According to what I read Lee was an explicit racist and believed thoroughly in slavery, as did the leadership class of the Southern states according to the documents they themselves wrote.
So I have to ask what is being memorialized when a statue of this man is placed in front of us. Surely not his inner, ambiguous, unexpressed dissati…
According to what I read Lee was an explicit racist and believed thoroughly in slavery, as did the leadership class of the Southern states according to the documents they themselves wrote.
So I have to ask what is being memorialized when a statue of this man is placed in front of us. Surely not his inner, ambiguous, unexpressed dissatisfaction with the slavery for which he fought.
And what reaction might we expect from the descendants of his victims, who are also targets to this very day of the same ideas which animated him and his colleagues? What would you all suggest?
Elihu Yale does not represent anything to most people. He donated some books to some college somewhere once upon a time and got them to paste his name over the door. Robert E. Lee is an explicit symbol of a living ideology. It makes a statement.
Yale University is named for slave-trader and merchant Elihu Yale. According to historian Craig Steven Wilder, Yale also "inherited a small slave plantation in Rhode Island that it used to fund its first graduate programs and its first scholarships... [the university] aggressively sought out opportunities to benefit from the slave economies of New England and the broader Atlantic world."[91]
I have a growing discomfort with statues as political and military statements in the public space. It's hard to visit Europe and not walk away with an urge to place statue and a roundabout on every corner, but I increasingly feel like that's not us. For all the same reasons we don't put living people on our currency.
The bigger debate is what to do with the public icons we already have?
Removing statues is a totalitarian impulse. I don't have to agree with every historical marker, why should I have to agree with every statue?
If I were a conscientious objector, should I have the power to remove the beautiful St. Gaudens equestrian statue of Sherman at a corner of Central Park in NYC? It symbolizes war, after all, despite the angel with the palm frond.
The urge to remove statues of people from the public space is beyond me. It's just that increasingly I don't see the point in building them in a public place either.
Why not build them, or in some cases move them to private property? I feel like that would resolve a lot of the conflict.
The whole concept of public art was supposed to enrich us as a people. The idea of removing statuary might be indicative of people spending too much time on the Internet. Just saying.
Perhaps the internet is the impetus for this current round of iconoclasm, but given the history going back thousands of years it seems to come from a place deep inside us. Remember when they destroyed the statue of Saddam Hussein?
I know I posted this elsewhere, but to me the idea that you can change, or erase history by destroying a statue is like making people disappear by placing your hands over your eyes. I get it in a 5 year old. Past that it doesn't make much sense.
I'm a big believer in promoting public art in museums and on private property. Even on public outdoor property if it's not historical figures, but our choice of public statues over the past 30 years has changed for the worse. In LA they built a monument to the Korean comfort women of WWII. In Boston they built a monument to the survivors of the potato famine. Do we really want a public square dedicated to memorials of past trauma, because that seems to be where much of it is heading?
The Vietnam Memorial was one of the last memorials that moved me. The WWII memorial that came after it was a disaster. I don't have much hope for future pubic monuments.
As long as we divide ourselves, such monuments don't have much hope of being more or less universally liked.
As long as we create monuments that are boring as hell (WWII, WWI, etc) and say nothing about the conflicts in question, well...yeah you're right.
I don't know what to say about the Mideast wars of the last 20 years. What kind of monument could be created for them, really? A big pile of shit, maybe.
I generally agree with what you are saying. I don't have a solution.
"I was much pleased the with President's message. His views of the systematic and progressive efforts of certain people at the North to interfere with and change the domestic institutions of the South are truthfully and faithfully expressed. The consequences of their plans and purposes are also clearly set forth. These people must be aware that their object is both unlawful and foreign to them and to their duty, and that this institution, for which they are irresponsible and non-accountable, can only be changed by them through the agency of a civil and servile war. There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day. Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right not the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master; that, although he may not approve the mode by which Providence accomplishes its purpose, the results will be the same; and that the reason he gives for interference in matters he has no concern with, holds good for every kind of interference with our neighbor, -still, I fear he will persevere in his evil course. . . . Is it not strange that the descendants of those Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom have always proved the most intolerant of the spiritual liberty of others?" - RE Lee 1856
He manumitted the slaves that passed to him in 1857 via a will. It took him forever to do so (something like 5 years) but debt and war had something to do with that.
It might surprise you that U.S. Grant also was a slaveowner once upon a time.
He personally didn't fight for slavery, he made that clear on several occasions. He would have preferred to remain with the Union, but when his state seceded, he was compelled by honor to serve it. The view of people in the antebellum US was that it was "these United States" rather than "the United States". In many cases primary loyalty was to your state, particularly in the South.
Is tearing down that statue going to remove Jim Crow, which Lee had nothing to do with? It's futile and stupid. Besides which, Lee had a point about his appeal to Christianity rather than war. Sure, the war ended slavery de jure, but de facto it remained for at least 100 years more. Lee's solution may well have bent that curve without 700k people dying. He understood that the _white_ southerners had to be brought along for the ride to get rid of slavery for good.
Anyway, instead of slagging the guy without knowledge, you should find out more about him. He's not universally admirable but there was more to him than some slavery monster.
Rather than contest anything above, I suggest people simply do the reading. Grasp what slavery meant, what Robert E. Lee thought of it and did about it, what heroizing the Confederacy means today. It's all out there are not hard to find.
So, ignore the facts, read craptastic propaganda, either left wing non-relativist bullshit applying modern values to people from the 1860s or patriotic rah-rah crap claiming the Union was for the end of slavery. Got it.
Careful here---this info emanates from The National Park Service, well-known purveyors of critical race theory.
"....The Civil War began as a purely military effort with limited political objectives. The North was fighting for reunification, and the South for independence. But as the war progressed, the Civil War gradually turned into a social, economic and political revolution with unforeseen consequences.
"....The Union war effort expanded to include not only reunification, but also the abolition of slavery. To achieve emancipation, the Union had to invade the South, defeat the Confederate armies, and occupy the Southern territory..."
What's this "modern values" shit? Best and proper to ignore your "craptastic" propaganda" and nonsensical reasoning. Modern values. Please. I know some people I'd like to clap in leg irons and set'em to work clearing my back forty. That sufficiently bereft of "modern values" for you?
When war was declared Lee was in Texas with the U.S.Army. His service prior to that included work in the engineering corps, and supt at West Point. O don't get me started on Crimea. Right you are.
That said, yes. More warfare. It was the 44 year gap between 1870 and 1914 without war that made WWI so terrible. A whole generation had no idea what war meant (mass death until one side is exhausted) at a time when the technology of same was improving to the point of making offensive warfare impossible without more technological improvements (armor, etc).
Meanwhile the ruling class still believed in Napoleonic maneuver warfare and decisive battles to settle wars in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
I would argue that every generation going back to the end of the ice age had a very good "idea what war meant." They were familiar with the history, even if most did not experience combat. In any event, that's a rather peculiar assertion to make---that war is initiated by a lack of war over a very specific time period. Lacks heft. Not to mention historical grounding.
"....at a time when the technology of same was improving to the point of making offensive warfare impossible without more technological improvements
"And that the carnage of the war can be attributed to the point of making offensive warfare impossible without more technological improvements (armor, etc)."
It sounds as if you're saying here that the rapid technological improvements in waging war up to that point stands as the primary factor in producing the prolonged mass slaughter. This seems self-evident.
First off, the "ruling class" had nothing to do with the strategies and logistics deployed in conducting the war, it was the high command and officer corps who formulated and carried out the strategies and logistics of the campaigns. Certainly the "ruling class" had thoughts on how the war and its execution would affect imperial designs and the war's political impact on civilians.
"Meanwhile the ruling class still believed in Napoleonic maneuver warfare and decisive battles to settle wars in spite of all the evidence to the contrary."
One would be hard-pressed to produce examples of two more opposite methods of warfare than "Napoleonic maneuver" and trench warfare.
For Napoleon "the ideal Napoleonic battle was to manipulate the enemy into an unfavourable position through manoeuvre and deception, force him to commit his main forces and reserve to the main battle and then undertake an enveloping attack with uncommitted or reserve troops on the flank or rear."
Additionally, it's estimated that the Grand Armee traveled more than 3,000 miles total in its 1812 invasion of Russia, including its ill-fated retreat. Whereas the first world war was fought with stationary soldiers occupying hundreds of miles of ribbon-like trenches often separated by as little as a 100-yards. No "Napoleonic maneuvering" here. Difficult to believe that the "ruling class" or anyone else involved in the war believed in this strategy for more than a few weeks.
A more compelling argument can be made that it was the lack of any sort of stated strategic goal by either side that led to the prolonged stalemate, punctuated by almost medieval logistics and countless failed strategies by the high command, combined with lethal modern weaponry, that produced the extended butchery from the battlefield "stalemate." French pride and stubbornness over lost and enemy occupied territory was a factor also.
You also seem to be suggesting that if a war like this had been fought earlier, that it would have reduced the carnage enacted in World War I. What evidence suggests that a war fought earlier would have been less gruesome, or for that matter would have sufficiently prepared the soldiers for the coming conflict? Almost every great conflict between nation-states introduces new technology and requires officers and soldiers to adapt to it on the fly. World War I was no different.
I would also argue that the emergence and extension of incipient imperial ambitions and consolidation among all the major European powers between 1870-1914 was ultimately the fulcrum that led to the outbreak of World War I. But it wasn't the only spark:
*European Expansionism (Imperialism/colonialism
*Serbian Nationalism
*Conflicts over Competing Alliances
*The Blank Check Assurance: Conspired Plans of
Germany and Austria-Hungary
*Germany Millenarianism – Spirit of 1914
*Rapid Economic Expansion
*Pre-war tensions from growing British/German naval ambitions
My reading of history strongly suggests that the combat that took place between 1914-1918 involving more than 100 nations is what made WW1 so terrible.
Must have missed something. More dissembling, incoherent nonsense.
Lee: "The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things...."
Get readin.'
"His public pronouncements were sometimes at odds with his private actions. Despite the fact that Lee told the Joint Committee on Reconstruction that everyone wished the former slaves well, for example, the records of the Freedman’s Bureau show that students under Lee’s direction at Washington College were heavily involved in their harassment."
"After the war, Lee continued to hold attitudes about class and race that were chained to the old order. A few weeks after Appomattox he expounded to a newspaperman on the need to “dispose” of the freedmen. He not only advocated the deportation of African Americans, he backed a plan to replace them with destitute whites from Ireland, who would form a new servant class. He also signed a petition that proposed a political system precluding all blacks, and many poor whites, from voting."
According to what I read Lee was an explicit racist and believed thoroughly in slavery, as did the leadership class of the Southern states according to the documents they themselves wrote.
So I have to ask what is being memorialized when a statue of this man is placed in front of us. Surely not his inner, ambiguous, unexpressed dissatisfaction with the slavery for which he fought.
And what reaction might we expect from the descendants of his victims, who are also targets to this very day of the same ideas which animated him and his colleagues? What would you all suggest?
Elihu Yale should not have a statue either.
Elihu Yale does not represent anything to most people. He donated some books to some college somewhere once upon a time and got them to paste his name over the door. Robert E. Lee is an explicit symbol of a living ideology. It makes a statement.
Yale University is named for slave-trader and merchant Elihu Yale. According to historian Craig Steven Wilder, Yale also "inherited a small slave plantation in Rhode Island that it used to fund its first graduate programs and its first scholarships... [the university] aggressively sought out opportunities to benefit from the slave economies of New England and the broader Atlantic world."[91]
John Hawkins square in Plymouth is gone--rightfully. I think statues ought to be rethought.
Interesting thought.
I have a growing discomfort with statues as political and military statements in the public space. It's hard to visit Europe and not walk away with an urge to place statue and a roundabout on every corner, but I increasingly feel like that's not us. For all the same reasons we don't put living people on our currency.
The bigger debate is what to do with the public icons we already have?
Removing statues is a totalitarian impulse. I don't have to agree with every historical marker, why should I have to agree with every statue?
If I were a conscientious objector, should I have the power to remove the beautiful St. Gaudens equestrian statue of Sherman at a corner of Central Park in NYC? It symbolizes war, after all, despite the angel with the palm frond.
Love Augustus St. Gaudens' work, btw.
The urge to remove statues of people from the public space is beyond me. It's just that increasingly I don't see the point in building them in a public place either.
Why not build them, or in some cases move them to private property? I feel like that would resolve a lot of the conflict.
The whole concept of public art was supposed to enrich us as a people. The idea of removing statuary might be indicative of people spending too much time on the Internet. Just saying.
Perhaps the internet is the impetus for this current round of iconoclasm, but given the history going back thousands of years it seems to come from a place deep inside us. Remember when they destroyed the statue of Saddam Hussein?
I know I posted this elsewhere, but to me the idea that you can change, or erase history by destroying a statue is like making people disappear by placing your hands over your eyes. I get it in a 5 year old. Past that it doesn't make much sense.
I'm a big believer in promoting public art in museums and on private property. Even on public outdoor property if it's not historical figures, but our choice of public statues over the past 30 years has changed for the worse. In LA they built a monument to the Korean comfort women of WWII. In Boston they built a monument to the survivors of the potato famine. Do we really want a public square dedicated to memorials of past trauma, because that seems to be where much of it is heading?
The Vietnam Memorial was one of the last memorials that moved me. The WWII memorial that came after it was a disaster. I don't have much hope for future pubic monuments.
As long as we divide ourselves, such monuments don't have much hope of being more or less universally liked.
As long as we create monuments that are boring as hell (WWII, WWI, etc) and say nothing about the conflicts in question, well...yeah you're right.
I don't know what to say about the Mideast wars of the last 20 years. What kind of monument could be created for them, really? A big pile of shit, maybe.
I generally agree with what you are saying. I don't have a solution.
"I was much pleased the with President's message. His views of the systematic and progressive efforts of certain people at the North to interfere with and change the domestic institutions of the South are truthfully and faithfully expressed. The consequences of their plans and purposes are also clearly set forth. These people must be aware that their object is both unlawful and foreign to them and to their duty, and that this institution, for which they are irresponsible and non-accountable, can only be changed by them through the agency of a civil and servile war. There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day. Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right not the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master; that, although he may not approve the mode by which Providence accomplishes its purpose, the results will be the same; and that the reason he gives for interference in matters he has no concern with, holds good for every kind of interference with our neighbor, -still, I fear he will persevere in his evil course. . . . Is it not strange that the descendants of those Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom have always proved the most intolerant of the spiritual liberty of others?" - RE Lee 1856
He manumitted the slaves that passed to him in 1857 via a will. It took him forever to do so (something like 5 years) but debt and war had something to do with that.
It might surprise you that U.S. Grant also was a slaveowner once upon a time.
He personally didn't fight for slavery, he made that clear on several occasions. He would have preferred to remain with the Union, but when his state seceded, he was compelled by honor to serve it. The view of people in the antebellum US was that it was "these United States" rather than "the United States". In many cases primary loyalty was to your state, particularly in the South.
Is tearing down that statue going to remove Jim Crow, which Lee had nothing to do with? It's futile and stupid. Besides which, Lee had a point about his appeal to Christianity rather than war. Sure, the war ended slavery de jure, but de facto it remained for at least 100 years more. Lee's solution may well have bent that curve without 700k people dying. He understood that the _white_ southerners had to be brought along for the ride to get rid of slavery for good.
Anyway, instead of slagging the guy without knowledge, you should find out more about him. He's not universally admirable but there was more to him than some slavery monster.
Rather than contest anything above, I suggest people simply do the reading. Grasp what slavery meant, what Robert E. Lee thought of it and did about it, what heroizing the Confederacy means today. It's all out there are not hard to find.
So, ignore the facts, read craptastic propaganda, either left wing non-relativist bullshit applying modern values to people from the 1860s or patriotic rah-rah crap claiming the Union was for the end of slavery. Got it.
Careful here---this info emanates from The National Park Service, well-known purveyors of critical race theory.
"....The Civil War began as a purely military effort with limited political objectives. The North was fighting for reunification, and the South for independence. But as the war progressed, the Civil War gradually turned into a social, economic and political revolution with unforeseen consequences.
"....The Union war effort expanded to include not only reunification, but also the abolition of slavery. To achieve emancipation, the Union had to invade the South, defeat the Confederate armies, and occupy the Southern territory..."
https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/changing-war.htm
What's this "modern values" shit? Best and proper to ignore your "craptastic" propaganda" and nonsensical reasoning. Modern values. Please. I know some people I'd like to clap in leg irons and set'em to work clearing my back forty. That sufficiently bereft of "modern values" for you?
Yeah, that made sense.
Reading history is too difficult. And not nearly as much fun as making it up on the fly, for purposes....?
Lee’s “code of honor” is the same upper class dick waving that started the Crimean War, and every other Euro war though WWI.
When war was declared Lee was in Texas with the U.S.Army. His service prior to that included work in the engineering corps, and supt at West Point. O don't get me started on Crimea. Right you are.
Which there should have been more of, might have spared us the cataclysm of WWI that brought us Hitler.
Hitler should have studied harder in art school---might have saved us 100 million deaths.
More upper class douchery?!?!
That said, yes. More warfare. It was the 44 year gap between 1870 and 1914 without war that made WWI so terrible. A whole generation had no idea what war meant (mass death until one side is exhausted) at a time when the technology of same was improving to the point of making offensive warfare impossible without more technological improvements (armor, etc).
Meanwhile the ruling class still believed in Napoleonic maneuver warfare and decisive battles to settle wars in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
So yes, more warfare.
I would argue that every generation going back to the end of the ice age had a very good "idea what war meant." They were familiar with the history, even if most did not experience combat. In any event, that's a rather peculiar assertion to make---that war is initiated by a lack of war over a very specific time period. Lacks heft. Not to mention historical grounding.
"....at a time when the technology of same was improving to the point of making offensive warfare impossible without more technological improvements
"And that the carnage of the war can be attributed to the point of making offensive warfare impossible without more technological improvements (armor, etc)."
It sounds as if you're saying here that the rapid technological improvements in waging war up to that point stands as the primary factor in producing the prolonged mass slaughter. This seems self-evident.
First off, the "ruling class" had nothing to do with the strategies and logistics deployed in conducting the war, it was the high command and officer corps who formulated and carried out the strategies and logistics of the campaigns. Certainly the "ruling class" had thoughts on how the war and its execution would affect imperial designs and the war's political impact on civilians.
"Meanwhile the ruling class still believed in Napoleonic maneuver warfare and decisive battles to settle wars in spite of all the evidence to the contrary."
One would be hard-pressed to produce examples of two more opposite methods of warfare than "Napoleonic maneuver" and trench warfare.
For Napoleon "the ideal Napoleonic battle was to manipulate the enemy into an unfavourable position through manoeuvre and deception, force him to commit his main forces and reserve to the main battle and then undertake an enveloping attack with uncommitted or reserve troops on the flank or rear."
Additionally, it's estimated that the Grand Armee traveled more than 3,000 miles total in its 1812 invasion of Russia, including its ill-fated retreat. Whereas the first world war was fought with stationary soldiers occupying hundreds of miles of ribbon-like trenches often separated by as little as a 100-yards. No "Napoleonic maneuvering" here. Difficult to believe that the "ruling class" or anyone else involved in the war believed in this strategy for more than a few weeks.
A more compelling argument can be made that it was the lack of any sort of stated strategic goal by either side that led to the prolonged stalemate, punctuated by almost medieval logistics and countless failed strategies by the high command, combined with lethal modern weaponry, that produced the extended butchery from the battlefield "stalemate." French pride and stubbornness over lost and enemy occupied territory was a factor also.
You also seem to be suggesting that if a war like this had been fought earlier, that it would have reduced the carnage enacted in World War I. What evidence suggests that a war fought earlier would have been less gruesome, or for that matter would have sufficiently prepared the soldiers for the coming conflict? Almost every great conflict between nation-states introduces new technology and requires officers and soldiers to adapt to it on the fly. World War I was no different.
I would also argue that the emergence and extension of incipient imperial ambitions and consolidation among all the major European powers between 1870-1914 was ultimately the fulcrum that led to the outbreak of World War I. But it wasn't the only spark:
*European Expansionism (Imperialism/colonialism
*Serbian Nationalism
*Conflicts over Competing Alliances
*The Blank Check Assurance: Conspired Plans of
Germany and Austria-Hungary
*Germany Millenarianism – Spirit of 1914
*Rapid Economic Expansion
*Pre-war tensions from growing British/German naval ambitions
https://online.norwich.edu/academic-programs/resources/six-causes-of-world-war-i
https://alphahistory.com/worldwar1/imperialism/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_Wars
My reading of history strongly suggests that the combat that took place between 1914-1918 involving more than 100 nations is what made WW1 so terrible.
Must have missed something. More dissembling, incoherent nonsense.
Hitler wasn't upper class.
That’s why I qualified my statement as through WWI. Hitler was definitely not a product of the values of the 19th century aristocracy.
"Anyway, instead of slagging the guy without knowledge, you should find out more about him..." Talking to yourself in the shower?
Lee: "The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things...."
Get readin.'
"His public pronouncements were sometimes at odds with his private actions. Despite the fact that Lee told the Joint Committee on Reconstruction that everyone wished the former slaves well, for example, the records of the Freedman’s Bureau show that students under Lee’s direction at Washington College were heavily involved in their harassment."
"After the war, Lee continued to hold attitudes about class and race that were chained to the old order. A few weeks after Appomattox he expounded to a newspaperman on the need to “dispose” of the freedmen. He not only advocated the deportation of African Americans, he backed a plan to replace them with destitute whites from Ireland, who would form a new servant class. He also signed a petition that proposed a political system precluding all blacks, and many poor whites, from voting."
https://www.historynet.com/robert-e-lee-slavery.htm