I think there’s a problem with honoring anyone who supported mob justice (whether racist or not) on the site where the state legislature meets.
I agree that the decision should be left to local governments, but doesn’t South Carolina have any governors who supported the rule of law and the right to a jury trial before execution? How about Carroll Campbell or Fritz Hollings? They never lynched anybody, and either would make a fine statue. Neither ever once said that black people should “remain subordinate or be exterminated.”
Right, but at the time people thought this guy was cool enough that they took the trouble to erect a monument to him. We have the proof and it is worth remembering. What the OP is suggesting amounts to destruction of evidence.
Also worth remembering is the constellation of arguments that go along with these guys. As long as there remains a monument to them on their home turf, their source (or at least one of their champions) remains exposed to scrutiny and comparison. Remove them and the GOP will have an easier time with their revived “States Rights!” rallying cry, as it will be harder to trace the history of those kinds of positions to such scurrilous characters, and therefore harder to anticipate where those positions wind up.
That’s right! If we can’t remove every single monument to every single individual in history that was unfair to others not of her/his kind, we have no right to remove monuments dedicated to someone who supported lynching.
:rolleyes:
It isn’t history that is compromised when exposed to modern thinking, it is dogma that suffers. And that is a good thing.
Do you think the removals of Lenin statues from Eastern Europe after the fall of the USSR has somehow backfired by eliminating the “scrutiny” that he would have otherwise received had the statues remained?
:rolleyes: How many monuments to Genghis Khan or Egyptian pharaohs are there in the U.S., exactly? Also, what is your evidence that they had a racial ideology similar to any of the figures under discussion here?
Still I don’t think he gave a speech that said “You damn stupid niggers. etc. etc.”. And while I can see his arm being twisted to get rid of the KKK why would Forrestt be under any pressure to give a speech to blacks?
Why would anyone assume that the speech to a black group, and the speech demanding the Klan be dissolved (sincerely meant or not), are the same speech?
As to why Forrest spoke to this black group, I dunno, I see that Qin’s cite has no cite of its own backing up the text of that speech, and even if correct I can’t see that it has any bearing whatsoever on Forrest’s role on the Klan. Perhaps he had political ambitions and was trying to tell some voters what they wanted to hear. Perhaps someone close to him had the ambitions. Perhaps it was all just blowing smoke to cover his real association with the Klan.
Not making any excuses for Forrest, but he wasn’t the only Confederate officer who permitted murders of black prisoners. Read McPhersons The Battle Cry of Freedom. Marse Robert was perfectly willing to have troops mistreat black POWs after the Battle of the Crater, those that weren’t murdered out of hand, until Grant started doing the same things to Confederate POWs. Lee is highly overrated, both as a general and a human being.
Well, the reversals of European history are distinct from the American experience. We don’t have to tear down our monuments, it didn’t get to that point. It just isn’t quite that shameful, rotten as some of these guys are.
They didn’t have to tear down Lenin’s statue either. The question posed by the OP is – is it a good idea to get rid of public monuments to people who are now understood to be antithetical to American values.
Also, I am utterly mystified by this statement of yours in another post:
Why do we need to preserve evidence, in the form of a public monument that extols a person who by contemporary standards deserves no praise, that some people used to like the asshole? Evidence of what, for what?
The answer is: no, it isn’t worth it. Put that energy into making things better in the present rather than trying to blot out remembrance of the past.
Some of these things are a little outlandish, no? Tear down the monument and some people will start to find some part of the story hard to believe, or never hear of it in the first place. A monument to history will have gone missing.
Why are you in such a hurry to destroy historical particulars?
But you see, it’s often not a remembrance of the past. For NBF it is fake history, used simply to promulgate racism.
And there’s plenty of books and blogs and ect without monuments to evil racist men. One can also have a battlefield marker without glorifying the racist general who led one side.
Just thought I’d throw out an appropriate book referral: Lies Across America by James Loewen. Discusses Forrest, among others. For example, apparently the Fort Pillow historical center does not mention the massacre of African-American soldiers. I’d recommend it (the book, not the center).
And, without racism, what is left of the history of the South? It begins slavery-racist, it stays racist through the Jim Crow era, and some say it remains racist. Tear down all the monuments and people are supposed to believe… what? The whole place sprang into existence in 1975? Just forget that anything happened here? Nothing to see here, everyone move along, oh yeah almost forgot, STATES RIGHTS!!!
How do you imagine people will forget about the racist history of the South by the removal of monuments that don’t even mention racism? What is being preserved in many of these monuments is a false and glorious mythology of the South. Losing that is no real loss, IMO.
What, do you think the spirits of these guys are preserved in these monuments? Do you think that by razing property you can harm them? Do you subscribe to some kind of animism like the God damned 4th century Catholics tearing down the monuments of Rome? No one with authority over these matters asked for your opinion.