We should use both our weaknesses and strength to create a better America
Published 2:07 pm Tuesday, June 30, 2020
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BY SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER
On June 22, protesters tried to tear down Andrew Jackson’s statue in Lafayette Square across from the White House. In these times, does Jackson still deserve a place of honor?
Here is the case for Andrew Jackson. Presidential historians usually put him in the top ten of America’s presidents. He was arguably the most important American president between Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, because much like Lincoln, he preserved the Union.
When South Carolina decided following John C. Calhoun’s Doctrine of Nullification that it could decide which federal laws it would follow, it was Jackson who stood up and said our federal union must be preserved.
Jackson was our first non-aristocratic president. Orphaned at 14, he fought for everything he had, and he rose to our government’s highest office through the sheer force of personality and political courage.
Andrew Jackson was not perfect. In fact, he was at the center of the two original sins of this country: slavery and the treatment of Native Americans. But if we’re looking for perfection, we’re not likely to find it in American history, or the history of almost any country or in human nature. The historian Jon Meacham said that when Jefferson wrote, “all men are created equal,” he was almost certainly writing about all white men.
So what do we then do about the Jefferson Memorial? Or George Washington and his slaves? Some say Abraham Lincoln was slow to act on emancipation. What about Franklin D. Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II?
Let’s not just pick on presidents. What about congressmen who approved Jackson’s removal of the Cherokees and laws requiring racial segregation? And what about the people who elected those congressmen?
When decisions were made that we would not make or approve of today, some of which would be abhorrent today, do we try to erase those memories? Should we burn down Washington’s Monument and Jefferson’s Memorial? The historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., said that such “self-righteousness in retrospect is easy and cheap.”
Here’s what I believe we should do.
First, recognize that it’s always appropriate to review the places that we have named or the monuments that we’ve put up to see if there is something more appropriate in the context of today’s times.
As NAACP President Ben Hooks used to say, “America is a work in progress.” America changes. So can our monuments and the places we name.
Second, we should try to learn even from those incidents in our history that today we abhor. Each year, I invite to the Senate floor outstanding teachers of American history. They find the desk that Daniel Webster once used and the desk of the three Kennedy brothers.
Tennessee teachers look for my desk because Howard Baker and Fred Thompson once had it. And they go to the desk of Jefferson Davis, the Mississippi United States senator who resigned to become president of the Confederacy.
On that desk is a chop mark created by the sword of a Union soldier who began to destroy it and was stopped by his commanding officer, who said, “We’re here to save the Union, not to destroy it.”
I say keep Jefferson Davis’ desk right where it is. Learn from the story of senators who resigned to join the Confederacy and Union soldiers who occupied the Capitol and the commanding officer who said, “We’re here to save the Union.”
Do we really want to dishonor Jackson’s courage or Jefferson’s eloquence or Washington’s character or Lincoln’s vision or FDR’s leadership because they did or said some things that today we wouldn’t do or say?
To do so would be a terrible misunderstanding of American history and of human nature. It would be ahistorical.
Samuel Huntington, who was a Harvard professor of U.S. history and politics, wrote that most of our politics is about setting high goals for ourselves, such as “all men are created equal,” and then struggling with the disappointment of not reaching those goals.
In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln appealed to the “better angels of our nature.” If there are better angels, there are worse angels, too. Not just in Washington and Jefferson and Jackson and Roosevelt, but in each of us.
It is wiser to spend our time bringing out our best, which does not mean ignoring the worst. We should be honest about our weaknesses, but proud of our strengths. We should learn from both to create a better future for the United States of America.