There’s a problem with that logic though. Not a huge one, but one that has to be addressed. It seems to me that the logical argument for getting rid of Confederate monuments is simply that they rebelled, they lost, and they fought for an evil cause. The fact that they were slaveowners and racists isn’t really much of a factor. If it is, then doesn’t that also mean we must no longer honor Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, or Woodrow Wilson? Or basically all southern monuments that honor the defenders of slavery, like John Calhoun? Or the great segregationists like JW Fulbright, George Wallace, John Stennis, and Strom Thurmond?
it seems to me that we should be a little clearer about naming secession as their fundamental crime. Their racist beliefs and slave ownership was a big part of what made them bad people, but we still honor slaveholders and racists that were a product of their times and did not try to overthrow the Constitution.
Statues aren’t for teaching they’re for glorifying, in my opinion. A lot of the current mess could be assigned to the long, continuous glorification of that which should only ever have been despised.
No favours were done to America in letting the defeated celebrate their ‘war heroes’/ racist leaders.
‘A man of his times.’, is an utterly meaningless phrase that includes every tyrant and madman from Hitler to Pol Pot. We are ALL ‘of our times’, that alone does not excuse our barbarism nor provide cover for celebrating it, in my opinion.
It’s decades late, but it’s going to have to happen, sooner or later. Southern gentility is not an exceptable reason to turn a blind eye to the public admiration of, what in the fullness of time are clearly believers in racism who fought against the declared values of your constitution.
You have done yourselves no favours in convincing yourselves it’s somehow okay to just leave these things standing, all these years. Its simply an open, festering wound. It’s time to correct that mistake and tear them down. All of them.
No museum, or gallery either, in my opinion. Just melt them down. Use the material to make a statue celebrating the next hero that unites both sides on this issue instead.
It’s reasonable to talk about where the line should be drawn. I think it should be drawn at anyone primarily known for fighting for slavery, for the Confederacy (whose primary goal was the perpetuation of slavery), for fighting for Jim Crow/segregation, etc. Thus Confederate generals would qualify, as would Calhoun, and Wallace, and thus their monuments should be removed (IMO), but I’m not sure if Stennis and Thurmond reach that “primarily known for fighting for Jim Crow/segregation” line, considering their very long careers and (if I understand correctly) very public repudiation of their past racist views.
I think it’s tougher to draw a bright line there. Most of the segregationists have been honored for achievements having nothing to do with segregation and I don’t think those honors should be taken away. Should we end the Fulbright Scholarships or change the name of the carrier USS John C. Stennis? An argument could be made for that but I think it gets really tough to draw the line and certainly Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Wilson were far more evil in this respect. We don’t honor them for being slaveowners either.
maybe that’s the line: we do not honor people for evil acts, but we will honor flawed men for their good achievements. So perhaps that means a Robert E. Lee monument might be appropriate at West Point, since he was a great general and one of West Point’s best graduates.
Being good at killing people who were trying to stop slavery was not a good achievement. It was a truly evil achievement. Study his strategy and tactics? Of course. Venerate him? No fucking way.
Want his memory preserved at a military academy? Recast his statutes as plumbing fixtures.
I’ve always found the belief by the current generation that they are smarter and wiser than their forebears to be adorable. To be sure, we learn from our mistakes, but we also have a habit of unlearning concepts previous generations already understood and developing new intellectual fads that turn out to be pretty stupid. I don’t want my descendants deciding that my favorite historical figures or current leaders that I like are evil and should not be honored because they have a particular different viewpoint on how us barbarians lived back in the 21st century. I can easily see monuments of Barack Obama taken down because he ate meat that WASN"T GROWN IN A LAB!!! He killed living things! It’s often easy for us to judge our ancestors for living in a time that was a lot tougher than ours. We’ll be similarly judged, but there should be limits.
Treason is not always evil. It is, however, always serious. If you’re willing to commit treason over some cause, then that must be a cause that you feel very strongly about indeed. George Washington and his comrades committed treason against Britain because they felt very strongly about the cause of representative government. Robert E. Lee committed treason against the US and all 33 states because he felt very strongly about the cause of owning other people. The former can be applauded: While we recognize that Washington et al. were flawed men, who did many other wrong things, the thing they felt most strongly about was a good cause, and so we can celebrate their treason. The latter, however, should only be scorned: Lee had his good qualities, as well, but the thing he felt most strongly about was an evil cause, and so we should despise his treason.
Left Hand of Dorkness, I was thinking more of members of the military who remained loyal, but you’re right that Harriet Tubman could certainly stand to be honored more than she currently is. That’s a good start. But we need more of them, at least as many as there are traitors who are currently honored.
By contrast, I don’t find your beliefs at all adorable. But, so long as they are your beliefs, let me mention that my forebears didn’t think Confederates should be celebrated with statues in the town square. Do you think you’re smarter and wiser than my forebears?
Strike that; you think decisions are irreversible.
That’s a glittering generality. You’re effectively just saying that sometimes we get it right, but sometimes we get it wrong – which is, pretty much, utterly useless when it comes to deciding whether any given call is right or wrong. It’s a real nothing of a sentence, there. It wasn’t worth typing out.
If the current leaders you like think the way you do, then I do want your descendants to decide exactly that. I’m a-wishin’ and a-hopin’.
Well, then, (a) do so, now. And (b) that answers your quip about Lincoln: he thought it was the right call to make in the 1860s; this ain’t the 1860s, so possibly he’d make a different call were he still calling the shots today. Since he ain’t here, you and I have to do our best with what smarts and wisdom we have now. Since you think stuff that’s reversible isn’t, maybe you should leave this one to me – or, if I’m too modern to get your deference, eschew adorability when deferring to my forebears.
Well I didnt really want it as a poll because i didnt just want someone to hit “2” for example. I wanted it to be a discussion of which it is.
To be honest the thing for me is I rarely ever “see” statues where I live in Overland Park Kansas. We have exactly one statue in our town that is dedicated to the founder. All other statues are general like kids playing. There is a funny one in Bucyrus Kansas to sexting. Downtown Kansas City has one the George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. There is one in Leavenworth Kansas dedicated to the Buffalo soldiers who fought indians so I’d bet they would have an opinion on that one. We do have a monument in a cemetery to dead Confederate soldiers who died at the battle of Westport.
So I guess my answer is I dont know because I dont live in the South where the statues and the controversy are.
So what do you think of the fact that after the war, they held reunions of Union and Confederate soldiers where they were able to meet, shake hands, and mend old differences?
Here is a link to the 33rd and the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburgh.
So should all those old confederate soldiers been rounded up and thrown in prison as traitors?
I understand, and I do favor removing confederate monuments erected long after the war. The exception I cited was for things like Confederate memorials to those who died in the war or the general feeling of regarding them as irredeemable traitors. Nor do I think they should lose honors received prior to the war, such as if there are monuments honoring those who fought in the Mexican war.
I’m not quite sure what your point is - I was commenting on the statues and the real reasons for their construction as opposed to the common myth that they were just honoring noble and honorable men who were just products of their times. It is not necessary to vilify Robert E Lee, Jefferson Davis, or PGT Beauregard - I see no point in doing that. I absolutely do condemn the attempts to glorify their cause of white supremacy.
To respond to your comments about the union soldiers and officials who governed during and after the war, it is true that many of these individuals were also, to varying degrees, white supremacists themselves. In fact this is partly why Reconstruction failed, as many in the north didn’t see the point in perpetuating a war that had already achieved its primary aims of preserving the Union (imperfect though it might have been) and also the late-in-coming Constitutional changes in giving black people basic human rights.
But those historical truths aside, over time, people both outside and even in the South gradually came to embrace the idea that blacks not only deserved basic legal protections according to the text of the law but also deserved to be treated as true equals under the law and in society as well. The statues and symbols memorializing the confederacy are incompatible with these ideals and have no place in a society that truly embraces fairness.
As others have mentioned, if we want to treat the statues as “history” and “heritage” there are ways to do that. But what white people (Southerners in particular) are really protesting for is their right to cling to their mythology that’s been passed from one generation to the next.
Given that that’s virtually all of them, I’d take that as a compromise. Which monuments are you thinking of that were erected soon after the war–say, before the end of Reconstruction?
I have never heard of someone saying, “This monument to this dude who fought in the Mexican War, erected due to his Mexican War heroism? Let’s take it down, because he also fought for slavery.” Is there a specific monument you had in mind with this example?
If there are memorials that show Confederate and Union soldiers shaking hands, that wouldn’t bother me much either. But you gotta remember, the UDC wasn’t just interested in remembering the tragedy of war, nor were they interested in promoting reconciliation. Again, they wanted to promote “the memory of our Confederate heroes and the glorious cause for which they fought.” The significant majority of Confederate monuments were raised by these people with this mission.
Take down all the UDC monuments to start with, then we can figure out what to do with the remainder.
