I've got to add here that I find the whole idea of removing statues and rewriting history a bit ridiculous. There are not many famous people from that era who were not involved in the slave trade either directly or indirectly. How many of the finest old buildings in Amsterdam were built using money which came from this source - maybe the pc brigade will suggest tearing them all down !
Lee was a slave owner. A relatively moderate one, if the propaganda is to be believed, but he still owned people as property. That statue, and others like it, were erected during the "Jim Crow" era to remind certain folks who was boss in them there parts. A statue in a public park is to revere the person venerated. It is a very public monument to a traitor to his country, a secessionist, and a slave owner. It is absolutely correct that these monuments are removed from public places. We should not seek to erase our past but to honestly and objectively appraise it, learn from it and not repeat it. Rommell was a fine general, not a Nazi if the propaganda is to be believed, but you wouldn't want a 15mtr tall statue of him surveying the land atop his halftrack in a Köln park now, would you?
George Washington owned slaves as well Fez - but the overall historical consensus is that he had a positive influence on history and so he appears in statues despite this. Why was a 'secessionist' a 'traitor to his country' ? Any more than any other separatist ? Are you suggesting that people who campaigned for Scottish independence should not be commemorated in Edinburgh - are they 'traitors' ? Or Catalan separatists in Barcelona ? He was a man who chose to put loyalty towards his state over and above any which he owed to his country. Do you want to revise the whole of history and take down statues to eg. Oliver Cromwell because some Irish people may take offence, or to Winston Churchill because he may be offensive to some Indian people. Or maybe even take the books of Charles Dickens off the shelves because he originally referred to ***in as 'The Jew' ?
As a little aside - twin mountains in Central Queensland used to be named Mount Jim Crow and Mount Wheeler, both names associated with racism - Jim Crow for obvious reasons and Wheeler after a police officer who was responsible for the massacre of around 1000 indigenous people in the area, the Darumbal people - to whom the mountains were sacred. Around three years ago, the State government authorised the original Darumbal names to be reinstated - Jim Crow is now known as Baga and Wheeler as Gai-i. There's a lovely little Dreamtime story about the creation of the two mountains - it tells of a young man and woman who fell in love, but they were of different skins (too culturally related to marry) and the elders forbade the relationship.The couple, defying the elders, ran away to be together, however the Rainbow Serpent came between them, pushing them apart, creating two mountains. It's used as a reminder about the importance of showing respect, obeying elders and the lore. For me, it's a reminder that possibly the oldest culture on Earth is in some ways far more advanced than many modern cultures.
A French writer exiled himself to England and a town on the French Swiss border rather than spend more time in jail over his writings. That town changed added his name to the name of the town. What is the name of the town today?
Cheers Frenchie. In Russia in the 17th Century the Czar brought in a tax for all people who possessed one of these - in Yemen in the 1930s they brought in a tax for all those who didn't. What was it ?
I'm sorry but I suggest strongly that you read the letters of succession that the rebel States wrote. Lincoln courted Lee but Lee saw his loyalty to Virginia as you rightly say. I compared Lee to Rommel, and you don't see HIS statue in German parks and Volk all know who he was! False equivalence. Nor do we see statues of Charles I everywhere, unlike Cromwell and the other Parliamentarians. They were on the right side of history as there is no divine right of kings! Cromwell certainly meted out a severe and gratuitous penalty to the Irish but they had attempted, in allegiance with Charles I, to return England to a pimple on the arse of the holy roman empire. Likewise there is no place for a statue of George III in Central Park. Books and museums, not public places.
