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It's hard to forget the violence that broke out in Charlottesville, Virginia last August when hundreds of white supremacists showed up to protest the proposed removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee, a Confederate hero of the Civil War. What happened that weekend re-ignited a national debate about what to do with some 700 other Confederate monuments in towns and cities across the country, mostly in the south. Earlier this year, we took a closer look at these monuments, and were surprised to learn not just when they were built and why, but who wants to tear them down, and who doesn't. We began in New Orleans where the culmination of then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu's crusade to remove four Confederate monuments looked more like a military operation than a construction job.

When the city of New Orleans removed a giant statue of P.G.T. Beauregard, a Confederate general who ordered the first shots fired in the Civil War, they did it in the dead of night. Construction crews wore bulletproof helmets and vests.

And police snipers were stationed on rooftops nearby. Mitch Landrieu says it was impossible to find a local company that would take the job.

Mitch Landrieu: When we put the thing out to bid, the one contractor that got-- showed up had his life threatened. He had his car bombed.

Anderson Cooper: His-- his car was actually--

Mitch Landrieu: His car was actually fire-bombed. Death threats were comin' in. And so, I couldn't find a crane. I could not find a damn crane.

Anderson Cooper: In New Orleans, you could not get a--

Mitch Landrieu: In New Orleans. I couldn't find a crane in Louisiana.

Mayor Landrieu eventually found a contractor from out of state and finally, after years of legal wrangling, took down four Confederate monuments. The last one removed was a 16 and a half foot bronze statue of General Robert E. Lee. It had stood for 133 years.

Until May, 19th 2017, when, to the cheers and jeers of onlookers, the Confederacy's most celebrated military hero was hoisted off its 68 foot pedestal.

"The whole point was to convince people that actually they won, and even in their defeat, it was a noble cause."

Mitch Landrieu: In a city that I represent, that's 67% African-American, to have a young African-American girl pass by that statue and look at it every day, I ask myself, "Am I really preparing for her-- a really good future? Is she feeling like she's gettin' lifted up by the government or is she being put down?" I mean, I think the answer's pretty clear.

Mitch Landrieu: Really what these monuments were, were a lie.

Anderson Cooper: A lie in what sense?

Mitch Landrieu: Well, in the sense that-- that Robert E. Lee was used as an example to send a message to the rest of the country, and to all the people that lived here, that the Confederacy was a noble cause. And that's just not true.

Mayor Landrieu agreed to show us what's become of Generals Lee and Beauregard - they've been gathering dust for more than a year.

Mitch Landrieu: That-- that's the first time I've seen 'em there.

Anderson Cooper: Is that right?

Mitch Landrieu: Uh-huh. Yup. They're pretty daunting.

Hidden away in this hastily built plywood shed in a location we were asked not to reveal.

Mitch Landrieu: And you can see, they're in the Civil War gear, the-- the military monuments. You know, they're there to revere them for their military service in propagation of the Civil War.

Anderson Cooper: You look at these monuments. You wouldn't know the Confederacy lost.

Mitch Landrieu: Well, that was the whole point. The whole point was to convince people that actually they won, and even in their defeat, it was a noble cause. And of course, the whole point of this is to-- is to confront history. I mean, this wasn't an LSU-Alabama football game where it didn't matter who won and lost, and you just got braggin' rights. I mean, we were talkin' about millions of people enslaved, 600,000 American citizens were killed, and they were trying to destroy the country.

The statues' final fate is unclear, but they're unlikely to ever be displayed again on public property in the city of New Orleans

Mitch Landrieu: I really did want to make a definitive statement, as a white man from the South, as the mayor of a major American city at the dawning of the 21st century, that it's not unclear anymore about what the Civil War was about and who won, and what the values are that we should really revere.

After the removal of the statues in New Orleans, and the violence in Charlottesville, cities, universities, and activists across the country began re-thinking what Confederate monuments said about their values. Several were removed in Baltimore and also in Austin, Texas. In Durham, North Carolina protestors tore down a statue of a Confederate soldier outside an old courthouse.

No state has more Confederate monuments to revere or revile than the commonwealth of Virginia. In Richmond, the capital, there's a contentious debate about what to do about five prominent Confederate statues on Monument Avenue.

Julian Hayter: All these years later, the Civil War, in many ways, is still contested ground. This is contested ground.

Anderson Cooper: This is ground zero of this debate.

Julian Hayter: Absolutely. In large part because it was the capital of the Confederacy.

Julian Hayter is a historian at the University of Richmond.

Julian Hayter: Monument Avenue is not just a national tourist attraction, but an international tourist attraction.

Monument Avenue is like a Confederate walk of fame. There are the generals: Robert E. Lee and his horse traveler; "Stonewall" Jackson; and J.E.B. Stuart; the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis; and finally Matthew Fontaine Maury, a somewhat more obscure figure who tried and failed to start a Confederate colony in Mexico.

Julian Hayter: Those monuments, in many ways, are part and parcel of what we call the Lost Cause.

Anderson Cooper: The Lost Cause. What does that mean?

Julian Hayter: The Lost Cause, quite frankly, is just the Confederate reinterpretation of the Civil War. It's created almost immediately after the war ends by Confederate leadership. it was hard for a lot of people, in my estimation, to believe that their ancestors died and-- and fought for an ignoble cause. 600-and-some-odd-thousand people died in the Civil War. Which is more Americans than died in the second World War. And people had to make sense of that.

Believers in the Lost Cause who raised money to build monuments in town and cities across the country were often veterans or their widows and children. Lost Cause ideology portrayed Confederate soldiers as heroes defending states' rights against northern aggression, and downplayed slavery's role in causing the war.

The first Confederate statue on Monument Avenue wasn't built until 1890, 25 years after the Civil War ended. The last one went up in 1929.

Anderson Cooper: You've written that these statues serve white supremacy.

Julian Hayter: Sure. And that, by the way, is a critical component of the Lost Cause. The idea that African Americans were not only happy slaves, but they were unprepared for freedom. The idea that African Americans were helpless-- after the Civil War. And in that way it represents the continuation of the ways that whites think about-- black folks' intellectual abilities-- not just during slavery, but shortly thereafter.

In the years after slavery was abolished and the Civil War ended, what became known as Jim Crow laws were passed that made African Americans second-class citizens.

Julian Hayter: There are laws that-- disenfranchise African Americans from their-- the 15th Amendment's right to vote. There are laws that restrict their movements. They represent, more broadly, the attempt to-- to reassert control over African Americans after the abolition of slavery.

Anderson Cooper: and these monuments are part of that?

Julian Hayter: Oh, absolutely. They're just as much a part of Jim Crow as they are of the Civil War and slavery. That's when they were built. They were built in the 20th Century. Very few people seem to-- to understand-- that these monuments were built during-- during segregation.

Mayor Levar Stoney: The monuments are just a symbol of the effort to ensure African Americans stayed maybe not in physical bondage, but in bondage in political and economically in this country and in this city.

Richmond's mayor, Levar Stoney, created a commission last year on the future of Monument Avenue.

Mayor Levar Stoney: those who chose to erect those monuments and the figures who are glorified in those monuments-- they made some serious attempts. to ensure that-- people who look like me would never hold any political office ever in Virginia.

Anderson Cooper: With Charlottesville were you surprised at how many people were willing to come out and show their true colors, show their Nazi flags?

Mayor Levar Stoney: I think it woke a lot of people up not just here in the Commonwealth of Virginia, but around the country.

There have been protests in Richmond over the future of Monument Avenue. The city has already spent more than half a million dollars on security. Mayor stoney says he wants the statues taken down.

Mayor Levar Stoney: it is for me the greatest example of nostalgia masquerading as-- as history.

Anderson Cooper: It's not real history?

Mayor Levar Stoney: It's-- well, it-- it's the fake news of their time.

William J. Cooper: Well, he and I just disagree. They're a part of history.

William J. Cooper says removing Confederate monuments is a mistake. He was a professor of history at Louisiana State University for 46 years and is a past president of the Southern Historical Association.

Anderson Cooper: One of the things that-- Mitch Landrieu said that stuck in my mind, he said there is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence for it. And that-- that these statues are revering a false history.

William J. Cooper: Well it's not a false history. It's not a false history. The monument was put up there by real people who had real beliefs. Maybe we don't like their beliefs. But one of the things that-- b-- bothers me most as a historian is what I call "presentism," judging the past by the present, figuring that we are the only moral people, that nobody else-- could be moral if they didn't think like we think.

Anderson Cooper: When you hear people m-- saying that these-- these-- these monuments celebrate white supremacy-- 'cause that's-- that's sort of the common refrain.

William J. Cooper: when you say "celebrate white supremacy"-- that's not incorrect. I mean, they do celebrate white supremacy. But they weren't put up to celebrate white supremacy.

Anderson Cooper: Really? I mean--

William J. Cooper: No, they were put up to celebrate the Confederacy.

Anderson Cooper: But if the statues do celebrate white supremacy, should they be up today?

William J. Cooper: Well, should Mount Vernon be up today? Should we go burn Monticello down tomorrow? Certainly, Thomas Jefferson believed in white supremacy.

Anderson Cooper: you're saying this is a slippery slope?

William J. Cooper: That's a very slippery slope.

Julian Hayter: I would say the difference, the critical difference between Washington and Jefferson and Lee, and men like Lee, is that while Washington and Jefferson were com-- complicated individuals-- and by our standards-- thought about ideas in-- in an entirely anachronistic way-- they also baked in the Constitution the components that allowed people to dismantle-- the slave system. They built as much as they destroyed. I cannot say the same thing for the Confederacy.

Professor Hayter was appointed by Richmond's Mayor to the commission that's going to make recommendations on what should happen on Monument Avenue.

Julian Hayter: There are 75 million people in the south who are the descendants of-- Confederate soldiers. And who I am to tell them that-- they cannot celebrate their ancestor in a particular way? But I also have ancestors who were the victims of the slave system, and I see no reason why we can't find a usable way to tell two stories, or tell multiple stories

Anderson Cooper: That tell the truth.

Julian Hayter: Not a romanticized version of the truth. where people are trying to absolve themselves-- from the deep inhumanities of-- of what the Confederacy stood for, but people who are willing to face down history for what it is in-- in all its ugliness, and all its beauty.

Anderson Cooper: do you believe the statue should be removed?

Julian Hayter: No. I'm a historian, and-- I think that the statues should stay with a-- footnote of epic proportions.

Anderson Cooper: Essentially you're suggesting

Julian Hayter: I'm suggesting we do a little bit of historical jujutsu. I'm-- right? I'm suggesting we use the scale and grandeur of those monuments against themselves. I think we lack imagination when we talk about memorials. It's all or nothin'. It's leave 'em this way, or tear 'em down. As if there's nothin' in between that we could do to tell a more enriching story about American history.

Historians call it recontextualization, the addition of signs or markers with information about when and why the statues were built to help people see old monuments in a new light.

Anderson Cooper: So, you'd like to see signs or placards or historical--

Julian Hayter: Anywhere--

Anderson Cooper: Lessons somewhere--

Julian Hayter: Anywhere around here, right.

Julian Hayter: --around here. Perhaps even on this sidewalk.

Anderson Cooper: So that as people approach the statue--

Julian Hayter: They can read the story of--

Anderson Cooper: And they can understand the context--

Julian Hayter: Absolutely.

Anderson Cooper: --in-- in which it was built--

Julian Hayter: Absolutely.

Anderson Cooper: --and the reason it was built.

Julian Hayter: Yep you could have-- a glass placard here and etched into that glass placard would be a story. And then when you look through it, you can still see the Lee monument, but you see it through the lens of a more accurate historical depiction.

Last year in a poll about Monument Avenue, more Richmond area residents said they preferred some form of recontextualization, over keeping the statues as they are or removing them.

Anderson Cooper: So someone walkin' down Monument Avenue today, what kind of a view do you think they would get about slavery, about the Civil War?

Julian Hayter: I don't think they'd get much of a view at all.

The only representation of an African American you'll find on Monument Avenue is a statue of Richmond native and tennis great Arthur Ashe. He's surrounded by children and holds a stack of books in his right hand and a tennis racquet in his left.

Julian Hayter: It was unveiled in 1996 in some ways as a proverbial middle finger to the other monuments. And believe me, this town exploded when they told the public that they were gonna build the-- the Arthur Ashe-- statue on Monument Avenue.

Anderson Cooper: A lot of people didn't want it built.

Julian Hayter: Oh, no.

Whatever recommendations made by Julian Hayter and the monument commission he serves on may have a limited impact. Unlike in New Orleans, the Confederate statues here may be protected by state law and the Republican-controlled Virginia General Assembly is unlikely to approve major changes any time soon.

One person who that might have disappointed is Robert E. Lee. Before he died in 1870, he was on record opposing the building of civil war monuments in the north and the south. "Wiser," he once wrote, "not to keep open the sores of war."
Produced by Keith Sharman and Erin Horan.

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The history and future of Confederate monuments

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It's hard to forget the violence that broke out in Charlottesville, Virginia last August when hundreds of white supremacists showed up to protest the proposed removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee, a Confederate hero of the Civil War.

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C- Feb 15,2020

R- The article tells what people think about the statues

A- North jersey by terrance T. mcdonald

A-There were no spelling errors

P- To inform

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CLOSE

The potential relocation of a statue of a Civil War hero has ignited a battle between the town of Kearny and the state of New Jersey.

Trenton lawmakers want to gift a statue of Alice Paul, a women's rights champion born in Mount Laurel, to the U.S. Capitol's National Statuary Hall Collection. The plan would see Paul's statue replace one of Philip Kearny, a general who died fighting for the Union at the Second Battle of Bull Run.

Kearny Mayor Al Santos, whose Hudson County town was named after the Civil War general, said he's stunned by the proposed statue swap, while a longtime Kearny historian says the general's contribution to the Union effort was too significant for New Jersey to consider replacing his statue.

"Without Philip Kearny, you might not be living in the United States of today," said the historian, Bill Styple. "The outcome of the war could have been different."

The push for a Paul statue comes as the nation reevaluates the types of historical figures who should be honored with public monuments, with controversies largely centering around statues of Confederate generals. There is also a push to include more women in the Capitol's National Statuary Hall Collection, which includes 100 statues, two from every state. Nine are statues of women.

Alice Paul makes a toast to Tennessee's ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote (Photo: Associated Press)

The New Jersey bill, S-1369, would ask a Congressional committee to approve replacing the bronze Kearny statue with one of Paul. New Jersey's other statue in the collection is a marble one of Richard Stockton. Both were given to the U.S. Capitol in 1888.

Santos, a Democrat, said he's concerned that the public has not been consulted about the proposed change. He also said he worries about the implications of state lawmakers appearing to favor one historical figure over another.

"Is someone who fought for the Union and preserving the Union less important than someone who fought for women's rights?" Santos said. "That kind of pitting one kind of historical figure against one another winds up pitting groups against one another. And I don't think that's the way history should be treated."

Assemblywoman Carol Murphy, D-Burlington, is driving the bill. Murphy acknowledges that Gen. Kearny is an important figure, but said his and Stockton's statues have been in the Capitol for over 100 years and it's time for someone like Paul to be honored.

"A woman needs to represent New Jersey," she said.

The Kearny statue won't be destroyed, noted state Sen. Linda Greenstein, D-Middlesex. It can be brought back to New Jersey to be displayed in a prominent place, she said.

"It's not a matter of wanting to dishonor Gen. Kearny as much as it is to honor Alice Paul and to do an appropriate way to do it," Greenstein said.

Kearny and Paul

Styple is a Gen. Kearny expert who in 1988 wrote "Letters from the Peninsula the Civil War Letters of General Philip Kearny." The general, who lost his left arm fighting in the Mexican-American war, signed up to fight again when the Civil War broke out because he was so outraged by slavery, according to Styple.

Kearny has a statue of its namesake, Gen. Philip Kearny, outside its post office. New Jersey lawmakers are considering replacing a different statue of Kearny that stands in the U.S. Capitol. (Photo: Mitsu Yasukawa/ Northjersey.com)

"He felt that slavery was a stain on the American flag and that the southern Confederacy must be defeated," Styple said.

When a statue of Kearny, killed in battle in 1862, was unveiled in Newark's Military Park in 1880, Gens. Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and George Mclellan all attended.

Paul was born five years later. She began fighting for women's suffrage in 1910, a decade before the ratification of the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. She formed the National Women's Party in 1916 and wrote the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923.

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"Women worked long and hard to make democracy accessible to all Americans and that feels like something worthy of celebration," said Lucienne Beard, executive director of the Alice Paul Institute. "New Jersey should be proud of her and of having a daughter that did something like that on the national stage."

Beard, a Civil War buff, said she knows the important role Gen. Kearny played in defeating the Confederacy. But it's vital to showcase the role women have played in the nation's history, Beard said.

Onto the Assembly

The state Senate introduced S-1369 on Monday and then approved it 28-5, with seven members abstaining. Greenstein said it was fast-tracked to nearly coincide with the anniversary of New Jersey's ratification of the 19th Amendment, on Feb. 9, 1920. The measure would need approval by the General Assembly before heading to Gov. Phil Murphy for his signature. A vote in the Assembly will not come before March, according to a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin.

State Sen. Joseph Pennacchio, R-Morris, was one of the five no votes. Pennacchio said it's "crazy" that the Legislature would consider removing a statue of a Union soldier who gave his life fighting the confederacy.

"We're going to discard him because he's not the flavor of the month?" he said. "Nothing against Alice Paul, she was a very nice lady. Find another way to honor her."

Asked to respond to that, Beard said, "I think it's a shame we have to look at something like 51% of the population getting the vote as a flavor-of-the-month topic."

Congress authorized creating the National Statuary Hall Collection in 1864. The first statue of a woman was unveiled in 1905, of Illinois' Frances Willard.

States were not allowed to replace statues until a federal law was enacted in 2000. Since then, several states have mulled replacing statues of men with those of women. Alabama added one of Helen Keller in 2009 to replace a statue of Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry, a Confederate officer.

Florida legislators in 2016 approved replacing one of their statuary hall pieces - honoring Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith - with a monument to black civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune, with the switch expected to occur this year. California in 2015 approved a now-shelved bid to replace one of its statues, of the Rev. Junipero Serra, with one of Sally Ride. And Kansas has spent 20 years planning to replace a statue of the late Sen. John James Ingalls with one of Amelia Earhart. The Architect of the Capitol, which oversees the hall, hasn't approved the Earhart statue's pedestal, according to Roll Call.

Besides thinking New Jersey's statue of Kearny should remain, Styple has another grip with S-1369: it misspells the general's name as Kearney.

"Philip Kearny was known to toss away mail if it was spelled incorrectly," he said. "He said, my friends know how to spell my name."

Terrence T. McDonald is a reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: mcdonaldt@northjersey.com Twitter: @terrencemcd
Read or Share this story: https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/new-jersey/2020/02/13/kearny-nj-upset-namesake-statue-may-replaced-alice-paul-d-c/4728868002/

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NJ wants to swap a century-old Civil War statue in D.C. Kearny isn't happy about it

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CLOSE The potential relocation of a statue of a Civil War hero has ignited a battle between the town of Kearny and the state of New Jersey. Trenton lawmakers want to gift a statue of Alice Paul, a women's rights champion born in Mount Laurel, to the U.S.

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C- May 19,2017

R- this video shows people talking about the statues being taken down

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A- There were no spelling mistakes

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New Orleans is the latest city to start taking down historical but controversial monuments that many say celebrate slavery and the Confederacy. Angry opponents see the move as suppressing or rewriting history in the service of political correctness. William Brangham talks to Walter Isaacson of the Aspen Institute and Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:
Last week in Baton Rouge, the Louisiana Statehouse passed HB-71, which would require a referendum before any military monument could be renamed or removed. In a show of defiance, black caucus members walked out after vote.

Meanwhile last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, torch-bearing protesters, including white nationalist Richard Spencer, marched against the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue there.

The Southern Poverty Law Center counts more than 700 Confederate monuments and statues on public lands across the country. The vast majority of those are in the South.

So, is this the right approach for dealing with the darker sides of U.S. history?

I'm joined now by two men who've wrestled with this very question. Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. He's helping build a national monument to the victims of lynching in Montgomery, Alabama. And Walter Isaacson is a historian and writer and president of the Aspen Institute.

Welcome to you both.

Walter, I would like to start with you first.

You are a native of New Orleans. You were there when they are bringing Robert E. Lee down off his pedestal today. What do you make of the city's moves?

BRYAN STEVENSON, Founder, Equal Justice Initiative:
Well, I think it's also very long overdue and a really important step for one of America's great cities that wants to be open and inviting to all the people of the world.

And I think this legacy of racial inequality and segregation has really put a cloud over New Orleans. And these statues and monuments have reflected that cloud more powerfully than anything.

These totems are made of concrete and steel and bronze, but they have been screaming at African-Americans for decades. And what they have been screaming is this narrative of racial difference, this history of white supremacy.

So, I think this is long overdue. And part of that has to do with the legacy. I don't the great evil of American slavery was involuntary servitude and forced labor. I think the real evil of American slavery was this narrative of racial difference we created, the ideology white supremacy that we made up. We said black people are different than white people. They're not fully human.

Our courts held that black people were only three-fifths human. And our 13th Amendment dealt with involuntary servitude and forced labor, but it didn't deal with this ideology of white supremacy.

And because of that, I don't think slavery ended in 1865. I think it just evolved. And the proof of that was the erection of these narratives or these monuments and totems, which came after a violent resistance, as Walter said, to racial equality.

And they have been there for decades screaming that that narrative of racial difference, that resistance to the end of emancipation, to integration is something worth honoring. And I think that has to change if we're going to be a country that makes progress in dealing with racial inequality.

WALTER ISAACSON:
I would agree that it was good to have the discussion, too, Bryan, which helped this city.

When I was first asked to be on the Tricentennial Commission down here, Wynton Marsalis said, I will do it with you if we take down Robert E. Lee.

And I said, well, I never paid much attention to Robert E. Lee when you go around Lee Circle. And Wynton said, I did. We did.

And that helped us do a dialogue down here, which now is pretty complete.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:
But, Walter, you heard Bryan say that they were screaming, that these statues were screaming about inequality and white superiority.

There's also a great deal of screaming, the people who are furious that these monuments are coming down. How is a mayor or a governor anywhere in the country supposed to wrestle with that very real boiling anger over these exact moves?

WALTER ISAACSON:
Well, I think what happened here in New Orleans is, we spent a lot of time talking about it, and the anger, especially among local citizens, receded.

I think there's a willingness now to put this behind. As I said, I just came from Lee Circle. There is a brass band there playing the national anthem.

I think that, once we had this catharsis of talking about it, there were people who protested the monuments coming down, but they were all outsiders who had come in from these weird groups around the country.

In New Orleans right now, it was a daytime, very peaceful thing to get this monument down, and I think the whole process of talking it through, and realizing that we don't need to put the Confederacy on a pedestal in New Orleans, which wasn't even part of the Civil War, really.

BRYAN STEVENSON:
Well, I think it's important to have a conversation about what we honor and why.

But I think there's a huge difference between Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis and people who were the architects and defenders of slavery, people who were actually considered traitors and treasonous, many of whom thought should be hanged after the Civil War.

And I think it's just a radical difference between what we see in the American South. We have states, like my state of Alabama, where Confederate Memorial Day is a state holiday, where Jefferson Davis' birthday is a state holiday. That's very far away from the conversations that we're having in other parts of the country.

And I think it does matter. We talk about memorials a lot. We have a 9/11 Memorial in this country because what happened on 9/11 was significant to the nation, to its history, to its culture. And we believe in the power of memorials to say something about who we are.

That doesn't mean that, if a nation put up a statue honoring Osama bin Laden, we would think that that is acceptable. We would be absolutely provoked by that.

And so there is a way to think about what we honor that reflects who we are, what we think is significant. The greatest person, the most influential person of the 20th century was arguably Adolf Hitler. That doesn't mean that there should be statues of him in Germany. We would be very provoked by that.

And so I do think we have to ask hard questions. And I think, on the question of the Confederacy and the architects and defenders of white supremacy, symbols of resistance to integration, there should be no debate. We cannot move forward if we actually think there is something acceptable about honoring that legacy.

WALTER ISAACSON:
You know, William, all slopes are slippery. That's why you try to find a moral footing.

Bryan got it right. You say, what was the purpose of this memorial? We have a memorial in this city right behind me - look over my shoulder - to Andrew Jackson. That's because it was put up in 1840. In the square where Jackson's statue is, that's where he mustered the troops to win the Battle of New Orleans. So, that memorial is there to honor that.

He was a bad slave owner. He had a lot wrong with him. But you have to say, is this a symbol of white supremacy and Confederacy and traitorousness, or is it because he won the Battle of New Orleans?

People who say things are slippery slopes, of course they are slippery slopes. That's why you have moral arguments to say, where do I put my footing, where do I try to draw the line?

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Why Confederate monuments are coming down

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New Orleans is the latest city to start taking down historical but controversial monuments that many say celebrate slavery and the Confederacy. Angry opponents see the move as suppressing or rewriting history in the service of political correctness. William Brangham talks to Walter Isaacson of the Aspen Institute and Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative.

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Should Confederate Statues Be Removed? - Countable

C- August 8,2017

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C-August 31, 2017

R- This is a picture of one of the statues in the removal of the statues

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C-  june 22,2019

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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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C- August 22,2019

R-the article says what the people want and think about the statue

A-The science monitor by patrik johnson

A- There were no spelling mistakes

P- To inform

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Erected in 1911, Atlanta's Peace Monument depicts a winged goddess calling to a Confederate soldier, "Cease firing - peace is at hand."

Is that a representation of reconciliation - or oppression? Vandals defaced the monument in 2017 after a violent white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, sparked nationwide protests.

Why We Wrote This

"The past is never dead," William Faulkner wrote. "It's not even past." Many communities are wrestling with that lesson today, as they debate what to do with Confederate monuments - underscoring how their meaning is shaped by the 21st century as much as the 19th.

This month, Atlanta added an explanatory plaque at the Peace Monument site, saying the monument "should no longer stand as a memorial to white brotherhood," its original intention.

Two years after Charlottesville, many locales continue to struggle with how to properly present Confederate statuary.

In Georgia and other former Confederate states, state laws prohibit monuments from being removed. That's led cities to look for ways to better explain the stone monuments and their role in history.

Atlanta is beginning with a quick approach: plaques. Besides the Peace Monument, it has added signs at the "Lion of the Confederacy," a stone statue in a city cemetery.

Even writing a plaque can be a fraught process. But officials say the important thing is that just addressing the issue can bring history to life.

"These statues are no longer static. They are now evolving," says Sheffield Hale, president of the Atlanta History Center.

Put up in 1911, the Peace Monument in Atlanta's Piedmont Park features a winged goddess calling to a Confederate soldier: "Cease firing - peace is proclaimed."

At the time, the monument was meant not to glorify the Confederate cause, but to urge reconciliation, a rekindling of a national bond stretching from Atlanta to Boston. It was built to commemorate peacekeeping trips to the North made by members of the Gate City Guard, Georgia's first militia, in previous years.

But 2019 is different historical country than 1911. What seemed progressive then can today strike some as an oppressive symbol. Vandals defaced the monument following the August 2017 violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a "Unite the Right" rally clashed with counterprotesters.

Why We Wrote This

"The past is never dead," William Faulkner wrote. "It's not even past." Many communities are wrestling with that lesson today, as they debate what to do with Confederate monuments - underscoring how their meaning is shaped by the 21st century as much as the 19th.

Atlantans suddenly faced some thorny questions, says Sheffield Hale, president and CEO of the Atlanta History Center: "Why is a peace monument a problem? What's wrong with peace?"

This month, the city of Atlanta installed a sign that presents one answer: the memorial's idea of reconciliation excluded African Americans. "This monument should no longer stand as a memorial to white brotherhood; rather, it should be seen as an artifact representing a shared history in which millions of Americans were denied civil and human rights," the sign states.

Two years after the Charlottesville march and its aftermath, states, cities, and citizens all across America continue to struggle with how to handle and interpret the artifacts of the past in the present day.

In that struggle, different narratives clash with modern distributions of power. Conservative Southern state legislatures have passed laws protecting historical monuments, including Confederate statuary. More liberal local jurisdictions are trying to rethink and reframe the meaning of these relics by surrounding them with context, including explanatory material such as signs and plaques.

The result, as in Atlanta, is a riveting and consequential debate that is about where the nation is going as much as where it has been.

"We are in the process toward a dream," says William Ferris, associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "These statues are markers along the way of how we address both the past and the future as a people. It is an ongoing conversation that in the 21st century is taking an interesting turn as the country is becoming predominantly nonwhite."

Monumental contested meanings

Richard Straut is one of the Atlanta Peace Monument's sworn protectors. He has a different view of its meaning than that expressed by its new accompanying sign.

The former Atlanta detective spent a career in both the police and military working for and with African Americans. He is a former commandant of the Old Guard of the City Guard, entrusted with the monument's care. The Old Guard's patch - a boar's head with an oak leaf in its mouth - now decorates the state National Guard uniform.

"I'm a soldier in the Old Guard, the precursor to our National Guard," says Mr. Straut in a phone interview. "It is integrated. We are not some white supremacist nonsense."

In 1911 the Old Guard wasn't trying to undermine the government in the United States with a peace monument that referenced a Confederate soldier, according to Mr. Straut.

"It was trying to bring the brotherhood back together again, and we succeeded. We are equal. And all races are involved," he says.

The Peace Monument is far from the only memorial whose meaning is contested today, of course. From small town squares to battlefields, the South is strewn with stone memories.

They range from innocuous cemetery markers to obvious paeans to the Confederate Lost Cause, including 75 "Johnny Reb" statues - most crafted after Reconstruction in Northern forges - that stand in public places, by intent, as sentinels of white power.

As of February 2019, 114 Confederate monuments have been taken down since the 2015 attack on a Charleston, South Carolina, church by white supremacist Dylann Roof, including General Robert E. Lee from Lee Circle in New Orleans and Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest from a park in Memphis. Some 1,747 still stand, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Many of these monuments are shielded from removal or extensive alteration by state laws passed in the former Confederate states, including Georgia, according to the SPLC. Some cities in these states are challenging the legality of these restrictions. Norfolk, for instance, has sued Virginia to lift the state's removal ban.

Other localities are focusing on adding context. But that process itself is difficult. What to say? How to say it? What is the context here, after all?

"It doesn't surprise me that communities are struggling to some extent with conceptualization, because the writing of new inscriptions is always extremely contentious," says Kirk Savage, author of "Monument Wars."

For its part, Atlanta has tried to move quickly, adding low-cost, fact-based panels that contextualize memorial presence, and bottom-line their intent.

"It is a process to turn them from public statues to outdoor museum exhibits, from statement to artifact," says Mr. Hale of the Atlanta History Center. "And it is recognition that these are not Civil War monuments. They are Jim Crow monuments."

Similar discussions - sometimes heated, often thoughtful - are taking place across the South as more and more Americans realize the monuments "are connected to what is happening to me in the present day," says Mr. Savage, a University of Pittsburgh art historian.

The process of contextualization can be fraught. But inaction can have consequences. The failure of the University of North Carolina to heed calls to contextualize its Confederate "Silent Sam" statue on campus may have helped lead to a mob toppling the statue in 2018.

"We started from a premise of some are going to come down, some are going to stay up, but ... what is next is the really important question: How do we start something that is actually more democratic and more representative and more empowering for people than the old monument system, which is an elite-driven system that almost always tends to reflect the power relations on the ground?" says Mr. Savage. "Our political climate has made it a much more urgent issue."

"The statues are no longer static"

Americans seem at a wary impasse over the Confederate monument issue, polls say.

In the South, a majority of white Americans want the monuments to stay, and a majority of black Americans want them removed, according to a Winthrop University poll. Overall, a plurality thinks they should remain. There is little agreement about how, or whether, to contextualize them.

Meanwhile, majorities of both black and white Americans agree that race relations in the U.S. are worsening, according to the Winthrop survey.

That raises the stakes for questions about monuments being pondered in places like Decatur, Georgia; Savannah, Georgia; Norfolk, Virginia; and Richmond, Virginia. Richmond's Monument Avenue features famous statues of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. The city's Valentine Museum is currently exhibiting dozens of conceptual drawings of what could be done with the statues, including one idea to bury them to their heads.

"The question for us has become, what does contextualization really mean?" says Bill Martin, the museum's director. "And that becomes a jumping-off point for a conversation that needs to happen."

Two years ago, in Charlottesville, a blue ribbon committee's decision to remove a Robert E. Lee statue sparked the "Unite the Right" rally. It devolved into a riot and street fight that left dozens injured and one dead.

The national tragedy at Charlottesville made clear to many Americans that the nation's legacy of white supremacy had burst into the present, and that white supremacists looked at Confederate statues as symbols of their ideology.

As newspaper reporters flocked to the city, religion professor Jalane Schmidt began holding informal tours of the statuary. The tour continues on a monthly basis, drawing upwards of 100 people at a time.

Ms. Schmidt says she didn't realize until after she began researching that over half of the residents of Albemarle County, where Charlottesville is located, were African Americans the year the Lee statue went up. And her research showed that its installation had little to do with commemoration of soldiers, and much to do with a "lost cause mythology" that advocated a national white brotherhood to thwart the political power of black Americans.

"These statues of metal look like mute monuments, but as we found out they are distilled hatred," says Ms. Schmidt. "They are sending a message of complete disregard for the humanity of black people."

Just a few miles from the Peace Monument in Atlanta is "the Lion of the Confederacy," a stone representation of a lion in repose, clutching a Confederate battle flag. The sleeping royal feline guards hundreds of slain Confederates, including an ancestor of Martin O'Toole's.

Mr. O'Toole is a former newspaper editor, an amateur historian, and a spokesman for the Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Last week, he made his first visit to the "Lion" monument after a contextual plaque was added.

Armed with a camera to document the changes, he immediately spots what he thinks is a mistake. A title says "Lion of Atlanta." The statue is actually called the "Lion of the Confederacy," Mr. O'Toole says.

He notes that Georgia nearly undermined the Confederacy as its key leaders backed national unity in the 1850s. So what happened? News in the South that church bells had pealed in New England in support of abolitionist John Brown's 1859 raid at Harpers Ferry meant that sectional disputes had morphed into "a dangerous moment for Southerners," says Mr. O'Toole. "They were suddenly afraid for their lives. They had to fight."

But even as he quibbles with the Lion's new explainer, he notes, "I'm OK with the panels. They are mostly fact-based and within the law. I just say thanks to the legislature for passing a law to make sure the Lion is still here. Or else it most assuredly would be gone."

Atlanta's confederate statues will stay, at least for now. But all around them, the conversation has shifted, and history, for many, suddenly seems alive - evoking both danger and hope.

"What is important is that these new panels are not permanent," says Mr. Hale, as park-goers gather to read the new panels. "We can change the words. We can add more panels. But that's the point. These statues are no longer static. They are now evolving."

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The future of America's past: Should we 'explain' Confederate statues?

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States are debating how to put Confederate statues in historical context - a reminder their meaning is shaped by the 21st century as much as the 19th.The future of America's past: Should we 'explain' Confederate statues?Confederate statues in context: The future of America's past?

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C- august 18,2017

R- The article has both sides of the story

A- The New york times by Anna Dubenko

A- There were no mistakes

P- to inform

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The political news cycle is fast, and keeping up can be overwhelming. Trying to find differing perspectives worth your time is even harder. That's why we have scoured the internet for political writing from the right and left that you might not have seen. Has this series exposed you to new ideas? Tell us how. Email us at ourpicks@nytimes.com.

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A statue honoring Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Va. Credit... Matt Eich for The New York Times

* Gracy Olmstead in The Federalist:
"We should also consider which parts of our history we are most proud of, and most eager to uphold. Conservatives believe in preserving and carrying on the best of the past - not its worst."
If the events of the past week prove anything to Ms. Olmstead, "it's that these memorials are splitting us further and further apart." She urges her readers - even those who do not want to see these statues taken down - to "seek to understand and sympathize" with those who support their removal. At the very least, she writes, "we can mitigate their toxic effect" by adding context or erecting new memorials. Read more "

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* Ben Shapiro in The Daily Wire:
"Everyone is trying to use the issue of Confederate monument removal as a club to wield against political opposition, and as a broadening mechanism for their own movements."
For Mr. Shapiro, the issue at hand has nothing to do with Confederate monuments. The reason we're really "talking about statues," he writes, is that they serve as a proxy argument for larger, political fights. The "truth" is that "Confederate statue removal is a local issue, not a national one." Read more "

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* Rod Dreher in The American Conservative:
"He fought for the wrong side and deserved to lose. But notice that after he lost, he called on all defeated Southerners to cease hostilities and to commit themselves to the service of the United States. [...] It mattered that he did not urge bitter resistance, but rather nobly counseled patriotism."
After New Orleans decided to take down its statue of Robert E. Lee in May, Mr. Dreher wrote a response to the controversy. He said he is "not losing sleep" over the removal of other Confederate leaders, but he's troubled by the move to take down a memorial to Lee, a "far more complex man" than many people realize. Read more "

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* Jonathan S. Tobin in The New York Post:
"A generation ago, nobody would have thought Washington or Jefferson controversial. Now it appears that even Mount Rushmore isn't safe, since among its quartet of greats, only Lincoln might be exempt from the iconoclasts."

Mr. Tobin believes the slippery slope reasoning of the president and others is not merely hypothetical - the logical result of the left's attempt to take down offensive statues has already been borne out in real life. He cites as his example an attempt to take down a famous statue of Theodore Roosevelt in front of New York's Natural History Museum. Read more "

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The empty pedestal of a statue that was pulled down by protesters in Durham, N.C., on Monday. Credit... Madeline Gray for The New York Times

* Gersh Kuntzman in The New York Daily News:
"Ever wonder why there are no statues of Adolf Hitler in Berlin?"
Mr. Kuntzman argues that Americans should treat their Confederate history the same way that Germany treats its Nazi past. He points out that "monuments are never about history itself" but rather about "what the people putting up the monument think about history." Read more "

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* Tyler Zimmer in Jacobin:
"The Confederate flag lionizes both racists and class traitors - indeed the two are inseparable."
According to Mr. Zimmer, the symbols of the Confederacy are not just about white supremacy, but also, inextricably, about class. Confederate flags and monuments, he writes, signify a "campaign by elites to hoodwink poor whites into throwing their lives away to protect ruling class wealth and privilege." Read more "

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* Adam Serwer in The Atlantic:
"To describe this man as an American hero requires ignoring the immense suffering for which he was personally responsible, both on and off the battlefield."

Mr. Serwer takes on the "myth of the kindly General Lee," arguing that this was a man "whose devotion to white supremacy outshone his loyalty to his country." There's no way, he writes, that one can defend Lee in "good conscience" unless one puts "tribe and race over country." Read more "

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Workers in Baltimore removed a Confederate statue early on Wednesday. Credit... Jerry Jackson/The Baltimore Sun, via Associated Press

* Eric Boehm in Reason:
"Baltimore offers a primer on the nonsensical slippery slope argument offered by defenders of the Confederate monuments."
At his news conference, Mr. Trump posed a rhetorical question to the assembled reporters, "Where does it stop?" Mr. Boehm responds by citing the example of the Baltimore City Council, which just this week unanimously passed a resolution to remove the city's Confederate monuments. Writing in the libertarian publication, Reason, Mr. Boehm puts it simply: "It stops....where it stops." Read more "

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* Ilya Somin in The Washington Post:
"The vast majority of monuments to Confederate leaders were erected to honor their service to the Confederacy, whose main reason for existing was to protect and extend slavery."
There are historical figures that pose a greater moral dilemma than that of Robert E. Lee, posits Mr. Somin. Woodrow Wilson poses one such example. However, he argues, "giving undeserved honor to the evil is at least as grave an error as denying proper recognition to those who merit it." Read more "

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* James M. McPherson in The New York Review of Books:
"The theme of liberty, not slavery, as the cause for which the South fought became a mantra in the writings of old Confederates and has been taken up by neo-Confederates in our own time."

In a 2001 article, Mr. McPherson traces the ways in which Confederate history has been rewritten to excise slavery as the animating issue at the heart of the Civil War and replace it with a "Lost Cause" theory of the conflict. The Lost Cause myth posits that "slavery was merely an incident," and the conflict was in fact all about "a difference of opinion about the Constitution." Read more "

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* Robert E. Lee in 1869 in The Republican Vindicator, via PBS:
"I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered."
How did Lee feel about Confederate statues? Perhaps it's best to refer to his own writing on the matter. Here, in a letter declining an invitation to attend an event memorializing the battle at Gettysburg, he writes about the importance of moving on. Read more "

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* The New York Times in 1865:
"So long as the South has an admiration for the rebellion, so long will the South be rebel at heart. [...] True patriotic devotion should redeem any portion of the Republic from reproach. It should bury forever every memorial calculated to perpetuate dishonor and disparagement."
On Aug. 16, 1865, 152 years before the most recent debate over memorializing Confederate statues, writers for The Times published this article, advocating the preservation of the "memorials of rebel cruelty." Read more "

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Right and Left on Removal of Confederate Statues (Published 2017)

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The political news cycle is fast, and keeping up can be overwhelming. Trying to find differing perspectives worth your time is even harder. That's why we have scoured the internet for political writing from the right and left that you might not have seen. Has this series exposed you to new ideas?