History and whitewashing truth

It is a measure of the warped world in which the American government now exists that the president in August complained bitterly about the Smithsonian Institution, that magnificent collection of 21 museums and galleries. What did the Smithsonian do that so offended the commander in chief? Apparently the Smithsonian - including the iconic National Museum of African American History and Culture - is too focused on “how bad slavery was.”

Let that sink in. The president is infuriated that we are ignoring the positive aspects of being bought, sold, beaten and forced to dwell in bondage from birth.

As my rage began to boil up yet again, I paused for a moment to wonder what a certain officer in the Civil War would have thought.

His name was William Toomey and he was one of the “Boys of ’61.” An Irish immigrant, he lived in Dunkirk, N.Y., and, at 35, had a wife and five children. He signed up for Company E of the New York 72nd Infantry’s Third Regiment in May of 1861, barely a month after the war began. He mustered into the Union Army with his friends and neighbors, and, possibly because of his age, Toomey began military life as a second lieutenant. Within 14 months he was the company captain.

He was my great-great grandfather.

In the three years of his service, Toomey would fight in many of the most horrific battles of the Civil War. At Gettysburg, while amidst the bloodbath that became the war’s turning point, his sword broke and he plucked another from a dead soldier to fight on - the same sword that is my family’s prized possession. The Wilderness, the battle that took place in dense forest that caught fire and burned alive many soldiers. Cold Harbor, where the Union side lost 7,000 men, most in the first eight ferocious minutes.

Capt. William Toomey

The war resulted in about 700,000 dead and brought about the end of slavery. Toomey mustered out with his company in 1864 during a day-long lull in the battle of Petersburg. I suspect by that time he had had enough, had seen enough and he certainly had done enough.

I can only speculate why he joined the Army to begin with. After all, most of the Irish who came to America had already fled for their lives from their native land. Toomey emigrated from County Cork, Ireland, and either lived through or certainly knew about the horrendous suffering of Ireland’s “Great Hunger,” the Irish Potato Famine (1845-1849). For what sets the famine apart from others is that its enormous mortality rate (400,000 died in 1847 alone) occurred at least in part because England continued selling Irish crops abroad rather than use them to feed the starving.

With the knowledge of that fresh hell, who wouldn’t sympathize with the enslaved?

Yet here we are, more than 150 years past the Civil War, with a president bent on a wholesale whitewash of our troubled, racist history. The parks have begun to take down exhibits on slavery and Native Americans that do not promote a “positive view” of our past. The most famous picture of the horrors of slavery, that of an enslaved man whose back was crisscrossed with scars, is being removed from exhibitions. And why? Because the exhibits tell the hard truth. That said, taking them down cannot snuff out the facts, now or ever.

Captain Toomey lived to have two more children and died in 1901, at the age of 75, at the Erie, Penn., home of his daughter Joanna, my great-grandmother. He was honored to the end of his days for his leadership during the war.

But until several years ago, I had never seen a picture of him in uniform. My cousin sent it, and I showed the picture to my son Tim, who now teaches history in an urban public high school (and unsurprisingly, knows nearly everything about the Civil War). Even his students had the same reaction as I when he showed them the image. “You have his hair!” they exclaimed.

And, I think, Captain Toomey’s willingness to do the right thing – something our country, and certainly this White House, could use more of.