The Dustbin of History
Yesterday (21 December 2020) the statue of Robert E. Lee was removed from Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. For those who are unfamiliar with this institution each American state can contribute two marble or bronze statues depicting now-dead former residents (no conceptual entities like "Liberty" or "Progress" allowed) for display in the U.S. Capitol. The choice is at the sole discretion of each state and, until yesterday, Virginia used one of its two slots for Robert E. Lee, who in any accurate American history would be regarded as the country's second-most infamous traitor.
A commission studying the matter recommended replacing Lee with a statue of Barbara Johns, though the final decision rests with the Virginia state legislature. Johns led a walk-out protesting the conditions at her segregated high school. The lawsuit following that action was later folded in to Brown v. Board of Education. She seems like a much worthier Virginian to honor than traitor in defense of slavery Robert E. Lee. Lee's effigy will henceforward be displayed at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture
National Public Radio covered this under the anodyne headline Virginia Removes Its Robert E. Lee Statue From U.S. Capitol. Feeling a somewhat lesser commitment to decorum Rolling Stone covered the event as Monument Glorifying Civil War Traitor Removed From U.S. Capitol.
Some will argue that is covering up or revising history. I say that no one learns history from public monuments. They exist to valorize their subjects and demonstrate what the Powers That Be who installed them consider to be of value. I don't see much value in the kind of maudlin Lost Cause mythologizing most monuments to the Confederacy seem to promote, but for those with a more pro-treason-in-defense-of-slavery position can take comfort that ten statues in Statuary Hall (i.e. 10% of all statues present) will still commemorate men who took up arms against the government commemorating them.
Thoughts?
A commission studying the matter recommended replacing Lee with a statue of Barbara Johns, though the final decision rests with the Virginia state legislature. Johns led a walk-out protesting the conditions at her segregated high school. The lawsuit following that action was later folded in to Brown v. Board of Education. She seems like a much worthier Virginian to honor than traitor in defense of slavery Robert E. Lee. Lee's effigy will henceforward be displayed at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture
National Public Radio covered this under the anodyne headline Virginia Removes Its Robert E. Lee Statue From U.S. Capitol. Feeling a somewhat lesser commitment to decorum Rolling Stone covered the event as Monument Glorifying Civil War Traitor Removed From U.S. Capitol.
Some will argue that is covering up or revising history. I say that no one learns history from public monuments. They exist to valorize their subjects and demonstrate what the Powers That Be who installed them consider to be of value. I don't see much value in the kind of maudlin Lost Cause mythologizing most monuments to the Confederacy seem to promote, but for those with a more pro-treason-in-defense-of-slavery position can take comfort that ten statues in Statuary Hall (i.e. 10% of all statues present) will still commemorate men who took up arms against the government commemorating them.
Thoughts?
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Comments
I can say with certainty that I have learned history from public monuments that were put up to "valorize their subjects and demonstrate what the Powers That Be who installed them consider to be of value".
But yes. It would be disingenuous to claim that teaching history was the sole, or even the main, purpose of putting up the monuments. Clearly, the people who erected them wanted us to think the individuals commemorated were heroes.
I remember my visit to Kircudbright in Scotland. In a restaurant I saw a memorial to John Paul Jones, a sea captain in the American Revolution. At one point, he sailed into his home port in Scotland and raided it, and (if I recall correctly) burned some ships, the first invasion of Britain since the Normans. You might think the British--all British--would view him as a traitor, but the Scots in that vicinity were proud of him. Maybe in another fifty years he will be regarded as a traitor again.
Maybe the opinion of Lee will change as well.
The only way I could see that happening would be if the USA becomes absolutely hated on the world stage, and people latch onto anyone who ever fought to get rid of it as a hero.
But even then, Lee would epitomize what most people dislike about the USA, so it probably wouldn't work.
I hope not. Opinions of Lee haven't changed in light of new information. The known facts are pretty much the same as when that statue was installed in 1909. What's changed is people's acceptance of white supremacy and the Confederacy. I'd hate to see those things becoming popular again.
John Paul Stevens conducted more of a raid than an invasion. (Invasion implies intent to occupy.) I suspect that there are similar forces at work here. The known facts unchanged while people's feelings about those facts have. For example, American Independence seems to have worked out reasonably well for the British in the long run, allowing Stevens to be viewed as "local boy makes good" rather than "local boy traitorously attacks home town".
Also if that counts then you have Stephen of Blois, The Angevin invasion, Philip of Flanders, Louis of France, Isabella&Mortimer, Henry Bolingbrock, Warwick?, Edward IV, Henry VII ...
The only statue of Bonnie Prince Charlie I know about is actually in Derby, England.
The Glenfinnan memorial to the Jacobite rising is topped by “a highlander”, not a representation of BPC.
The monument at Arivruach has no statue at all.
Where are the BPC statues in Scotland?
I didn't know that until recently either.
Anyway, when is an invasion not an invasion? Isabella, Queen of Edward II, brought an army over from France and successfully deposed her husband in favour of their son. Henry Bolingbroke who had been in exile abroad returned to England and deposed Richard II. Henry Tudor brought an army of French mercenaries supplied by the King of France and deposed Richard III. William III of Orange brought an army over from the Netherlands and deposed James II / VII. None of the above are officially successful invasions.
If memory serves me right, there is a statue of George Washington in Trafalgar Square.
First @Crœsos who would you class as the first and third most infamous traitors in your country's history?
Second the US Civil War was 160 years ago. How far is it now true - rather than coat-trailing - to describe the key figures in that war as traitors, rather than recognising that they were fighting for a different version of your country from yours? I accept, it's a version that because it was driven by a desire to retain slaves. you, and I, would regard it as a reprehensible version but does that make them traitors? And does it help or hinder to call them traitors, rather than, say, rebels?
Third, was he actually tried, prosecuted and executed as a traitor after the war finished? If not, how right is it to call him one?
Fourth, was his statue there as an admired general, or as a symbol of something else?
Fifth and finally, there is a statue of Oliver Cromwell outside Parliament in London.
Lee didn't start the civil war. He was a soldier defending his country.
Don't have yourself on
I'm surprised his erstwhile career in piracy didn't come up in the confirmation hearings!
#1 is Benedict Arnold, whose name is still synonymous with treason among Americans. I haven't really given thought to who would be #3. Possibly Nathan Bedford Forrest on the grounds that his treason overlaps Lee's and then continues beyond it with his founding of the Ku Klux Klan, attempting to complete his treason through terrorism when it became clear it was lost on the battlefield.
I'd say that the traitors/rebels distinction is more of a both/and rather than an either/or in this case. The U.S. Constitution has a very specific definition of treason. Art. III, § 3, cl. 1 states, in part:
It's a little-invoked clause of the Constitution, in part because it's so specific, but if the Confederacy doesn't count as treason against the United States then nothing is treason against the United States. As for whether it helps or hinders, I guess it depends on what you're trying to help or hinder. It is, however, accurate.
Lee was never tried nor convicted, but I think there's enough evidence in the public domain to conclude he's guilty of treason as defined by the U.S. Constitution. A lot of things never go to trial or result in a conviction. For example, no one was ever convicted of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and yet most people are willing to agree that he was, in fact, assassinated. A significant number of people will even ascribe this assassination to specific individuals (usually, though not always, Lee Harvey Oswald) despite the lack of court cases on the matter.
Lee's main noteworthy accomplishment was as a military officer, a talent which he put to use in slaughtering a large number of his fellow Americans. As for the motives of those who chose Lee to represent Virginia, I'll just note that 1909 was pretty much the dead center of the years that the Daughters of the Confederacy were heavy-handedly installing a bunch of Confederate monuments all across the United States in promotion of their moonlight and magnolias version of Lost Cause mythology.
Lee did not start the Civil War, but no one claims that he did. He wasn't defending his country, he was attacking it and violating the oath he swore of loyalty to the United States and its commander in chief.
You betcha it was "something else": the whole culture of slavery, racism, the failure to pursue reconstruction, separate but equal (God help us!), segregation, black lives that don't matter, the whole rancid stench associated with the Trump presidency and the mis-conduct of his re-election campaign, and an interpretation of US history that produced Birth of a Nation. He may have been a great general, "but if the cause be not just...................." Maybe Lee wasn't a traitor, he was something much worse than that!
Sounds like George Washington and his colleagues if I stop the quotation where I did.
Washington et al. receive exemption under the Harrington Rule.
NEWTON: Do you think George Washington had the right to take up arms against the British?
BUCKLEY: Oh certainly, and I'm very glad he did. But, if the British had captured him, they would have been well within their rights to hang him.
End quote. I don't think there's any contradiction in what Buckley said. Because his cause eventually won, Americans are right to consider GW a traitor. And the British, then and now, are right to regard him as a traitor. (Though hopefully they've found other things to worry about since then.)
There's a statue of Flora McDonald in Inverness, plus a couple of other memorials to her.
You’re only a traitor if you lose? Seems a poor reason for deciding who can and can’t be remembered.
And, yes, Lee Harvey Oswald was never tried yet alone convicted of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. That was because meanwhile he'd been murdered.
This may surprise you @Crœsos but I'd never heard of either Benedict Arnold or Nathan Bedford Forrest before. I had to look them up.
Underlying this, though, is a question to which I don't think you are giving enough attention. This is that all four of the people mentioned, the three you've named and Washington whom @Gee D has named, lived in conditions where after their lights, if not yours, their loyalty to what they'd thought of as their country was put under great pressure. They faced an internal split. Each responded to it in different ways, as also did those who eventually left for Canada.
From where I am, after your lights, Washington was definitely a traitor. He owed his loyalty to George III. He broke it, as did all the other US national heroes of that era. They broke it over what looks like a trivial issue, whether they should have to pay taxes for the cost of their own government. That, though, is seen now as merely a symptom of deeper issues.
Benedict Arnold looks more suspect. He changed sides twice, and money seems to have played a part in the second one. That introduces an element of duplicity and treachery which doesn't seem to be present for the other three.
Even sticking with Art. III, § 3, cl. 1, aren't there plenty of more recent people one could criticise, Ammon Bundy, the Rosenbergs, Edward Snowden to name three? And, you and I both condemn Lee Harvey Oswald. Would you feel the same towards someone who had taken a potshot at Donald Trump?
What I'm trying to get to is that retaining or removing a statue of a Confederate general has become a symbol for a whole lot of other things, as @Nick Tamen and @Kwesi have expressed in their comments. The personality of Robert E Lee has become as good as insignificant, irrelevant, weighed against them. He lived 150+ years ago. The 'whole lot of other things' are current. Many of them trace back to them, but there has been plenty of iniquity since. Shouting 'traitor' at him doesn't help the debate on those other things. Like much symbolism, it provides an excuse for ducking them.
In other words the statues weren't even about commemorating the particular individuals. They were about sending a message about the virtues of white supremacy in the South at a later time when it was beginning to look like black Americans were forgetting their place.
I also vaguely remember hearing somewhere that at least one of the Confederate leaders (and it might very well have been Robert E. Lee) wouldn't have wanted a statue in the first place.
I've no interest, though in this whole demonisation of Lee that Croesos seems determined to engage in. A discussion of removing a statue hardly needs to descend into the other extreme as if those are the only 2 options. Most people in history are neither cartoon heroes nor cartoon villains.
That they fought for rival notions of what the US should be doesn't make one man good and the other evil.
Even you I think agree that slavery is an offence against an objective system of moral rights. In fact, you're inclined to deny that offences against objective systems of moral rights can be excused on the grounds that the person couldn't have known better.
One can admire people in spite of them defending a moral wrong. But not because they defended it.
I just bet you think that every debate on climate change still needs to have 1 person who thinks it's happening and 1 person who thinks it's not, for 'balance'.
Sides are not inherently equal.
Nevertheless, I am not aware of any statues to him.
You asked. I provide.
If you think debate a good thing, some difference of views would seem to be necessary...
But that's not a good analogy. Climate change is a live issue. The US civil war was decided two lifetimes ago - there is no principle left to be fought for. The need in the aftermath is for reconciliation, for the winners to be magnanimous to the losers in order to go forward as a united country.
A better analogy would be a more recent war. Where it seems to me those who fought for Nazi Germany can be respected as people like us who happened to be on the wrong side, but those who were committed Nazi party members are still seen as evil.
Where is the corresponding distinction in the US Civil War ? Between those who made speeches in favour of slavery as a system, and those who fought for their culture and their right of self-determination and who would have done so whether slavery was involved or not ?
Consign slavery to the dustbin of history ? Absolutely. But that's not what you want to do, is it ?
Successful traitors are often memorialized by the countries they start. Whether they're memorialized by the countries they betrayed is a dicier matter, heavily dependent on post-rebellion relations. Unsuccessful traitors are almost never memorialized by the counties they betrayed. The most notable exception seems to be Americans who committed treason in defense of slavery.
No one is building public monuments to Bundy, the Rosenbergs, Snowden, or Oswald. Well, at least not in their own country.
Historical figures are usually judged by their actions, which are also the main way we assess their "personality". Lee's personality was one that included betraying his officer's oath and taking up arms against his country in defense of chattel slavery. The rest of his personality is pretty dire, too.
And again, we're talking about a public monument. It is, by definition, already "a symbol for a whole lot of other things". That's the point of public monuments. Virginia had the opportunity to select two of its deceased former residents to symbolize what it thinks is best about the state. For the record Virginia has been the birthplace of eight U.S. presidents and has produced eight Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, including John Marshall. For that matter, Virginia even produced a Civil War general who wasn't a traitor to America. Lee wasn't selected because of a lack of other suitable candidates, he was selected in order to valorize him and the cause he fought for.
There is one commemorating his valor at Saratoga. It depicts a boot, referencing the wound Arnold received in battle, and does not explicitly name him. It is essentially a damnatio memoriæ.
Corrected quote attribution. BroJames, Purgatory Host
There is apparently a monument to John Brown in Kansas City, Kansas, lauding his fight against slavery. Brown of course would qualify as an unsuccessful traitor, as he failed in an attempt to grab land from the US to establish his own freeman's republic.
There's also a monument to him at Harpers Ferry, though from what I read on-line, it's not clear if the text praises him personally, or just points out the location of his armoury. It does not appear to depict him personally.
Wow!
Isn't that the problem? The North and South were reconciled by calling a halt to reconstruction and the institution of segregation. That is what the statues commemorate(d).
I don't know the details, but I suspect any statue to John Brown in Kansas is more likely there because of his part in the successful resistance to the expansion of slavery into that state than because of his failed raid on Harper's Ferry in Virginia.
Depends on how you define "success". Sometimes you have to distinguish between the plan and the goal. Lee's goal (and Washington's) was to set up an independent, separatist republic. For Brown the freeman's republic was a step towards abolishing American slavery. A useful accomplishment, but not an end in itself. It could be argued that Brown succeeded more through his trial and execution than he would have had he managed to set up a beleaguered free area on the border of Virginia and Maryland. In the immediate aftermath of the raid most Americans, north and south, regarded Brown as a violent crank. By the end of his trial a lot of northerners regarded him as a violent crank who made a lot of good points. It seriously tilted public opinion in the north towards abolition.
Sometimes governments do honor traitors as a way of distinguishing themselves from a previous government. For example, the West German government to deliberate pains to put up monuments to traitors to the previous government as a way of saying that they aren't the same government as previously held office. Monuments to John Brown could be viewed the same way, as emphasis that the U.S. is now under Lincoln and Sumner's free republic rather than Madison and Jefferson's slave republic.
That there were military people at the time who decided differently when the war broke out highlights something important. Up until then, nobody had to decide whether they were Virginians or USians. When Virginia decides to go one way and the Northern States the other, that creates a comparable dilemma to that which convulsed their great-grandparents in 1775. As I've already said, it's difficult, and counterproductive to call those traitors who decided the opposite way from the way you support. They aren't so much repudiating their country as being forced, perhaps against their wishes, to choose which of two versions of it they regard as having a prior claim on them.
I'm also still very interested to know you answer to my question,
Fortunately, it's a matter of law not of feeling.
I did not write the thing that you have attributed to me in your multi-cut-and-paste effort.
You’re quite right. It was Augustine the Aleut. I’ve corrected the attribution both there and here. BroJames, Purgatory Host
You didn't have to wait long did you? About 2 hours later @Russ was back to discuss commemorating the noble Germans who weren't dedicated members of the Nazi party but who ran their armies anyway.
And he did it while completely ignoring what I'd actually said about Robert E Lee, too.
Well, not nobody. Some enslaved Virginians who were lucky enough to have the opportunity to escape had to decide whether they were Virginians (in which case they were property) or Americans.
Lee (and his fellow officers) had already implicitly made their decision. Here's the oath for a U.S. Army officer as revised in 1830:
Lee would have re-taken that oath every time he received a promotion. (The oath he took when graduating West Point and receiving his initial commission in 1829 was slightly different in wording but substantially the same in its particulars.) In other words Lee pledged his loyalty to the United States and to its president, not to Virginia. If he felt there was a division of loyalty he could just as easily have pursued a (less glamorous) military career in the state militia. We already know that Lee had no problem leading his troops to put down rebellions. He was the commander of the forces that captured John Brown at Harper's Ferry. He decided to deliberately betray his oath the the United States. He had no similar oath to the state of Virginia.
Depends on who and why. If it's someone who's taking a shot because they don't like the Trump presidency*, that's pretty treasonous. If it was one of his (alleged) sexual assault victims who saw his smirking, orange face on television one time too many and just snapped I'd probably be more understanding.
Relevant quote:
My apologies to Croesos. I should have been addressing Enoch. Apologies to him too! My response, though, remains the same.
We admired Rommel, feted von Manstein (who deceived himself and us) and even acknowledged SS-Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Bittrich.
But no.
The "traditional" post-Civil-War "settlement" is based on the idea that treason is the primary crime here, that the North has magnanimously agreed to largely pardon this because they understand how Southerners could have seen this differently, fighting mistakenly but honourably for what they saw as their rights. And if the North is prepared to do this, then why should they not?
Whereas the argument is now no, the primary problem is not and never has been treason but slavery and racial oppression, and that this is a historical and ongoing crime for which the North has no right to pardon the South, and that Lee's statue as a symbol of this must be removed. Dragging treason into it would appear to muddy the waters.