The commission tasked by Congress with swabbing Confederate traces from the armed forces is recommending two ships be rechristened. As historians and activists argue over the next step, it’s worth remembering the unifying effect such names had on the America of 150 years ago and can have again today.

Confederate names for ships and army bases were powerful symbols of reunification in the post-Civil War period of Reconstruction. With talk of the nation being as divided now as any time since then, it’s still a worthy aspiration.

However, this reconciliation often came at the expense of the freedmen. One after another, Democratic states boosting the Lost Cause myth purged Republican blacks from office and erected statues to remind them of “their place” on the bottom rung of society.

It’s easy to say citizens shouldn’t have gone along with it, but black and white, they lived in fear of a common threat: “The South will rise again.” 

So, leaders chose not to dance on Confederate graves. If painting words on an ironclad helped prevent renewed bloodshed, it seemed like a good idea since no perfect one presented itself. Such acts bought time to ensure that victories won in war could be legislated in the next century of relative domestic tranquility.

This brings us to the first ship on the chopping block, the guided-missile cruiser United States Ship Chancellorsville, named for the battle where General Robert E. Lee won a victory for the Confederacy at the cost of his “right arm,” General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.

Today, Lee and Jackson are viewed as traitors along with Benedict Arnold, who won the first American victory in 1775 at a battle from which the class of ship the Chancellorsville belongs gets its name: Ticonderoga.

Arnold’s name was also stricken after he betrayed the patriot cause. Americans even defaced the headstones of the turncoat’s relatives, also called Benedict Arnold, and a stone boot that stands at the site of the fort refers to him only as “the ‘most brilliant soldier’ of the Continental Army.”

Those citizens would have sympathized with the impulse to strike Confederate honors. General Ulysses S. Grant would have, too, having said that as far as causes, slavery was “one of the worst for which a people ever fought and one for which there was the least excuse.”

We may wish the Civil War generation had done more to erase the Confederacy, but the nation grew tired of forever war and occupation. We don’t face the realities of their yesterday. We can only control our today and try to strike a better balance.

The thing is, Chancellorsville is one of the few Civil War clashes for which North and South used the same name. Therefore, removing it from the ship’s bow also erases the deaths of 1,606 Union troops. Couldn’t a way be found to commemorate their sacrifice and cast the cruiser in a more unifying light?

The commission also considered renaming the United States Ship Antietam, refraining because it was a Union victory that led to the Emancipation Proclamation. This was wise since the battle stands as the bloodiest day in American history, but it shows that impulses to delete the nation’s villains can threaten its heroes, too.

The second vessel, United States Naval Ship Maury, honors Matthew Fontaine Maury. He didn’t own slaves like Lee and Jackson. He did serve in the secessionist navy, but it’s not that contribution that earned him that oceanographic survey vessel and a crater on the moon.

Maury is known as the “Father of Modern Oceanography and Naval Meteorology” and “Scientist of the Seas.” In a world where we’re lectured about nuance, couldn’t we honor those contributions the same way we eat Caesar salads without endorsing Roman slavery?

Sinking the Chancellorsville and Maury would do nothing to right the wrongs of the past if it’s not handled with care. The Civil War generation resisted the urge to seek vengeance. Let’s see if we can follow their example and make reconciliation our lode star, too.