"New Orleans removing Confederate monuments..." Topic

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Vae Victis.

I do however hope that the three statues end up in a historical park, although the fourth monument – not Confederate at all but white supremacist – should be destroyed. I'm shocked that it stayed up this long.

I agree with CATenwold.
Why in hell is the 4th one still standing?

Since it seems that a private sponsor has offered to pay for the removal, maybe he bought them too.

Agreed with comments above.

Also agree, but do hope they actually do put the three Confederate statues in a park.

CAT, I'm not sure it's Vae Victis, as it's not our gallant northern brethren who are behind the removal, but PC run amok. Where will it all end? (I agree the 4th should be permanently taken down.)

In my part of Kentucky there is a small town called Fairview. In that town you can find the Jefferson Davis Monument, a 351 foot tall concrete obelisk (making it the 5th tallest monument in the US). It was built between 1917-1924. How much longer can it expect to survive in such a revisionist and PC environment? I would imagine the calls for its destruction have already begun.

It's all a shame, really.

The 4th one should be removed but not these 3. I think they should remain.

Shame about Beauregard, but I can see why the others need to go.

And seriously, a monument to an explicitly white supremacist organization?

Then again, I used to live in N.O. – it's a crazy place.

The PC Police are on the move.

When will Sherman's statues be removed?

It aint PC Police. It's common sense Police. I agree with Old Pete on this one. The 4th one should be crushed into gravel & fill a few potholes.

What crap.
Let us all bow down to the god of Political Correctness otherwise (GASP!!) someone, somewhere might be offended.

I think that Beauregard should have been allowed to stay. He was from the state!

The fourth one does not surprise me. It Nawlins after all.
My wife went to school with the Mayor and knows his sister. Her, wife, brother still lives there.

I would think he had more important things to worry about than 3 monuments. Their crime rate is one of the highest in the States. Recently had 16 people shot in one night in one place. Guess things are so bad in Nawlins that mitchey needs to re-direct peoples attention away from his failures and the crumbling city. So lets find something and make an issue out of it. That way the people will not see the high crime rate, the poverty high minority unemployment etc.

Is Nawlins going to be a better place after this? Nope. But a bunch of liberals and their minions will feel good about themselves and we know feelings are better than actually doing something. And that is what counts feelings, not actual improvements.

The three should remain, they hurt nothing, at the least Beauregard should stay he was from NO. The fourth, yes that should go. This whole thing is just stupidity, like it changes anything….

Somebody walking by the statue of Lee unawares my suddenly have their safe space stabbed by a micro aggression and become short of breath.
Best to not take a chance, and let the mayor's brother in law make a fortune over charging for their removal and selling them off for scrap metal.

But even that will not be enough! All photos of them MUST be purged from all records also!!!!!i

Everyone who agrees with this kind of nonsense or see the "common sense" of it … do you not recognize what a slippery, Stalinist slope this kind of idiocy is putting us on?

An appalling politically motivated decision on the part of the City Council and Mayor regarding the three Confederate statues. The 4th should be removed. New Orleans used to be a vibrant interesting mess. Now it is just a mess.

As Gump said, "Stupid is as stupid does!"

Mark my words, they'll be coming after Jefferson and Washington next. The excuse will be that both men owned slaves (as if every African king living during the same period did not have slaves, but I digress) I highly doubt those agitating actually know enough about Confederate generals to be offended by them, the ultimate agenda is to 'transform' the U.S. by getting rid of all symbols of 'white oppression' AKA Western Civilization.

They should never have been allowed to be put up in the first place.

They already are.

I've seen calls to remove them from things too, and one guy will no longer be on one of the currency bills, once they figure out which woman to put in his place.

The lives of Davis, Lee, and Beauregard can be examined fully. One might agree or disagree with how they lived their lives. But if one wants to know what kind of men these were, there aren't any obstacles.

I am sorry that their present day enemies are so blinded by hatred and/or political correctness, that they can't acknowledge the greatness of these men and why they should be remembered.

By way of comparison, sensitive U.S government records pertaining to Martin Luther King, Jr., are sealed until 2027.

Is it better to have monuments honoring men like Lee, etc. (admittedly flawed, as all of us are) which have been acknowledged by many as being great, even by their enemies, or should we honor modern day heroes whose information about their personal characters is deliberately withheld from us?

I realize I might have earned myself a trip to the Dawghouse with my comments. I hope not. In my defense, I'll simply say that I think about these things. I admit that I can see the point of the people who don't like the statues of Lee, etc., but they can't erase history and change society by removing them.

I have to agree with Mr. TenWolde and the rational Irish Marine on this one.
Lee, Davis, and Beauregard were otherwise honorable men, but they chose the wrong side then, and should not be honored for doing so now. A pity, but it is what should be done.

Each community in each generation defines what's important to them, and what's not. Each generation rewrites its interpretation of history either based on new data, or based upon modern sensibilities. That doesn't mean its good history just modern reality. But the reality is they should not try to erase history…the Soviet Union was good at that.

The fourth monument had to come down. Shocked it was still there. The others should stay.

If a stature of Robert E. Lee and native son Beauregard can be taken down, then what of Jefferson and Washington? What of all the Presidents that called Virginia home?

Would the Washington monument and the Jefferson Memorial be taken down? Would Mount Vernon and Monticello be demolished?

What of Mount Rushmore? Cover up Washington and Jefferson?

Then there is Stone Mountain.

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The key to all of this is context. To judge these monuments by todays standards is a disservice to our own history.

Louisiana suffered 6,545 casualties for the Confederacy and 945 for the Union. Both White and African American.

I would not have those three statues taken down. I would have instead placed a monument to all the Louisiana soldiers and sailors who fought for the Union near one of the others. I would place a statue of Lincoln near Davis, both American Presidents.

This is a reflection of demographic change. The history that those statues represent is not the history that the majority of the population wish to celebrate. Maybe we should ask ourselves why the demographics have changed so dramatically and what the future looks like.

We cannot re-write history. We can only re-interpret it.

In the book "1984" the regime was systematically re-writing history to fit their agenda. In the Soviet Union Stalin attempted the same as did Hitler. This tearing down of our history is not so different.

A lot of Southerners gave their lives for their country and we cannot ignore that. Most never owned a slave. They fought as one Southerner put it, "because the Yankees are here."

Robert E. Lee was a great American. He is one of the most be-loved and greatest generals in American history. He graduated from West Point and served his country in the Mexican War and in the West. He came from a prestigious Virginia family many of whom served in both wars against Britain.

Looking back we can see him as a traitor. But he sided with his state at a time when loyalty for your state was on a higher plane. Both north and south (yes even Lincoln had difficulties with states rights issues in the North through much of the war.)

Now it is accepted that the federal government is superior to the states. But that wasn't the case in 1861. This was true both north and south. The war changed that. So we shouldn't judge these actions in the context of todays standards.

"We cannot re-write history".

Actually, a lot of people work very hard at doing just that, based upon what I've heard they're teaching in history class now, and what is written in many textbooks.

Three traitors who were leaders in The War of the Slaveholders' Rebellion, and one statue honoring white supremacy.
The city needs the revenue from the sale of scrap metal, which it will not get because corrupt contractors will pocket their share first.

Like David Barton.

People no longer favor honoring people who fought to defend the plantation archipelago on public property. Meh.

Winston, might I suggest you go back and check history. It seems like your comment about "The War of the Slaveholders' Rebellion " is not really accurate. I was under the impression it was states rights versus federal rights and which one had the power to make them. Yes the idea of slavery was an issue but not the primary reason as most people are prone to believe.

I'm amused by the folks here who say, yeah, take down the white supremacist monument because those were bad folks, but leave the other three because those were honorable men. Hate to break it to you, but Davis, Lee, and Beauregard stood for exactly the same thing as the white supremacists, only on a vastly greater scale, and they were responsible for far more deaths. If the white supremacists were bad, so were the other three. It's not political correctness or revisionist history, it's real history. The "revision" took place shortly after the war with all the BS about the 'glorious lost cause'. People are finally waking up and rejecting the BS and seeing the history for what it really is.

"He who controls the present controls the past; he who controls the past controls the future." – George Orwell.

It is easy to re-write history. It is done all the time.
Anyone who thinks that this is about 150 year old Confederates is (IMO) missing the real agenda – which is to re-shape American culture. Read about the campaign to erase Woodrow Wilson from our cultural memory under way by "concerned activists" at Princeton University. Nothing is safe or sacred.

B

The fourth Statue: link
Note that Longstreet was wounded and taken prisoner by the White League.

I saw this on one of my visits. The current anodyne plaque raised more questions than it answered so I looked it up and was appalled by the event. There were other armed insurrections in the former Confederacy. Some were not reversed. Wilmington NC saw one that overthrew the elected government.

Wilson WAS racist trash.
And a lousy president too.

Yep.

I do not find anything honourable about these three men. In order to defend slavery they were willing to break their oaths and turn traitor to our country. They fired on the flag and led men into battle against it. The long list of casualties and misery caused by that war should lay at their feet.

Disco Joe, slavery was the PRIMARY and ONLY reason for the Civil War.
Ask yourself one question. Without slavery, would there have been a war?

Tariffs, no doubt.

Sorry, gents. I am not going to rise to the bait. If you want to believe that the American Civil War was solely about the issue of slavery – that's fine with me. We will just continue to differ in our opinions on that score.

Wait until they come after YOUR favored historical personages. And don't think it can't happen.

B

The secessionists knew why they were seceding.

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Indeed – and if one reads the entire document it becomes evident that it addressed a good deal more than just slavery.

B

This notion of "erasing history" is ludicrous.

Just because you take down a monument honoring white supremacy doesn't mean you can't still be a white supremacist. Feel free to! But don't expect everyone else to honor that as well.

I am sorry that their present day enemies are so blinded by hatred and/or political correctness, that they can't acknowledge the greatness of these men and why they should be remembered.

As a white Virginian who was raised on Gone with the Wind and dreams of supposed past glory, I am blinded by neither hatred nor political correctness.

I am also not blinded by the Lost Cause mythology that seems to blind reactionaries who cry about "political correctness" to defend the worst cause in American history.

I have never been to New Orleans and I know nothing of their politics. I have never been sympathetic to the Southern cause, slavery, etc. I am from Pennsylvania. Whenever I visit Gettysburg, I am never offended by any of the Confederate monuments I see there. I feel proud that someone wanted to remember these men. Even though I do not agree with what they stood for, I can appreciate that they gave their last full measure. Maybe one day those monuments will be gone also. If that happens I know I will be very disappointed. I think history should be remembered not removed. I hope it never comes to that in this state.

Hopefully, they will never remove the monuments from battlefields.

And perhaps battlefields would be a better location for some of the monuments.

The only states rights that the secessionists felt worth mentioning in their declarations were those that safeguarded the institution of slavery. They feared that President Lincoln would abolish slavery. This is supported by the timing of secession as well as the words of the secessionists themselves.

To make the war about grand principles means that you have to ignore the specifics of what the people themselves were saying at the time.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the whole North-South thing start over extending slave laws into new states? Was it state rights or did slave states succeed because they no longer wanted to follow a majority ruled federal govt which was leaning towards anti-slavery?

Whatever you think of Lee and Davis they, and their cause, were pro-slavery (Lee from his own letters). I'm not for erasing history, but some might argue that history has already been rewritten on this point.

"States rights" only became an issue when pro-slavery representation in Congress was no longer sufficient to ensure Federal enforcement of pro-slavery laws.

The numerous secession crises over slavery in the decades prior to 1860 also point to the obvious point of the "Lost Cause".

Actually it was never about "state rights" it was about Federal Rights. The South wanted the Federal Fugitive Slave Acts enforced and the Northern "state rights" of personal liberty laws banned. the South wanted a Federal right to take slaves anywhere into the Western Territories. The South wanted slavery to be Federally protected and when they realized the North was not going to do that much of the slave South seceded.

The Preamble to the US Constitution

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,[note 1] promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The Preamble to the Confederate Constitution

"We, the people of the Confederate States, each state acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity — invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God — do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America."

The Confederate Constitution states that the Confederate states are forming a permanent union. So much for State Rights and the right to succeed, since all the states signing this gave away that right.
The Confederate Constitution also gave the Confederate Government control over any
"No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."
So no Confederate state could make any changes. So much for State Rights.
Slavery was the 800 pound gorilla in the causes of the war, with loss of the power of the Slave states in relation to the rest of the US a much smaller great ape.