Civil War Statues?

[Tom Earp]

Interesting point was brought up that statues were built to honor someone.

That is what the statues of Southern Officers and soldiers were built for, not to pronounce that slavery was such a great thing. As I stated before, of course they were not built right after The Civil War because the South was beaten and trampled on the Carpetbaggers sent down from the North just like the American Indians were from the time whites were landing in The New World.

I would imagine the same could be said of American soldiers who fought in Viet Nam and came home and were spat on and to this day, The Wall is vandalized. Is this that much different than what is being done to Southern Statues?

I think we are all in agreement today that slavery was bad, but that is not today but way back when it was a norm of the times. Were there slaves up north, of course there was but they worked in the homes and were called servants and did not pick cotton in the fields.

Are all wars bad, yes because people get killed but try to get the worlds peoples to get along with out killing each other whether in this (OUR) or other Countries.

I first posted this to have a common sense discussion not turn it into a The South will rise again post bit just talk about it and now, we are getting down to something using some niggle of common sense. Oh, that means using some common sense which seems to be lacking in the Country at the moment. That is what I love about chatting with my G C Friends!

Thank you!!

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by Tom Earp

Interesting point was brought up that statues were built to honor someone.

I don't think anyone has supplied much if any evidence of that. There is far more evidence to support that these statues were built as part of the Lost Cause propaganda campaign to glorify those who fought to preserve the institution of slavery. You have been asked to explain why you think these are honorable men or why they deserve participation trophies. You have yet to respond in any meaningful way.

That is what the statues of Southern Officers and soldiers were built for, not to pronounce that slavery was such a great thing. As I stated before, of course they were not built right after The Civil War because the South was beaten and trampled on the Carpetbaggers sent down from the North just like the American Indians were from the time whites were landing in The New World.

That is your second theory. Do you have anything to back it up?

I would imagine the same could be said of American soldiers who fought in Viet Nam and came home and were spat on and to this day, The Wall is vandalized. Is this that much different than what is being done to Southern Statues?

If the Vietnam Memorial was built to honor Ho Chi Minh, I think you might have a fair point.

I think we are all in agreement today that slavery was bad, but that is not today but way back when it was a norm of the times. Were there slaves up north, of course there was but they worked in the homes and were called servants and did not pick cotton in the fields.

It depends on what you mean by "up north," but generally speaking, by 1860, there were no slaves up North as slavery was illegal.

It happened like this:

I first posted this to have a common sense discussion not turn it into a The South will rise again post bit just talk about it and now, we are getting down to something using some niggle of common sense. Oh, that means using some common sense which seems to be lacking in the Country at the moment. That is what I love about chatting with my G C Friends!

Well the subject of these statues necessarily involves talk of the South rising again because those are the people who erected these statues. Now local communities are having some tough conversations and making local decisions to make changes which reflect their community values.

[Sciencewoman]

Originally Posted by honeychile

I do question who is going to pay for the removal of these statues and the changing of millions of street/school/town/state names. We're in a time when we need public funding for such things as infrastructure, education, poverty, and massive governmental debt. I can remember all too well when a group of small, rural communities changed their street numbering system to help emergency vehicles find their destinations quickly. People's heads were exploding over having to (horrors!) buy new return address labels and house numbers!

Not to mention hurricane clean-up....

[honeychile]

Originally Posted by Kevin

In OKC, we are changing the names of 3 schools. That is being paid for with private donations.

That would be a good thing.

Originally Posted by Sciencewoman

Not to mention hurricane clean-up....

Sorry, I did include hurricane clean-up in my first draft, and accidentally omitted it prior to posting here.

[Kevin]

[Sciencewoman]

I'd have to stay home all winter if I didn't drive when it snowed or was icy. *sigh*

I took drivers' ed. in December/January, on a stick shift car. At the time, I thought my parents were sadists, but I learned a lot about winter driving.

When I was going to school in Maryland, waiting/melting seemed to be way to deal with the snow, and we're used to salt trucks, sand trucks, plow trucks, etc. That makes a HUGE difference, and I think most northerners take those services for granted and don't realize that states with less need don't have access to all those interventions. No one can defy physics.

You're the second person who's told me they live right by the location of that NC picture. The first person is one of my chapter sisters who now lives in NC and said the same thing about the ice. I asked her about the explosion, but she didn't know. Do you know what happened, MC?

ETA: I almost forgot. I'm Sciencewoman. I CAN defy physics.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by Sciencewoman

When I was going to school in Maryland, waiting/melting seemed to be way to deal with the snow, and we're used to salt trucks, sand trucks, plow trucks, etc. That makes a HUGE difference, and I think most northerners take those services for granted and don't realize that states with less need don't have access to all those interventions. No one can defy physics.

This, exactly this. (Sciencewoman excepted from the last statement, of course.)

You're the second person who's told me they live right by the location of that NC picture. The first person is one of my chapter sisters who now lives in NC and said the same thing about the ice. I asked her about the explosion, but she didn't know. Do you know what happened, MC?

Why yes, I do indeed.

It wasn't an explosion. As I recall, that storm got bad—meaning the road got covered in a layer of ice (maybe 1/2 inch?)—surprisingly quickly. The woman driving that car, as with lots of the other cars in the picture, was trying to get up the hill, but as you've noted is usually the case, physics wouldn't cooperate. She kept trying though. I think some (well-intentioned but stupid) people might even have been trying to help her out by pushing while she tried to will the car—through her foot and the accelerator—up and over the hill.

Anyway, she tried to the point that things under the hood overheated and caught fire. And that was it for the car. Someone took the picture with her phone and sent it to a local TV station. And the rest is Facebook history.

[ASTalumna06]

Originally Posted by Sciencewoman

When I was going to school in Maryland, waiting/melting seemed to be way to deal with the snow, and we're used to salt trucks, sand trucks, plow trucks, etc. That makes a HUGE difference, and I think most northerners take those services for granted and don't realize that states with less need don't have access to all those interventions. No one can defy physics.

On the other hand, I've encountered extreme panic, stores and businesses shut down, and demands to stay off the road when it's basically just wet outside. When I lived in Houston, it rained one night and dipped slightly below 32 degrees for a couple hours, and my office was closed the next day and no one was on the road. People were amazed that I chose to be out driving around. One woman asked me why I was risking my life to shop for food

[Sciencewoman]

Thanks for the explanation, MC. I'm just glad no one died, because I had the sense that I shouldn't have been making light of the photo.

To prove my physics-defying ability, I point to the fact that I have successfully derailed this thread. Granted, it's not quite as physics-defying as derailing a moving locomotive, ala Superman, but still.

And now I'm going to "rail" it -- given Kevin's comments about Robert E. Lee not being comfortable with war memorials, I wonder what he would think about the sculpture of himself in Lee Chapel, lying in repose on a camp bed. It reminds me of the tombs of some English monarchs. It was installed in 1975, and the sculptor Edward Valentine seems to have focused on famous southerners in his work.

I've also wondered what he would think about the "party shuttle bus" at W&L being named after his horse, Traveller. It's a clever name for a bus, but given Lee's personal focus on honor, it just seems...wrong.

ETA: Well, humph. Jon "railed" it back first.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by Kevin

Well in this country, we elect officials who preside either as executive actors or in some legislative body. Those people vote on things as a group and it's usually majority rule, but not always. In some cases, you have leaders of educational institutions who can make those decisions on their own or with an appointed board of some sort. Generally speaking, that's who draws these lines.

And in those communities that handle this well, those elected or university officials and other community leaders will facilitate hard but necessary conversations in the community about the statues, the meanings that they had and the meanings that they have now.

Originally Posted by JonInKC

What Frederick Douglas thought is anecdotal. I could quote someone with a differing opinion and it would bring no more or less of anything of value to the discussion.

Informed viewpoints—and I think that the viewpoint of Frederick Douglass qualifies as "informed"—always bring something valuable to the conversation. In this case, it illustrates how at least one former slave, and probably many more former slaves, viewed and experienced the canonization of Lee. It also serves as a reminder of the majority's indifference and even antagonism to that point of view.

Originally Posted by Sciencewoman

And now I'm going to "rail" it -- given Kevin's comments about Robert E. Lee not being comfortable with war memorials, I wonder what he would think about the sculpture of himself in Lee Chapel, lying in repose on a camp bed. It reminds me of the tombs of some English monarchs. It was installed in 1975, and the sculptor Edward Valentine seems to have focused on famous southerners in his work.

I've also wondered what he would think about the "party shuttle bus" at W&L being named after his horse, Traveller. It's a clever name for a bus, but given Lee's personal focus on honor, it just seems...wrong.

My guess is he would be horrified by the former, which really is way over the top, and saddened by the latter.

[JonInKC]

What Frederick Douglas thought is anecdotal. I could quote someone with a differing opinion and it would bring no more or less of anything of value to the discussion.

Here's something from snopes:

"Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and (from 1865) the general-in-chief of Confederate forces, neither owned slaves nor inherited any, thus it is not correct to assert that he “freed his slaves” (in 1862 or at any other time).
As in the case of Ulysses S. Grant, the slaves that Lee supposedly owned actually belonged to his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, and lived and worked on the three estates owned by Custis (Arlington, White House, and Romancoke). Upon Custis’ death in 1857, Lee did not “inherit” those slaves; rather, he carried out the directions expressed in Custis’ will regarding those slaves (and other property) according to his position as executor of Custis’ estate.
Custis’ will stipulated that all of his slaves were to be freed within five years: “… upon the legacies to my four granddaughters being paid, then I give freedom to my slaves, the said slaves to be emancipated by my executor in such manner as he deems expedient and proper, the said emancipation to be accomplished in not exceeding five years from the time of my decease.” So while Lee did technically free those slaves at the end of 1862, it was not his choice to do so; he was required to emancipate them by the conditions of his father-in-law’s will."

[Kevin]

Here's an outstanding article in the Atlantic about Lee. Worth a read if you still think he was in any sense a decent human being.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...al-lee/529038/

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by Kevin

Here's an outstanding article in the Atlantic about Lee. Worth a read if you still think he was in any sense a decent human being.

I tend to think that "in any sense" goes a bit too far. I won't deny at all his shortcomings or his significant moral failures, nor the consequences of them.

But like most of us, he was a mix of good and bad. There are very few people who I would deny were "in any sense a decent human being." I can't put Lee in the same category as Caligula, Hitler or Pol Pot, nor do I think history suggests that I should.

To suggest that he wasn't decent in any way is not accurate, I don't think. And I think it's the mirror image of the mistake of making him the noble hero that the Lost Cause myth does. The truth, I suspect, is somewhere in the middle.

I wonder what would have happened had he lived longer—whether any development might have been seen in his views. Who knows?

[Kevin]

In OKC, we are changing the names of 3 schools. That is being paid for with private donations.

[1964Alum]

I've hesitated to jump into this but will despite my reservations. I am a 13th generation Virginian and descendant of large land and slave owners. From the cradle on, the romance and glory of the Old South was drummed into my little blond-curled head. I'll offer up something to perhaps offer some more understanding of the controversy around the statues. As Kevin already posted, yes, these statues were erected in the same time frame as the ascendancy of Jim Crow in the South along with the resurgence of the KKK in far greater numbers than it had earlier existed and then with an entirely different population. Most were erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy and yes, it was an attempted revival of the Old Virginia with her notions of supremacy.

But these had less to do with slavery than it did with White Supremacy. Was RE Lee a White Supremacist? Yes! of course he was! Virginia was established with a new world aristocracy from the get-go. Early colonists coming to Virginia came bearing their family coats of arms, and a commission was even created in colonial Virginia to ensure the legitimacy of the bearers of these coats of arms. There was from the beginning a clear caste system from the "aristocratic "whites at the very top all the way down to the black slaves, particularly where marriage was concerned. There was even a class/caste system among the slaves. This class/caste system continued all the way up to and after the Civil War. RE Lee descended from the Washington and "King" Carter families along with the Lees, at the very top of the Virginia aristocracy. This still exists to some but much lesser extent today.

The young men in these families were taught from the cradle on that they were born to rule and that blacks were inherently inferior and only by the grace of God were they brought to Virginia to save them from life in Africa and their primitive religions. Whites not of their social status were considered inferior as well. Great wealth and even more enhanced social status came with these large land holdings which depended on owning slaves to work these lands. Also to have servants in the homes. There was a certain honor code, but it was based greatly upon noblesse oblige of the upper classes toward their inferiors, the slaves occupying the lowest spot on the totem pole.

There was economic devastation in Virginia as a result of the Civil War, and white
Virginians feared that their alleged racial superiority would disappear. There was a saying in the county that my ancestors helped settle that "All we have left is our good names and the family silver, which we buried." RE Lee and some of the other Virginia generals exemplified to them Southern honor and nobility of the highest order. I'm not sure how I escaped this mind set, but neither slavery nor white supremacy in any form is a part of my heritage that I want to embrace or perpetuate. They all belong in the dust bin of history. I have many friends with deep Southern roots who have also come to terms with deeply flawed aspects of their ancestry and have long since discarded them as part of their now value system. The reality is that these statues conjure up the fantasy of the ante bellum South to some and cause great pain to others.

I would hope other Southerners would take a clear-headed look and understanding of what these statues represent. I personally would like these statues put into museums of history along with reality-based teaching opportunities.