Removal of historic monuments

[Lew Silverman]

Originally Posted by Buick6

It's almost impossible to view history by what we know today. You have to view it in the context of what the laws and beliefs were then. The War Between the States wasn't only fought about slavery. But a lot of people today still think that slavery was the only issue. The US Supreme Court case of Dred Scott upheld slavery several years before the war. And years later, the US Supreme Court case of Plessy Vs. Ferguson upheld separate but equal laws, which were what most Jim Crow laws were about (separate bathrooms, drinking fountains, etc.) But the statues and monuments have nothing to do with any of that. They were erected to honor leaders of men who answered the call of duty to defend their states against an invading army from the north. They were erected as a way for southerners to regain some pride after a devastating defeat. Those statues aren't about racism or white supremacy, but the way the liberal mind works they make that leap. I'd bet those same people believe Sherman's March to the Sea was honorable and humane.

Your first two sentences make a great deal of sense, which is why it's hard for some people to understand how the past has helped to shape our present.

Slavery not "THE" cause of the war? Not if you believe most contemporaneous writers of the period, including Alexander Stephens, when he authored the "Cornerstone Speech", which most certainly stated that slavery, and it's spreading west, was a very "BIG" part of the call for secession. Chattel slavery was a very large part of the economy down south, after all. And I suppose that President Lincoln's rational to pursue hostilities with the states who seceded after they attacked Fort Sumter was more of an effort to keep the Union in one piece, then to end slavery, at least initially. The "Emancipation Proclamation" came later, and only affected those chattel slaves in the areas not under Union control.

But if, as you say, the statuary and other monuments were erected to help southerners regain some pride after a devastating defeat, why did it take, in some cases, 40 years to emplace them? And why the somewhat coincidental passage of the "Jim Crow" laws to subjugate the part of the southern population that earned the rights of citizenship at the conclusion of that conflict. "Separate", but hardly "equal", and it took 58 years for the SCOTUS to finally get it right.

I suppose it would be an interesting research project to find out what was said, back then, about that period right after the war. Had President Lincoln not been assassinated and had he been able to bring about the ideals he so eloquently stated in his 2nd Inaugural Address -

"With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds."

Maybe we wouldn't be fixated on statues right now.