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In the June 1969 issue of Civil War History — Volume 5, Number 2, pages 116-132 — a renowned Southern historian attacked the legacy of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
"No single war figure stands in greater need of reevaluation than Lee," wrote Thomas L. Connelly, the late University of South Carolina professor. "One ponders whether the South may not have fared better had it possessed no Robert E. Lee."
Connelly's essay was among the first academic musket shots fired on Lee's standing as an outmatched but not outwitted military genius presiding over a Lost Cause — a reputation celebrated in fawning biographies and monuments like the one removed Friday in New Orleans.
Was General Lee overrated? Get your armchair historian on...
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The Truth About Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee: He Wasn’t Very Good at His Job
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If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four tellers?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday June 12 2017, @05:40AM
That's not a bad idea at all. Sort of reminds me of the Confederate memorial on Martha's Vineyard.
"WHAT?!" you say, "Another confederate memorial in Massachusetts? I thought Charlie Baker wanted to tear down the "only one" [bostonmagazine.com]."
Nope. There's a much more interesting confederate memorial on Martha's Vineyard. Even weirder -- it was dedicated by Union veterans in memory of their Confederate brethren. Photo here. [typepad.com]
The history of the thing is explained here [mvmagazine.com]. Basically, a Confederate veteran moved to Martha's Vineyard after the war and at some point paid to erect a monument in honor of Union soldiers. Some years later, the Union veterans returned the favor. There are other such joint monuments in the U.S. (example [wikipedia.org]), a relic of the rather widespread reconciliation events that occurred mostly in the early days of the 1900s when Unionist troops were too old to dance victory jigs anymore and both sides were eager to heal wounds -- hence the Martha's Vineyard monument's title "The Chasm Is Closed."
However, we no longer have the Ken Burns effect to erect public monuments to reconciliation through PBS documentaries... instead, division is the political order of the day. The statues are now seen as symbols of division and thus are being removed.