Is this guy left wing or right wing?

[Teallaura]

I think either that or relocating to a museum where it can be put in context is the answer. As stated in other places I am of course entirely against their destruction, but I understand the problem of them giving honour to someone.

I'd be content though, even if they remain, if we could just make people aware of the actual history of most of these statues.

Come HERE and say that to our faces! Of all the - are you actually dumb enough to believe that Southerners DON'T know the history? You who've NEVER seen a Confederate Monument in person - how DARE you presuppose that we don't understand them! You seem to think they were all erected in the 1960's - most were erected well before then. Most were erected within the living memory of the war - by the Sixties, few veterans were still alive and few people who were still alive were older than babies at the time of the war.

ARGH!

Really unsubscribing now - if I can just make it to the button without running into anything else as infuriating!

[simplicio]

I think either that or relocating to a museum where it can be put in context is the answer. As stated in other places I am of course entirely against their destruction, but I understand the problem of them giving honour to someone.

I'd be content though, even if they remain, if we could just make people aware of the actual history of most of these statues.

Many of our military bases in the south are named to honor the generals of the Confederacy, Bragg, AP Hill, etc. Not sure those would be rechristened. They were named after men of renown.

But isn't relegating those statues to a museum hiding them away, out of sight and mind? The museum would allow a more thorough discussion of all the ideas involved. But so does displaying them in the public square.

Is it possible to honor men for the laudable things, while also recognizing that all they did was not honorable or laudable? The thing is that we have advantage of the distance of history, and we still depend on the same worn propaganda of the 19th century. Either states rights or slavery, self determination or treasonous rebellion, the War of Northern Aggression or going to die to make men free, but seldom do we discuss the reasons why both are thought to be accurate.

One problem is that the subsequent history of the south is connected to the Civil War and the causes leading up to the war, Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era. Because it is still within living memory, many are conflicted over the stands taken at the time which assault our sensibilities today.

What qualities do we see in a statue? There are statues of Robert E Lee and Bedford Forrest (a brilliant military tactician and founder of the KKK). We Christians have the idea of original sin, a recognition of good and evil (what G-d created was good, what man does with what he is given can be good or evil). But can we apply the concept? A statue of Margaret Sanger would be condemned as a monument to abortion by some and a self determination of the woman by others. There is no "middle ground" on Sanger.

[Sparko]

Teal is right.

[demi-conservative]

You're right to be concerned. There are at least 2 active racists on this forum who claim to be Christians, who spend a lot of time derogatively talking about non-white races, and who have proposed racial segregation as a method for answering social problems. For some reason it seems most of the other forum members think they're just joking around, or trolling or something, and don't seem to take them very seriously. I've rarely if ever heard them speak out against the obvious racist ideology spouted by these guys (with the exception of maybe KingsGambit). It's really sad, and I wish more people would speak out against it, because I know that they're good people who know that that sort of talk is off, but maybe they don't want to ruffle feathers or something. I don't know.

Please to get on right side of history, where no one cares that libs scream 'racist! racist!! racist!!!!'.

[demi-conservative]

As I understand it, most of them were erected in the early 20th century, when the US was sort of romanticising the South, and their defeat. Probably helped along by films like Birth of a Nation, and continued later with films like Jezebel, and Gone with the Wind. I'm not a Southerner, and while I can sympathize with people who have "Southern pride", I feel like I need to remind anyone who waves the Stars and Bars that the North won (especially if they live in the North).

Sounds like half nation is still unhappy occupied territory, and other half likes to rub it in faces of theirs. Sad!!!

[Leonhard]

are you actually dumb enough to believe that Southerners DON'T know the history?

That's a point I didn't consider. Are most of these statues only found on Southern land, and do the Southerners know when most of these statues were put up and why?

You who've NEVER seen a Confederate Monument in person - how DARE you presuppose that we don't understand them!

My experience is that a lot of people don't understand them. That might simple be my foreign experience, and that's of course of questionable value. I've been in discussions with people who, like me, preferred the preservation of the statues, until I mentioned that most of them were put up in response during the time of Jim Crow laws, or when black children began going to school, then the sympathy tends to evaporate.

This leads me to think, though its only my personal experience, that a lot of people are ignorant about the history of the statues.

You seem to think they were all erected in the 1960's - most were erected well before then. Most were erected within the living memory of the war - by the Sixties, few veterans were still alive and few people who were still alive were older than babies at the time of the war.

The vast majority were put up between 1900-1920, during times of Jim Crow laws and the founding of the NAACP, and there's another spike around the 60ies during the shenanigans of George Wallace who stood in the door of a schoolroom to block two black students from entering and holding a grandiose speech about that. Basically all those put up in schools were put there in response to the rise of black children going to public schools.

It seems extremely unlikely that these two correlation are merely accidental.

[Leonhard]

But hey, it's okay if your (general - Danes probably excluded) ancestors are honored publicly for fighting for whatever they believed in -

We've just had a long nationally sponsored documentary in Denmark about our history. It took a sober look at our history in all its gory complexity.

For example King Christian Xth whom you'll see a lot of statues of, as well as building dedicated to, who kicked out the Catholics, turned Denmark Lutheran and began a moral crusade for a virtuous living (and got rich by taking back all the properties the Catholic monasteries had), was highly problematic morally. He was a drunkard. He started a futile war with Sweden and Norway for conquest. When he lost it, he blamed the danish people's moral impropriety and set up laws to punish sex outside of wedlock severely, meanwhile he himself have more than a dozen lovers (all of whom he had children with).

That and during his reign women began being burned as witches.

To protestants he probably counts as a "God uses the wicked for good purposes" kind of man. For Catholics he was a brute and a tyrant. Historically we can understand who he was and what he did.

Danish slavery is a horrible thing, and something I wish was discussed more. Few people outside of Denmark realise we had africans displayed in the Zoo in the early 20th Century. However, in the Zoo, there are plaques and posters describing this openly and honestly now. Awareness of it is being made.

If Southern people have the same awareness of their statues, then such signs might still be good for tourists who'd want to understand the history of your towns.

Like I said, my preference is for the statues to remain. As long false history is not propagated by them, in that case context would need to be provided. The smaller the change to provide that context the better. If, like you say, none is required then there's no need for that.

you'd rather assume that those people didn't really grieve for their lost loved ones and were just being racist.

I have a hard time understanding the timing. Whoever put up the statues decided to do so in just as those racist tensions were peaking.

And while we're at it - Confederate veterans were paid pensions as were their widows just as were Union veterans - if those who actually fought the war could show mercy to those who took up arms, who are you to condemn them now?

I don't understand this. I have nothing against the Confederate veterans not being hounded, and getting to live in peace after they had lost. What does that have to do with racist motivations for the statues that were put up between 1900-1920 and in the 60ies.

Unsubscribing.

Okay.

[Leonhard]

My lone point for keeping the statues in general is that – and I do believe this is a rare case where slippery slope concerns would be justified – if we do in fact start to take down statues several generations old because of evils undeniably committed by those they depict... then where would we stop?

In the end I don't believe in any sweeping decisions, and that it should be up to local people to decide these things.

[Starlight]

My lone point for keeping the statues in general is that – and I do believe this is a rare case where slippery slope concerns would be justified – if we do in fact start to take down statues several generations old because of evils undeniably committed by those they depict... then where would we stop?

Is it a problem not to have statues?

My country has very few because we're a young country with a short history and our culture doesn't tend toward statues (naming streets or places or parks after someone is a more common memorial). It could well be 10 years since I last saw a statue in person.

For your 'slippery slope concern' to be justified here you'd have to say that my society is deficient for not having statues or that somehow I have been deprived by not being exposed to more of them... I don't really see grounds for arguing that.

[Sparko]

My lone point for keeping the statues in general is that – and I do believe this is a rare case where slippery slope concerns would be justified – if we do in fact start to take down statues several generations old because of evils undeniably committed by those they depict... then where would we stop?

In the end I don't believe in any sweeping decisions, and that it should be up to local people to decide these things.

they also tore down statues of Christopher Columbus!

We went all over this in the other thread. After the war the North and South made peace with each other and became one nation again. Part of that peace was honoring war veterans of both sides in many ways. We also showed that General Lee was a friend of Lincoln and had even freed his slaves before the war. Not every southern soldier was a slaver or any more racist than anyone in the North. The war was not merely about slavery either. It was pretty complicated. So to just claim that any southern statue or the flag is honoring slavery is wrong.

[carpedm9587]

Bullcrap. None of you have any idea what they were put up for - or by whom.

But hey, it's okay if your (general - Danes probably excluded) ancestors are honored publicly for fighting for whatever they believed in - even if they were only a generation ofr so removed from slavery being quite legal in their territories and weren't really abolitionists - but statues dedicated to those whose lost was still felt very much at that time (seriously, you guys do realize Civil War veterans were still living when most of this statuary was erected often in memorial to their fallen friends) by their friends, families, communities and even other veterans should be torn down because you'd rather assume that those people didn't really grieve for their lost loved ones and were just being racist. After all, your ancestors only made sure that women and children would starve, regardless of race - or did you thinks Sherman's scorched earth policy had no ill effects?

I thought the fight over the stupid 'battle flag' was ridiculous (neither side ever noticed it wasn't the ACTUAL flag!) but this is just sick. It's mob justice a hundred years too late.

And while we're at it - Confederate veterans were paid pensions as were their widows just as were Union veterans - if those who actually fought the war could show mercy to those who took up arms, who are you to condemn them now?

Y'all can go right ahead showing your callous disregard for the feelings of others and utter ignorance. War's over, but you're the ones still fighting it.

Unsubscribing.

So, a couple of things. Your first sentence is wrong. For many of these statues we have records of who paid for them (a huge percentage were paid for by the "United Daughters of the Confederacy"). We also have recoords of when they were deployed, and the vast majority did NOT go up after the Civil War: they were put up during the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras. We also have, for some statues, written references in letters, diaries, and records of the public meetings had to clear the way for their erection (most are on public parks and on government grounds). So we have a fair body of evidence that these were put up in reaction to the growth of civil rights for "people of color."

There is also a significant difference between paying a widow a military pension and honoring a traitorous leader with a statue. This was a civil war, which is a messy thing. The rank and file were pressed into service, or went willingly, on both sides. They left women and families behind in droves. For the winning side to be willing to extend itself to help widows and orphans on both sides is an act of kindness. Erecting statues to the leaders of the southern rebellion is an honorific. Apples and oranges, IMO.

And yes, we are (in a sense) still fighting some parts of the civil war: the part that has to do with expunging racism as much as possible. Today the war is not north vs. south, because racism exists throughout our country (as it did then, frankly). It is a war fought with education and law, not swords and guns. It is a war that doesn't only pit true racists and white supremacists against those who decry their hateful ideologies; it also challenges each of us to look within and see what vestiges of racism lurks within ourselves in the form of implicit biases we have developed/learned/acquired from our families and communities and culture. I do believe the shadow of racism lurks in most of us; I do not see how that cannot be true when overt racism was part of our society only decades ago. But it is for each of us to make that detemrination for ourselves. I know it lurks in me, and I have a multiracial family. I know that I am better for seeking it out, and grappling with it. I think our society as a whole would be better if each of us were willing to look for it and, if it exists, do everything possible to weed it out.

[Adrift]

That's a point I didn't consider. Are most of these statues only found on Southern land, and do the Southerners know when most of these statues were put up and why?

Unless we're including controversial statues like those of Columbus, then yes, most, if not all Confederate statues are found in the South. I think Southerners who are fighting for the permanence of the statues know that they date generally to the first half of the 20th century. In fact, that seems like the only time most of these statues could have been erected, since erecting them much earlier would probably have been a sour reminder of a war lost. For most of the population, they likely don't know or don't care. It's been my unfortunate experience that most Americans don't really care that much about history.

My experience is that a lot of people don't understand them. That might simple be my foreign experience, and that's of course of questionable value. I've been in discussions with people who, like me, preferred the preservation of the statues, until I mentioned that most of them were put up in response during the time of Jim Crow laws, or when black children began going to school, then the sympathy tends to evaporate.

This leads me to think, though its only my personal experience, that a lot of people are ignorant about the history of the statues.



The vast majority were put up between 1900-1920, during times of Jim Crow laws and the founding of the NAACP, and there's another spike around the 60ies during the shenanigans of George Wallace who stood in the door of a schoolroom to block two black students from entering and holding a grandiose speech about that. Basically all those put up in schools were put there in response to the rise of black children going to public schools.

It seems extremely unlikely that these two correlation are merely accidental.

I've seen sources like the SPLC and NPR try to make this connection, and if there's a connection (and of course, I'm no historian) I don't think it's as pertinent as they're attempting to make it. It seems to me that both the rise of the NAACP and the creation of these statues coincide with a sort of early 20th century romance of the South, as soldiers who had fought in the Civil War were beginning to die off. I think this had more to do with just memorializing the fallen dead, and Southern Pride, than as a direct reaction to resistance to Jim Crow. Looking at the charts that the SPLC themselves provide, they don't show so much a spike in the 60s, as much as a dip off in the late 30s up until the mid 50s. They imply that the statues were directly in response to racial unrest, but just as likely a reason is that there was a rationing/redirecting of materials leading up to and during WWII, and soldiers had more important things on their minds directly after the war to be concerned with erecting statues of old dead men. We see a similar dip leading up to and following WWI. The SPLC themselves also note that major periods of memorializing (the early 1910s, and 1960s) also coincide with the 50th and 100th anniversary of the Civil War. So that has to be kept in mind as well. And finally, the sort of memorials we see more of during the 60s has to do with a rise in the naming of school buildings than with statue erection until we get directly to the 100th anniversary.

[Adrift]

If Southern people have the same awareness of their statues, then such signs might still be good for tourists who'd want to understand the history of your towns.

While I agree with you that the statues ought to remain as a public reminder of past transgressions, I think a big difference between the Danish issues you've mentioned and the American South is that there's a psychological component that's hard to fathom unless you're from that region. Imagine you and your ancestors are pictured as not only being on the wrong side of history, but representing the pinnacle of 19th century evil. Despite those transgressions, you attempt to find some way to turn the failure of the Confederacy into a bit of pride for some of the heroic actors of that war, and then fancy types from the North (and the South) come in and take that all away. Not only did they lose a war 150 years ago, but they routinely get sand kicked into their eyes every time it's brought up. In some ways it may be comparable to the sort of heavy guilt that Germans feels about their Nazi past. When I was there, a lot of young people suffered heavily from guilt for actions their grandfathers had accomplished, and would only speak of the period in hushed tones which demonstrated to me that it was still a very sore point. Unlike Germany, however, where you can at least share your feeling of guilt with a whole nation, in the US you have to share the nation with the North who pat themselves on the back for keeping the nation in one piece and ending slavery. There's a sort of cognitive dissonance in the South where at one point you want to be proud of being an American, but you're also proud of being a Southerner. It's gotta be a little strange.

Honestly though, in my experience, most people don't really think too much about this issue. Maybe moreso in the South, but most folks are just living their lives, and only think about the monuments when the news reports on them. Hardly anyone I know in the North cares at all about the Civil War unless they're history buffs, or are into Civil War reenactments, and that's generally true of Southerners as well (at least the ones I've been friends with).

[Leonhard]

I've seen sources like the SPLC and NPR try to make this connection, and if there's a connection (and of course, I'm no historian) I don't think it's as pertinent as they're attempting to make it. It seems to me that both the rise of the NAACP and the creation of these statues coincide with a sort of early 20th century romance of the South, as soldiers who had fought in the Civil War were beginning to die off. I think this had more to do with just memorializing the fallen dead, and Southern Pride, than as a direct reaction to resistance to Jim Crow. Looking at the charts that the SPLC themselves provide, they don't show so much a spike in the 60s, as much as a dip off in the late 30s up until the mid 50s. They imply that the statues were directly in response to racial unrest, but just as likely a reason is that there was a rationing/redirecting of materials leading up to and during WWII, and soldiers had more important things on their minds directly after the war to be concerned with erecting statues of old dead men. We see a similar dip leading up to and following WWI. The SPLC themselves also note that major periods of memorializing (the early 1910s, and 1960s) also coincide with the 50th and 100th anniversary of the Civil War. So that has to be kept in mind as well. And finally, the sort of memorials we see more of during the 60s has to do with a rise in the naming of school buildings than with statue erection until we get directly to the 100th anniversary.

Arguing from correlation is of course always frightfully complex business. And certainly, if you look up individual articles and books references from those times on the erection of this or that statue, you won't find a word about race. Similarly, you don't hear a word about race from George Wallace when he stood in the doorway of the school. Ostensible, if you read his speech, that he spoke that day, he did so to protect state rights. True. The state's right to segregate black children from white children in schools. As he said when he was inaugurated "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

The coincidence just seems too strong. Though you make a good point Adrift. I didn't consider that it might just be a lack of materials in the time leading up to the Second World War. I'll have to think about that.

The legacy of the Confederates are a tragic affair. I have no doubt that there was a lot of great virtues in the soldiers and generals of that war. And that individuals fought for all sorts of reasons. Though it seems to be hard to say that the cause was not slavery. If they fought to protect the states independence, what meddling was it they wanted wanted independence from? Their right to keep capturing free-men and turning them into slaves.

Then on the heel of that came Jim Crow, George Wallice. Black people have been dealt a sour hand throughout this. I'd like to think they're owed at least some attention to what these statues mean to them.

Today we now have the Alt-Right with their various shades of white-supremacy (or racial realism, or ethno-nationalism as they prefer to call it). If you want to march to support the existence of these statues, you'll inevitably find yourself next to a klans man, or similar sympathisers like the Sons of the Confederate Soldiers. These later faults cannot be blamed on the original confederates. Yet to them these statues represents something quite loathsome.

I doubt the confederates would identify with these new generations.

General Lee actually hoped that one day the slaves would become a working class, educated in civilisation through slavery, as was the thought of most of the confederate intellectuals – highly patronising by our standards, but they were products of their time – one cannot say that there wasn't a nobility to them. Historical figures are always a mixed bag. And the point that the Northerners weren't angels either, and had many similar faults, and that Abraham Lincoln gave the Emancipation Proclamation more as a compromise than on moral grounds, is not something I'm not unaware of.

[Leonhard]

While I agree with you that the statues ought to remain as a public reminder of past transgressions, I think a big difference between the Danish issues you've mentioned and the American South is that there's a psychological component that's hard to fathom unless you're from that region. Imagine you and your ancestors are pictured as not only being on the wrong side of history, but representing the pinnacle of 19th century evil. Despite those transgressions, you attempt to find some way to turn the failure of the Confederacy into a bit of pride for some of the heroic actors of that war, and then fancy types from the North (and the South) come in and take that all away. Not only did they lose a war 150 years ago, but they routinely get sand kicked into their eyes every time it's brought up. In some ways it may be comparable to the sort of heavy guilt that Germans feels about their Nazi past. When I was there, a lot of young people suffered heavily from guilt for actions their grandfathers had accomplished, and would only speak of the period in hushed tones which demonstrated to me that it was still a very sore point. Unlike Germany, however, where you can at least share your feeling of guilt with a whole nation, in the US you have to share the nation with the North who pat themselves on the back for keeping the nation in one piece and ending slavery. There's a sort of cognitive dissonance in the South where at one point you want to be proud of being an American, but you're also proud of being a Southerner. It's gotta be a little strange.

Honestly though, in my experience, most people don't really think too much about this issue. Maybe moreso in the South, but most folks are just living their lives, and only think about the monuments when the news reports on them. Hardly anyone I know in the North cares at all about the Civil War unless they're history buffs, or are into Civil War reenactments, and that's generally true of Southerners as well (at least the ones I've been friends with).

You make very good points. I'll think about them.