For a legislator known as a consensus-builder and expected to try to mend deep rifts in Maryland politics, proposing to remove a plaque memorializing Marylanders who fought in the Civil War — from both sides — was a curious first step for Adrienne A. Jones (D-Baltimore County), the newly elected speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates.

As a Northerner transplanted to Maryland, I agree with her that the preamble inscribed on a plaque the Maryland Civil War Centennial Commission placed on a wall of the Maryland State House in 1964 is troublesome.

The preamble notes that the commission “did not attempt to decide who was right and who was wrong.” Well, the commission did not have to decide who was right and who was wrong. History had already done so. Any equivocation on the subject was misguided.

I disagree, however, with Jones’s position that it is improper to “memorialize” Marylanders who fought for the Confederacy. It is wrong to legitimize their cause. But remembrance of the thousands of who fought for the South serves a purpose — forgiveness and reconciliation — that is as important today as ever.

Jones is the first woman and the first African American to serve as speaker. The speaker serves as an ex officio member of the State House Trust, which oversees changes to the State Capitol. In her first action as a member of the trust, Jones proposed removing the 1964 plaque. That would be a mistake.

The plaque states that it is intended as “evidence for [Maryland’s] remembrance of her nearly 63,000 native sons who served in the Union forces and the more than 22,000 in those of the Confederacy in the War Between the States,” observing that they “tried to do their duty as they saw it.” By 1964, the last veteran of the Civil War had died, and the language of the plaque correctly reflected the fact that the time for judging individuals by the side they chose had long since passed.

A photograph of my great-great-grandfather Alexander Frantz hangs in my living room. He was from the Harrisburg, Pa., area and served with the 46th Regiment of the Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.

Like many Marylanders who fought for the South, he was a poor, uneducated farmer. He undoubtedly spent little time studying the issues before deciding to enlist in the Union Army. Had he grown up 40 miles to the south, he may have decided differently. Does that matter anymore?

I am sure Jones has taken the short journey up the road from her home in Baltimore County to the Gettysburg National Military Park. I’d urge her, however, to take a special trip to visit the State of Maryland monument, dedicated in 1994.

The monument is a bronze statue on a granite base depicting two wounded Marylanders, one Union and one Confederate, helping each other on the battlefield. The inscription reads: “Brothers again, Marylanders all.”

It is the same sentiment that the State House plaque attempts to convey, perhaps less artfully than if written today. There is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and Jones’s position that it is inappropriate to memorialize men who fought and died for the Confederacy threatens to make the racial and political divisions in Maryland even worse.

An iconic photograph from the 50th reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1913 shows Union and Confederate veterans of the battle shaking hands across the stone wall at the Angle, the area targeted by Pickett’s Charge and the high-water mark of the Confederacy.

The men on one side of the wall had not forgotten that the men on the other side once tried to kill them. But they understood at a level few of us can appreciate that the path to healing is through forgiveness and reconciliation, not through bitterness and condemnation.

The Civil War was fought over the institution of slavery. The wounds of slavery, including its legacy of systemic racism, have not healed. They will not heal until we abandon our obsession with revisiting the past in search of people to blame for problems that can be solved only in the present. And revisiting the past is what Jones’s proposal feels like.

We should let Confederate veterans rest in peace and let their descendants remember them with dignity. That can be done without glorifying their cause and will allow us to learn from the past without unnecessarily refighting old battles and reopening old wounds.

[Published as an op ed by the Washington Post on June 21, 2019 but not posted to my blog until December 18, 2019. The date of posting that appears above was backdated to place all posts in the order in which they were written.]