When my family moved from southwestern Ohio to northern Virginia in January 1963, it was the oddest sort of culture shock.
We were right in the middle of the Civil War centennial, which meant almost nothing in Ohio but was sort of a big deal in Virginia. In fact, the house my parents had purchased was in a subdivision that was sort of about the Civil War, or the War Between the States, as they called it in Virginia.
The neighborhood was called Mosby Woods.
Still is, in fact, although there seems to be a movement to change it.
It has become part of the drive to get rid of everything in the South that is seen as honoring the Confederacy. And I suppose Mosby Woods falls into that category, if only for the names of two of its streets – Plantation Parkway and Confederate Lane.
But there are plenty of others that have nothing to do with honoring the South. Two streets named after battles – Antietam and Shiloh – were Union victories, and if you were to tell anyone in Georgia “Sherman Street” honored the Confederacy, you wouldn’t be believed.
Another street name after a person makes no sense at all. Tecumseh was a Native American chief who died in 1813. Maybe the folks naming the street got confused because he formed a confederacy of tribes.
Or maybe, just maybe, they were being really sly. You see, Tecumseh was General Sherman’s middle name.
Seriously, though, there isn’t that much in the street names to offend people. I grew up on Atlanta Street, and my only regret was that Sherman Street didn’t intersect with us.
I suppose one problem difficult to cure is the name of the subdivision itself.
Mosby Woods.
John Singleton Mosby was a Virginia attorney who became famous as the leader of a guerilla unit that operated against Union troops in Northern Virginia. He was called the Gray Ghost for his ability to slip in and out of sight and was very effective for much of the war.
He hadn’t been a slaveholder. In fact, he disapproved of slavery, and in the half century he lived after the war was outspoken in his belief that the so-called “Lost Cause” had been less about states’ rights than about the right to own slaves.
Indeed, in 1894 he wrote to a former comrade that it was a waste of both money and time to erect monuments to Confederate heroes. He became an outcast in the South for supporting the Republican Party and he left Virginia for Washington, D.C., where he lived for the last 40 years of his life.
So why had he joined the Confederacy at all? Pretty much for the same reason Robert E. Lee did. Mosby considered himself a Virginian first and an American second.
It’s all part of a much bigger issue. How do we decide which historical figures are worthy of having statues erected to them or places named after them?
You see, there really isn’t anyone who doesn’t offend someone.
And even the ones who offend nearly everyone sometimes have reasons to keep their names. When John Lewis died last month, people suggested that the Selma bridge he had crossed in 1965 should be renamed for him.
The Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River had been named for a famous Ku Klux Klansman, and folks suggested it would be a double mitzvah to change it. But changing it at this point might just be confusing.
John Lewis was famous for crossing the John Lewis Bridge?
Well, the winners write history.
But it gets more and more ridiculous the further they take it. Twenty years ago, at the turning of the millennium, historians called Thomas Jefferson the greatest mind of the 18th Century.
He wrote maybe the most important line ever written.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Yes, Jefferson had flaws.
Major flaws.
He was, after all, a man of his time. He owned slaves and he had children with at least one of them. But in a world that still believed in the divine right of kings, Jefferson told the world that average people should have the right to determine their own destiny.
So do we tear down the Jefferson Memorial? Do we demolish the Washington Monument? After all, George owned slaves.
To me that’s an easy call. None of the Founding Fathers were traitors to the country and all believed in the potential greatness of the United States of America.
As for Mosby Woods, we can certainly change a couple of street names without reinventing the wheel.
There are good words that can fit a Southern motif. Magnolia, for example. Or Palmetto. Maybe even Pontchartrain.
If it matters to have them named after people, folks like Jimmy Carter shouldn’t offend anyone. If you want to go offbeat, how about Georgia native Oliver Hardy?
It shouldn’t be that big a deal.
There really are other problems a lot more worthy of our time.