Statues and History

Trump has attacked removal of “beautiful” monuments to Confederate icons like Stonewall Jackson, Jeff Davis, and Robert E. Lee. Will Washington and Jefferson be next, he said; our culture and history are being “ripped apart.”

He is, of course, such a deep student of culture and history.

Washington and Jefferson did own slaves. Washington freed them at his death; Jefferson agonized in writing about the moral problem. But we honor them not for their slaveholding history, but in spite of it, because their larger meaning to us dwarfs that one facet. Washington won our independence, then led the new nation so as to consolidate our democracy. Jefferson gave voice to its great principles.
It’s an outrage to compare them with the likes of Davis and Lee. American heroes they were not — traitors in fact, who made war upon the United States.* They might well have been hanged at war’s end, but for our immense magnanimity, “to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

And if Trump wants to talk history, here’s some more of it:

Ever since the Civil War, Southerners have tried to whitewash it as battling for “states’ rights.” Rights to do what? To enslave kidnapped people; torture them and steal their labor with whips; to rape them (a bigger aspect of slavery than is commonly realized). That’s what the war was about.

Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens candidly said so at the outset, proclaiming the true purpose to be continuing enslavement of people deemed racially inferior.

Should we keep statues honoring warriors for that evil cause? And make no mistake why those statues were erected. Most went up long after the war — indeed, they were really monuments to a new war — against integration and racial equality. For all their blather about “states’ rights” and “history” most who romanticize the Confederacy and venerate its monuments really have (n-word)s on their minds. The “culture” in question is the culture of white supremacy. Those monuments stand to tell African-Americans, “We honor those who fought to enslave you, and would love to do it again. Be intimidated! Whites rule!”

Trump too, with his tweets about “history and culture” is likewise sending a message. A message to those racist Confederacy lovers, that he’s with them.

America is better than that. Better than its president. Better than those statues.

* Lee was in some ways a noble figure. A true military hero, when the war began, he was actually offered command of both armies. Lee agonized between loyalty to state versus nation. I think he chose wrongly.

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