[Vision2020] Robert E. Lee Did Not Want Statues; Would Keep Open "The Sores of War"

[Nicholas Gier]

Daily Kos, Aug. 19, 2017

Robert E. Lee, the general featured in many of these statues (most of which
were erected after the turn of the century—including a flurry in the 1950s
and 1960s), was against the idea of Confederate monuments and said so
on multiple
occasions:
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/08/18/robert-e-lee-discouraged-monuments-they-keep-open-the-sores-of-war-he-wrote/?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.ed707fe6c593>

The first
<http://leefamilyarchive.org/papers/letters/transcripts-UVA/v076.html>was
to Thomas Rosser, a former Confederate general who in 1866 queried Lee
about a proposed commemorative monument.

“My conviction is,” Lee wrote, “that however grateful it would be to the
feelings of the South, the attempt in the present condition of the Country,
would have the effect of retarding, instead of accelerating its
accomplishment; & of continuing, if not adding to, the difficulties under
which the Southern people labour.”

He reiterated these feelings in another letter three years later:

The second
<http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/saxon/servlet/SaxonServlet?source=/xml_docs/valley_news/newspaper_catalog.xml&style=/xml_docs/valley_news/news_cat.xsl&level=edition&paper=rv&year=1869&month=09&day=03&edition=rv1869/va.au.rv.1869.09.03.xml>came
in 1869, when Lee declined an invitation from the Gettysburg Battlefield
Memorial Association to help mark the positions of the troops in that 1863
battle with granite memorials.

He responded that his “engagements will not permit me to be present.” But
even if he were able to attend, he added, he thought 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.”

In fact, the great-great grandchildren of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis
and Stonewall Jackson have all issued statements approving the removal of
these statues from public ground
<http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/16/us/robert-e-lees-grandson-comments-on-statue-removal/index.html>
:

"Eventually, someone is going to have to make a decision, and if that's the
local lawmaker, so be it. But we have to be able to have that conversation
without all of the hatred and the violence. And if they choose to take
those statues down, fine," Robert E. Lee V, 54, of Washington DC, told CNN.

"Maybe it's appropriate to have them in museums or to put them in some sort
of historical context in that regard," he added.

Bertram Hayes-Davis, great-great grandson of Jefferson Davis:"In a public
place, if it is offensive and people are taking issue with it, let's move
it. Let's put it somewhere where historically it fits with the area around
it so you can have people come to see it, who want to understand that
history and that individual."

In a public letter published at Slate
<http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/08/stonewall_jackson_s_grandsons_the_monuments_must_go.html>,
William Jackson Christian and Warren Edmund Christian, two great-great
grandsons of Stonewall Jackson were crystal clear in their desire to see
the monuments removed from public spaces:

We are native Richmonders and also the great-great-grandsons of Stonewall
Jackson. As two of the closest living relatives to Stonewall, we are
writing today to ask for the removal of his statue, as well as the removal
of all Confederate statues from Monument Avenue. They are overt symbols of
racism and white supremacy, and the time is long overdue for them to depart
from public display. Overnight, Baltimore has seen fit to take this action.
Richmond should, too.

They went on to say the family preferred to celebrate the actions of
Stonewall Jackson’s sister:

While we are not ashamed of our great-great-grandfather, we are ashamed to
benefit from white supremacy while our black family and friends suffer. We
are ashamed of the monument.

In fact, instead of lauding Jackson’s violence, we choose to celebrate
Stonewall’s sister—our great-great-grandaunt—Laura Jackson Arnold. As an
adult Laura became a staunch Unionist and abolitionist. Though she and
Stonewall were incredibly close through childhood, she never spoke to
Stonewall after his decision to support the Confederacy. We choose to stand
on the right side of history with Laura Jackson Arnold.

-- 

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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