The most charitable possible spin that you can put on the Lost Cause mythologizing is that it was part of an attempt to reunite the country after the great rift. The massive, gaping chasm that exists in that interpretation is that it was solely aimed at white Americans. Even if one considers it well-intentioned--and I do not--it's a long way from an honest reckoning.Originally Posted by Hawk
All lost, but by the graves
Where martyred heroes rest
He wins the most who honor saves
Success is not the test
The world shall yet decide
In truth's clear far off light
That the soldiers
Who wore the gray and died
With Lee, were right.
I'm pasting that again because I don't have to do any more than walk a mile up the road to read it.
Here's the aforementioned Confederate Catechism.
In answer to whether the war was caused by slavery:
2. Was slavery the cause of secession in the war?
No. Slavery existed previous to the Constitution and the Union was formed in spite of it. Both from the standpoint of the Constitution and sound statesmanship, it was not slavery but the vindictive, intemperate anti-slavery movement that was at the bottom of all the troubles.
And, as a palate cleanser, a Virginian who remained loyal to his nation and his officer's commission wrote this:
[T]he greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of liberty, justice, humanity, equality, and all the calendar of the virtues of freedom, suffered violence and wrong when the effort for southern independence failed. This is, of course, intended as a species of political cant, whereby the crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of the rebellion might go down in history hand in hand with the defenders of the government, thus wiping out with their own hands their own stains; a species of self-forgiveness amazing in its effrontery, when it is considered that life and property—justly forfeited by the laws of the country, of war, and of nations, through the magnanimity of the government and people—was not exacted from them.
— George Henry Thomas, November 1868
Volumes have been written about Lost Cause mythologizing and sanitizing. Let's be real here.
Last edited by Julio3000; 08-19-2017 at 01:14 PM.
Am steadfast in thinking it over Economic Anxiety and her email server.
Oh the Civil War in the 19th century !!!! ---- my bad
.............
If we want to memorialize the memory of the Civil War how about a statue of Trump.
To remind people what happens when you refuse to "let it go"
The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to make sure he doesn’t get a gun.
About this specific claim: 'the monuments were put up to change or sanitize history'
I consider something substantive and compelling when the reasoning behind it hasn't been entirely reduced to an overdrawn, over-emotionalized extremely narrow appeal.
Give me an historically accurate consideration of events, relating to specific statues, for starters.
Let's try and keep this concentrated on the monuments themselves. The hyper-generalizing going on this thread is making my head spin.
The proof is in the pudding
The more progress of equality, more of these stupid things went up. It isn't hard to understand why they are there
Last edited by goldfly; 08-19-2017 at 02:01 PM.
"For there is always light, if only we are brave enough to see it. If only we are brave enough to be it." Amanda Gorman
"When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross"
A perfect example of where the county should either entertain a) removing the plaque b) artistically reinterpreting the statue or c) tearing it down completely. The same goes for the monument nearby that specifically honors the men who signed the Ordinance of Secession ... for signing the Ordinance of Secession.
These are not the kind of monuments I have a problem firmly and immediately readdressing.
Julio3000 (08-19-2017)
Due to recent events, there's been a lot of coverage of how these monuments came to be. The role of the United Daughters of the Confederacy has been covered a bit; should be easy enough to google. There were so many emplaced that lots of them were actually mass-produced by foundries, etc, rather than being the work of artisans.
David Blight's Race and Reunion is a great place to start for the immediate postbellum discussion.
And I'll try to keep the discussion limited to monuments themselves, but it seems rather hard to do so, given that it's all part of a broader historical context.
The problem is way too many people see nothing wrong with it. Just a statue, you can walk on by it. It's "just a statue" until people start proposing to bring it down or move it, or, as you suggest, reinterpret it. I'm more of the mind to keep the ones that don't have that kind of language, do reinterpreting, etc. and build more monuments for African-Americans of that era, abolitionists and so on. Of course that would upset a good number of people firmly opposed to doing anything to the Confederate monuments. I speak from firsthand experience of hearing that having grown up in the semi-rural Deep South.
This article, from a UNC-CH historian, underscores some salient facts about one particular monument, a memorial to Confederate enlistees from the university. It's a nice-looking thing, and has an inscription which is non-inflammatory, if romanticized (which is the way of things, for sure).
But here's a passage describing a speech given at its dedication, in 1913:
'During the dedication speech, Carr praised Confederate soldiers not just for their wartime valor but also for their defense “of the Anglo Saxon race during the four years after the war” when “their courage and steadfastness saved the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South.” The “four years after the war” was a clear reference to the period in which the Ku Klux Klan, a white paramilitary organization terrorized blacks and white Republicans who threatened the traditional white hierarchy in the state. Then he boasted that “one hundred yards from where we stand” — and within months of Lee’s 1865 surrender — “I horse whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds because she had maligned and insulted a Southern lady.”
Carr admittedly was uncommonly explicit about conflating Confederate memorialization with white supremacy, but Southern memorials inherently celebrated the slave South and white power along with the heroism of Confederate soldiers.'
So I guess it's reasonable to turn the question around a bit. Why did the monuments of the type erected by the UDC not offer any acknowledgement, however circumspect, of the stain of slavery, or of black inhabitants of the south? If the purpose was solely to memorialize the fallen or even to promote reconciliation, why would that be utterly absent?
Yeah, the Ordinance of Secession ("with reverence and admiration for the courage and integrity of...") is pretty objectionable, IMO. It was erected in 1961.
1961.
The nearby Lee monument, funded by the aforementioned UDC, says "His monument is the Adoration of the South, his shrine is in every Southern heart."
...which adds some inescapable perspective for how seriously these folks took the humanity of non-white southerners.
57Brave (08-19-2017)
Hypocrite is too good a word for this man. Former President sounds about right, disgraced former President even better.
Once again Gail Collins is the level head in the room:
.............................
I believe I have an answer to our statue problem.
There are two ways to look at what happened this week in Charlottesville, Va. One is as a crisis over racism, anti-Semitism and violence. The other is as a crisis over the removal of Robert E. Lee on a horse. We know where our president went. “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” wrote Donald Trump.
Sure, a different president — oh God, for a different president — would have had a larger vision. But for the moment let’s think small and focus on the statue. The nation has around 700 public memorials to the Confederacy, and most people would say that’s more than plenty. But getting rid of statues, any statues, has become very difficult. “They become sacrosanct once they’re erected,” said Kirk Savage, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh who’s an expert on the subject. “It’s as if the monuments had been dropped from the sky.”
Pittsburgh, for instance, has a truly awful 100-year-old statue of Stephen Foster, the composer of “My Old Kentucky Home,” looking down in white benevolence on what was commissioned to be “an old darkey reclining at his feet strumming negro airs upon an old banjo.” But city officials haven’t been able to make it go away.
Here in New York we have the problem of Dr. J. Marion Sims in Central Park. Sims is known as the father of American gynecological medicine, and he pioneered a surgical procedure to repair tears that some women suffer during childbirth.
It wasn’t until fairly recently that people living around the statue learned that the way he had perfected his technique was by experimenting without anesthesia on slave women. The city is wrestling with that one, aware that it’s managed to get rid of only one statue in modern history — Civic Virtue, a fountain depicting a large naked man standing (virtue) astride vanquished female figures representing vice and corruption. (A politician named — yes! — Anthony Weiner held a press conference demanding that it be evicted.)
There have always been ways of getting around the problem of unwanted statuary. Erika Doss, a professor in the American studies department at Notre Dame, pointed out that when the American revolution began New Yorkers pulled down a memorial to King George III in Bowling Green. It shouldn’t be all that difficult, she said. “Memorials and monuments have a life span, not unlike the human body. They’re symbols at certain moments. Values change, histories change.”
But these are sensitive times, and we could use a more efficient way to cycle out the pieces that have overstayed their welcome. Suppose they just had expiration dates? Every 20 years, a statue would come up for renewal. A commission could hold hearings, take public comment and then issue a decision. Evictees could go off to a new life at museums or private collections.
It would be a good way to get rid of the huge overrepresentation of military men. When I walk my dog in the morning, I almost always run into the Civil War general Franz Sigel, sitting on a horse looking out over Riverside Park. Actually, the neighborhood only knows about the horse, since our view is mainly equine derrière.
And we could whittle down the politicians. A little later I pass Samuel Tilden, who was governor of New York in the 1870s and an unsuccessful candidate for president. The statue was built from the estate of, um, Samuel Tilden.
Both men were fine Americans, and you wouldn’t want to disrespect them. But if they had due dates it might be possible to give somebody new a turn. We’ve never, for instance, had a statue of Elizabeth Jennings Graham, a black city teacher whose refusal to get off a white-only trolley car in 1854 led to the legal integration of New York City mass transit a century before Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat.
Didn’t even know about Graham, did you? But maybe you would if she had a statue.
Trump, of course, just likes white guys on horses. “The beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced,” he moaned in a Robert E. Lee tweet.
Future generations are never going to see a bronze version of Trump astride his mount. Besides the detail of being perhaps the worst occupant of the White House in American history, our president doesn’t ride. He did once buy a racehorse named Alibi. One of Trump’s former executives has claimed that the colt had to have part of his hooves amputated when his owner forced him to be exercised over the trainer’s objections.
Trump denies this. But if we had more room for new statues, concerned citizens might want to put up some money to erect one of Alibi, limping.
The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to make sure he doesn’t get a gun.
Ruth H. Hopkins @RuthHHopkins
Privilege is saving confederacy statues because they're 'historic' but bulldozing through ancient sacred sites & artifacts for pipelines.
The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to make sure he doesn’t get a gun.
bravesnumberone (08-19-2017), CK86 (08-20-2017), Runnin (08-20-2017)
The phases of Civil War monument construction per Gaines Foster, history prof at LSU:
I. The Ceremonial Bereavement Period (1865 - 1885)
II. The Celebration of the Confederacy aka the "Lost Cause" (1883 - 1907)
III. The Waning Power of the Confederate Tradition (1898 - 1913)
Bruce Catton, Reflections on the Civil War ... written in 1981.
"The essence of the legend of Lee and the dauntless Confederate soldiers was that they suffered mightily in a great but lost cause. The point is that this very phrase accepts the cause as having been lost. There was no hint in this legend of biding one's time and waiting for a moment when there could be revenge. This was the lost cause; something to be cherished, to be revered, to be the outlet for emotions, but not to be the center of a new outbreak of violence. In that sense, I think the legend of the lost cause has served the entire country very well."
[...]
"The things that were done during the Civil War have not been forgotten, of course, but we now see them through a veil. We have elevated the entire conflict to the realm where it is no longer explosive. It is a part of American legend, a part of American history, a part, if you will, of American romance. It moves men mightily, to this day, but it does not move them in the direction of picking up their guns and going at it again. We have had national peace since the war ended, and we will always have it, and I think the way Lee and his soldiers conducted themselves in the hours of surrender has a great deal to do with it."
"Our purpose is to collect and preserve all material for a truthful history of the Confederate States and to honor the memory of all men and women who served in the cause."
Aww you care about hypocrisy now?
This clip from the Library of Congress has been making the rounds again over the past week. It's tragically fascinating.
Sometimes, putting a human face on things makes it easier to properly digest.
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