Well, as long as it doesn’t follow a pattern of:
No, no – I understand the good reasons a Lee statue in Charlottesville should be removed. I don’t agree, on balance, but I freely admit that excellent arguments exist and I regard it as a close question myself.
But in my view, Gettysburg or Antietam don’t constitute close questions. This thread is the result. It’s not an effort on my part to say, “If you don’t want the statues out of Gettysburg then how can you object to them elsewhere?”
Instead, I am saying, “Even if you want the statues out elsewhere, I don’t think you can object to them in Gettysburg, and yet many people do, including some posters here.”
That’s helpful clarification.
I don’t think your contention that many people favor destruction of all confederate statues is correct.
Have any of the posters in this thread actually expressed that view? Skimming back through, I see lots of conditional statements about alteration and modification depending on facts unknown to the poster, or focus on particular problematic statues.
Whether Lee was a hero, a traitor, or somewhere in between is an opinion and not a factual matter that can objectively be gleaned by “providing appropriate context to deepen our understanding.” It seems you simply want the Park Service to adopt your opinion of Lee and the South and portray them as we would Nazis.
Early last century the Park Service requested that the states provide and design their own memorials to honor the leaders and men who served. All states, north and south, were invited to design statues which depicted the soldiers in a positive light.
What is it about the Lee statue that you find offensive?
Is it just an opinion that he “levied war against the United States”, as the Constitution defines treason? Is it just an opinion that he did so in order to preserve slavery, and the governmental system that permitted it to exist?
Those are facts. You don’t get to evade them just because they make you uncomfortable. Avoiding facts, such as by calling them mere opinions, is why we still have to complete mop-up actions from the war even today.
It’s worth bearing in mind that the army Lee marched through Maryland and Pennsylvania put no small amount of effort into kidnapping and enslaving people, which is a war crime now and would have been considered one then. Is that mentioned anywhere in Gettysburg?
In the context of the battlefield I actually don’t have a problem with heroic statues of Lee and his ilk, but there should be some sort of display putting it into context. The “Lost Cause” narrative is a lie - but it’s a lie that has to be explained, because it’s a lie that affected American history and American life.
And continues to affect it, I daresay.
OK, but opinions can be backed up with facts. Like:
That’s what my opinion is based on. What are contrary opinions based on, other than “you’ve got your opinion, and I’ve got mine”? Because unless there’s a similarly strong backing for a contrary opinion, mine should carry the day.
And that was a mistake, if we view Gettysburg as a museum whose goal is a true account of Gettysburg and the Civil War that Gettysburg was a turning point of, rather than a time capsule of early 20th century differing opinions about the Civil War at the state level.
I think I’ve made that crystal-clear, thanks.
And Nathan Bedford Forrest simply *killed *black prisoners.
You know, I think, by an large, that “dog whistles” are mostly imaginary. But not in his case. NBF was a deadly cavalry raider, but a indifferent general. However, there are more monuments to him that any other CSA general, excepting Lee. And you know why? Because he founded the KKK. NBF being lionized is a 100% pure dogwhistle to the ears of the KKK and their allies.
Lee’s troops also killed black union prisoners. At the Battle of the Crater, his army slaughtered black union troops who were trying to surrender, later his army marched the few survivors through Petersburg so that the crowd could jeer and torment them. it is hard to imagine why someone interested in historical accuracy would be opposed to providing visitors to Gettysburg this kind of information at the base of Lee’s statue.
I know this is incredibly petty of me, but I believe I was the person who made this point. I spent the first two pages of this thread having Bricker just straight up refusing to acknowledge my posts, I feel inclined to cherish them.
When Lee proposed a prisoner exchange to Grant, Grant made it clear it included all Union troops including black troops. Lee declined and said the black troops were property not prisoners.
Think about the horrors those prisoners must have endured. Think about being a black American soldier captured by the confederacy. I would imagine the Taliban couldn’t be more cruel if they got their hands on one of our soldiers.
These black troops wore the American uniform. They marched under the American flag and they stormed the battlements of America’s enemies and yet the man who is responsible for their murder and enslavement gets a statue at Gettysburg, but the idea that that statue put Lee in some kind of historical context is dismissed as historical revisionism.
I’ve highlighted the phrase where RickJay misspelled ‘difference in culture.’
“The blacks this great Southern hero enslaved were criminals. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, were good people.”
The Confederate government had also declared that white officers of black troops would be treated as fomenters of slave rebellion and executed. https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/the-battle-of-the-crater/?mcubz=3
Bricker, if in 50 years in a better future Cuba, some unusual Cubans in charge of some small town in Cuba raised a statue of Castro to represent their opposition to some national trend, and then decades later the later local government decides that they’d rather remove this statue because of the quite reasonable problems many Cubans have with that symbol, would you quibble with their decision to remove it?
And I am saying that we don’t need to do anything about North Korea because the Martians will drop by any day now and destroy their nukes.
And I have made as concrete an argument for that in this thread as you have made for your stated position here about Confederate statues at Gettysburg.
But since this thread is not about North Korea’s nukes, I hope I may be excused for not going into detail about the Martian solution. However, since it is about Confederate statues at Gettysburg, would you care to make a case in support of your statement?
I don’t picture having a problem with “usual” Cubans undoing an action promulgated by unusual ones.
The case has been made by others: that Gettysburg is an area designated for Civil War statues. The clear point of Gettysburg is to serve as a historical memorial for events of the Civil War, which by all accounts included Confederates.
Suppose they were usual for their specific time and place, but unusual by broader and later standards.
Then I have no problem with it. I dislike Castro; I don’t have much in the way of antipathy for a piece of stone that looks like Castro. The guy is undeniably and factually a huge part of Cuban history. It doesn’t bother me to accept the idea that he’d leave behind statues.
Do you have a problem with the later local government deciding to remove those statues?