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Confederate statues protest: the history and the debate

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Confederate Statues Debate In 59 Seconds

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Why People Think The Statues Should Come Down.

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A multi-ethnic democracy requires grappling honestly with the past-and recognizing the symbols of the Confederacy for what they are.

Joshua Roberts / Reuters

On Saturday in Charlottesville, a rally in defense of a statue of Robert E. Lee turned into a reenactment of the cause he led-white supremacists marching behind the Confederate battle flag, their opponents left injured or dead on the ground.

But like Lee's soldiers, today's defenders of white supremacy are fighting for a losing cause, a defeat that their violence will only serve to make deeper and more lasting than it otherwise would have been. Across the United States, the statues are starting to topple, the streets renamed, the memorials removed. These visible inscriptions of white supremacy into the American landscape are being erased.

In New Orleans, Mayor Mitch Landrieu recently hauled down three public monuments to the Confederacy and to white supremacy. "These statues were a part of ... terrorism as much as a burning cross on someone's lawn; they were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city," he explained. In Kentucky, the mayor of Lexington responded to Charlottesville by accelerating his efforts to move statues of two Confederate leaders from the courthouse lawn to a public park. This was the rising tide of change that the Charlottesville rally hoped to stem.

As of August 2016, there were still more than 1,500 public commemorations of the Confederacy, even excluding the battlefields and cemeteries: 718 monuments and statutes still stood, and 109 public schools, 80 counties and cities, and 10 U.S. military bases bore the names of Lee, Jefferson Davis, and other Confederate icons, according to a tally by the Southern Poverty Law Center. More than 200 of these were in Virginia alone.

And one sits in the center of Charlottesville. It was commissioned exactly 100 years ago, a gift to the city from a local philanthropist, to honor his parents with a physical incarnation of Southern ideals. But the statue was hardly the only contemporary effort to enshrine and defend these ideals. As it was being commissioned, sculpted, and erected, the second Ku Klux Klan was surging through the country. In Charlottesville, the local Klan gave $1,000 to the University of Virginia's Centennial Endowment Fund in 1921, funds it gratefully received; there was a second Klan chapter for the students on campus.

The statue stands 26-feet tall, despite its oddly small pedestal. "Let it stay that way," urged a speaker at its dedication. "The planet as a pedestal would be too small for Robert Edward Lee." It was unveiled in 1924, as the conventions of the Confederate Veterans and Sons of Confederate Veterans met, with "the greatest procession that ever threaded its way through the streets of Charlottesville." The Boy Scouts policed the route; the National Guard and governor marched; the president, board, faculty, and students of the university joined in. The man who introduced the ceremonies praised the "deathless devotion" of the veterans, who had fought "at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg," and now worked "to keep the record of Confederate heroism free from the stain of calumny!"

It was less a dedication than a canonization. The master of ceremonies called Lee "the greatest man who ever lived." The president of Washington and Lee proclaimed him "a Christian saint." Lee, he explained, embodied "the moral greatness of the Old South," with its "unusual combination of manly courage and womanly tenderness, its habitual tenderness toward the weak and helpless." (When three slaves escaped, Lee had them tied to posts and whipped -50 lashes for the men, 20 for the woman-and then had their backs washed with stinging brine.)

His defenders today insist that Lee's heroism lay not least in his laying down his sword when the war was done, deciding to "promote harmony once he recognized defeat." The speakers at the dedication likewise stressed Lee's role as a peacemaker; one went so far as to imagine the statute depicted "not the lurid splendor of the battlefield," but instead, Lee riding to Lexington to begin his tenure as a university president.

Yet this is not what the statue depicts. Not this one, nor the others. Where are the statues of Lee seated at Appomattox, signing the terms of that surrender? Where are the marbles and bronzes of Lee the college president, wearing civilian clothes, ensconced behind a desk piled high with paperwork? Why is this peacemaker always immortalized girded for war?

Perhaps it's because this, too, is largely myth, as my colleague Adam Serwer has so ably documented. Grant excoriated Lee for "setting an example of forced acquiescence so grudging and pernicious in its effects as to be hardly realized." And the reconciliation he offered was between whites-it pointedly excluded those he had held as property, whose freedom the war secured, but whose equality he bitterly contested.

Lee himself, after the war, encouraged a friend to banish the 90 newly freed women, children, and old men working on his plantation. The government could pay for their care, Lee advised; better to replace them with white labor. "I have always observed that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and wherever you find a white man, you see everything around him improving." That is the harmony Lee promoted.

But the Lee memorialized in Charlottesville isn't even the conciliator of myth. He's attired in uniform, riding his horse. He's the general who took an invading army north into Pennsylvania in 1863, in defense of a slave society. And not merely in the abstract. Lee's army was ordered to respect white property, but chose to regard the blacks it encountered as contraband-to be seized and returned to the South, whether born free, manumitted, or escaped. The army seized scores of their fellow Americans as slaves, actions sanctioned at the highest level of command; it took as many as a thousand back to Virginia. Those actions are among the "calumnies" that speakers at the statue's dedication praised the veterans of Gettysburg for contesting.

"Some of the colored people who were raised here were taken along," wrote Rachel Cormany in Chambersburg. "I sat on the front step as they were driven by just as we would drive cattle." Women, children, and infants alike were marched off to slavery. Philip Schaff, a prominent theologian, watched as Lee's army seized neighbors born and raised in the town. "One, Sam Brooks, split many a cord of wood for me." He appealed to the conscience of one of their captors; he insisted he felt "comfortable," because they were merely reclaiming stolen property.

Lee's army, retreating in defeat, released some, but most were hauled South to the auction block. For the crime of refusing to cross back to Virginia, one boy was horribly mutilated, doused in turpentine, his genitals sliced off, and left to die in a barn by his Confederate captors. If there is no evidence that Lee, the living embodiment of womanly tenderness, sanctioned such crimes, neither is there evidence he acted to stop them. Nor was the Gettysburg campaign an anomaly; slave raids were a persistent feature of Confederate campaigns out of Virginia. At the Battle of the Crater, Lee's army slaughtered black prisoners; one soldier lamented that some survived because "we could not kill them as fast as they [passed] us." This is what the uniform Lee wore represented; this is what the army he commanded did; this is the pose in which he is immortalized in the center of Charlottesville.

There is a reason why statues of Confederate generals are still powerful political symbols; a reason why a candidate came a hair's breadth from securing the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Virginia by campaigning to preserve them. The statues in public squares, the names on street signs, the generals honored with military bases-these are the ways in which we, as a society, tell each other what we value, and build the common heritage around which we construct a nation.

The white nationalists who gathered in Charlottesville saw this perhaps more clearly than the rest of us. They understood the stakes of what they were defending. They knew that Lee was honored not for making peace per se, but for defending a society built upon white supremacy-first by taking up arms, and then when the war was lost, by laying them down in such a way as to preserve what he could.

On Saturday, President Trump told Americans they "must be united" and "condemn all that hate stands for." He deplored the "violence on many sides." A century before, such remarks would have been heartily applauded in Charlottesville. At the statue's dedication, the keynote speaker deplored the violence of the Civil War, and praised Lee for his efforts at "reunion and reconciliation," and for forging a nation with "hearts unspoiled by hate."

The myth of reunion was built around this understanding, that the nation should treat both sides in a war that killed three-quarters of a million Americans as equal, or at least not inquire too closely into the merits of each cause. And that unity would come not from honestly grappling with events, but from studiously ignoring injustice, and condemning those who oppose it as hateful.

But the swift backlash against the president's remarks by leaders of his own party and leading figures of his own administration signaled that the United States of 2017 is not the same nation it was in 1924. Republicans and Democrats alike saw the white nationalists in the streets of Charlottesville for what they were, and rejected their vision of a nation built on white supremacism.

This is why the city council of Charlottesville voted, a century after it was commissioned, to remove the statue of Robert Edward Lee.

And ultimately, it is why the others will come down, too. The statues will be moved, the streets renamed, and the military bases will honor patriots who fought for their country and not against it. Because a century and a half after Reconstruction began, America is still working on the project of constructing a more equal society, and reinvesting in the experiment of a multi-ethnic democracy.

The white nationalists in Charlottesville hoped to halt this project. Instead, they have simply given it fiercer, redoubled urgency.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Yoni Appelbaum is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees the Ideas section.

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A multi-ethnic democracy requires grappling honestly with the past-and recognizing the symbols of the Confederacy for what they are. On Saturday in Charlottesville, a rally in defense of a statue of Robert E. Lee turned into a reenactment of the cause he led-white supremacists marching behind the Confederate battle flag, their opponents left injured or dead on the ground.

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Debate Video On Why The Confederate Statues Should Stay Up Or Go Down.

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Debate Video On Why The Confederate Statues Should Stay Up Or Go Down.

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Erasing history?: The debate over Confederate monuments

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What People Think About The Confederate Statues.

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What People Think About The Confederate Statues.

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OPINION AND COMMENTARY

Not so fast on removing monuments

Before we start condemning every park, street, monument, or public building named after a member of the Confederacy, it might be useful to review the entire record of that individual. For instance, Jefferson Davis served with distinction in the war with Mexico, helping to preserve Texas independence. As secretary of war, Davis was responsible for sending Robert E. Lee to defend against Mexican depredations near Brownsville, and helped establish the U.S. Cavalry corps to defend Texas against Comanche, Apache and Kiowa raids.

Thousands of Tejanos, American Indians and free blacks served the Confederacy in both civilian and military roles. As a former Marine and retired Air Force officer, I firmly believe that removing or renaming these monuments is disrespectful to everyone who served, no matter their race or ethnicity.

Daniel L. Nation,

Fort Worth

We can't erase the past

In my opinion, removing historical monuments only removes history facts.

If we eliminate historical monuments, what is next? History books that mention Confederate soldiers? All facts about how Africans were brought into this country unwilling? No mention of how our country was developed? The book Tom Sawyer is banned because of the N-word, then the Confederate flag, now all statues of the Confederacy...

Why don't we just say that "slavery" didn't exist ... It's all a fallacy. We are doing an injustice to our country's history. What we all should do is make sure it doesn't happen again and move forward.

Why we should removeConfederate monuments

As a proud former history teacher, here's why I think Confederate monuments should be removed from our public squares:

All history is instructive and worthy of study, but not all history is worthy of honor.

We must never forget, hide nor stop learning from the ugliness of our history, but we must also be careful that the ugly not be exhibited in places of honor. Monuments in our public squares that celebrate a wrong and un-American cause in a positive light have no place.

They belong in our museums as a reminder that a wrong took place and should not be repeated. I don't want my grandchildren passing a Confederate memorial and thinking that a "cause" is somehow worthy of honor, because it is not. Removing Confederate monuments is not "removing history." It is removing a dishonorable cause from a place of honor. Let's move those statues that celebrate a cause we as Americans have long since rejected to a museum so we can learn from them - not celebrate them.

Where will the destruction stop?

This latest uproar over destruction of Confederate monuments has me very concerned. If these folks on the far left are this upset about past slavery in history, and they are so offended, why not start at the top?

Gather together, travel to Egypt and start with the Pyramids. Tear them all down and then move on to the next stop. When you finally get to the U.S., then we may as one great country understand.

Till then, I just see whiny 5-year-olds wanting to get their way. I just don't understand my country anymore.

Scott Neystel, Fort Worth

Are we eradicating our history?

If we abolish all the Civil War statues and the Confederate flag, rename all the schools, parks, buildings, highways and counties of names connected with the Confederacy, then will history be rewritten that there was never slavery in America?

Many of the Civil War military men were formerly Union soldiers with great service records, but their service in the Civil War has erased that fact in our history. President Lincoln would rather have had Robert E. Lee than U.S. Grant lead the Union Army, but because Lee was a Virginian, he didn't want to fight against his own.

How many Americans know that Arlington National Cemetery was the home of Robert E. Lee and his wife before the Civil War?

As some want to erase the offensive reminders Civil War reminders - as they see them - will we be doomed to repeat it once the history is gone?

Cecelia Gilbreath,

Fort Worth

Is political correctnesstaking aim at our history?

I must ask one question. Why did all of these statues, street names, parks, buildings and monuments become so offensive that they must be torn down or renamed? The ones pushing all of this rely on feelings and political correctness and not on facts we can learn from!

I am not referring to the African-Americans in this statement. Where does this all stop? Next it will be freedom of speech because someone isn't speaking politically correct!

We shouldn't judge history with emotions or being politically correct. We judge our history correctly so we won't repeat mistakes of the past! I am asking the African-American community to forgive my ancestors and me for being wrong, and may we all learn to walk in respect, grace and love.

Let's not take it out on those who fought

Both sides in the Civil War fought honorably and forthright for what they sincerely believed.

I am a great-granddaughter of the Confederacy, but my ancestors were poor farmers, not rich slaveowners. They were not KKK, racist terrorists of the neo-Nazi storm troopers. They were Americans who fought with courage in the Alamo, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Statues and names of ancestors are not our enemies.

We must not let cruel, ugly, mean political groups tear our country apart.

Too bad we're stillrefighting Civil War

A local church has removed a stone plaque that has only three words ... "Civil War Memorial." No Confederate imagery, only a phrase memorializing ALL who died in that war. A worker said, "A citizen complained. We had to take it down to make sure the church building wasn't vandalized."

2) Six Flags over Texas management decides to take down all the flags, except the Stars and Stripes, that have flown over Texas and the Six Flags park since 1961. They explained that they wanted to present a flag the "unites" us. The truth is surely that they wanted to avoid potential trouble, so Six Flags executives simply surrendered to the activists.

3) Dallas appoints a "task force" to decide the fate of the city's century-old Civil War monuments. How fair and transparent will that group be? Dallas' cowardly city officials are just surrendering to avoid trouble by "progressive" agitators.

Is this democracy in action, or is this mob rule by a small group of snowflake, liberal activists?

The pendulum will inevitably swing the other way. It will get ugly. I grieve for our divided nation.

Targeting blacks as gettingfree ride is troubling

A recent letter writer (Becki Hutchison, Aug. 17) seemed to suggest that only whites work and pay taxes while everyone else gets freebies from these tax dollars.

However, I suspect that whites aren't the only ones who pay taxes, and many whites are being helped by government programs, which are supported by everyone's taxes. She believes history is being torn down (I guess because whites are becoming the minority).

From what I've read about history is that this is a nation of immigrants except for the American Indians (who incidentally weren't white). We are a nation of immigrants of many colors and many of them are helping make this a better nation.

Charles Clines,

North Richland Hills

This story was originally published August 25, 2017 5:22 PM.

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OPINION AND COMMENTARY Not so fast on removing monuments Before we start condemning every park, street, monument, or public building named after a member of the Confederacy, it might be useful to review the entire record of that individual. For instance, Jefferson Davis served with distinction in the war with Mexico, helping to preserve Texas independence.

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Why and Why Not To Confederate Statues Being Taken Down.

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Why and Why Not To Confederate Statues Being Taken Down.

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What Should Happen to Confederate Statues? A City Auctions One for $1.4 Million (Published 2019)

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The debate over whether to remove Confederate monuments divided the country. The question of what to do with them next is just as complicated.

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Why Confederate Statues Should Not Be Taken Down.

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Why Confederate Statues Should Not Be Taken Down.

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"A great nation does not hide its history, it faces its flaws and corrects them."-President George W. Bush, Opening of the NMAAHC, September 24, 2016

A great Nation does not hide its history. Let that sink in for a moment.

Truer words were never spoken than those offered at the grand opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture last September, by the man who signed the legislation authorizing the Museum, George W. Bush.

Remembering is powerful. Remembering, forces us to become wiser.

We think of the words Never Forget and we instantly remember 9-11 or the Holocaust. We connect because we remember. We look. We learn. We discover. And hopefully, with a little faith, self-discovery and humility we grow into better, more loving human beings.

We do not learn when we run from our wrongs. We learn when we face them.

This is why I, as a black woman, who is a direct lineal descendant of African slaves in my maternal family tree (my grandmother "Viney" was brought to America in the hull of a slave ship in the early 1800s, around 1803 we believe from Africa and was sold to the Henry plantation in Georgia), am opposed to the removal of Confederate statues in the south whether it be here in Richmond, Virginia or deeper south in Alabama.

Although I agree with the powerful words and sentiments expressed by Mayor Landrieu of New Orleans last week about why he thinks Confederate statutes and symbols should come down, I do not think it reflects the great first amendment freedoms America was founded upon.

Let me be clear: I felt very differently about the Confederate flag because it was a waving symbol of hate, rebellion and division flying over modern day state capitols throughout the south. However, I am not opposed to people wearing the confederate flag on their hats or flying it in their yards. That's called "free expression" and in America it is sacrosanct.

Just as we cannot tell people not to buy Nazi paraphernalia or collect it in their homes (no matter how abhorrent we may find it), we likewise cannot tell people they are not allowed to honor family members who fought for the confederacy or that their forbears could not raise monuments to southern heroes like Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson-both of whom were decorated and beloved West Point graduates and union officers before the south seceded from the union in rebellion.

In July 2015 when former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, now UN Ambassador Haley, ordered confederate flags down after the horrific shootings of nine black church members in the historic AME church in downtown Charleston, she was 100% correct.

The symbol was used by Dylan Roof to stoke his murderous rage one night after a Bible study where he killed nine God-fearing black church members. After that incident, the public sentiment shifted and the flag had to come down. More powerfully, South Carolinians taught us all a profound lesson of love, compassion and reconciliation as tens of thousands of them marched together on the famed Arthur J. Ravenel Bridge.
Related: Opinion: Racial Hate Is Infecting College Kids in America
But here is my point: In America, we pride ourselves on free thought. Free expression. Freedom to worship as we believe. Freedom to speak our minds without terrorizing or harassing others (hate speech is not free speech as defined by the US Supreme Court). Freedom to associate with groups and have ideas that may differ from each other, even if they are the "wrong" ideas.

At the end of the day, I don't want statutes of Robert E. Lee to come down.

I attended Washington & Lee University in Lexington Virginia as a first-year law student. It was an experience I will never forget. We had racial threats made against us as the largest black class of law students in the schools storied history, (which I wrote about in a 1998 Washington Post article entitled, "A Black Law Students First Trials"). But our white classmates were as outraged as us, and the Dean reacted swiftly and firmly to handle the perpetrators. We endured.

I don't fear 150-year-old statues of old dead white men. What I fear is the hatred we see in real time in 2017 on social media and in our political rhetoric.

The people who hated having black classmates at their school didn't hate us because there were statues of Robert E. Lee or George Washington (our nation's first President and a slave owner) on campus. It wasn't because of a Gen. Stonewall Jackson monument VMI or downtown.

They didn't like having black classmates because they had racist hearts. They honored racial prejudice. They harbored cultural bias. That, my friends, is what we must work toward eradicating.

And we won't do it by hiding from our racist, slave owning, segregated past. If we start taking statues down, well, we better go for old Thomas Jefferson (master of a slave who was his mistress and mother of at least four of his children). And let's not forget President Trump's favorite president, Old Hickory-Andrew Jackson. Another slave-holding Indian-killing president of our nation. Get my point?

We do not learn when we run from our wrongs. We learn when we face them.

Keep the statues where they are so that people can explain history to their kids. Keep them so that we can have a constructive dialogue at places like Montpelier (the home of President James Madison, who is considered the father of the Constitution).

Montpelier has a series called The Mere Distinction of Colour, a provocative new exhibition examining the institution of slavery and its legacy. Mount Vernon has done something similar with its new slave exhibit as of last year. Monticello announced earlier this year a new wing about Sally Hemings and of course, the new National Museum of African American History and Culture (which was the victim of yet another hateful racial act yesterday) is the place that every American family should go and take their kids, and their grandkids. And teach them, so that they do not repeat our mistakes.
Related: Is Removing Confederate Monuments Like Erasing History?
America is different because we value freedom. Freedom of thought. Of Speech. Of Heritage. Of celebration.

I don't fear 150-year-old statues of old dead white men. What I fear is the hatred we are seeing in real time in 2017 on social media, on our college campuses, in our workplaces and in our political rhetoric (i.e.: Kathy Griffin).

America is advanced citizenship. You have to want it, work at it, and trust that it ultimately works for us all.
Sophia A. Nelson is an NBCBLK Contributor and author of the new book, "E Pluribus One: Reclaiming our Founders Vision for a United America." Follow NBCBLK on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

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Opinion: Confederate monuments should stay and here's why

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I don't fear 150-year-old statues of old dead white men. What I fear is the hatred we see in real time in 2017 on social media and in our political rhetoric.