# Should the names of Confederate figures be removed from public places of honor? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 29, 2016, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544 "2016-03-29T17:51:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2016, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/81 "2016-03-30T20:29:11Z")
> [@madmonk28](#): > > If Southern Pride is based on a treasonous war to protect slavery, maybe they shouldn’t be proud of it? How about William Faulkner, Harper Lee and Robert Johnson as better sources for southern pride? > [@](#): > > For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago. – [William Faulkner](http://discerninghistory.com/2013/06/reliving-the-battle-of-gettysburg-william-faulkner-quote/) Of course, he meant and should have said, “For every **white** Southern boy.” ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/82 "2016-03-31T00:08:45Z")
While I have no problem with communities deciding to rename things currently known as “The Robert E. Lee Mini-Mall” or “Bedford Forrest Bouncy Castle”, I stand foursquare against any attempt to change the name of the southern perennial shrub known as [“Confederate Rose”](http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/southerngarden/hibiscus.html).\* \*while lots of Southerners think the name honors the Confederacy that went to war with the U.S., it actually refers to the plant’s southeast Asian origin (the Malay Confederacy). ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/83 "2016-03-31T00:30:21Z")
> [@Revenant\_Threshold](#): > > When you don’t have anything named after slave owners? > > I’m honestly surprised this apparently seems like a slippery slope. I don’t really want to celebrate slave owners. Not even in the face of tradition. “Gosh, but it’s been like that for so _long_, honestly can’t we just not worry about it” is not an argument that holds much water with me. It’s kind of a big deal. Why stop with those with ties to slaveholding? How about other bad things? Kennedy was a philanderer and an adulterer; his father was a bootlegger, a man, likely, with plenty of blood on his hands, should we remove “Kennedy” from all buildings, schools, parks, etc.? As someone pointed out earlier, you are indeed judging people with the morality of another time. It’s hard enough for people to be great in their own time, but for them to be great when measured against some future morality, that seems ridiculous. I think it’s safe to say that with everyone we celebrate from history, we don’t think, “Well, he really was an amazing A, and of course he was a pure and noble saw in every other aspect of his life and thinking, too.” ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/84 "2016-03-31T00:43:41Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > Why stop with those with ties to slaveholding? How about other bad things? Kennedy was a philanderer and an adulterer; his father was a bootlegger, a man, likely, with plenty of blood on his hands, should we remove “Kennedy” from all buildings, schools, parks, etc.? > > As someone pointed out earlier, you are indeed judging people with the morality of another time. It’s hard enough for people to be great in their own time, but for them to be great when measured against some future morality, that seems ridiculous. I think it’s safe to say that with everyone we celebrate from history, we don’t think, “Well, he really was an amazing A, and of course he was a pure and noble saw in every other aspect of his life and thinking, too.” You’re right, of course, that nearly everyone would fall short when judged by modern sensibilities, but the confederates were particular assholes. Sundering the nation, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands, to enshrine slavery. That’s laughably evil. That’s like cartoony evil. Being a moderate shitheel by modern standards is expected, but the confederates were like the world’s biggest shitheels _at the time they lived_. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/85 "2016-03-31T00:44:56Z")
> [@Drum\_God](#): > > See, this is the problem I see people getting into. Washington and Jefferson owned slaves. They were not saints, but they were products of their time. Even Lincoln was hardly a civil rights activist in the modern sense. He freed the slaves, but he would never have considered a black person his peer. > > No one could be honored if we expect absolute modern purity from them. I like how a person earlier said, “they didn’t know any better”. In many cases, that is literally true. Judging historical figures by modern standards is a fool’s errand. Today, we are also products of our times. > > Where we can draw a distinction, however, is in what the honoree is being remembered _for_. George Washington is honored with his name and likeness on so many things _in spite_ of his owning slaves. His deeds as a founder of the nation, first President, and military exploits are among the things that lead us to hold him in high esteem. His owning slaves is acknowledged, but it is not what we celebrate. > > Robert E. Lee, on the other hand, is honored for precisely the reasons he should be reviled. He betrayed his country (the fact that he was “honorable” about it is immaterial). He fought for the institution of slavery, regardless of his personal feelings on the matter. If anything, his personal feelings, in my view, make his deeds worse. He knew slavery was wrong, but he defended it none-the-less. Or maybe he defended the south in spite of its slavery. I know it’s taken on a given on this board that the war was about slavery, but it wasn’t. It really was about states’ rights. Yes, for many people it might very well have been about slavery, but you give the example the person who led the battle, a person not a fan of slavery. In Georgia in I think it was the late 1820s, Georgia almost went to war against the federal government over not being allowed to move into the Indian lands to the west and mine the silver. It was anathema to them that the federal government would/could try to control the activities of Georgians. I don’t want to derail the thread, but the fact that there was more to the cause of the war than slavery really needs to be taken into account. No that it will. ::shrug:: ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/86 "2016-03-31T00:48:06Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > I know it’s taken on a given on this board that the war was about slavery, but it wasn’t. Bull-fucking-shit. There was more to take account of. But the driving goal was to keep the free labor. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/87 "2016-03-31T00:50:44Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > You’re right, of course, that nearly everyone would fall short when judged by modern sensibilities, but the confederates were particular assholes. Sundering the nation, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands, to enshrine slavery. That’s laughably evil. That’s like cartoony evil. Being a moderate shitheel by modern standards is expected, but the confederates were like the world’s biggest shitheels _at the time they lived_. Slavery, particularly the chattel strain that was present in the US was 100% vile. But it was possible because slavery was a fact of life in the world leading up to America. For hundreds, thousands of years, slavery was a present. The East African slave trade was in full swing hundreds and hundreds of years before Columbus ever set sail. I bring this up not to excuse the slaveholding in the American South, but to understand it. How could people treat other humans so monstrously? I just don’t think we’re equipped to understand it, given the fortunately reality that slavery seems SO “Huh, you must be kidding” to us. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/88 "2016-03-31T00:55:19Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > Bull-fucking-shit. Says you. I even made a note. 😉 > [@Lobohan](#): > > There was more to take account of. But the driving goal was to keep the free labor. I don’t think so. Slavery really was on its way out anyway, due to economics. And the only people who would benefit from free labor would be the slave owners. But most southerners did NOT own slaves. It was only the wealthy landowners who could afford to keep them. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/89 "2016-03-31T01:45:14Z")
And it was only the wealthy landowners who had a voice on politics. As always it was a rich man’s war despite being a poor man’s fight. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/90 "2016-03-31T01:51:07Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > Slavery really was on its way out anyway, due to economics. Not necessarily. [It was much more efficient and profitable than is now appreciated.](http://www.salon.com/2014/09/07/we_still_lie_about_slavery_heres_the_truth_about_how_the_american_economy_and_power_were_built_on_forced_migration_and_torture/) > [@](#): > > By the early twentieth century, America’s first generation of professional historians were justifying the exclusions of Jim Crow and disfranchisement by telling a story about the nation’s past of slavery and civil war that seemed to confirm, for many white Americans, that white supremacy was just and necessary. Above all, the historians of a reunified white nation insisted that slavery was a premodern institution that was not committed to profit-seeking. In so doing, historians were to some extent only repeating pre–Civil War debates: abolitionists had depicted slavery not only as a psychopathic realm of whipping, rape, and family separation, but also as a flawed economic system that was inherently less efficient than the free- labor capitalism developing in the North. Proslavery writers disagreed about the psychopathy, but by the 1850s they agreed that enslavers were first and foremost not profit-seekers. For them, planters were caring masters who considered their slaves to be inferior family members. So although anti- and proslavery conclusions about slavery’s morality were different, their premises about slavery-as- a-business model matched. Both agreed that slavery was inherently unprofitable. It was an old, static system that belonged to an earlier time. Slave labor was inefficient to begin with, slave productivity did not increase to keep pace with industrialization, and enslavers did not act like modern profit- seeking businessmen. As a system, slavery had never adapted or changed to thrive in the new industrial economy—let alone to play a premier role as a driver of economic expansion—and had been little more than a drag on the explosive growth that had built the modern United States. In fact, during the Civil War, northerners were so convinced of these points that they believed that shifting from slave labor to free labor would dramatically increase cotton productivity. > > It didn’t. But even though the data of declining productivity over the ensuing three score and ten years suggested that slavery might have been the most efficient way to produce the world’s most important crop, no one let empirical tests change their minds. Instead, historians of Woodrow Wilson’s generation imprinted the stamp of academic research on the idea that slavery was separate from the great economic and social transformations of the Western world during the nineteenth century. After all, it did not rely upon ever-more efficient machine labor. Its unprofitable economic structures supposedly produced antique social arrangements, and the industrializing, urbanizing world looked back toward them with contempt—or, increasingly, nostalgia. Many whites, now proclaiming that science proved that people of African descent were intellectually inferior and congenitally prone to criminal behavior, looked wistfully to a past when African Americans had been governed with whips and chains. Granted, slavery as an economic system was not modern, they said, and had neither changed to adapt to the modern economy nor contributed to economic expansion. But to an openly racist historical profession—and a white history- reading, history-thinking public obsessed with all kinds of race control—the white South’s desire to whitewash slavery in the past, and maintain segregation now and forever, served the purpose of validating control over supposedly premodern, semi-savage black people. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/91 "2016-03-31T02:25:08Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > It was treason and only stopped being treason when the British capitulated. [Treason doth never prosper.](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Harington_(inventor)) ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/92 "2016-03-31T02:46:32Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Easy. Non-Cornfed Southern pride does not involve the Civil War, and certainly does not regret its outcome. That’s funny. Too bad it isn’t true. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/93 "2016-03-31T03:00:41Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > And it was only the wealthy landowners who had a voice on politics. > > As always it was a rich man’s war despite being a poor man’s fight. As are most wars that are not revolutions. But, then, the American Civil War was a revolution of a kind. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/94 "2016-03-31T03:03:14Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > That’s funny. Too bad it isn’t true. How not? Why can there not be such thing as Southern pride that does not celebrate slavery or the Confederacy? **If** there can’t, then of course Southern pride needs to go, and be buried deep underneath the ash-heap of history, but, still, why can’t there be? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/95 "2016-03-31T03:08:35Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > As are most wars that are not revolutions. But, then, the American Civil War was a revolution of a kind. Albeit an [_Unfinished Revolution._](http://www.amazon.com/Reconstruction-Americas-Unfinished-Revolution-1863-1877/dp/0060937165) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/96 "2016-03-31T03:13:26Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > It really was about states’ rights. Yes, for many people it might very well have been about slavery, but you give the example the person who led the battle, a person not a fan of slavery. In Georgia in I think it was the late 1820s, Georgia almost went to war against the federal government over not being allowed to move into the Indian lands to the west and mine the silver. Funny how “states’ rights” only comes up when a state wants to be allowed to do something unjust, like slavery or Indian removal or segregation or union-busting. No conservative ever seems to invoke that disreputable and disgraceful phrase in connection with Colorado legalizing pot. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/97 "2016-03-31T03:23:29Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > How not? Why can there not be such thing as Southern pride that does not celebrate slavery or the Confederacy? **If** there can’t, then of course Southern pride needs to go, and be buried deep underneath the ash-heap of history, but, still, why can’t there be? Consider, after all and for instance, [the history of the Confederate battle flag](http://boingboing.net/2015/06/29/tom-the-dancing-bug-the-true.html). ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/98 "2016-03-31T03:31:40Z")
Oh, good, we’re doing _this_ thread again. Yay. Personally, I think this ship has sailed. The Great Internet Outragigensia has decided that any man who wore a Confederate officers coat was a vile, corrupt, hateful monster, fit only to be remembered as a salutary example of how degraded a man can be. Fair enough, I suppose; it’s only been about fifty years since, at least in the South, every Confederate general was a _preux chevalier, sans peur et sans reproche_. Both views are equally simplistic, equally inaccurate, and equally comforting for those holding them. I assume the purge of memorials to Confederate officers will also include [Maury Hall](http://www.usna.edu/Academics/Academic-Facilities/) at the US Naval Academy as well as the [USNS Maury](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USNS_Maury_(T-AGS-66)), both named after [Matthew Fontaine Maury](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Fontaine_Maury#International_honors), first superintendent of the US Naval Observatory, arguably the founder of modern oceanography, and one of the foremost scientists of 19th century America? He accepted a commission in the Confederate Navy, so clearly he was a monster, as well. > [@Miller](#): > > Most of the Confederate generals, you can’t really say the same thing about him. Robert Lee got stuff named after him specifically for waging war against his own nation for the right to own slaves. If he’d never been a Confederate general, there’d be no statues of him. So that’s a different kettle of fish entirely, as I see it. Don’t be so sure. The historian Charles Bracellen Flood said that even if we had lost all record of what Lee had done during the Civil War, he would go down as one of the great educators in American history. The trustees of Washington College, in Lexington, Virginia, probably expected nothing more than a fund-raiser and figurehead when they offered Robert E. Lee the presidency of the college in August of 1865. But what they got was an educational revolutionary. Under his presidency, Washington College was the first college in the country to offer courses in photography and Spanish, and one of the first to offer courses in international law. He also created “press scholarships”, the genesis of what would become a journalism school. He did not live to see it come to fruition, but he proposed what would have been on of the nation’s first Schools of Business. The college offered courses in surveying and agriculture, a dramatic departure from the then-typical classical curriculum of most liberal-arts schools. He actively sought students from the North and West, part of his attempt to reconcile and rebuild Virginia within the United States; a motive recognized by the group of New York businessmen who held a fund-raising dinner for Washington College in 1869. Lee became so enamoured of education that he called pursuing a military career “the greatest mistake of my life”, and deliberately marched out of step with the schools cadets whenever they paraded. This from a man, remember, who had commanded one of the Army’s elite cavalry units, had been Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy, and is one of the greatest military geniuses the United States has ever produced. You’re right, though, that the various Lee High Schools and such were probably not named in honor of his educational achievements. Yet if Lee is worthy of any honor at all, a school is perhaps the most appropriate memorial. But of course _pace_ **Drum God** , **Lobohan** , and **Chronos** , he was the Arch-Traitor, so obviously an irredeemable fiend. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/99 "2016-03-31T03:42:21Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > Don’t be so sure. The historian Charles Bracellen Flood said that even if we had lost all record of what Lee had done during the Civil War, he would go down as one of the great educators in American history. > > The trustees of Washington College, in Lexington, Virginia, probably expected nothing more than a fund-raiser and figurehead when they offered Robert E. Lee the presidency of the college in August of 1865. But what they got was an educational revolutionary. Under his presidency, Washington College was the first college in the country to offer courses in photography and Spanish, and one of the first to offer courses in international law. He also created “press scholarships”, the genesis of what would become a journalism school. He did not live to see it come to fruition, but he proposed what would have been on of the nation’s first Schools of Business. The college offered courses in surveying and agriculture, a dramatic departure from the then-typical classical curriculum of most liberal-arts schools. He actively sought students from the North and West, part of his attempt to reconcile and rebuild Virginia within the United States; a motive recognized by the group of New York businessmen who held a fund-raising dinner for Washington College in 1869. Lee became so enamoured of education that he called pursuing a military career “the greatest mistake of my life”, and deliberately marched out of step with the schools cadets whenever they paraded. This from a man, remember, who had commanded one of the Army’s elite cavalry units, had been Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy, and is one of the greatest military geniuses the United States has ever produced. [I should probably provide a cite for all this.](http://lee200.wlu.edu/Educator.html) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544/100 "2016-03-31T04:08:59Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [shrug] That slaveowner was still the Father of His Country, Victor of the Revolution, First POTUS, and all of that. I’m inclined to cut him some slack. [Or maybe not . . .](http://www.salon.com/2013/11/17/they_spawned_the_1_percent_how_washington_and_lincoln_explain_inequality_today/) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-names-of-confederate-figures-be-removed-from-public-places-of-honor/750544.md?page=6)