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Va. Scraps Tribute to Confederacy Gilmore's Salute Includes Unionists
By R.H. Melton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 21, 2001; Page A01
RICHMOND, March 20 -- Gov. James S. Gilmore III (R) discarded Virginia's Confederate History Month proclamation today and replaced it with a tribute to both black and white Civil War combatants that expressly denounces slavery as the root cause of the four-year conflict.
"Everybody who needs to be honored can recognize honor in this proclamation," Gilmore said of the official certificate of recognition designating April as a month of "remembrance of the sacrifice and honor of all Virginians who served in the Civil War."
Confederate heritage groups promptly denounced Gilmore's revised proclamation as a capitulation to the Virginia NAACP, which last year threatened a statewide tourism boycott over the governor's Confederate History Month designation, despite its specific reference to the horrors of slavery.
"Gilmore has knuckled under to the NAACP," said Bragdon Bowling, of Richmond, the second-highest officer in the state chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. "Basically, he's done their bidding by honoring people who invaded this state and murdered, raped and pillaged. It's a cop-out, a sellout."
Striking at a core belief of the Confederate remembrance groups, Gilmore expanded the resolution to say for the first time "that had there been no slavery there would have been no war." Many heritage groups say the primary cause of the war was a constitutional conflict over states' rights.
Black leaders generally hailed Gilmore's revised proclamation as a positive step that could also be a political boost to the white conservative Republican who recently assumed the national chairmanship of the GOP and may have his eye on a U.S. Senate seat.
Emmitt Carlton, of Alexandria, the immediate past president of the state NAACP, said Gilmore's revision was a "more balanced resolution" than the one issued by former governor George Allen (R), who sparked an outcry from civil rights groups with his 1997 Confederate History Month proclamation, the third of his term that failed to include any mention of slavery. Allen, now Virginia's junior U.S. senator, later apologized.
Assuming the governorship in 1998, Gilmore amended the Allen designation to include a reference to slavery, saying it "degraded the human spirit [and] is abhorred and condemned by Virginians."
Even with the change, some civil rights advocates continued to be irritated by the official praise for the Confederate cause. Their anger peaked last year, when the 30,000-member NAACP threatened a boycott similar to the South Carolina protest over the Confederate battle flag that flew atop the state Capitol.
For Gilmore, who won election with considerable black voter support, the NAACP boycott threat was a painful turning point in an administration that prided itself on racial inclusion.
It reminded Gilmore's modern Virginia that age-old wounds of racial intolerance had not yet healed. At one point in early April, black leaders held a news conference at the state Capitol here denouncing Gilmore on the Confederate proclamation at the very moment he was in his office downstairs signing the bill for the January holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
For years, King had been honored on the same day as southern Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. At Gilmore's urging, the legislature changed that.
Gilmore averted a boycott with a pledge to rethink the proclamation. As recently as today, he conferred with former governor L. Douglas Wilder (D), the nation's first elected black governor.
"The governor is trying to show the Civil War was an American tragedy," Wilder said. "I hope this stops it from being a cause celebre for one group or another. It was his intention to clear the air, and I think it does clear the air."
Like the previous April proclamations, the latest version notes that Virginia was the epicenter of the war from the time Richmond became the Confederate capital in April 1861 to the fall of the last capital in Danville in April 1865.
The new proclamation also salutes Virginians on both sides who "distinguished themselves . . . fought with bravery . . . and sacrificed their lives in defense of their deeply held beliefs." Lee and Jackson also get their customary tributes.
But it also includes the tale of Sgt. William H. Carney, of Norfolk, who fled slavery to join the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers and was awarded the Medal of Honor for valor at the siege of Fort Wagner, "where he was struck by three bullets," the proclamation said.
Gilmore said that not issuing a proclamation this year was never an option because logically he would have had to cancel the hundreds of declarations he issues for other groups throughout the year.
Toni-Michelle Travis, an African American who teaches government at George Mason University, said any aspirations for federal office that Gilmore may have could be bolstered by what she called "his effort to reach out."
"It's an olive branch," she said, "but he's thinking of higher office."
Gilmore conceded that his new proclamation would not please all sides -- "I doubt that anybody is totally happy with everything," he said -- and even his African American allies quibbled with some of the new language.
Opposition was strongest from the heritage groups. "We're going to be there every year on this, I promise you," Bowling said. "This is an outright betrayal of all Confederate soldiers in Virginia."
>>>I don't care if he did this to curry favor with Black voters, damn it, Gilmore DID THE RIGHT THING! We need to view the Civil War for what it was in our history: a national tragedy where people on both sides fought and died and that slavery was, if not the core issue, certainly fairly near to the heart of the question.
We need less of this rose-tinted lens offerings of the noble cavaliers of the antebellum South valiantly and gloriously defending states rights and their right to a damn fine mint julep on the veranda while the darkies sang gospel songs in the background.
The previous pandering to the glories of the Confederacy is akin to Reagan's visit to Bitburg to pay homage to the poor fallen German soldier when it was well established that a number of those graves were filled with the murderers of the SS.
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