Hi, I'm Confederate President Jefferson Davis. I suck and I am dead. (via I, Infrogmation on Wikipedia) [contextly_sidebar id="6RRQ9PHYfRVi5v2zoMJxo8oMo7phSjZy"]We reported last week that the New Orleans City Council had voted to grind the city's confederate monuments down to a fine dust and force pig turd racists to snort them for a Festivus miracle. OK maybe it didn't vote for ALL OF THAT, but you get the gist. Predictably, folks who really, really want to keep those slave-driving bronze farts around, for birds to poop on,
It is possible to preserve these monuments in a different location -- a museum documenting the culture of the Jim Crow South, for instance. But hey, if they decide to simply surround these statues with monuments to the slaves these men fought to keep in chains and the Union soldiers who had to die to defeat them, I'll keep an open mind.
Other places with long histories are full of artifacts from earlier eras with viewpoints that may be seen today as lacking an appropriate level of historic balance and objectivity. Richmond, Virginia, with its Monument Avenue; the Japanese-American relocation camps at the Manzanar National Historic Site;
I've been to Manzanar twice, once before it was designated a Historic Site, once after.
Manzanar is presented as a failure of the US to live up to its ideals, and a belated recognition of that fact, it is not presented as a place of national pride, but of remembrance.
As other non-commenters noted, the people of New Orleans can move these statues to a museum, or present them in some more appropriate context that more completely presents how that history is appropriately seen today. The top of a giant column in the middle of a huge traffic circle doesn't cut it.
Guess I should add another picture I took there...
It is. And the memoirs are a great read, even if we make the usual allowances for distortion, intentional and otherwise. . . . Sherman's a fascinating man in his contradictions and ambiguities.
A complex guy. And little! I once saw a dress uniform of his, and Old Uncle Billy was not a large man. It was at an exhibit at the Ronald Reagan (gag) Library. What made it worth it, aside from the Sherman thing, was being able to point out to the docents, that one of their placards about the battle of Shiloh was erroneous.
If you are talking about R.E. Lee, he did have his finest moment at the surrender and afterward, when he urged his men to go back and be good citizens. He was, however, everlastingly despised by one of his former generals -- George Pickett. Years after the war Pickett still was not over the trauma of Gettysburg. "That old man (Lee) killed my division," he told an acquaintance, who was shocked by the vehemence with which he said it.
the monuments should be relocated to a museum that will tell the whole un - "White" washed story of the Antebellum / civil war south. It's time to have a museum that also tells the story from the slaves, free men, and poor farmers' point of view. The monuments that are there are of people who have almost nothing to do with the city, and were not natives, either.
But the city needs more monuments to its founders (Bienville) and to the musicians who created jazz, from Buddy Bolden, Kid Ory, Jelly Roll Morton, etc.
Any attack on "art" (good or bad art), including statues and monuments, makes me a little ill. More so when it's been part of the landscape for decades or centuries. I mean there are lines -- hard to shed a tear for Stalin statues falling all over Eastern Europe post-Soviet Union or even the staged Saddam Whatshisname statue tumbling down in Iraq, but the fucking Taliban or Isil destroying Buddhist, Christian and "other" Muslim antiquities breaks my fuckin' art-lovin' heart.This is our fucking history. Sadly, we own it. Don't erase them, move them a little where they are and match them with a statue or monument of roughly equal heft, some ideological counter-point, a Martin Luther King to the William Bedford Forrest, etc., with a prominent explanatory plaque in between. Change the context and, oh yeah, coat the whole bottom 20 feet with whatever clear finish let's you remove graffiti from a car exterior with some brake fluid and a rag.
Street parade chant of the Know Nothings, circa 1850, replete with bass drum accent:"The Dutch! The Dutch! The dirty, rotten Dutch!They don't amount to much!But they're a damned sight better than the I-i-i-irish! [boom! boom!]"
Members of this secretive Nativist movement were told not to discuss it with outsiders. If questioned, they should fold their arms and reply, "I know nothing!"Even then it must have been an opportunity for snark. "Well that much is obvious, but what is your political movement about?"If it makes you feel any better, just remember we've always been at war with the Belgians.
I suppose that let's Grandma Moses off the hook too. What about Precious Moments figurines? And cowboy hats and boots worn by people who don't own livestock?
Until the latter part of the war, Lee would attack, or counterattack if he could, before he had to retreat into trench warfare. Grant's Vicksburg campaign across country with no supply line was a model of defeating the enemy in detail with little loss. He moved so fast his troops walked into a Confederate uniform factory in Jackson, I believe, while it was in full operation. He pulled order out of chaos at Chattanooga, and once he had the Army of the Potomac he never relinquished the initiative, and forced Lee to react to him instead of the other way around. He later said the one attack he regretted was Cold Harbor, and of Grant, Lincoln said, "he understands the arithmetic." But Lincoln also loved Grant because he took what he was given and went to work with it, without constantly whining for reinforcements and complaining about this and that. His move on Petersburg was genius, screwed up by timidity on the part of his subordinates, and could have ended the war much sooner.
It is possible to preserve these monuments in a different location -- a museum documenting the culture of the Jim Crow South, for instance. But hey, if they decide to simply surround these statues with monuments to the slaves these men fought to keep in chains and the Union soldiers who had to die to defeat them, I'll keep an open mind.
Giant troglodyte libel!!
Absolutely.
Other places with long histories are full of artifacts from earlier eras with viewpoints that may be seen today as lacking an appropriate level of historic balance and objectivity. Richmond, Virginia, with its Monument Avenue; the Japanese-American relocation camps at the Manzanar National Historic Site;
I've been to Manzanar twice, once before it was designated a Historic Site, once after.
Manzanar is presented as a failure of the US to live up to its ideals, and a belated recognition of that fact, it is not presented as a place of national pride, but of remembrance.
As other non-commenters noted, the people of New Orleans can move these statues to a museum, or present them in some more appropriate context that more completely presents how that history is appropriately seen today. The top of a giant column in the middle of a huge traffic circle doesn't cut it.
Guess I should add another picture I took there...
I'm pretty sure it's also in Sherman's Memoirs, but I'm too lazy to go upstairs and check it out in my Civil War library. Well done.
It is. And the memoirs are a great read, even if we make the usual allowances for distortion, intentional and otherwise. . . . Sherman's a fascinating man in his contradictions and ambiguities.
red, for the blood shed for their traitorous cause.
A complex guy. And little! I once saw a dress uniform of his, and Old Uncle Billy was not a large man. It was at an exhibit at the Ronald Reagan (gag) Library. What made it worth it, aside from the Sherman thing, was being able to point out to the docents, that one of their placards about the battle of Shiloh was erroneous.
If you are talking about R.E. Lee, he did have his finest moment at the surrender and afterward, when he urged his men to go back and be good citizens. He was, however, everlastingly despised by one of his former generals -- George Pickett. Years after the war Pickett still was not over the trauma of Gettysburg. "That old man (Lee) killed my division," he told an acquaintance, who was shocked by the vehemence with which he said it.
Pickette wasn't wrong . . .
Grant's been criticized for supposedly wasting his men, but Lee had the highest per capita casualty rate in the war.
the monuments should be relocated to a museum that will tell the whole un - "White" washed story of the Antebellum / civil war south. It's time to have a museum that also tells the story from the slaves, free men, and poor farmers' point of view. The monuments that are there are of people who have almost nothing to do with the city, and were not natives, either.
But the city needs more monuments to its founders (Bienville) and to the musicians who created jazz, from Buddy Bolden, Kid Ory, Jelly Roll Morton, etc.
Giant statues of Paul Bunyan are folk culture. That we are not at war with.
Any attack on "art" (good or bad art), including statues and monuments, makes me a little ill. More so when it's been part of the landscape for decades or centuries. I mean there are lines -- hard to shed a tear for Stalin statues falling all over Eastern Europe post-Soviet Union or even the staged Saddam Whatshisname statue tumbling down in Iraq, but the fucking Taliban or Isil destroying Buddhist, Christian and "other" Muslim antiquities breaks my fuckin' art-lovin' heart.This is our fucking history. Sadly, we own it. Don't erase them, move them a little where they are and match them with a statue or monument of roughly equal heft, some ideological counter-point, a Martin Luther King to the William Bedford Forrest, etc., with a prominent explanatory plaque in between. Change the context and, oh yeah, coat the whole bottom 20 feet with whatever clear finish let's you remove graffiti from a car exterior with some brake fluid and a rag.
Street parade chant of the Know Nothings, circa 1850, replete with bass drum accent:"The Dutch! The Dutch! The dirty, rotten Dutch!They don't amount to much!But they're a damned sight better than the I-i-i-irish! [boom! boom!]"
Members of this secretive Nativist movement were told not to discuss it with outsiders. If questioned, they should fold their arms and reply, "I know nothing!"Even then it must have been an opportunity for snark. "Well that much is obvious, but what is your political movement about?"If it makes you feel any better, just remember we've always been at war with the Belgians.
I suppose that let's Grandma Moses off the hook too. What about Precious Moments figurines? And cowboy hats and boots worn by people who don't own livestock?
Until the latter part of the war, Lee would attack, or counterattack if he could, before he had to retreat into trench warfare. Grant's Vicksburg campaign across country with no supply line was a model of defeating the enemy in detail with little loss. He moved so fast his troops walked into a Confederate uniform factory in Jackson, I believe, while it was in full operation. He pulled order out of chaos at Chattanooga, and once he had the Army of the Potomac he never relinquished the initiative, and forced Lee to react to him instead of the other way around. He later said the one attack he regretted was Cold Harbor, and of Grant, Lincoln said, "he understands the arithmetic." But Lincoln also loved Grant because he took what he was given and went to work with it, without constantly whining for reinforcements and complaining about this and that. His move on Petersburg was genius, screwed up by timidity on the part of his subordinates, and could have ended the war much sooner.