Protests swept the nation after the death of George Floyd in the spring. While most protests were peaceful, some took advantage of the situation to destroy property, including pulling down a handful of the more than 700 Confederate monuments. All told, as of August, about 60 Confederate symbols (statues, flags, school names, etc.) had been removed, renamed, or relocated. Nearly 1,800 of these symbols remain. Some of these removals have been done peacefully; others were pulled down by mob action. Abraham Lincoln spoke out against such a “mobocracy” in the past, but is there a rational case for removing Confederate monuments?
Sociologist James W. Loewen, best known for his books, “Lies My Teacher Told Me” and “Lies Across America,” points out that all monuments reflect three distinct time periods. I explored this concept in a recent dialogue and discovered that all three time periods, and the motivations of the people of those times, provide a rational basis for removing Confederate monuments. Keep in mind that all statues, school names, Army base names, etc. are to honor the person or people depicted.
1. The Subject: The first time period represented is the subject of the statue (or name, in the case of school naming). All Confederate statues represent aspects of the Confederacy and its four year existence during the Civil War, primarily reflected by statues of Generals, Confederate government leaders, and sometimes generic soldiers. The rational question: Is it appropriate to honor the Confederacy and its leaders?
Former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu noted on a recent Zoom discussion that Confederate leaders were people who acted to “destroy the United States in order to protect and expand slavery.” Renowned Civil War and Abraham Lincoln historian Allen Guelzo put the question even more bluntly: “Why would you erect statues to people who committed treason?”
These views are backed up by history. Eleven states chose to break the Constitution to secede and engage in a civil war to protect and expand slavery because they didn’t like the results of a national election. This wasn’t simply an irrational reaction to Lincoln’s election, it was a decision planned for many years. While still part of the United States, individual States, Congressmen, Senators, and even President James Buchanan’s Secretary of War John Floyd shipped arms and munitions south and ordered the Union’s limited navy offshore to minimize Union resources for possible response after secession, not to mention any Union response to foreign nations who might take advantage of domestic disarray. Colonel Robert E. Lee of the Union Army was offered the position of General-on-Chief, but chose instead to renounce his citizenship to join the Confederacy. Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis and former Georgia Congressman Alexander Stephens also renounced citizenship to become President and Vice President of the Confederacy. Many other military officers and congressional representatives joined them. All chose to forsake the Union and actively go to war against the United States.
Former George W. Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently questioned the “glorification of the Confederacy” and especially the glorification of “military officers who tried to destroy the country,” adding, “I don’t get it.”
2. When monuments were erected: Placement of monuments began shortly after the Civil War, but the majority occurred in a large spike after the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling that allowed “separate but equal” segregation. This graph gives a good visual of what I’m about to describe (right click to open the image in a new tab so it’s easier to read):
A special emphasis was to erect Confederate statues in front of courthouses as a form of intimidation to African Americans, many brought in on trumped up charges during the Jim Crow era. Erection of these statues was part of a larger scheme of intimidation where the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy groups ran rampant and everyone, white and black, knew that the judge, prosecutor, and sheriff bringing black men into the courthouse might very well have been wearing a white hood and burning crosses the night before. The time period (post-reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation) also reflected a conscious attempt to rewrite history, creating a “Lost Cause” mythology that denied slavery’s role in antebellum America and the cause of the Civil War. This massive undertaking to rewrite history and engage in intimidation lasted up to the second world war. A smaller spike occurred immediately after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that reversed the earlier Plessy and deemed segregation unconstitutional because it created and institutionalized inequality. Unlike the earlier spike that emphasized courthouse statues, this response to the desegregation of schools decision was focused on naming schools after Confederate leaders, again directed intimidation to demonstrate to African Americans that white supremacy still ruled despite the Court order. This continued through the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act.
These choices of when and were to erect Confederate monuments and name schools and Army bases was not random or accidental, as the graph shows. Rather than merely coinciding with Jim Crow laws or pushback against civil rights progress, the act of erecting monuments to the Confederacy was another plank in the platform to promote white supremacy and rewrite history. The United Daughters of the Confederacy were instrumental in this program. The UDC was also behind the rewriting of textbooks to minimize the role of slavery (e.g., “African immigrants came to America to find work” instead of the reality of the forced international slave trade).
3. The present: The final time period reflected by all monuments is today; the time in which we all view and evaluate, or reevaluate, the appropriateness of monuments to the past. While some see Confederate monuments as representative of “heritage,” others see them representing a continuing subjugation based on race. Let’s rationally examine the two views.
The argument for the monuments reflecting “heritage” is, we all must admit, rather weak. The Confederacy lasted only about 4 years. What we refer to as the “Confederate flag” existed for even less time. This hardly is enough time to reflect heritage. Also, the “heritage” presented is a false history that intentionally dismisses slavery as the key to secession and the cause of the Civil War despite the Confederacy, both at the state and federal level clearly and repeatedly stating that protection of slavery was the cornerstone of secession and war. So what is the actual heritage of the Confederacy? It’s the slave-based plantation economy and white supremacy. This is why you can see Confederate flags flying in North Dakota, New Jersey, and other areas that either didn’t exist at the time or were Union states, not part of the Confederacy. It’s also why the most ardent defenders of Confederate statues are modern day KKK, tiki torch-carrying neo-Nazis, and white supremacists such as the Proud Boys.
Meanwhile, the majority of African Americans today view these monuments as a continuing reminder of white supremacy. We are 150 years after the Reconstruction amendments that guaranteed freedom, citizenship, and voting rights to all Americans (and reiterated 50+ years ago with the Civil and Voting Rights Acts), and yet African Americans and other minorities still feel they are being blocked from exercising their constitutional rights. They feel that these Confederate monuments exacerbate and provide and anchor for continuing racism in America. The deaths of unarmed African American men and women for minor or non-crimes while white supremacist mass murderers are taken without violence reinforces this perception of inequality.
What I’ve presented above is a rational case for the removal of Confederate statues, school names, and other monuments to the Confederacy. This should serve as a starting point for further rational discussion. It does not provide a rationalization for mobs pulling down statues. My hope is that it provides a framework where historians, members of the community in which individual statues sit, and black rights activist groups such as Black Lives Matter can proactively sit down to discuss the fate of any given statue, school name, etc. In a broader sense, I hope these discussions can lead to a more comprehensive discussion on equality in America such that we can identify and remove the societal barriers that keep us from achieving the more perfect union that the Founders and Abraham Lincoln saw as our national ideal.
I will follow up this post in a few days by addressing some alternative positions and rebuttals to what I’ve presented. Feel free to leave your own questions and/or rebuttals (and even solutions) in the comments and I’ll incorporate them into the next post.
Additional Posts Addressing Comments and Rebuttals:
Do We Erase History by Removing Confederate Monuments?
Can We Add Context to Confederate Monuments?
[Graphic credit: Southern Poverty Law Center]
David J. Kent is an avid traveler, scientist, and Abraham Lincoln historian. He is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World as well as two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
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The basic premises of this article are entirely specious. First, the number 60 is hardly a handful – it is instead a significant number. Secondly, the destruction/removal of statues, sculptures, and monuments is historically reviled as an early step in the formation of socialist and authoritarian governments. Thirdly, these actions are the result of anti-government actions by those who profess and practice anarchy. Finally, the existence of these artistic efforts, worthy not only in that manner, provides us the visual reminders of our nations’s past; the opportunity to study and use the lessons they convey, both good and bad, to guide our current and future choices. Engraved in granite before our U.S. Archives Building in Washington, D.C., is the following quote from William Shakespeare: “…the past is prologue…” Condoning these acts is akin to rejection and erasure of our past leading to its repetition or worse.
I’ll address your statements in more detail in my follow up post, but here are some quick responses.
1) The actual number of Confederate symbols is a bit of a moving target, so 60 might not be the current number. Either way, 60 is only 3% of 1800, so while “handful” is a subjective term, 3% isn’t all that significant. Also, the vast majority (~90%) of that number have been removed by the owners and/or government and not pulled down by protesters. Of the entries listed in the following table, for example, only 11 of the 84 were pulled down by protesters; the rest were removed by owners. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monuments_and_memorials_removed_during_the_George_Floyd_protests#Confederate_monuments)
2) American soldiers pulled down statues of Hitler. Iraqis pulled down statues of Saddam Hussein. Other socialist and authoritarian statues have been pulled down by the people and/or forces of freedom routinely over the course of history. So a statement that pulling down statues leads to “formation of socialist and authoritarian governments” seems particularly unsupportable.
3) As already noted, most statues were removed by governments themselves, not protesters. The vast majority of protesters are people asking for government protection of their constitutional rights, not the destruction of government. Ironically, the groups most vociferous about protecting Confederate monuments, as I noted in the post, are KKK, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists, most notably anti-government and anarchistic groups like the Proud Boys. So this statement seems to have things reversed.
4) Two parts to the “finally” statement: Indeed, many of the statues do have artistic merit and that is a consideration of rational discussion. On the other hand, many are not great works of art in themselves. Those that are may not work in museum or park settings because they are designed to be seen from below, in particular examples like the massive statues of Robert E. Lee in New Orleans and John C. Calhoun in Charleston, SC, both of which were placed on tall columns. As for visual reminders of our nation’s past and “the opportunity to study and use the lessons they convey,” that’s very true. It’s one of the reasons why a rational discussion about potential removal of Confederate statues and other symbols is necessary. By doing so we can avoid the vandalism and destruction of mob rule. We may decide they do have to be removed, or that they can be used for educational purposes either in situ or in museum settings, but that decision should be through proactive, rational debate.
5) As I noted in the post, I personally don’t condone acts of vandalism, and from what I’ve been able to discern, very few people condone such acts. My goal in this post, and the post(s) to follow, is to encourage rational discussion and a reasoned and informed decision on the fate of monuments. This is also true for non-Confederate monuments that have been targeted, including Columbus, Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, and Teddy Roosevelt (and perhaps others I missed).
6) Finally, and I’ll address this is more detail in a future post, we have to be careful to ensure history is indeed remembered and learned from. To that end we must have historical information that is real. As I mentioned in the post, Confederate monuments were part of a platform of racial intimidation and rewriting of history to minimize the role of slavery (as well as Jim Crow, segregation, KKK, lynching, etc.) in our history. A rational discussion of Confederate monuments can help us communicate the realities of our history to the public such that the public can make more informed and rational choices. The more we can do this proactively, the less we’ll see of uninformed mob action.
Thanks for your comment. I’ll likely address your points in greater detail in forthcoming posts, which I’m now thinking will likely be a series of post.
With all due respect, none of your arguments reach anywhere near the level of approval of condoning or supporting the hiding or destruction of these creations. Public discussion is always enlightening, but not always appropriate or necessary. As for real historical information, how would you define that? The adage, “history is written by the winners…” is, unfortunately, human nature and, realistically we deserve to interpret our lives and experiences in our own contexts. No one or group has the intrinsic right to revise or erase history, only to have their own personal opinions on which to base their choices in their personal journeys. That is why we must condemn these disrespectful attitudes. They are, indeed, the antithesis of our hard-earned freedoms in the Constitution to think, speak, and act lawfully, religiously, and ethically, without coercion.
I understand that the arguments aren’t persuasive to you. Given that the vast majority of Confederate monuments do remain in place, it’s obvious that not all agree that they should be removed. That’s not surprising. Also, any Confederate monuments that are on National Park Service property cannot be removed without Congressional action (nor can any be added). But some jurisdictions have decided to remove statues for a variety of reasons. As far as I can tell, what to do with them is still up in the air for most of those taken down.
Also, as I noted, very few were pulled down by protesters. I don’t condone mob destruction of any statues, and I suspect you’ll find that’s true for most Americans.
As for “real historical information,” most would define that as accurate and complete history of individuals and the times. For example, Robert E. Lee might include his service in the United States Army prior to rejected the Union and fighting for the Confederacy to protect and expand slavery. His time after the war as president of Washington College (renamed Washington and Lee after his death) might be relevant if any of his actions were relevant to his standing. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s history would obviously included his Confederate Army service, as well as his roles in the murders of black Union troops (USCT) at Ft. Pillow and elsewhere, as well as his role as grand dragon of the KKK. In all cases, the full story would need to be told.
I’m not sure what you mean by “we deserve to interpret our lives and experiences in our own contexts.” That seems to describe memoir, not history. History isn’t just how we might interpret ourselves, but how our actions relate to the context of the time. For example, we can’t claim that slavery wasn’t the main reason for secession and the war because it was the main reason, as leaders of the states and federal Confederacy clearly explained.
I’ll discuss the question of “erasing history” in more depth in another post, but clearly we aren’t erasing history by removing monuments that are designed to present a false history. As the old saying goes, we don’t forget what Hitler did because there aren’t any statues of him in Germany. Statues have very limited reach; you must actually physically see it to gain knowledge from it, and many statues have rather poor (and often inaccurate) signage explaining the person and/or context. Clearly we need to do a better job of presenting accurate history to each new generation.
I’m not sure what you mean with your last statement about “the antithesis…to think, speak, and act lawfully, religiously, and ethically, without coercion.” The goal my post espouses it to provide a rational and fact-based discussion of Confederate (and by extension, other) monuments such that we can think, speak, act lawfully, and ethically without coercion. Confederate monuments were, in fact, erected as coercion and intimidation against people of color, as I explained in the post. To act without coercion we must learn accurate history, not a false history, and make choices based on honest discussion. The present focus on Confederate monuments in the wake of the repeated deaths of unarmed black men and women gives us an opportunity to reevaluate our history on accurate and honest terms. The end result may be that most Confederate monuments remain in place with additional context. Or the end result may be different. That will depend on our willingness to honestly discuss our history. So again, this isn’t about erasing history, it’s about more deeply engaging with our history.
I’ve been sidetracked with other issues since this post but expect to have a follow up post after the weekend.
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