No Defense for McDonnell

Governor McDonnell's "Confederate History Month" proclamation was an indefensible historical whitewash.

I'm sorry Daivd, but McDonnell's confederate proclamation was obnoxious, even if more subtle than Gilmore's.

For one, it's a historical whitewash. I'll start with this: "the surviving, imprisoned and injured Confederate soldiers gave their word and allegiance to the United States of America, and returned to their homes and families to rebuild their communities in peace." That sort of whitewashes the actual aftermath of the War, in which the former Confederacy in fact sought to undermine, often through violence, the principal achievements of the War. That was true in Virginia as it was throughout the South.

What's worse is what was not said, which was that (as you note) the Confederacy was probably the worst “cause for which men ever fought” of the 19th century, whereas the declaration makes it sound honorable, which it was not (and I say this as someone whose parents are both from the South).

If a declaration on the Confederacy is incapable of saying the most fundamental thing about it--which is that it was a monstrous act of disunion in the cause of an even more monstrous system of racial slavery--then it is, in fact, better to just say nothing.