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posted by on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the to-be-replaced-by-piles-of-beignets dept.

A 2015 New Orleans Times-Picayune article tells how New Orléans' Vieux Carré Commission recommended that four monuments be removed. Three of them honour

[...] Confederate generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy [...]

The other monument

[...] was erected in 1891 to honor the 16 members of the White League who died during an insurrection against the integrated Reconstructionist government in Louisiana, which was based in New Orleans at the time.

Various news outlets are reporting that the latter monument, an obelisk, has been dismantled at the behest of the city government, and that the others are also set to be dismantled.

coverage:


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:40PM (28 children)

    by edIII (791) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:40PM (#503982)

    Those monuments in Europe are there to remind us of the evils that can beset us when we are not vigilante. They are there to remind us to NOT elect the Trump's of the world to power. When people look upon them, the big take away is how many victims there were of simple hatred. There were no justifications for it, no real benefits of doing so, just the satisfaction that psychopaths get when they see their victims squirm in agony.

    Concentration camps celebrate the survivors, mourn the victims, and vilify the evil men and women that created them.

    These statues on the other hand simply honor men that held atrocious values and do not serve as a warning about racism, slavery, and its associated evils. They serve to celebrate those men, to celebrate those ideals held while besieged by detractors, and to fervently dream of the South Rising again.

    Yeah. They can melt those fuckers down and use them for scrap metal. Good riddance, and a lot of people in that state no longer have to watch men that are deservedly vilified be celebrated in a form of indirect racism and bigotry.

    Nice try though. It was a really decent attempt to point out hypocrisy.

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  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:45PM (4 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:45PM (#503991) Homepage

    If there is anything my post pointed out, it wasn't necessarily hypocrisy but the mental gymnastics of those selectively justifying the further existence of hate symbols. Nice try, though, you did pretty well.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:56PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:56PM (#503997)

      You're both a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Besides, a better question to ask if using Nazi Germany as an analogy, how much actual Nazi paraphernalia is still up and in nice little garden like display alcoves on public streets? None. The camps and such are not in the public view and thus one must make the conscious decision to visit them. We still have battle grounds that are monuments and here too.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:16PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:16PM (#504039)

      Nice try, though, you did pretty well.

      Except got not knowing the difference between vigilant and vigilante, which makes his first sentence pretty damn funny.

      • (Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:34PM

        by edIII (791) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:34PM (#504051)

        I fucking know the difference! My spell checker and shaky fingers apparently do not.......

        Besides, it's not like we can edit posts or anything if you find it after you hit submit. Editing is a big thing around here :)

        --
        Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:39PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:39PM (#504055)

        Ah, typo-flames. The most erudite of literary criticisms.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by mayo2y on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:59PM (20 children)

    by mayo2y (6520) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:59PM (#503998)

    Robert E Lee doesn't belong on a list of evil men. He was chosen by Lincoln to lead the Union armies but was conflicted about fighting against his home state. You have a case against Jefferson Davis, but you're over-playing your hand by including Lee.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:30PM (12 children)

      by edIII (791) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:30PM (#504046)

      Yet, he still had a choice. Fight for slavery and the right to own people, of fight to keep the Union intact. He fought for the Confederacy. He choose poorly. He lost.

      I'm not seeing anything about Lee worth celebrating at all. That states right argument that gets trotted out is just a way to detract from the real argument, and that was whether or not they could own people and enjoy the associated low costs of labor. I'm sure it makes them feel a little bit better than outright fighting for slavery, but not many people are fooled into believing that an issue of states rights is why the Civil War started.

      --
      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @12:29AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @12:29AM (#504080)

        "People don’t ask that question, but why was there a Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?"

        • (Score: 1) by mayo2y on Thursday May 04 2017, @08:47PM

          by mayo2y (6520) on Thursday May 04 2017, @08:47PM (#504520)

          That, believe it or not, has been the topic of many a lecture, article and book. There were lots of places where cooler heads (or a different approach) could have averted war.

          Example: Andrew Jackson and the Nullification Issue in the 1830s. The South in 1860 did not believe the North had the backbone to win a war against them. They thought that the North would quickly tire of fighting and then they (the North) would be neighbors (similar to Canada is today).

          If they believed that the North was going to consider this an existential battle and would be willing to lose hundreds of thousands of men they may very well have not initiated the war,

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:48AM (4 children)

        by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:48AM (#504104) Journal

        Yeah, this is an oversimplification of history. The secession of Virginia is not like the deep South. It's often forgotten today, but there were two waves of secessions. The first began with South Carolina soon after Lincoln's election. And there were a bunch of states that followed. But then Virginia voted AGAINST secession. Repeatedly. Other border states followed Virginia's lead and chose to stay with the Union. A few months went by before the other states seceded.

        Why did Virginia secede? Only after Lincoln decided to invade the South, and because he was forcing the border states to produce soldiers (the so-called "75,000 volunteers") to fight those states. Another thing that's often forgotten today is that the legality of secession was not definitely resolved until AFTER the Civil War. There were folks on both sides (North and South) that had argued that secession was legal before the war, and there were plenty in the North who were happy to just let the Southern states go.

        So, actually, there is more of an argument over "states rights" for the secession of the border states in the second wave of secessions. If you look into their articles of secession, Virginia mentions slavery only once, in a statement that the North was "perverting" its powers to "oppress" the South. Arkansas specifically mentioned the demand for marshalled troops to invade its neighboring states as a primary cause for secession.

        These states only made their choice to secede after the North had clearly decided on aggressive war. And before the Civil War, loyalty to one's state really was a big thing -- the federal government was much smaller and less significant than today. Robert Lee knew what the war would mean for his home state -- even if they stayed in the Union, Virginia as a border state would end up as a major battleground. No matter which side he chose, Lincoln had already made a choice where the citizens of Virginia were going to lose terribly.

        So he chose loyalty to his home state. I'm not saying that deserves a statute, though many people at the time thought it did. Heck, I'll stop talking here and hand the argument over the Charles Adams, grandson of John Quincy, and great-grandson of John Adams, a man who fought for the Union in the Civil War, who actually led regiments of black troops in the Civil War, and whose interest in history afterward was so strong that he became the president of the American Historical Association. And you know what topic he chose to speak on during his tenure as AHA president? He gave an oration on why Robert E. Lee deserved a statue in Washington, D.C. [archive.org].

        Again, I'm not necessarily saying Lee deserves a statue or that we should keep up the ones existing today. But Adams explains very thoroughly why he's a different case from the Deep South very pro-slavery secessionists.

        • (Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:53AM (2 children)

          by edIII (791) on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:53AM (#504186)

          I did not know that. Thank you for the link. It was rather long, but in the end I found his speech. It was compelling.

          I'm willing to agree he was fucked from the start, and didn't have any good choices. He is made out to be the liberal Southerner which I found interesting.

          The link included images of the actual pages from 1902 which was pretty neat. Thank you.

          --
          Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
          • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:11PM (1 child)

            by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:11PM (#504304) Journal

            You're welcome. I came upon that speech a couple years ago when these debates started happening over confederate monuments. I think it's a fascinating first-hand account.

            The unfortunate thing, of course, is that stuff like Charles Adams' arguments were then taken too far by Southern apologists in the next generations, leading to the myth of the "Lost Cause" and the denial that slavery played a primary role in the causes of the Civil War (which of course it did).

            We've seen the pendulum swing back and forth. In the late 1800s, the North perceived themselves as "victors" and the other side as losers, and the few monuments erected then reflect that rhetoric, often celebrating. By around 1900, there was a lot more conciliatory rhetoric among veterans particularly, leading to joint memorials and meetings of veterans from both sides. But then the sons of the veterans came along and in the South wanted to remember their fathers as heroes -- so you get the inaccurate "Lost Cause" stuff: that's when a LOT of monuments went up around the 1920s and early 1930s. The pendulum had swung so far by 1958 that Congress voted to recognize Southern Civil War veterans officially as veterans under federal law, giving them and their survivors pension benefits. That was too late for any actual veterans, but many wives and children received federal veterans benefits (and apparently even last year, there's still at least one child [usnews.com] of a Southern Civil War veteran receiving benefits).

            But with the Civil Rights Movement, the pendulum started to swing back -- and rightly so. And now we're tearing down the statues.

            What I like about Adams' account is that it tries to explain the nuances and personal struggles many people undoubtedly had about the coming war. To me, that's a lot more interesting than the extremist positions people tend to have: either you brand the South summarily as evil pro-slavery traitors or you're a Southern apologist who denies that slavery was even a major factor in the war. Both sides in that discussion are severely flawed. History is more complex.

            • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:16PM

              by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:16PM (#504305) Journal

              Oops -- sorry about that link. I misunderstood that the veteran in question there actually served in the Confederate army but then joined the Union army. Anyhow, I guess there aren't any more children of confederate veterans still receiving federal benefits, though there still were a few years back.

        • (Score: 2) by boxfetish on Thursday May 04 2017, @08:09AM

          by boxfetish (4831) on Thursday May 04 2017, @08:09AM (#504237)

          "...and there were plenty in the North who were happy to just let the Southern states go."

          Count me among those. In fact, I'd be happy to even let them do it today, as long as these "taker" states in the South first paid back ever dollar they have taken from the Federal government, over and above what they paid in.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @02:29AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @02:29AM (#504121)

        "Yet, he still had a choice. Fight for slavery and the right to own people, of fight to keep the Union intact."

        Not really. He fought for his soil, which at the time, was his home state of Virginia.

        As did most of the Civil War volunteers, North and South.

        It wasn't a simple, Union was anti-slavery, Confederacy was pro. Witness the buried history of the Manhattan draft riots. New Yorkers fucking rioted because they did NOT want to be drafted to free blacks. There was an attempt by Manhattan city government to secede from the US over this, by "declaring the city's independence from Albany and from Washington." Thousands were injured, dozens lynched, and a fucking black orphanage burned to the ground (among other abolitionist targets) in the protest.

        This kind of thing is fascinating to get a glimpse into the minds of civilians at the time. It's not really talked about. Lincoln used the same troops that had just won the Gettysburg battle to put down the riot. That too, is rarely discussed.

        Secession was more than just fighting over slavery. It was considered part of the deal with joining the Union in the first place, and the ultimate solution when the terms of that agreement were unilaterally infringed/broken. That concept is no longer discussed, but it was considered a right of the States to secede in those days. Georgia actually seceded again from the Confederacy during Sherman's march to the sea, because the Confederate government had proven powerless to defend that State.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:45AM

          by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:45AM (#504205)

          Secession was more than just fighting over slavery. It was considered part of the deal with joining the Union in the first place, and the ultimate solution when the terms of that agreement were unilaterally infringed/broken.

          The biggest battle seemed to be over the expansion of slavery. Had the South been willing to accept no further expansion of slavery, the war might never have happened. Of course, they feared that increasing the non-slave states would create a situation where the slave states would be increasingly marginalized in the Federal government, which was probably true, and slavery would eventually be outlawed anyway. It was a declining institution, slaves were increasingly expensive and fewer and fewer people could afford to own them, we of course will never know if it would have died out on its own as it had almost everywhere else in the civilized world before being forced out.

          That concept is no longer discussed, but it was considered a right of the States to secede in those days. Georgia actually seceded again from the Confederacy during Sherman's march to the sea, because the Confederate government had proven powerless to defend that State.

          The Confederacy showed the major flaw with the states rights trumping the central government when it came to making major regional decisions. There were several times, particularly in the western battles, when a proper military response might have stalled or even stopped the Union forces. Yet state governors refused to release forces to the Confederate government for battles, instead keeping them to defend their own states. The end result of course was that battles were continually lost, then the states by themselves were too weak to stop the Union advances.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @08:31AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @08:31AM (#504240)

          He fought for his soil, which at the time, was his home state of Virginia.

          What does that even mean? It wasn't like northerners were trying to confiscate his land.
          He didn't have to fight at all.

          Witness the buried history of the Manhattan draft riots. New Yorkers fucking rioted because they did NOT want to be drafted to free blacks.

          That's not really a surprise. Nobody wants to be drafted. And northern whites were just barely less racist than southern whites. So of course a whole bunch of them would be anti-war. Just like a whole bunch of americans were against getting involved in WWII.

      • (Score: 2) by dry on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:58AM (1 child)

        by dry (223) on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:58AM (#504165) Journal

        How about the fact that he freed his slaves before General Grant? I guess its OK to honour a slave holder as long as he was a northerner and damn someone who freed his slaves as he was an evil southerner.

        • (Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:10AM

          by edIII (791) on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:10AM (#504193)

          You have a point. Which along with the other poster info makes me agree that had shit for choices and chose the most honorable thing he could do. I'll walk that back a bit, and say with him that it is not so simple at least.

          --
          Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:37PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:37PM (#504054)

      No. That makes him worse.
      If he did not believe in the cause and yet still choose to serve as a general in the confederacy it means he actively enabled those who fought for slavery while knowing better himself.
      He had the option of sitting it out. Instead he chose to be on the side he knew was wrong.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @12:19AM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @12:19AM (#504074)

      The responses to this post suffer from some serious PRESENTISM.
      One of the things the Civil War decided was that slavery was to be considered universally wrong and illegal.
      That was not the case before the war. Consider that slavery had been part of America since the very beginning. Even Northern states had it! The "Father of our Country" (George Washington) was a slaveowner with a plantation in Virginia! Same with our second President, the admired Thomas Jefferson. So it is quite possible to see how someone raised in that part of the country could see it as something that had always been with us and would probably continue for a long time into the future--the Southern economy just prior to the Civil War was based on it. What else would they do? So please keep in mind that it is too much to ask people to think OUTSIDE of their time and place. The individuals who do that are rare indeed. Your thinking is just as much a product of your time and place as theirs was of their own.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:57AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:57AM (#504106)

        What, exactly is your point?

        Because it sounds like you are saying that abolitionists weren't a major movement in the US before the civil war.
        Which is pure applesauce.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @08:35AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @08:35AM (#504242)

          offtopic? wtf?

          OP says, "could see it as something that had always been with us and would probably continue for a long time into the future" when in fact the abolitionists had been working hard to make sure people saw it a different way.

          Its also really disingenuous to refer to virginia as a "northern state" when they joined the confederacy.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @06:41AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @06:41AM (#504226)

        "Not the case" except in every other civilized country at the time. Some American's are so willfully ignorant - usually the same ones regardless of the issue.

    • (Score: 1) by UncleSlacky on Thursday May 04 2017, @07:48AM

      by UncleSlacky (2859) on Thursday May 04 2017, @07:48AM (#504235)

      Whatever you think of Lee, there is really is no logic to him having a statue in New Orleans, a place he had no connection with whatsoever.

  • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @02:16AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @02:16AM (#504115)

    What the statues represent is in the eye of the beholder. I see no reason to waste time and money removing these statues and creating unnecessary strife merely because some people are offended by them or feel that they "honor" a wrong cause.

    • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:11AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:11AM (#504137)

      You smell like mayo and bologna.