Robert E Lee's descendant okay with removal of Confederate monuments

[Mormolyce]

Robert E. Lee's great-great grandson OK with Confederate statues coming down

The great-great grandson of Gen. Robert E. Lee condemned last weekend's violence in Charlottesville, Virginia and said it might be "appropriate" for Confederate statues to be exhibited in a museum.

"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's Polo Sandoval.

"Maybe it's appropriate to have them in museums or to put them in some sort of historical context in that regard," he added.
Gen. Robert E. Lee's bronze statue in Charlottesville was at the center of violent clashes last weekend between white supremacists -- who converged on a park once bearing Lee's name to oppose a plan to remove the statue -- and counterprotesters.

...

Lee, who works as an athletic director at a Virginia school, called Saturday's incidents "senseless" and "sad" for his family.
"Those sorts of acts on Saturday, that's just not to be tolerated," he said. "We feel strongly that Gen. Lee would never ever stand for that sort of violence."
"We just want people to know that the Lee family just really wants to send their best to the people in Charlottesville," Lee added.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/16/us...val/index.html

Fun fact: Robert E. Lee himself was opposed to Confederate war monuments, and the Confederate flag, and even supported the erasure of battlefields.

Here’s what Robert E. Lee thought about Confederate monuments

The violence that erupted in Charlottesville over the weekend, which left one woman killed and dozens more injured, stemmed from a white nationalist and alt-right protest over the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

Debates about the removal of Confederate statues have been ongoing for many years, and opponents of removing the monuments often decry such attempts as an attempt to erase history.

In light of all this, it's probably best to remember one relevant historical fact: Robert E. Lee was opposed to Confederate monuments.

“It’s often forgotten that Lee himself, after the Civil War, opposed monuments, specifically Confederate war monuments,” Jonathan Horn, a Lee biographer, told PBS.

After the Civil War, Lee received a number of letters requesting support for the erection of Confederate memorials, according to Horn.

In June 1866, he wrote that he couldn't support a monument of one of his best generals, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, saying it wasn't "feasible at this time."

"As regards the erection of such a monument as is contemplated," Lee wrote in December 1866 about another proposed Confederate monument, "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."

Not only was Lee opposed to Confederate memorials, "he favored erasing battlefields from the landscape altogether," Horn wrote.

He even supported getting rid of the Confederate flag after the Civil War ended, and didn't want them them flying above Washington College, which he was president of after the war.

"Lee did not want such divisive symbols following him to the grave," Horn wrote. "At his funeral in 1870, flags were notably absent from the procession. Former Confederate soldiers marching did not don their old military uniforms, and neither did the body they buried."

“His Confederate uniform would have been ‘treason’ perhaps!” Lee’s daughter wrote, according to Horn.

"Lee believed countries that erased visible signs of civil war recovered from conflicts quicker,” Horn told PBS. “He was worried that by keeping these symbols alive, it would keep the divisions alive."

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rober...220734970.html

We shouldn't erase history by pulling down monuments to a man who wanted us to erase history!

[Wyrt]

But how will we be able to remember history without statues glorifying slavery?

[Very Tired]

But how will we be able to remember history without statues glorifying slavery?

Slaver-what? W-we never did such a thing in America! Certainly never went to war over it....

Oh god... It's already starting to fade!

[Breccia]

But how will we be able to remember history without statues glorifying slavery?

No no...they were glorifying states' rights. They fought, killed, and died for states' rights.

"Which rights?"

Uh...the rights to own slaves.

[yetgdhfgh]

Robert E Lee sure did fuck up at Gettysburg but apart from that he was a great general.

Didnt Robert E Lee once after the civil war pray with a black guy in a church?

[Travis B]

Slaver-what? W-we never did such a thing in America! Certainly never went to war over it....

Oh god... It's already starting to fade!

Robert E. Lee? Confederacy? Civil War? What are all these strange words?

[Dr Assbandit]

Incoming "Lee's decendant is a beta cuck who is ashamed of his white heritage" .

[Mormolyce]

Incoming "Lee's decendant is a beta cuck who is ashamed of his white heritage" .

And also Robert E Lee himself.

...oh shit.

[Breccia]

Technically they went to war because the federal government refused to force states outside the Confederacy to return runaway slaves; so essentially it was not about state rights but about the federal government not intervening in the affairs of states, which is the exact opposite of state independence.

Depending on which book you read and how far South it was written, the causes seem to vary. Other than the fact that four states put "we want to own slaves" into their mission statement when leaving, that is. And then, the United States ended up shooting themselves in the foot six hundred thousand times -- more than any other war we've ever been in and damn near more than all of them combined -- largely over the right to treat human beings as property.

The United States has done some horrible things over the years, but it's tough to top that one. What kind of person would want to celebrate such a time, to relive such...

(checks last week of news)

Oh, right. Er, alt-right.

[Deletedaccount1]

I think it is a non-issue. Where I live, the government changes history in textbooks to erase its war crimes. At least things like that don't happen in the US, except maybe glossing over the deaths of Native Americans a bit but that is different.

[Wyrt]

I think it is a non-issue. Where I live, the government changes history in textbooks to erase its war crimes. At least things like that don't happen in the US, except maybe glossing over the deaths of Native Americans a bit but that is different.

There are things the US tries to keep low. Like just how bad it was in the Jim Crow era.

[Deletedaccount1]

I don't see the analogy between erasing embarassing history with erasing monuments that glorify that embarassing history.

I didn't make an analogy. Having monuments that glorify local war heroes is different (and much less bad) than completely brainwashing your population about certain events in a relatively recent war (I am referring to Japanese textbooks about WW2). The symbol of the confederacy means more to southerners than nostalgia for slavery. If you disagree with that, you would have to admit that it's at least debatable. The Japanese government rewrites its history books for the direct reason of making the Emperor, the imperial government and State Shinto in general to look more appealing and to create more generations of LDP-voting neoconservative nationalist citizens.

The LDP has been in power in the government every year except for 4 since the modern government was established so you can see how well this brainwashing has worked.

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There are things the US tries to keep low. Like just how bad it was in the Jim Crow era.

I remember learning about that in American public school and how the KKK and local governments would prosecute and lynch blacks during Reconstruction. Maybe it is different in some places but I went to school in Virginia when I lived in the US.

[AndaliteBandit]

No no...they were glorifying states' rights. They fought, killed, and died for states' rights.

"Which rights?"

Uh...the rights to own slaves.

And the Fugitive Slave Act is proof that the slave states were more than happy to take away the rights of other states to not allow slavery within their borders.

So not much has changed at all, has it? They're still pro-state rights, but only until states start doing things conservatives don't like.

[Adam Jensen]

But how will we be able to remember history without statues glorifying slavery?

Because I know when I need to study history, I just jaunt down to the local park, stare at the statues and just absorb the history through osmosis!

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No no...they were glorifying states' rights. They fought, killed, and died for states' rights.

"Which rights?"

Uh...the rights to own slaves.

"It has nothing to do with slavery!"

Ignoring the 15+ years of furious debates revolving around slavery in the territories and the Fugitive Slave Laws and fears of abolitionist movements that lead directly to the civil war breaking out in 1860 . . .

[Breccia]

By the way, the family of Andrew Jackson just said the same thing. Here is the open letter they published.

This is a big deal, as we all know, Trump insists Jackson would have stopped the war in the first place.

[Kujako]

But how will we be able to remember history without statues glorifying slavery?

Stop letting the southern states decide what's in our history books?

[Ripster42]

And the Fugitive Slave Act is proof that the slave states were more than happy to take away the rights of other states to not allow slavery within their borders.

So not much has changed at all, has it? They're still pro-state rights, but only until states start doing things conservatives don't like.

Texas even states in their articles of secession/declaration of causes, whatever you want to call it, that other states not honoring the fugitive slave act is one of their reasons for seceding.

"The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th [This is the article of the constitution to which the fugitive slave act regards, enforcing property rights-FSA specifically regards slaves as property.] article of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holdings States in their domestic institutions--a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.

In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color--a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States."

And, oh ya, the second paragraph.

[Breccia]

MLK had numerous affairs. As our progressive friends have told us, a man who cheats on his wife and then has sex with her, is guilty of rape. Ergo MLK is a rapist. How much longer must we honor are streets and schools with the name of a rapist?

Name one person who said this, and also, reported and ignored.

[-Nurot]

Stop letting the southern states decide what's in our history books?

But Texas just redid all its textbooks a couple years ago. All that money to try and paint history differently would be wasted.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...cies/19175311/
http://www.businessinsider.com/ameri...vil-war-2015-7

[AndaliteBandit]

MLK had numerous affairs. As our progressive friends have told us, a man who cheats on his wife and then has sex with her, is guilty of rape. Ergo MLK is a rapist. How much longer must we honor are streets and schools with the name of a rapist?

I agree, mental health care needs to be be free and easily accessible for all.