Monuments to False History: Saturday Political Soap Box 242

Nathan Bedford Forrest, in all his glory, in a statue on private property in Nashville.  It gives you hope that one day, even the most unartistic child can design and execute a statue.

Monuments are not history.

If you want history, crack open a book.  And not just one book, but several.  RESEARCH.  Understand the biases and intent of the authors you read.

Monuments are symbols.  They are not really designed to teach history.  They are designed to send a message.

Civil War monuments, in overwhelming numbers, were not put up after the Civil War.  They were put up during the resegregation of the Jim Crow era.  They were put by during the height of the clan in the 1920s.  They were put up in the 50s when the civil rights movement was trying to push back against bigotry.  Gee.  I wonder what symbolic message they were trying to communicate?  Any guesses? Anyone? 

The Daughters of the Confederacy organized a significant surge of these monuments and other related memorabilia to REWRITE history.  They wanted to soften the Confederacy's image and to diminish what the Civil War was really about - the right to enslave parts of the human race based on the color of their skin.

So, it is important to note that many of the confederate monuments are not meant as a preservation of history; they are intended as a deliberate distortion of history,

I'm not thrilled with the wholesale destruction of monuments.  Yet I know, without fuss or muss, monuments come down over time.  We forget the past, like it or not.  Nobody's foaming at the mouth over whether we lose a World War One monument or not.  Every year, some old cemetery goes to seed, those buried there no longer visited or cared for.  Every year, despite the Historic Preservation Act, old homes and buildings are lost.  There's a whole TV show about it - Mysteries of the Abandoned.

Time marches on.  Historians research and find out truths about past eras that may seem unpleasant to the fables and myths we were told when we were growing up.  It's difficult sometimes - I don't like hearing about how George Washington had slaves and his manipulating where they stayed so they didn't pass enough time in a free state to be considered free themselves. *  It may not be easy for Southern Heritage folks to hear the Nathan Bedford Forrest was a founder of the Ku Klux Klan, or that a cursory review of documents of southern states declaring themselves as seceded make it crystal clear that it was ABOUT SLAVERY.

I am currently reading The Impeachers by Brenda Winapple about the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, and also listening to the podcast 1865.  I admit, even as a history buff, I had sided with the idea that the Andrew Johnson impeachment was somewhat unjustified, and that the Radical Republicans were guilty of overreach and over-punishing the South.  Eh, turns out, not so much.  Andrew Johnson was a raging bigot who would stop at nothing to deny black suffrage.  A man who turned his back on riots and slaughter of blacks, and concentrated on restoring the South to the Confederacy elements.  The Radical Republicans were the heroes (imperfect heroes, yes, but the only perfect hero sacrificed himself for us over two thousand years ago - everyone else falls short of that).  And the statues of them are few and far between.

We need to let local communities decide what statues they display or not.  With political and economic power in those who are unhappy preserving this false view of history, things will come down.  School names will change, as voted by local school boards and city councils.  Flags will change, as it finally is in Mississippi.  Sports team will look at the effect on their marketing and bottom line and finally change offensive names.

Mount Rushmore and the land it is on need to be given back to the native Americans that are its rightful owners.  Let them do with it what they will.**

Stone Mountain is a bigger problem, as although it is more offensive, it is held in private hands.    If there is any way to do it, ownership needs to diversify. If Stone Mountain is to survive, it must not be a tribute to the Confederacy, but a historical museum that also chronicles things the horrible things that it did, and be direct and truthful about what the Confederacy and what it was trying to defend (spoiler alert - it ain't states rights, unless you mean the right to enslave people).

There is no need to keep up these symbols of hate and slavery. 

Let's let historical scholarship continue to get at the facts and fundamental truths of eras past, and not be afraid of what we discover.

As for our monuments, let them evolve and change and ve replaced (as monuments have done for all time), and symbolize a better hope and promise of our republic, and to the fair and open democracy that it sometimes strives to be.


*As chronicled in the book Never Caught: The Washingtons' Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar.


**Although some question the Presidents on Mt. Rushmore, and they certainly had their flaws (some of them profound flaws), I do not question the symbolic intent of Mt. Rushmore.  I do question where it has been placed, and who should own it.