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Monuments to Robert E. Lee

 
 
 
repoman

repoman

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So there is a move to get rid of 3 monuments to him in New Orleans. I don't really have a major problem with it if it does not go much further. From what I have read, Lee was not a terrible person on his own time, but still honoring a military leader of the Confederacy seems to be not good.

But there are some other lines which I think should not be crossed. In no specific order:

1.) No Confederate leader should be disinterred - unless he is buried in a free standing monument or the whole cemetery is disinterred.

2.) Monuments to civilians of the antebellum or confederate south should not be taken down unless maybe they were a particularly heinous person. Say there was a monument to confederate nurses - that should not be taken down.

3.) Museums and historical sites of the confederacy (that are not pro-southern) should not be stripped of public funding if they have them now.

4.) Civil War re-enactors shouldn't be pressured out of their hobby.


Anyway, with america having lots of Asian, Arab, Latino and other immigration in recent decades I think that a lot of these new people can't even relate to the Civil War as a concept in the same way as whites and blacks can. It is going to fade on its own.
 
A lot people of the day had a lot of respect for him, and from the speakers of a few old trucks still, songs with his name can still be heard, and even though there are those that drive to irradicate every thing that can even remotely have some connection to racism, not every praise of his name is race based, but that won't stop the people on a mission. And, perhaps, it shouldn't, but must those that refuse to support these vindictive movements be berated for not acquiescing?
 
It is a shame that such a noble man has had his memory degraded by being hijacked by white supremacists. But it must be remembered that it was the people of the South, not the North, that did this, and the consequences are their own. In life he was anything but a pro-slavery person, freeing what slaves he inherited, living by his own work, and being one of the few in the Southern armies to advocate recruiting African-American soldiers, with emancipation as a reward. (the other was Cleburne, one of the most brilliant southern generals, who suffered the consequences of not being promoted, despite the leadership crisis in the Army of the Tennessee, and who has few if any monuments to him, because of the white supremacist tenor of the post-war monument builders. Cleburne was even more radical than Lee, saying free the slaves first, all of them, and THEN recruit them, while the others said, serve first, freedom afterwards. Cleburne was in every way a hero, but little appreciated, largely for this reason. Also slighted was James Longstreet, who during the war was Lee's strong right hand, but after the war became a Republican and was wounded leading a mixed militia company against the Klan in New Orleans. There is a monument there commemorating the Klan on that occasion but not the mixed militia led by a genuine Civil War hero)

There's no easy answer, and I would say that we'd have to look at the monuments individually and try to judge their intent. I would say that Lee monuments outside of Virginia would be suspect. (with the exception of the Gettysburg one, naturally)
 
Sarpedon said:
It is a shame that such a noble man has had his memory degraded by being hijacked by white supremacists. But it must be remembered that it was the people of the South, not the North, that did this, and the consequences are their own. In life he was anything but a pro-slavery person, freeing what slaves he inherited, living by his own work, and being one of the few in the Southern armies to advocate recruiting African-American soldiers, with emancipation as a reward. (the other was Cleburne, one of the most brilliant southern generals, who suffered the consequences of not being promoted, despite the leadership crisis in the Army of the Tennessee, and who has few if any monuments to him, because of the white supremacist tenor of the post-war monument builders. Cleburne was even more radical than Lee, saying free the slaves first, all of them, and THEN recruit them, while the others said, serve first, freedom afterwards. Cleburne was in every way a hero, but little appreciated, largely for this reason. Also slighted was James Longstreet, who during the war was Lee's strong right hand, but after the war became a Republican and was wounded leading a mixed militia company against the Klan in New Orleans. There is a monument there commemorating the Klan on that occasion but not the mixed militia led by a genuine Civil War hero)

There's no easy answer, and I would say that we'd have to look at the monuments individually and try to judge their intent. I would say that Lee monuments outside of Virginia would be suspect. (with the exception of the Gettysburg one, naturally)
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I'm trying to remember where I read this, but I don't recall Lee freeing his slaves. I remember him berating them for being lazy. Or perhaps they were his wife's slaves?
 
Lee did not initially free his slaves. He did though at the start of the war when he resigned his position in the Union Army.

He was actually sued by one of his slaves who claimed he'd been emancipated by Lee's father. The slave lost the case, but refused to work and was a thorn in Lee's side. That's probably the one he called lazy.

SLD
 
hmm, I guess I got the timeline wrong. Interesting that he would emancipate them when the war started. Possibly a political statement.
 
I wonder if Woodrow Wilson will have his name taken off many buildings. I was surprised to see an over year old video of Judge Andrew Napolitano saying the Wilson was a despicable racist who segregated federal jobs that had been integrated since reconstruction.

He knows his stuff really well, normally.



there is also a segment on Lincoln and the US Civil War:


I am not sure how accurate he is about it being a better option to allow slavery to die on the vine in the US than to have the war.
 
Jason Harvestdancer said:
Of course Grant also had slaves, and kept them through the war until the constitution was amended. It wouldn't be bad to take down monuments to him as well.
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The only evidence that Union general (and later United States President) Ulysses S. Grant ever owned any slaves is a document he signed in 1859 that emancipated "my Negro man William" (i.e, William Jones), whom Grant stated in the document he had purchased from Frederick Dent (his father-in-law). Little is known about William Jones; as even Grant's biographers note, "exactly when and how Grant acquired ownership of a slave remain something of a mystery." There is no other evidence showing that Grant ever owned more than this one slave, much less "several."

It is often stated that Grant's wife, Julia Boggs Dent, "owned four slaves," and Julia herself identified four "servants" whom she claimed "belonged" to her up until the end of 1862. However, those slaves had been purchased by Julia's father, Frederick F. Dent, and there is no record of his ever having transferred ownership of them to Julia — without such a transfer, neither Julia nor her husband Ulysses would have had legal authority to free them.

From 1854 to 1859 Grant managed his father-in-law's farm, White Haven, where a number of slaves lived and worked. But again, those slaves belonged to Grant's father-in-law, so Grant himself had no legal authority to set them free. (Some of the slaves at White Haven eventually drifted off during the Civil War; any that remained were freed when Missouri's constitutional convention abolished slavery in January 1865.)

The statement attributed to Grant about not his freeing his slaves earlier than December 1865 (when the 13th Amendment was adopted) because "Good help is so hard to come by these days" is almost certainly an apocryphal one. No credible documentation records Grant as having said such a thing, and he was only ever in a position to emancipate a single slave, which he did back in 1859.

"Contrarily, Confederate General Robert E. Lee freed his slaves (which he never purchased — they were inherited) in 1862! Lee freed his slaves several years before the war was over, and considerably earlier than his Northern counterparts."

Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and (from 1865) the general-in-chief of Confederate forces, neither owned slaves nor inherited any, thus it is not correct to assert that he "freed his slaves" (in 1862 or at any other time).

As in the case of Ulysses S. Grant, the slaves that Lee supposedly owned actually belonged to his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, and lived and worked on the three estates owned by Custis (Arlington, White House, and Romancoke). Upon Custis' death in 1857, Lee did not "inherit" those slaves; rather, he carried out the directions expressed in Custis' will regarding those slaves (and other property) according to his position as executor of Custis' estate.

Custis' will stipulated that all of his slaves were to be freed within five years: "... upon the legacies to my four granddaughters being paid, then I give freedom to my slaves, the said slaves to be emancipated by my executor in such manner as he deems expedient and proper, the said emancipation to be accomplished in not exceeding five years from the time of my decease." So while Lee did technically free those slaves at the end of 1862, it was not his choice to do so; he was required to emancipate them by the conditions of his father-in-law's will.
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http://www.snopes.com/confederate-history-slave-ownership/
 
Thank you for clearing that all up. I'd never even heard the suggestion that Grant owned slaves before, and it seems like a typical southern revisionist distortion. Besides it is irrelevant. Grant was never much for civil rights until he met Lincoln. Grant disgraced our country with his military order expelling Jews from the military department under his control. Fortunately, not only did Lincoln countermand that order promptly, but also apparently sat Grant down and effectively talked him over to the right side that when the latter became President, he was a strong advocate for Jewish people, going so far as to put pressure on Romania, which was having pogroms at the time, and bringing in lots of refugees. In his memoirs, he counts the fact that he went from being anti-semitic to being considered a friend of the Jewish community as being one of the things he was most proud of. He gives the credit to Lincoln's persuasion. (there being no documentary evidence of this private conversation)

I've always been more appreciative of people who start out bad and become good rather than those who are raised correctly and never have to make the hard decision.
 
There could be a trick to it. Union officers probably used former slaves as valets, etc. So calling them "slaves" isn't entirely untrue, tho the motivation seems to be deception.
 
repoman said:
I am not sure how accurate he is about it being a better option to allow slavery to die on the vine in the US than to have the war.
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All the other countries in Western civilization abolished slavery in the 1800s too, and none of them needed to fight a war and kill 800,000 people to do it, so it seems to me it's hard to argue that having the war was a better solution than not having it. But to call it an "option" implies somebody made a choice to free the slaves by war. He should keep in mind that the South started the war.
 
That part is true. The US has never started a war. The US has blockaded countries, but not fired the first shot. The US has sent arms to the enemy of whomever we want to fight against, but not fired the first shot. The US has moved troops into disputed territories, but not fired the first shot. The US has sent unreasonable ultimatums, but not fired the first shot.
 
This seems to me to be an absurd movement. History is history and Lee was a major player in US history whether some people dislike him or the idea of him or not. This movement would be similar to a group of people trying to erase Oliver Cromwell or Guy Fawkes from English history.
 
skepticalbip said:
This seems to me to be an absurd movement. History is history and Lee was a major player in US history whether some people dislike him or the idea of him or not. This movement would be similar to a group of people trying to erase Oliver Cromwell or Guy Fawkes from English history.
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Are there monuments honoring OC or GF?
 
Horatio Parker said:
skepticalbip said:
This seems to me to be an absurd movement. History is history and Lee was a major player in US history whether some people dislike him or the idea of him or not. This movement would be similar to a group of people trying to erase Oliver Cromwell or Guy Fawkes from English history.
Click to expand...

Are there monuments honoring OC or GF?
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Absolutely, there are several for both - (google is your friend). And then Guy Fawkes has become an honored symbol for Anonymous, all of who wear Guy Fawkes masks when making public statements.
 
So I guess 100 years from now, the argument might be to remove monuments of our current leaders because they used fossil fuels, which 100 years from now, outlawed, and considered a horribly primitive and dangerous means, will be considered very non-PC.
 
Google isn't friendly enough to me to show me English monuments honoring Guy Fawkes. Seems to me the memory preserved is GF's failure.

And it appears that statues of Cromwell are not without controversy of their own. So much for direction from England...perhaps a PC infection from America. Those thin skinned Irish...

How GF masks worn by Anonymous is an argument favoring REL monuments is a mystery to me.
 
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