-nine joined the Confederate Army as well.

After the Civil War, the nation’s embrace of the myth of the Lost Cause, widely seen by white people to be the consummation of national reconciliation, led the Army to celebrate the Confederacy in both formal and informal ways. During the Jim Crow era, as the nation mobilized for two world wars, the Army named a number of new posts for Confederates. Some of these men served in the antebellum U.S. Army, while some did not. In 1929, the Army authorized units to trace lineages to Confederate forces and allowed those units to depict Confederate names for certain campaigns on their battle streamers. It is perhaps the strongest evidence of the deep hold of the Lost Cause on the American imagination that the Army’s leadership saw nothing wrong with celebrating people who resigned and took up arms against the Constitution.

As we prepare to open the National Museum of the United States Army (NMUSA), the Center of Military History (CMH) has considered very carefully how we interpret the stories of the thousands of Americans who, from 1860 to 1865, chose to fight against this country in the service of a new country that promised to preserve chattel slavery. We are confident that all of our exhibit areas address the complexity of the Civil War and our nation’s other conflicts, highlighting the stories of all Americans who have served, without glorifying or celebrating the accomplishments of our enemies. In another important step toward a more honest understanding of our past, the Secretary of Defense has banned the display of Confederate symbols across the military services, but much more remains to be done. It is vital that we continually remind ourselves of the cause for which white Southerners fought in the Civil War. The Army has a laudable record of expanding diversity and inclusion in many respects, especially over the past thirty years, yet it would be a mistake to think that racism and inequality have been eradicated from our ranks. We have ended exclusions of LGBTQ citizens from serving openly, and we have opened combat roles to women, but this work is not done. Our community of historians, museum professionals, and archivists must be leaders in a new campaign in the ongoing battle for civil rights and social justice. We can lead in two ways. First, we must continue to strive to diversify our community so that we can amplify the voices of women, people of color, and LGBTQ colleagues in a field that has been dominated by straight white men. As the rest of the Army becomes more diverse, we must keep pace so that our products and services speak to all who serve. In this way, we can continue to educate and inspire our force and allow them not only to take strength from the best of our history and heritage, but also to continue to ask hard questions about our past.

Second, we must continue to innovate in our published historical products, historical programs, and museums in order to educate the rest of the federal government and the nation about its Army. CMH occupies a powerful position of influence in this space, especially in the digital age. Visitors to our museums and readers of our products, both in print and online, will expect to see how we deal with these aspects of the Army’s past. By confronting difficult topics in our history, and telling the stories of all who have served, we serve the nation by strengthening civil-military relations at all levels.

My recent conversations with our work force and with members of Career Program 61 leave me inspired and confident that we will continue to move the Army History Program in the right direction. In 1968, American author James Baldwin remarked, “The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.” In no community is this statement truer than in the profession of arms—including our fellow citizens in uniform and the dedicated civilian employees who support them. In these difficult times, I am reminded daily that practitioners of history have an immense responsibility to help our society understand our shared past. We can best do that through rigor, subjectmatter and technical expertise, and an emphasis on inclusion.

[Chainmail]

I was also a Lead Investigator for the Marine Corps IG later in my career. That guy has the look - and coupled with his very suspicious editorial, all my alarms go off.

[Tell It Right]

That's not true. Perhaps Antonio Johnson is the first person we have the name of on record as having slaves (from the Virginia court declaring his indentured servant to being "indentured servant for life" against his will).

As early as the first few English settlements there were whites brought here against their will from the streets of England -- often young runaways or orphans.

[xzins]

The Army is shaped by the party in power during its time in power. This is especially true in the higher ranks that require nomination and congressional approval. Ultimately, though, as President Lincoln found, the object of an Army is to win wars. It took a long, bloody search before Lincoln could identify Grant as a warrior who wins. We had the same issue in WWII with Patton and Eisenhower. After a while, winning was the ultimate issue for an Army.

Political appointments and promotions aren’t necessarily good fighters. Pretending every soldier has the same physical or mental ability does not make it so, and thus it injures the warfighting capability of a unit.

The purpose of our military is to win wars. Period.