Allocating public honor: The cases of Benedict Arnold and Philipe

Allocating public honor is no small issue.  Consider two possible candidates for such honor.  The first is Benedict Arnold.  Given that he is an eponym for traitorous conduct, it is no surprise that there are no monuments honoring him in the United States.  But consider the almost certain possibility that there would be no United States were it not for his courageous leadership at the Battle of Saratoga.  Not only were the British forces defeated; it is also the case that the victory spurred the then-onlooking French to decide that the American secessionists were worth investing in.  There  can be little doubt that the French support was absolutely vital to winning American independence.  As Lin-Manuel Miranda has brought to our collective attention, there was not only the figure of Lafayette, but also, at least as importantly, the aid given by Rochembeau and the Franch navy in order to prevail at the Battle of Yorktown.  Had Arnold's generalship not prevailed, all might have been lost.  Had he died shortly thereafter, there can be little doubt that he'd be remembered, perhaps even earning a commemorative stamp of a plate block devoted to "Heroes of the American Revolution."  So why should the “mere” fact that Arnold, a genuine hero and contributor to the reality of the United States of America circa 1777,  decided that he would remain loyal to King George III after all deprive him of even an iota of recognition that one might argue is his due?  No doubt the question appears odd, even bizarre.  But would honoring Arnold be any more bizarre than the fact that the United States Postal Service in 1995 published a plate block of stamps devoted, in 12-point type to the Civil War--in 10-point type to the War Between the State--and included stamps honoring, among others, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis?  Were they really more worthy of “commemoration” than Benedict Arnold?  Had any of them really served the country they had pledged loyalty to so well as Arnold had through the Battle of Saratoga.

The second candidate is Field Marshall Philppe Petain of France, the so-called “Lion of Verdun” in recognition of the key role he played in the ultimate defense of France and defeat of Germany during World War I.  As a result, he was honored by the City of New York with a ticker-tape parade down Broadway in New York City, which in turn was commemorated by a  plaque in a series that recognized everyone who had garnered such a tribute down what was  labeled the “Canyon of Heroes.”  Needless to say, most people today remember Petain, if at all, as the collaborationist head of the Vichy regime during World War II.  A committee appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio to consider a number of New York monuments, including those of  Christopher Columbus in Columbus Circle and of Theodore Roosevelt in front of the Museum of Natural History, recommended that reference to the “Canyon of Heroes” be removed from all 206 of the various plaques recognizing those who had received ticker-tape parades.  They did not, however, recommend the removal of Petain’s particular plaque, either because it is thought to be part of a historical record of persons who have been so honored, perhaps because they feared that some of the remaining 205 honorees might also be found to have had feet of clay should they be closely examined.  So the Solomonic compromise was to acknowledge that he had received a ticker-tape parade while eliminating the suggestion that anyone receiving such a parade was necessarily a “hero.”

As with Arnold, Petain’s initial heroism was completely negated by his later conduct.  He was stripped of the equivalent of the “honorary degree” as a “hero” awarded him by New York; perhaps we should analogize this to the withdrawal by a number of universities of honorary degrees conferred on the hitherto philanthropic Bill Cosby upon discovery that he was also a serial sexual predator.  Reputation—and consequent “honor”—is always subject to revision, either because of after-acquired information or later conduct or simply revisions in our estimation of what was long known to be true.  Dramatic recent examples include Woodrow Wilson and John C. Calhoun, each now “dishonored,” in a quite literal sense, by Princeton and Yale, respectively, by the renaming of programs and colleges.  Most recently, Millard Fillmore, Buffalo's contribution to the White House, was stripped by the State University of New York at Buffalo from one of its central buildings, presumably because he had signed the so-called Compromise of 1850 that included an even more tyrannical Fugitive Slave Act than the first one of 1793, should that be possible.  So why should Fillmore deserve honor merely because he was one of our "accidental" presidents, getting there by the death of the "real" presidents and, just as importantly, having done nothing as president to balance out the support of the Fugitive Slave Act.  Though, of course, one of the principal rock venues of all time was on Fillmore St. in San Francisco, presumably named by grateful Californians whose entry to the Union, as a free state, was another part of the Compromise.

Might one argue that Arnold does in fact deserve some (grudging) recognition as an American hero, even if we must combine that with appropriate caveats?  So, then, what about Petain?  If one believes that defeat of Germany was essential during World War I, then should we continue to pay due homage to the Lion of Verdun?  If we answer (some version of) “Hell, no!!” is not the reason that collaboration with what most of us continue (correctly) to view as the baseline for absolute evil makes one, in the most literal sense, dishonorable?  Petain presumably was not a Nazi himself, but, rather, came to the conclusion that it was in the interest of “the French” to accept the reality of their defeat and therefore to accept as well the creation of the puppet Vichy government that he headed.  Most of us no doubt prefer Charles de Gaulle.  I have no problem with accepting that argument.  But, to put it mildly, it is thoroughly political and, as with all political arguments, it is presumably open to argument.  And one can ask about its application to many other examples.

Barack Obama notably informed Americans, following the election debacle of 2010, that politics always involves compromise; he pointed out that there would have been no United States without accepting the reality that his wife’s ancestors would continue to be held in bondage.  He is surely correct, and we can debate to this very day whether what William Lloyd Garrison called the “covenant with death and agreement with Hell” was worth it.  But let us not deny the realities undergirding the United States.  If we reject Charles Blow’s recent remarkable column, “Yes, Even George Washington,  denouncing the “Father of our Country” as just one more slaveholder, and reply that Washington, after all, won American independence, then why not recognize that Benedict Arnold has his own claim to being honored by Americans grateful for independence as (or, perhaps, if ) they celebrate July 4?  And if sophisticated “realists” say even today that American collaboration with dictators and thugs is “necessary and proper” in order to achieve the ends of American foreign policy, then why, exactly, draw the line at Petain?  I do not deny that there are good answers as to why Petain is different, say, from collaborators with Josef Stalin during World War II, including, of course, the United States.  But the answers need to be spelled out rather than blithely assumed.

The present moment invites a national conversation raising the most fundamental questions of how Americans wish to define themselves.  As Oliver Wendell Holmes reminded us, “We live by symbols.”  Part of de Gaulle’s genius was to redefine France as a nation of resisters instead of the collaborationists that all too many were, led by Petain but, in fact including later President Francois Mitterand and a variety of lesser worthies.  And, of course, the United States quickly snatched up Werner van Braun as an honored contributor to the weaponry of the Cold War.  No doubt it was considered in bad taste, in Huntsville, Alabama, to bring up van Braun's collaboration with the Nazi regime.

History is the reality of the almost literally endless reconsideration and what Joseph Schumpeter, in a different context, called “the creative destruction” of symbols.  That destruction is inherent to the process by which societies choose, sometimes thorough solemn institutional deliberation, sometimes by the spontaneous action of mass movements and protests, to redefine themselves and instantiate their most fundamental commitments.   As Paul Simon put it, we are living in what, in its own way, is an “age of miracles and wonders.” It poses the most fundamental of Socratic questions, “How shall we live, and whom shall we choose to honor?