This is a useful and important point.  It is worthwhile,
however, to ask why the current exchange developed the way
that it did.  Since I bear some of the burden of provoking
this latest round of conversation, hopefully my perspective
will have some usefulness to you.

I am interested in the Confederate heritage groups because I
teach Virginia history at a Virginia university.  Many of my
students are education majors who aspire to (and given JMU's
success at placing them, it is safe to say will) teach in
the Virginia state school system.  Since quite a few of them
come to my classes with assumptions about Virginia history
derived from the public history of the state, it would be
irresponsible of me not to know something about it.  And
much of the public history of the state is influenced by
Confederate heritage groups.

Moreover, as an historian whose salary is paid by the people
of the State of Virginia, I feel considerable responsibility
to them.  When I write, I consider anyone interested in the
larger issues of Virginia history to be my audience.
Indeed, we are very fortunate in this state to have large
numbers of people who care passionately about its history
and heritage.  For me to decide to exclude many of those
people from my audience would be an act of arrogance--and
too, I think, a civic mistake.

Thus, the conversation about the flag in specific and
heritage groups in general allowed me a chance to hone my
thinking about the nature of the public history they
symbolize and produce.  Writing something permits me to
develop my thoughts in a deeper and more sophisticated
fashion--for me, anyway, the process of writing is very much
implicated in the process of thinking.  This strikes me as a
very useful forum in which to begin that process.

In my larger body of writing about Virginia, it seems to me
that the organizing theme whiche best structures Virginia's
disparate and lengthy history is "freedom."  After all, this
is a notion that speaks powerfully to Virginia's
contribution to our country.  To speak of freedom as a
public value, however, necessarily requires us to talk about
freedom's antithesis.  And here the irony is especially
rich, since not only were Virginians at the forefront of the
political movement which embedded freedom as a primary value
in our national public life, but they also were the largest
and wealthiest of the U.S. slave-holding societies.  As
Edmund Morgan remarked some 30 years ago, this is the
central paradox of Virginia history.  (I should note that
there are plenty of other potential organizing themes--this
one makes most sense to me, but it is by no means the only
master narrative available to us.)

Seen this way, however, it is insufficient to tell the story
of Virginia history as just the story of race or the story
of slavery.  Slavery, Jim Crow, and massive resistance are
clearly an important part of the story, but surely not the
only one.

Virginia's academic historians, I should note, DO speak to a
larger range of issues.  I would offer up, as an excellent
example, April Hatfield's fascinating new study of Virginia
in the larger Atlantic world, or Ed Bond's terrific study of
Virginia religion during the colonial period.  There are a
great many other similar examples.  One book that I think
strikes an excellent balance on these themes is Dalzell and
Dalzell, BUILDING MOUNT VERNON (or something like that).
Slavery is an important part of their story, but by no means
the only thing they talk about.

Warm regards,
Kevin

---- Original message ----
>Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 09:53:17 -0500
>From: John Cullom <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Virginia History
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>I have subscribed to the VA-HIST forum for several months
now.  I have come to the conclusion, from reading the
letters, that the essence of Virginia History is either
slavery or racism.  Surely there is more to Virginia History
than that.
>
>John Cullom
>Catonsville, MD
>
>To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see
the instructions
>at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University

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