For Art Sparker*
A Very Nice Horse that just happens to be trotting riderless through Emancipation Park, Charlottesville, Virginia
A Very Nice Horse that just happens to be trotting riderless through Emancipation Park, Charlottesville, Virginia
*inspired by our discussion in comments on post below
I like it.
ReplyDeleteTraveller (I assume it's Lee's horse Traveller) feels so much lighter now---there's an extra spring in his step!
ReplyDeleteWell what a discussion and all from our dinner time conversation in Yorkshire. In Liverpool, the port from which the ships left for Africa and returned from America with the cargos of people and sugar, tobacco and cotton on board there is now a rather excellent museum about the slave trade. That's the sort of museum your Robert Lee statue belongs, and maybe since I didn't know how it came to be erected that part needs explaining too. But don't destroy a work of art of a horse and its rider. Myabe because in the UK we live with the remains of French oppressors of the English, ie Norman castles and churches we can value beauty in history rather more easily that more recent symbols elsewhere. I wonder if you dig down into the people who made fortunes in America fromthis trade, what did they spend their money on. And why is there never the similair outrage on behalf of the indiginous population.
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ReplyDeleteCATHY:
You are not doing the most basic research to find the information you need to have a full discussion:
I should not have to explain how the Lee statue came to be erected:
if you'd bothered to follow the link to Emancipation Park in this post, you would know the answer.
And I already said in the last post that the United Daughters of the Confederacy was behind many of them---in the case of the Lee statue, they were not, they merely were invited to attend its unveiling.
The United States has museums about slavery; Americans of all races do protest on behalf on Native Americans (did you miss the Dakota Pipeline protests?);
the French are not currently threatening an invasion. ACTUAL NAZIs in my country *are* currently calling for a return to white supremacy and using the Confederate statues as a rallying point---they're not equivalent to your Norman castles.
I am done with this conversation.
Cathy's comment about saving the statue and moving it to a museum, where it could be surrounded with interpretatiive materials, might have validity if it was the only Lee statue in the country and we didn't have currently have any museums doing that work. But neither scenario is true.
ReplyDeleteI was curious how many Robert E. Lee memorials there were so I googled it. Wiki gives a long incomplete list, but not a number, and I wasn't going to count them up myself, but it's a lot.
What I did find in my search is that Lee himself was opposed to these monuments--not just to statueshimself but monuments to the confederacy, and statues of other generals. In turning down an invitation to attend a memorial gathering he wrote "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.".
He also wrote "As regards the erection of such a monument as is contemplated,” Lee wrote of an 1866 proposal (to erect a statue of Stonewall Jackson), “my conviction is, 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; [and] of continuing, if not adding to, the difficulties under which the Southern people labour.”
In other words Lee wanted to put the war behind him, and move on--and he wanted the same for the south. So an educated guess, based on his writings, would suggest Lee would support taking down his monument.
I see from your rather personal attack on me that I have annoyed you. Not my intention, this will be my last comment on your blog. I wish you the very best of luck in your blogging.
ReplyDeleteCATHY: I'm sorry we couldn't find some common ground. I guess I never did understand your intentions in this conversation...
ReplyDeleteMy best to you too.
BINK: Belately replying to your comment to say thanks for the info on Lee.
ReplyDeleteI don;t know how many statues of Lee there are, but there are more than 1,500 Confederate monuments.
I'd vote for documenting them all as important history as PHOTOGRAPHS, and then removing them.