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I've read the discussion on the destruction of General Lee's statue in Charlottesville in last week's thread. I got the impression that many commenters here are prone to come up with explanations why the official removal of the statue was at least unsurprising or objectively justified from a culture war perspective, and I get that. But it seems they aren't focusing on the palpable difference between legally removing a statue and destroying it in a furnace. Because as far as I'm concerned, it's a big step from one to the other.
I'm reminded of the political transitions that happened in Central Europe in 1989-91, because many local monuments to either Soviet politicians/soldiers or local Communists or Marx/Engels were officially removed as a result. Anyone can correct me if they can, but I think all those new political systems were content with just removing the statues and putting them in "museums", which in most cases basically meant that these statues were put in open-air storage in remote and mostly abandoned memorial parks to just wither away, but not destroying them, cutting them up, melting them down etc. This hasn't even happened to Stalin statues in the Baltic states, for example, even though local anti-Soviet sentiment was definitely the strongest in the entire region, not something to understate. You can still find and visit those statues today.
And in this case, even this relatively close parallel doesn't really work, because it's not like there was a fundamental regime change in Virginia since the statue was erected.
And what happened to Lee's statue certainly cannot be explained by financial considerations either, as I'm sure that whatever arrangement that was on the table for putting it away as a museum piece was cheaper than melting it down in a furnace.
The only fitting parallel that comes to mind is Napoleon ordering captured cannons to be melted down to build a gigantic iron monument in Paris dedicated to the victory at Austerlitz. But again, I'm sure I won't have to explain in detail how that political context was completely different from this, even though I'm aware there are many hardline leftists today who would've preferred the evil Confederacy to be publicly humiliated in such ways back in 1865.
In the end, the only sufficient explanation I can come up with is that local authorities were afraid that Lee's statue, no matter where it were to be placed, was likely to become a site of pilgrimage for right-winger heretics opposed to the culture-warring leftist interpretation of race relations in the US, hence the statue's destruction.
Plus, and this is just pure speculation on my part, I think General Lee was such a perfect personification of the Southern patriarchal ideal of gentlemanliness that he invites leftist hostility like no other figure in US history. Plus, he had the cheek to candidly express views on slavery and the innate characteristics of Africans that are, from a leftist perspective, uniquely horrible, just too painful, and cutting too close to the bone, as they say.
As far as I know, the locals got a say. They didn’t want Lee to hang around. I believe the bronze is going to be used for some sculpture or installation. While I’m sure you will find it low-effort or objectionable, it will still be public art. I think that’s a perfectly valid use of the materials. There’s no statute of statue limitations, and if the current residents (owners? Caretakers?) wanted to melt the statue, more power to them.
I do think the authorities were wary of what you describe. The article also cited a risk of “violence” if the statue were to remain on display somewhere. I imagine they were thinking of white supremacists reclaiming Mr. Lee for Stone Mountain, Dukes of Hazzarding their way over innocent museum visitors along the way. If I’m feeling charitable, they were probably also worried about attracting anti-Confederate vandals.
Your speculation, though, is off-base. Lee is just too removed to merit personal hostility. Can you think of any particularly gentlemanly myths about the guy? All I’ve got is that he joined the Confederacy out of some kind of principled stance; partial credit, but not particularly unique. And I expect my knowledge of historical trivia is a lot broader than the average statue-tipper.
No, sometimes people mean what they say. Lee represents the Confederacy more than he personifies it. Hundreds of thousands died because he, and people like him, chose to stand up for a garbage cause. Nothing personal about it.
This is the outcome of pernicious lies about American history; not yours, though the use of "traitor" reveals so much of the ignorance in those speaking. Lee saw no superior allegiance to the Union because the gestalt US is a postbellum creation. Today states have such say in mutual governance because of the vast expansion of the federal government--both disastrously alien ideas in the 19th century. Slavery was the flashpoint on the magazine of this idea as the north asserted previously nonexistent authority on the south but were slavery not at issue it would have been something else. As insulting as you and many may feel at the idea of southerners fighting for states' rights, it is far more insulting to be told 19th century Americans would die in mass to free slaves, an insult not least of all because so many weren't American.
It was a war over the government of the country, federal or decentralized, and while the gestalt US has on balance made the world a better place (though this wanes by the day) than would be if the US had stayed decentralized, the term "War of Northern Aggression" still most accurately describes the conflict and is the reason men so principled as Lee found reason to oppose the north.
This is an extremely heterodox interpretation of history. You can argue that the entire field has been "captured by the left" and therefore shouldn't be trusted, but please be clear that this is the level of claim you're making.
Put simply, as a civil war aficionado, I have consumed various primary sources and secondary ones produced in less contentious times. There has been a dramatic shift in tone and removal of information over the past two decades, all of which have yet to be predicated by anything like new information.
I'm not even arguing the Civil War wasn't about slavery. It very clearly was the most major factor in the conflict. Just that the effort to cast it into cut-and-dry, black and white, hero-villain bullshit is just so obvious if you're remotely educated on the subject. I won't be gaslit about it.
I hope no one here is trying to cast hero-villain bullshit. My knowledge of the civil war comes is not as specific as yours or hlynka’s, yet I don’t believe it relies on sources written in the last 20 years. I’m in favor of argument from primary sources and resisting the urge to paint today’s values on a 150-year-old conflict.
My objection to Jake was similar to token’s. When a guy shows up, drops two or three classic revisionist lines, and insists that the whole premise of Civil War scholarship is “pernicious lies,” it’s not hard to see where he’s going. I have not been particularly reassured by his subsequent responses. If, like me, token suspected him of playing motte-and-bailey, making the motte explicit was a reasonable decision.
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As another civil war nerd; how do you know how haven't already been gaslit? There was a strong, well funded revisionist and revanchist effort to deny the historical reality of the south, the civil war, and the way the war was fought for several decades up until at least the 1960's.
How do you know the sources you read weren't based Rutherford's feelings about it rather than the historical reality?
It's turtles all the way down if we want to go tit for tat on "how do you know". What I can say about my older textbooks is they use far less emotional language and have more graphs than contemporary cruft.
Again: Do they? When you read accounts of EG Shiloh from pre about 2006 you'd think Johnny Reb had carried the day and not gotten driven from the field. When you look at nice books full of nice graphs from those days, you might notice the casualty numbers are somewhere between "enthusiastic" and Plutarch, with the union loosing something like 2 times as much as they actually did; by folding in a certain amount of loses to disease and desertion into battlefield casualties while at the same time only counting Confederates that were shot dead on the field. This leads to ridiculous figures (again, to pick shiloh) where the union looses twice as many men on the line in a battle where the confederates attacked, lost, and retreated.
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It always strikes me as odd that in history we have to find THE reason while in modern times we understand actors are motivated by disparate reasons.
For some people, state’s rights were why the civil war was fought. For many others, slavery was why the war was fought. For others, it was defense of home and hearth.
One final point. If it was solely about slavery, why didn’t Lincoln prior to any shooting use the fifth amendment to secure the slaves freedom while compensating the south? Would’ve in the long run been cheaper than the civil war and probably could’ve more orderly transitioned to a post slave situation.
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Pleading for clarity while citing Wikipedia in a two-sentence reply is poor decorum.
Yes, the field has been captured by those united in ideological opposition to any who argue the north shares blame in the war. The north as righteous crusaders is their orthodoxy, one which quite naturally requires such suppression of dissent when individuals like Lincoln himself so immediately and totally dispel their false history of the war in the quote already given:
Lincoln governed with extreme use of nonexistent power. He would have addressed all those grievances he had power (or contrived power) to solve. Had slavery alone been the issue, he could have simply done nothing at all as the Corwin amendment would have prevented secession. Had tariffs then been the remaining issue, Lincoln would have found a way to lift them unilaterally or else pressured congress to removing them, perhaps even pursuing beneficiary changes to those once hurt by the tariffs. But decades of northern antipathy toward the south and the sum of harms resultant meant the final grievance of the south became the Union government itself. They were no longer interested, and indeed no longer consented to its governance. With that, Lincoln's only remaining option was war. The south fired the first shot, but Union soldiers remained at Fort Sumter in hopes exactly that would happen.
One should note that Lincoln actually mentioned the Corwin amendment in his inaugural address and said he had no objection.
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Notice that I did not say anything about slaves. The “garbage cause” I had in mind was secession first and the social order of the Old South second. There’s a nice letter that sums it up:
The words of a man with allegiance to, and respect for, a higher federal Union. His personal loyalty to Virginia won out, in the end, but it wasn’t an easy decision.
“War of Northern Aggression” is pure, ahistorical revisionism. It was the South that agitated for dismantling the Union, the South which passed Articles of Secession, and of course the South which fired the first shots.
A Union that no longer exists, a Union that had he fully felt his own prescient words he would have fought against to his dying breath:
(And a Union that had all Americans of the time known would follow, would have themselves seen Washington burned to the ground.)
Ahistorical revisionism is ignoring the economic destruction the north wrought on the south and the nullification crisis that spurred decades before South Carolina seceded; it's ignoring their secession despite the Corwin amendment; it's ignoring the refusal of New Jersey and Delaware to ratify the 13th; it's ignoring how so many of those who would "die to free black men" went on to murder, often first raping, untold numbers of Native Americans in the decades that followed, atrocities led by such wonderful Union officers as George Custer. Ahistorical revisionism is most of all the idea whites would fight a war in the 1800s over the quality of life of blacks. It beggars belief so incredibly dissonant positions as the supposed totality of racism to this day, only finally being truly addressed, can be held simultaneously with the belief racism weighed so heavily on the hearts of American men 160 years ago to be the sole basis, absolutely-no-other-reason-whatsoever, for nearly a million of them to murder each other.
And that ignores so much on just the financial interests involved in the conflict. Still, there is nothing difficult, for there is nothing truthful in denying the part slavery played in the civil war; reciprocally, only falsehoods are found in asserting that without slavery secessionist war would have never happened. Rather, it as as we so often see ("Wet streets cause rain"), if slavery were truly the only issue, the war would have never started.
When I call you on
you backpedal to defending what he would think about today’s government. And when I point out that “War of Northern Aggression” is a revisionist attempt to gloss over all the ways the South started it, your response is to cry Both Sides and insist that Southern suffering is overlooked.
I can’t even tell why you’re quoting “die to free black men” as if it’s something I asserted. Again, I did not mention slavery at all until you brought it up. Perhaps it was buried in one of the sources you’ve tossed out? No?
I’m starting to suspect you’re more interested in pushing a narrative about racism than actually arguing any points.
You equivocate; on the entity you call "Union" and conflate with its successor and on what "allegiance" meant to the man. Lee considered himself Virginian first, this is fact, the federalized gestalt US and notion of American first not existing until the 20th century, also fact.
This is very bad. It is low-effort, uncharitable and antagonistic. In a discussion about causes of the civil war, the south suffering from economic policies enacted to benefit the north is wholly relevant. Your poor mockery amounts to "but other than taxes, what did the south have to complain about?" Frame this in context just-antebellum America would know well: "But other than taxes, what did the 13 colonies have to complain about?" Or most crudely but certainly most accurately, "Aside from all that shit the north did to the south, what did the north do to the south?"
Again low effort, uncharitable and antagonistic.
The Lincoln and Lee quotes were provided because they alone settle this matter. The President of the United States and the final commander of the Confederate Forces could have only been more plain in conveying "Slavery is not the cause of this war" if they said that verbatim. You, or rather those whose words you repeat, go to incredible lengths with total institutional backing and control to call liar on both sides.
You claim it is ahistorical revisionism to dispute the relevance of slavery: the south suffered tremendously under tax policy enacted to benefit the north
You claim it is ahistorical revisionism to dispute the relevance of slavery: the Corwin amendment would have made slavery constitutionally protected
You claim it is ahistorical revisionism to dispute the relevance of slavery: two northern states refused to ratify the 13th amendment
You claim it is ahistorical revisionism to dispute the relevance of slavery: northerners would not have died to free blacks from bondage
If two factions were poised for war and the supposed cause at issue was commonly viewed with apathy by one faction while the oppositional faction could have achieved their goals peacefully, why did they still go to war?
You must either contrive some many-stepped rationalization or take the simplest explanation: the cause of the war was something else.
It wasn't Fort Sumter. First shot, yes, in a war that was inevitable. A first shot there is no controversy(archive) in saying resulted from Lincoln's maneuvering. Please fully read that article as I expect the title may provoke misconstruing. A plain reading will enlighten you to that inevitability of conflict.
I hope you apprise yourself of my history here, the image you have of me is false. You do not know how I think, you do not know why I chose to comment on this. It was not to make demons of the north, nor martyrs of the south. I'll leave you on that, as your poor behavior has made me disinterested in dignifying your words again after this final reply.
I never claimed that it was disputing the relevance of slavery that was revisionist.
I said “war of northern aggression” was revisionist, and I’ll stand by that statement. Even though I’m fully aware of the tariff crises, the debate over nullification and federal/state primacy, and the various unsatisfactory compromises which left the nation at the boiling point. These are mitigating factors; they do not overrule the fact that the South made the final decision.
You have consistently argued against a position I haven’t taken.
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Hardly seems like economic destruction according to this [pro-Southern source](Ahistorical revisionism is ignoring the economic destruction the north wrought on the south):
Insofar as I've understood, the "Tariff of Abominations" was only a temporary thing and basically in large part happened due to Calhoun et al engaging in machinations that only blew up in their face, the South had if anything a hegemonic position in American politics before the Civil War with most presidents in the preceeding decades being either pro-slavery Southerners (Pierce, Tyler, Polk) or South-friendly Northerners (Buchanan, Fillmore etc.), and the whole Civil War was basically Southerners getting scared that this hegemony might be over for good (which would then have reprecussions on many things, not the least being slavery) and leaving in a huff.
I would have responded to this earlier but I didn't want to ignore your first line, and there it looks like you meant to include a link.
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The Vice President of the Confederate States of America (via Wikipedia):
Historian William C. Davis (Look Away pp. 97-98 via Wikipedia):
I won't tell you Northerners fought "to free slaves" because that's as obviously wrong to me as it is to you. It's easy to reconcile the seeming inconsistency in Mr. Lincoln's thinking: the South seceded to preserve slavery, and the North took up arms in reaction. Perhaps the North didn't care about slavery, but that doesn't matter in evaluating the South's cause.
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