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Confederate Statues Are Torn Down—Who’s Next?
Margaret Thatcher, at Hillsdale College
The latest brouhaha about moving a Confederate statue called Silent Sam took place at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The statue was originally pulled down in August, and now university administrators must keep it on campus; a state law was passed in 2015 prohibiting state agencies from “permanently removing or relocating state-owned memorials or statues.” UNC Chancellor Carol Folt stated, “I have a preference to move it off campus, but, like everyone here, I swore to obey the law.” How noble of her.
The university is considering a proposal to build a history and education center to house the statue and other historical artifacts; the announcement of this proposal on Monday led to the latest campus protest. The administrators will decide next week whether to move forward with the proposal for the new center.
Although “white supremacists” (and not normal American citizens) supposedly are the ones who have demanded the Confederate statues remain in place, many of us are probably ambivalent about these statues; they remind of us a difficult time in American history, a period of racism and violence. Yet we also know that reminders of those times are a way to demonstrate our willingness to face our past and point to the lessons we have learned.
I began thinking, however, about the implications of these removals of Confederate statues, and where it could lead us.
What other criteria could be used to condemn celebrated Americans who are memorialized in statues? We have already seen school curricula altered to support the propaganda of the Left: Christopher Columbus has been turned into a destroyer of Native Americans; George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were racists (slave owners), as were other presidents. As The Federalist points out today, Harry Truman was an anti-Semite. Other admired politicians could be targeted, such as Margaret Thatcher, who broke the unions in England.
So this is not just about removing the statues of Confederate soldiers. It might just be the first step in removing any statues of people who didn’t, or don’t, accept the Progressive agenda.
An interesting sidenote worthy of mentioning is that the University of California, Irvine, rejected a proposal to erect a statue to Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who risked his life to save 100,000 Hungarian Jews from Nazi death camps. They gave no explanation for their refusal.
Why do statues make such powerful statements? I believe they take ideas and embody them in stone, providing a visual, visceral impact. They are also continually displayed for everyone to see, making a statement about our Founders, about freedom, about leadership, and about values. Although many people over time might just walk by them without noticing them, others might stop to view and contemplate them, at least the first time they pass. These people who are carved in stone or bronze tell all who view them that they are worthy of remembering and honoring for generations.
So removing Confederate statues may just be the prelude to a larger, more insidious plan.
And statues may not be the only monuments affected. A Detroit High School has threatened to remove Ben Carson’s name. Don’t worry—if it happens, it won’t be until 2019.
Published in Culture
Bryan, I don’t take his comment personally, and I don’t think you need to either. (I won’t tell you that you shouldn’t.) Also making a suggestion about how a person should look at something isn’t necessarily a demand. It’s a suggestion. I think the attacks on the word “should” are not helpful. Finally, trying to make a comparison between the Germans and WWII, and the Confederacy in the Civil War doesn’t make sense to me: two different times, two completely different wars, and many different motivations. I personally wouldn’t go there.
As for me, I am waiting for the answer to the german ww2 memorial question. It’s a good one. I say of course they should.
As an aside the vast majority of the confederate war memorials were put up to memorialize the dead and not as some jim crow in your face crap. If you look at the history of these memorials you’ll see that many were constructed around the turn of the century or shortly thereafter when those soldiers were getting old and beginning to die out. It was a way of thanking folks for their service and sacrifice – aka a nice thing to do. The timeline of these memorials is not unlike the ww2 nat’l memorial – approved in ’93 and dedicated/opened in ’04.
Some of the commenters seem to be coloring with too few crayons. As we move away from events that occurred a century and a half or more ago it is easy to lose an appreciation for then-contemporary events that motivated and/or affected individuals. We see the results of their collective acts, but not input of their individual motives. And that is the great risk we take in erasing history — that we lose the opportunity to see how contemporary context led to mass action.
Think about Syria, today. Who are the good actors and who are the bad? Assad has generally left Christians alone in Syria while a lot of his opposition would kill or simply drive them out. When the US supports opposition to Assad (in part because Russia and Iran benefit from his remaining) are we providing funds and guns to good guys or bad? Likely both. That is the messy business of contemporary events. What monuments will be erected there in 50 or 100 years and will they get it right?
So now return to the South and a time still early in the American experiment. There were no chain stores and copycat malls. There were no superhighways. The central government was very weak. State government had barely more power outside of denser populations and the reach of the militia. Slave owners had disproportionate power in state government over small rural farmers. Is it impossible to imagine that the ranks of armies were filled more by appeal of “our team” versus “their team” — our liberty (to keep our ways) versus their oppression? How many farmers would march out of the hills to ensure that Tidewater plantations live economically secure lives? It had to be more complicated than that.
How do you unify after a civil war? Does denying a population the ability to honor their war dead expedite or retard that process? Are these symbols of persistent rebellion or a part of closing the book on a different (and in part repugnant) way of life?
Recall the Emancipation Proclamation did not enfranchise women and Asian rail workers. It did not prevent Jim Crow. It set the table for the ongoing struggle to bring full meaning to the aspirations of the constitution for individual liberty — something now again challenged through identity politics.
Are removing statues depriving us of facing these questions? Are they simply the next move in the empowerment of identity politics?
You bring up an interesting point, @rodin: who decides the meaning of symbols? Meaning can arise at an individual level, a group level, a community level, a state level, a federal level or even an international level. Who gets to decide if a symbol is educational, heartfelt, degrading, inappropriate or helpful? And symbols are going through multiple filters in terms of condemning them or appreciating them in these times. But it’s valuable to look at our own beliefs and values, to see if we can make sense of our reactions, consider the role of our heads and hearts, and ultimately act based on wisdom. That’s probably expecting too much, but that’s what I’d wish for. Thanks.
Given the incredible ignorance that most of these social justice warriors have about American history, I am unsurprised at their desire to destroy so many symbols of that history. I became something of a Civil War buff about 40 years ago. I started by reading Shelby Foote’s Civil War Narrative. When I completed those three volumes I read Douglas Southall Freeman’s Lee’s Lieutenants and the eight volumes of Allan Nevins Ordeal of Union. I then went on to read, perhaps, a hundred of more memoirs and histories and analyses of the period. My interest wasn’t necessarily in the battles as much as in the individual experiences and views of the participants.
The idea that the majority of either side stood for racism or antiracism, slavery or emancipation, or, indeed, any particular view other than their own version of patriotism and the desire to live as free men in a free society is totally bogus. That a man wore a butternut uniform and followed Robert E Lee did not make that man a racist or a supporter of slavery. Somewhere in Shelby Foote he quotes a Confederate solder who was asked by a Union soldier why he was fighting. The Confederates answer was, because you are here.
Many of those men were fighting for their home and their towns and their state. They weren’t fighting against the Constitution, they were fighting because they thought it was being violated by an invading army that was trying to conquer them. Not all of them were good and decent people, but most were. The vast majority had no stake in slavery, but they did have a stake in the concept of the state they lived in being free to choose to leave the union if the Union was violating the terms under which it was created. The statues that commemorate men like Robert E Lee and the common Confederate soldiers are not racist. They are recognizing the enormous sacrifice these individuals made in their fight for the same rights that stirred the American revolution.
If one wants to take down the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the founder of the KKK, that would be understandable. I am sure that there are other statues as well of less honorable men both North and South. However, before a statue or monument to an individual is torn down or removed or defaced the provenance of that piece should be fully explored which means you damned well better have a better idea of history than most of the modern vandals seem to possess. Heroes and villains need to be viewed in the context of their time, as do common men.
Thank you for shining a bright light on this discussion, @eugenekriegsmann. The studying you have done is very impressive, and has led you to conclusions that make sense to me. I just wish the SJW’s would do a fraction of the work you have done.
Either a side who fights for a wrong cause should morally have monuments or is should not. If it is not OK for the South, then it ain’t OK for the Germans.
Second, the word “should” means you think people ought to act a certain way or think a certain way. If I say “You should be unhappy” then I am telling you how to feel.
Then again, around here, I am often told how I really feel, and what I am really saying, even when I say I am saying the opposite.
I can’t speak for @HeavyWater, but it seems like he said some monuments could stand, and that perhaps others would best come down. Re Germany, I don’t take offense to their building war memorials to their fallen, although I wouldn’t want to see statues to individuals. Many Germans weren’t Nazis, and I hate that they participated in the atrocity, but I don’t think it’s our business if they establish war memorials. If they put up a statue to Himmler, I would condemn it. Nor do I think they should comment on the memorial choices we make.
I don’t think of this as an all or nothing choice when it comes to monuments and statues. I think some of the statues can be torn down and others can be allowed to stand.
I don’t think statues should be pulled down by mobs. I did, however, appreciate the way the Mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu, dealt with some monuments/statues.
Perhaps my “We should look at the Confederacy with a mood of regret” line was poorly worded. I should have wrote: “I would try to persuade others that the Southern Confederacy represents a regrettable moment in our history.”
“Persuade” is a better word choice than “should.” Ooops.
I’ve thought about your saying this earlier, @heavywater, and I agree. It’s simple-minded and superficial for people to say that anyone on the Confederate side should be condemned. But the Left prefers black and white decisions, because nuance requires thoughtfulness and study. From what I’ve seen, 100 statues (out of 700) have been taken down. I wonder how many of the colleges or communities thought over their decisions. In our own county, they decided to move a statue to a less conspicuous space. They said they would use private funds but couldn’t come up with enough money. That’s another issue: should the taxpayer be expected to pay for these decisions?
Edit: my oops– Is it appropriate to expect taxpayers to pay for these decisions?
I hope you are equally supportive of progressive efforts to tear down statues of Christopher Columbus in former Italian areas. You would still be wrong in either case, but at least you would be consistent in your exacting standards, and not merely applying them to an out-group.
In any event, this is not like abortion or gay marriage, where people are, in accordance to their first principles and priorities, morally obligated to oppose or support something that is important to large segments of the population, due to what is perceived as a direct violation of the rights and welfare of others. Tearing down cultural monuments that have been standing for decades or longer and which are important to millions of people in the general area because one finds it subjectively offensive is being a bullying jerk, plain and simple, and as such is usually motivated by a combination of spite and disdain toward whatever group is symbolically targeted. In essence, its a legal hate crime against my ethno-cultural group.
Finally, I wouldn’t be so quick to celebrate migrant displacement of culturally objectionable native Southerners, the newcomers will be primarily left-leaning or progressive……something produced comparatively rarely in the culture of Southerners that you seem to find offensive enough to support being singled out and publicly attacked. Gee, I wonder if the same things which drives us to honor our ancestors is also what makes us consistently rank so highly in indexes of patriotism and military service? A foundation you support destroying as surely as tearing down the Jefferson Memorial over his slave ownership-or Christopher Columbus statues honoring his bravery and adventurism in ‘discovering’ our continent on account of his morally repugnant actions against native Caribbeans-would destroy the foundations of American civic nationalism (which it largely has, among millennials).
Who then gets to determine what was the “wrong” cause? Is it simply a case of “they lost the war?”
@lowtech-redneck— could you clarify this paragraph? I know you weren’t directing the comment to me, but I’m still interested. Are you saying that newcomers to the South will be from the Left? If so, what leads you to think so? Are you saying the South doesn’t produce Left-leaning folks themselves. Help!
The American Civil War is very different than WW2 any other war we were involved in. These were all American boys fighting and dying. The differences between the southern boys and the northern boys were very hard to define. Their leaders had their ideologies, but the men were just fighting for their homes and freedoms. When it was all over, they were just dead American boys. Erecting statues to memorialize their sacrifice harms no one, but allows their ancestors to show their respect and take a small amount of pride in what they tried to do.
If a formerly Italian-American neighborhood becomes a majority non-Italian-American and the city council decides to tear down a statue of Christopher Columbus, that’s fine.
Just because I am an Italian-American (on my father’s side, but probably Irish on my mother’s side) does not mean that I care much about statues of Italians or Italian-Americans.
I disagree. Cultures change. People change. Attitudes change.
The attitudes of the average American citizen towards black people is different today than it was in the 1860s or even in the early 20th century. So, whereas in previous times many people did not see anything wrong with the Confederate statues, in our current times, people think of these statues as an eye sore.
Imagine if the people of Iran were able to overthrow the Iranian Theocracy currently ruling over the Iranian people with an iron fist and depriving them of their human rights.
Those billboards and other symbols celebrating religious clerics will be torn down and replaced with Iranian pop singers or Iranian human rights activists. That’s to be expected.
The sooner the entire South can get its collective head out of the 1860s, the better. If northern transplants are needed for that to happen, bring them on. I’ve visited Texas many times because my wife grew up in the Dallas metro area and her family still lives there. I like the “New South.” The “Old South” I don’t care for as much.
I think a large majority of Americans of all racial-ethnic groups have similar feelings. There is a certain viewpoint that some (perhaps very few) southerners have that most people find morally repugnant.
As I said, earlier, Grant was very generous toward the treatment of all the soldiers, and I think he set a fine example for understanding and forgiveness.
Agreed. I was asking in a more general sense. For example: is it wrong to have memorials to, say, Napoleon? What about WWI monuments?
Outside of black Southerners, who are as left-leaning as black Americans in the country as a whole, the South is an overwhelmingly conservative region, far more so than any other area except the predominantly Mormon areas of the United States. Its not that the South doesn’t produce left-leaners, they simply produce them in far fewer quantities than elsewhere, and moreover produce far more conservatives than elsewhere, with characteristic results (moderates are more susceptible to gradual cultural change from a relatively large, and highly motivated, progressive minority). And I’m saying that newcomers will be far more left-wing, as a group, than native Southerners, diluting the total and in some cases turning states purple or blue (as in Virginia). Those who are, and choose to remain, hostile to Southerners honoring our heritage will be overwhelmingly of the Left.
There is a certain viewpoint that some (perhaps very few) people in all parts of the country adhere to that most find morally repugnant. Or at least used to. Modern progressive orthodoxy actually encourages it, but only when directed at ‘privileged’ demographics.
Strangely enough, its primarily that exact same racist progressive movement that is supportive of removing Confederate monuments (its certainly not a large majority of Americans of all racial-ethnic groups): https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-protests-poll/a-majority-of-americans-want-to-preserve-confederate-monuments-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKCN1B12EG
Edit: forgot to include some crucial words in the first sentence.
I’m almost as fond of Grant as I am of General Lee. The same really goes for just about every Union soldier except Sherman-though I would never support any effort to remove any statues dedicated to him, either to accommodate bitter Southern memories or due to his campaigns against American Indians; that is literally the type of thing most Southerners would find repugnant to do to our worst enemies, much less fellow Americans and ideological allies, which I hope helps explain our anger over, and sensitivity to, this issue.
Are they really? I thought most of them went to Church on Sunday and a great number of them were/are military veterans. I’ve heard that they vote for Democrats like their Northern counterparts but voting for Dems and being left-leaning aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Nowadays, they mostly are the same thing; either explicitly or implicitly, intersectional identity politics are now the norm, even the unifying creed, of the Democrat Party. Black elected officials always tended to be far more progressive than the people who vote for them, but the gap seems to have narrowed over the last couple of decades. Its true that black Americans are still far more traditional than most other Democrats, and were once fairly conservative on issues like abortion and gay marriage, but 1.) they haven’t historically voted on such issues, and b.) I believe that their positions have changed to align more closely with both their elected officials and their progressive political allies, much like it has for the children of recent hispanic immigrants.
*Much of black culture, especially in the South, is similar to that of white Southerners for obvious reasons. If Britain and America are two peoples separated by a common language, white Southerners and black Southerners are one people separated by a common history. If we are ever going to truly unite, it has to come through mutual respect and the honoring of all of our ancestors, not the denigration of one to advance the other-which sadly was, and in progressive circles remains, the pattern.
I’d rather build up statues of Frederick Douglass than tear down statues of Robert E. Lee.
My sentiments exactly.
Texas and Florida are examples of Southern states with lots of northern transplants that are not Left wing in political orientation.
It’s not as though the only choices we have are neo-Confederate racists and “progressive” socialists.
Neither Ted Cruz nor John Cornyn of Texas buy into the neo-Confederate mythology. Same for Rick Scott and Marco Rubio.
There is a 21st century out there and most Southerners have embraced it. It’s time to put away those childish things, including the Confederate flag and all the rest.
I myself can’t get into the Confederacy. Besides the not unimportant issue of slavery, the executive had way too much power for my libertianish principles and they executed two men writing anti-slavery pro-Confederacy propaganda.
But is now really the time to do what the Cain-like SJWs want? It won’t be a solemn and respectful change in that occurs after a long and thoughtful deliberation about history. It will be history thrown into the all consuming fire of oikophobia that hates this society more than it loves humanity. David Rubin probably isn’t a big fan of the Confederacy but he has come out against all the tearing down of every statue because he recognizes this is the regressive left’s way of shutting people up rather than continuing the conversation.
What is repugnant isn’t the desire to learn about the history of Napoleon or World War I or the Civil War.
What’s repugnant is that some Southerners feel an emotional need to live in the 1860s, as if they are still “fighting for Southern rights” like John Calhoun.
Get a life! Quit worshipping your ancestors who fought for an immoral cause. No one cares about how your feelings were hurt when that Robert E. Lee statue got torn down.
Me, I’m living in the 1600s worshipping my ancestors who were throwing people out of windows.
Here in Indianapolis there is Monument Circle, at the center of Downtown. It’s where all the Monuments commemorating those who fought and died for the United States of America.
But, for the most part, it isn’t about those who fought and died against our country.
Well I wouldn’t expect there to be any there, much like I wouldn’t expect statues for Washington in London. That’s why I asked what defines a wrong cause. Should people not have respect for William Wallace? I would expect the answer is no in England and yes in Scotland.