I encourage you to read Claire Johnson’s exploration, “Complicated History: the Memorial to Robert E. Lee in Richmond”, her recent post at the blog of the University of Virginia’s Virginia Newspaper Project. Quoting extensively from late 19th century newspapers with both white and black readerships, the post puts the questions being debated so angrily today into needed perspective. Here’s a snippet:
It is a matter of much contention today whether these monuments to Confederate leaders were one such message to the black communities of the South or simply monuments built to honor the Civil War dead and Southern history.
Confederate monuments began going up in Richmond not long after the end of the Civil War. In 1875, a statue to Stonewall Jackson was erected on the Capitol grounds. However, the statues that now line Monument Avenue went up later, beginning 25 years after the end of the war, in 1890, with Robert E. Lee. The other Confederate statues on Monument Avenue came later: J.E.B. Stuart and Jefferson Davis’ statues were added in 1907, 42 years after the Civil War ended. Stonewall Jackson’s was built in 1919, followed by the monument to Confederate Naval Officer Maury in 1929. That’s 54 and 64 years, respectively, after the end of the Civil War and fall of the Confederacy.
There are other possible purposes: a reminder of the many losses during the Civil War and the ongoing need for reconciliation.
Of those who feel the need to tear down Confederate memorials, with what will you replace them? Choose wisely. Not only should we not forget that the war was fought, we shouldn’t relinquish the opportunity to remember why it was fought: it was fought over the abolition of slavery.
My ancestors fought, successfully, to free slaves. My ancestors suffered losses as a consequence of that struggle, losses whose effects persist to the present day. I was taught by my parents to treat everyone, regardless of the colors of their skins, with respect and consideration. Tell my impoverished Irish ancestors about their white privilege. The very idea is absurd. I don’t think I have anything of which to be ashamed or contrite and certainly less than the descendants of those who owned slaves, traded in slaves, fought for the Confederacy, or have continued to praise the Confederacy.
I think the focus on the timeline of when memorials were built is that initially they tended to be for the dead, then they became means of creating a history, and then they became centerpieces for voting rights resistance. The Lee memorial in Richmond I believe was one promoted by Confederate General Jubal Early who served under Lee, and its easy to discern the desire to commemorate someone he had personal affections for, as well as a desire to elevate his war experience by elevating Lee.
What the piece doesn’t go into is Union veteran thoughts. 1890 was a time when blue-grey fraternities emerged, in which civil war remembrances were being shared across battle lines through correspondence, publications, blue-grey dinners, and battlefield tours. Confederate General Joseph Johnston, who lifted the banner off the Lee memorial in this piece, served as honorary pallbearer at Union General William Sherman’s funeral the following year.
All of which is somewhat beside the point. Whites reconciled with each other in an extraordinary healing from the type of civil wars that cripple countries. However, very little was done after the Civil War for the freed slaves; its not really an argument about the Civil War people are having, its about the failure of assimilating freed slaves and their descendants afterwards.
White privilege is minority disadvantage. Most white people do not have special advantages, and not all black people have disadvantages. For some white people, white privilege allows them to denounce the system that they refuse to dismantle.
Slavery was not the original sin. I will cause heart palpitations for some people, but slavery existed long before the US. There was nothing exceptional about US slavery.
The Civil War was fought over slavery, and after the Civil War, three Amendments were passed to ensure that the outcome was not reversed. This was not to be. Through twisted reasoning, the Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson invalidated the Equal Protection Clause.
This is the cause of Jim Crow and all government sanctioned discrimination. Equality implies a single entity, and separate implies multiple entities. There can never be “separate but equal”. It is internally inconsistent.
Replacing “always equal” with “separate but equal” resulted in a logically inconsistent legal state, and for the next 58 years, government was allowed to legally discriminate and segregate based upon race or any other factor. Sixty-three years later, the damage caused has still not been reversed.
The first black non-slave generation should have been subjected to the same non-governmental discrimination of any foreign immigrants. While these non-black groups were subjected to discrimination and segregation, the second generation was able to begin overcoming and overthrowing the social constraints.
Legally, the second generation non-black groups were subjected to government discrimination, but as opposed to these groups, black people were subjected to legally permissible governmental discrimination. For 58 years, conditions for black people were not allowed to improve, legally.
Brown v. Board of Education was not a grand establishment of new rights or privileges. It was the restoration of the legal standing of black people stated in the 14th Amendment. The location of this racist Board of Education is rarely mentioned, but it was in Kansas. To my knowledge, Kansas was never part of the South or Deep South.
(For an eye-opener, the intellectually curious should look-up Malaga Island.)
Even with the legal attempts to reverse the damage of Plessy v. Ferguson, the aftermath is still being felt, and it will likely take several more generations to undo those 58 years.
For this reason, extra steps must be taken.
It’s complicated, TastyBits. When Kansas was opened up for settlement in 1854, slavery there was possible on the basis of popular sovereignty. Consequently, Kansas attracted quite a few Southerners as settlers. The Kansas border wars between anti-slavery and pro-slavery settlers took place from 1854 and 1861 and were important foreshadowing of the civil war that was to come.
Look up “Bleeding Kansas”.
All of which is somewhat beside the point. Whites reconciled with each other in an extraordinary healing from the type of civil wars that cripple countries. However, very little was done after the Civil War for the freed slaves; its not really an argument about the Civil War people are having, its about the failure of assimilating freed slaves and their descendants afterwards.
It seems to me though that among whites, there’s a scapegoating phenomenon for those failures which is now reopening the wounds between various segments of the white population even though it doesn’t break down along geographical lines so much anymore.
John Mitchell Jr certainly was prophetic, “He put up the Lee Monument, and should the time come, he’ll be there to take it down.”
This is a really good report (pdf) on the Confederate Memorial in St. Louis that was recently removed.
http://www.lindenwood.edu/files/resources/the-lost-cause-ideology-and-civil-war-memory-at-th.pdf
What’s interesting about this is that St. Louis, though a slave city, supported Abraham Lincoln in 1860, unlike say New York City, or Lincoln’s hometown. It had a local GAR organization that offered its opinions during the initial controversy over its construction, and while they preferred the memorial be placed at Jefferson barracks, where I assume there is a pow gravesite, they were largely divided, but one representative gave a speech about historical inaccuracies in the memorial that should have simply been incorporated into a sign placed next to the memorial.