"Forrest family sue over takedown of Memphis statues" Topic

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It seems they ain't just whistling Dixie ---

The family of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and the Sons of Confederate Veterans filed a petition Wednesday seeking legal action against the city of Memphis for its role in taking down three Confederate statues last month.

The petition, filed with the Tennessee Historical Commission, accuses the city and nonprofit Memphis Greenspace Inc. of violating "numerous" state laws on Dec. 20, when Greenspace removed the Forrest statue from its pedestal atop his and his wife's graves in Health Sciences Park, and statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and war correspondent and Capt. J. Harvey Mathes from Fourth Bluff Park.

Damn straight!

I wish them the best. This desecration of history needs to stop.

While not a Forrest fan & a "D*mn Yankee" I still think this PC stuff needs to stop.

Forrest statue? Melt it down into doorknobs. And that goes doubly for that traitor Davis.
Desecrating History? More like remembering it properly.
The founder of the KKK deserves no public in your face tributes.

Them's fightin' words!

Seriously, Forrest is a mixed bag, and a man of his times. Yes, he started (or accepted the leadership of) the KKK, but later repudiated it. He was a slave trader, but it was a legal business, and the idea that it was morally wrong was, on the world scale, extremely new. Was Fort Pillow his order? Probably not. Was it his duty and responsibility to control? Definitely. And he failed at that. Was he a brilliant natural leader, tactician and strategist? Yes. Was he a racist? Yes. Same as 99% of the people in the world at that time, even abolitionists, including Lincoln. So I personally don't honor Forrest except for his military skill, which was remarkable (like such figures as Genghis Khan, Attila, Tamerlane, Napoleon, etc.. ).

Were the statues put up as an in-your-face to those of the negro race? No. (Some today might be by truly fringe kooks, but I don't think that was the intent then). Were they put up out of misplaced nostalgia? Gotta say yes.
But so what?

I truly question the decision to remove monuments, largely because I don't think it resolves any issues, costs public money better spent on better, more proactive efforts, and is largely of no importance to anyone unless they've been stirred up about something that in most cases they probably had neither noticed nor cared about until an "activist" started yelling about it. Monuments, good and bad, are part of our national culture and history. Put up a sign next to the thing, telling the bad of the person as well as the good, and let people learn from it. Put up statues to honor good men and women to counter the bad. All sorts of solutions come to mind, far more positive and far less divisive than what is going on.

But even if the statues should come down, what the government of Memphis did was a gross abuse of its power, a waste of money, and deceitful, not to mention illegal. There's a right way to do things and wrong way to do things, and they did it in utterly the wrong way. If governments can behave in that way to do something an individual approves of, they can behave in the same or similar ways to do something the individual does not approve of. And that is a very dangerous thing.

File this under "be careful what you wish for…"

Well stated Parzival.

"I think it wiser, not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered."

- Robert E. Lee, 1869

They need to come down. But not destroyed. Assuming (a big assumption) that they were not actually put up as a metaphorical middle finger to the black population then, their continued presence in a 21st century setting IS.

Forrest may be "complicated" but Davis is less so. It is better to put them and others in a setting where the history can be discussed far more than can be done on a plinth.

The city of Memphis has its obligation to its citizens even if it means defying a law put in place by those who wish to retcon the Civil War to "states rights" without acknowledging that it was the right to continued slave trade that was the predominate cause – as stated ast the time.

This is not "PC", its a society growing up.

Wyatt

"that it was the right to continued slave trade that was the predominate cause"

Really? Because the slave trade ended in 1808.

Parzval is correct. We are a nation of laws and every level of government must obey those laws. The state passed a law to protect statues and Memphis does not have the right to unilaterally remove them. Memphis does have the duty to obey the law. We should not destroy our history, we should not desecrate graves either.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

Wyatt, no one passed that law to pretend the war was about "States Rights" as exclusive from slavery (though for many Southern participants, it was-- Lee being a significant example).

But even if they had, then it is the obligation of the City of Memphis to fight those laws in the courts, or by exerting influence on the legislature. The city had a greater obligation to obey and uphold the laws of the state in this circumstance, while taking legal and existing actions to seek correction of the laws, if such correction is needed. If the laws violated human or civil rights, and thus the US Constitution and the natural rights of man, I would agree with you. But simply because someone decides that a statue offends them does not mean any such violation of rights exists in any way. There's a statue of nudes playing instruments in the middle of Nashville. Some people are offended by it, and some think it's ugly. Does that mean the city should take it down? Hardly. An opinion that someone dislikes something is merely that, and does not mean that the purpose of the thing is to offend or that rights are being violated. Throughout this nation there are statues of Washington, Jefferson and Jackson. All three were slave owners and one committed the Trail of Tears genocide. Shall we tear them down too? Shall we violate the law to tear down any statues on their graves because someone doesn't like them? What if someone doesn't like what you say, or doesn't like what you write, or doesn't like the little metal figures of men committing slaughter that you play with? Shall the government abuse the law and your rights to remove your thoughts, opinions, and even property so as to protect the feelings of others? "That's different!" No, it isn't.
It's an abuse of power for the government to ignore the law, no matter what the feelings of someone are, especially in a society as the US which allows for legitimate, functional paths of grievance to correct wrongs. Even if the statues of Forrest should be removed, the process to do so should be legal and proper, not deceitful and manipulative. That a government is willing to do the latter does far more damage to the people than any statue ever could.

With all due respect, Memphis does have a right to unilaterally remove statues (or, for that matter, any other structure) located on property owned by the City of Memphis. I can't tell for certain whether all of the removed statues were located on city property, but I assume that they were (and to the extent that they aren't, I would agree that the city had no right to remove them). I understand that several states have enacted laws restricting the removal of statues, by, in effect, the owner of that land. It is not clear that such laws are constitutional. If a state passed a law forbidding the removal of, say, a cross, and the land on which that cross is located was sold to a synagogue or mosque, could the state law require the synagogue or mosque to keep the cross on the land? I think not. In any event, making the determination of the constitutionality of a law is one of the reasons why we have courts.

I certainly don't think that erasing history is a good idea. That said, there is something rather incongruous about erecting statutes honoring people, including Jefferson Davis, Lee, Jackson and Beauregard, all of whom had served in the U.S. Army and had taken oaths to defend the Constitution, and all of whom broke those oaths and rebelled against the U.S. government (and lost). I understand that they had their reasons for doing so. But claiming that the City of Memphis needs to respect the laws and processes of the U.S. (even though they may prove unconstitutional), when the people honored by those statues failed to do the same seems one-sided, at the very least. And yes, two wrongs don't make a right, but again, that's why we have courts.

I suppose that for the sake of completeness, I should say that I have much less problem with monuments in town squares honoring the people from the town who died in the war. The latter is more of a memorial to the town's loss. And of course, the tombs of those who died should be left in peace regardless of the actions done by their occupants during their lives. The wrongs of the past can't be made right by dishonoring the earthly remains of those who have died.

Also, @ Dn Jackson: The slave trade in the U.S. did not end in 1808. The *importation* of slaves was outlawed, but slaves born in the U.S. remained slaves and could be and were sold right through the Civil War/War Between the States. I'd recommend you look up "Fugitive Slave Act of 1850", and also, the actual opinion of Dred Scott v. Sanford (see: link ), including Justice Curtis' dissent, beginning on p.564, which has an interesting summary of the Founders' understanding of citizenship, voting rights, the right to bear arms and the meaning of "well regulated militias."

"We are a nation of laws and every level of government must obey those laws".

Actually, based upon voluminous empirical evidence that is now incorrect. We used to be a nation of laws, but now they are so frequently and flagrantly ignored that the new mantra has replaced it.

"We are now a nation of special interests, and anyone with sufficient funds and crafty or corrupt lawyers and judges in their pockets can ignore the laws with impunity".

Maybe the Lee statue from VA can keep Forrest and Jeff Davis company?

It's interesting the attitudes towards these men. I wonder if we realize that without their actions, slavery wouldve taken a lot longer to end.

Perhaps we owe them some thanks and it wouldve been better to put an educational plaque about the war and its consequences rather than remove them.

Rewriting history seems to be your thing. When do the re-education camps start? Have you learned nothing from the evils of communism?

Yes because if this meets up no one could play Civil War games because one side would have been the South.

Some people, it seems, just like to post from the isolation of their self-incarceration to elicit a response as their own personal entertainment.

The more they are engaged the more entertained they are and the more the cycle continues and escalates.