While a lot of these organizations that pushed the Lost Cause theory are shit heads. I would like to present the Valentine.
The Valentine traces its roots to Edward Valentine, a member of an aristocratic family in antebellum Richmond. Valentine spent the war studying art in Europe, and was depicting Confederates before the final shots were even fired. He was “helping to define the visual imagery of the Lost Cause,” Vida told me, by fashioning generals as godlike. Rather than historical renderings, the imagery of Richmond’s Confederates could be better likened to propaganda. Valentine sculpted Davis, and the statue, funded by the UDC, debuted in 1907.
The Valentine is fairly based because…
In a brick row house down the street from the White House of the Confederacy, a statue of the former president is spotlighted—lying on its back. After Jefferson Davis was pulled to the ground in 2020, the Valentine, a museum that presents Richmond’s history, was delighted to welcome him home. “A rope was tied around his waist and attached to a sedan,” Christina Vida, the curator of general collections, told me with a grin, “and he was pulled off his pedestal.” Vida has neat brown hair that swished at her shoulders as she circled the fallen Confederate on temporary display in the gallery. She pointed to his broken arm, flattened face, and coat of Pepto-Bismol pink paint. She said that of all Confederates doused in 2020, this remarkable pink was found only on Davis. She quite liked it.
There’s a lacquer on Davis’s wounds—a smashed nose, a chipped thumb—to preserve the damage. Tufts of a tissue noose still stick to his neck. When I asked Vida what she thought about the fact that he returned like this, she told me she’s thrilled. In this condition, he doesn’t need placards contextualizing the Lost Cause: He’s a new monument altogether. Atop a pedestal, Davis’s outstretched arm once commanded authority. From the ground, he’s reaching for a helping hand that no one seems to be offering.
Well the are historic in that they’re a part of the history of oppressing black people that continued after the Civil War. But doesn’t seem like history someone in the South should want to celebrate.
Meh, in Tennessee a local bar has the Confederate battle flag on the wall and I have heard in there several times that all Yankees should be shot, referring to anyone from the north. The issue is that people have moved around so much there are from the north in the south and vise versa. New York and California are the most hated states by many southerners.
If you say it referring to Americans as a British person, non offensive. If you are from somewhere where you use it as a derogatory term… I would say it is intended to segregate the populace and that will offend people.
It’s hilarious to me that redneck conservatives love to wave the flags of the Confederacy and the Nazis - the recipients of the two biggest beatdowns in US military history. Losers in every sense of the word.
It’s funny how everyone in this thread has the opinion that they are on the winning or losing side as if anyone alive was actually involved in the war. How anyone can still take these things personally is weird. What I mean is calling a southerner a “loser” is weird from the person giving the insult and the person receiving it (if they actually feel offended, which they shouldn’t).
I always found it weird when people would make hero’s of Allied soldiers in WW2, even though, if you met them in person, you would find their beliefs horrifying.
Everything to do with the confederacy, except from teaching about the civil war, should be banned in the US. That flag they love, ban it. Statues, rip them down. Locations named after conspirators, rename them. The civil war was an attempt to destroy the US and divide it in two. They lost, fortunately. All associations to the traitors they were should not be allowed. People who claim “it’s my heritage” heritage of what exactly? That you’re white? Your skin says that. That your family was racist? Not a good quality to be flaunting and something you should probably come to terms with.
I think the better action, over a blatant violation of the 1st amendment, would to push back ourselves instead of trying to get the government to break its own rules.
Anytime someone uses the phrase “War of Northern Aggression”, pointedly correct them in saying “(American) Civil War”. Anytime they spout “states rights”, amend them with “to own humans and demand other countries return the people they want to enslave”. Rock the damned boat and use the 1st amendment how it should be. They are not protected from other people having disdain for them for being stupidly proud of atrocities. And you know what, being proud of being descended from racist slave owners is not a protected class. Just saying.
The government shouldn’t suppress speech. But we can certainly give them consequences for being assholes.
If the confederate monument was installed in the 19th century, I’ll hear the history argument.
If it was installed as an overtly racist response to civil rights movements in the 20th century, that shit is racist as hell and needs to disappear from public lands.
Nah. Tear 'em all down. The history can be left to the written word, detailing how they got destroyed. They don’t deserve any monument trying to extoll their “glory”. Rubble-ize them and put up memorials to the slaves in their place.
A collage/university in the UK (unfortunately can’t remember which one) dealt with a similar problem well. It had statues of the founders out front. Unfortunately, they made their money from the slave trade. There were calls to destroy the statues. They instead, moved them to a small, half forgot garden in the back. As well as their original descriptive plagues, some more were added, explaining how they made their fortunes, and the various moral failings we now see in them.
It seems to me like this struck a good balance. It acknowledged the good they did, while emphasising the bad. Failing to recognise both good and bad can occur in individuals is often how history can repeat itself.
In short, don’t destroy them. Instead, stick them at the back of a museum to the horrors of slavery, half forgotten, except for their crimes.
I’ll make an exception for Stone Mountain, just because it is the largest work of its kind. (And should remain so.) All the plaques and lookout points can say ‘here’s a neat thing made by assholes.’
Anything that can be put on a truck, though? Honk honk, let’s go already.
Perhaps, but it should be measured. Discarding harmful traditions and such is good, forgetting what we did wrong is bad. I think museums are a great place for these. We certainly don’t care for human sacrifice, but that doesn’t stop us from putting ritual daggers on display from ancient civilizations. No sense in forgetting something important and having to learn it all again, and large objects that stand as a monument to bad decisions can be subverted to a good cause.
With big bold letters that say “SLAVERY IS BAD” for any museums located anywhere that uses the phrase “War of Northern Aggression”.
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