Charlottesville

[L Verge]

“Enough lives have been sacrificed. We must extinguish our resentments if we expect harmony and union.” Stanton reported that Lincoln “spoke very kindly of General Lee and others of the Confederacy” and showed “in marked degree the kindness and humanity of his disposition, and the tender and forgiving spirit that so eminently distinguished him.”

Oh that some of those engaged in pious words and violent actions now would consider the words above - especially their comments showing resentment of inanimate objects and their support of actions that will only bring turmoil and disunion.

[Lincoln Wonk]

This post has little to do with what happened in Charlottesville, but it does focus on the monuments: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/whi...ar-statues

I love this section which explains the success of the Monumental Bronze Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, which boasted its monuments would last as long as the pyramids of Egypt:

Monumental Bronze Co. set itself apart from its competitors in three ways. One was variety: customers could get an urn-topped pillar, a St. Joseph, or an elephant holding a bushel of cigars, each one on a pedestal with four fully customizable panels. (“It [was] like going to Wal-Mart,” monument expert Timothy S. Sedore told the AP.)

They also had a whole muster of Civil War statues in various designs, the parts of which could also be easily interchanged, Mr. Potato Head-style. “Statue of American Soldier” was a man with a mustache and a billed cap, holding his gun in both hands. “Colorbearer” had a flag draped over his shoulder. “Confederate Soldier,” introduced in 1889, wore a broad-brimmed hat and carried a bedroll. You could also get your soldiers custom-made: the Confederate Monument in Portsmouth, Virginia has four Monumental Bronze Co. statues on it, each fashioned after a local man.

Another of their selling points was price: thanks to their choice of material (as well as their distribution model, which relied on independent “agents” and eliminated the need for storerooms) they could easily undersell stone-based companies. In 1890, a “life size” soldier from Monumental Bronze Co. would set you back $450, the equivalent of $12,000 today—tough, but doable, especially if the whole town was chipping in.

[David Lockmiller]

(08-26-2017 02:46 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Did Lincoln ever express his views on various members of the Confederacy during the war?

In her book “Team of Rivals,” Lincoln historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote at pages 731-33 of President Lincoln's last day fully alive:

Good Friday, April 14, 1865, was surely one of Lincoln’s happiest days. The morning began with a leisurely breakfast in the company of his son Robert, just arrived in Washington. “Well, my son, you have returned safely from the front. The war is now closed, and we soon will live in peace with the brave men that have been fighting against us.”

At 11 AM, Grant arrived at the White House to attend the regularly scheduled Friday cabinet meeting. He had hoped for word that Johnston’s army, the last substantial rebel force remaining, had surrendered to Sherman, but no news had yet arrived. Lincoln told Grant not to worry.

[At the cabinet meeting], Lincoln said that “he thought it providential that this great rebellion was crushed just as Congress had adjourned,” since he and the cabinet were more likely to “accomplish more without them than with them” regarding Reconstruction. He noted that “there were men in Congress who, if their motives were good, were nevertheless impracticable, and who possessed feelings of hate and vindictiveness in which he did not sympathize and could not participate. He hoped there would be no persecution, no bloody work, after the war was over.”

Stanton later wrote that Lincoln seemed “more cheerful and happy” than at any previous cabinet meeting, thrilled by “the near prospect of firm and durable peace at home and abroad.” Throughout the discussion, Stanton recalled, Lincoln “spoke very kindly of General Lee and others of the Confederacy,’ exhibiting “in marked degree the kindness and humanity of his disposition, and the tender and forgiving spirit that so eminently distinguished him.”

That afternoon, Mary and President Lincoln went for an open carriage ride. During the drive, President Lincoln said to Mary: “We must both be more cheerful in the future—between the war & the loss of our darling Willie—we have both been very miserable.”

[Darrell]

(08-19-2017 07:17 PM)L Verge Wrote:  I still want to know how these individual state and local leaders are getting away with ignoring U..S. laws? Kind of reminds me of the Winter of Secession and the debate as to whether states had the right to break away from the Union...

Laurie,

My understanding is that the federal law previously cited (Public Law 85-425) has nothing to do with protecting Confederate monuments and memorials. Rather, it provided for "pensions to widows of veterans who served in the military or naval forces of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War."

It also provided for Confederate veterans to receive "a monthly pension in the same amounts and subject to the same conditions as would have been applicable to such person under the laws in effect on December 31, 1957, if his service in such forces had been service in the military or naval service of the United States."

The latter provision was largely symbolic as there was purportedly only one Confederate veteran still living at the time the legislation was enacted, Walter Washington Green Williams (and his claim to having worn the grey is highly suspect).

http://uscode.house.gov/statutes/pl/85/425.pdf

---

Speaking of Civil War pensions, apparently there is one individual still receiving this federal benefit based on her father's service. And, interestedly, he fought on both sides of The Late Unpleasantness, originally enlisting in the Confederate army in 1862, but later deserting to join the Union.

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/201...shot-fired

[L Verge]

It doesn't make me happy that the protection of those statues is evidently fabricated, but thanks for sharing. Let's hope that some of the legal minds on this forum can find something different that will protect further vandalism and destruction. I'm tired of things slipping closer to anarchy.

[Darrell]

(09-02-2017 11:24 AM)L Verge Wrote:  It doesn't make me happy that the protection of those statues is evidently fabricated, but thanks for sharing. Let's hope that some of the legal minds on this forum can find something different that will protect further vandalism and destruction. I'm tired of things slipping closer to anarchy.

Agreed. On the other hand, the Virginia statute does seem to protect Confederate monuments. It specifically authorizes a locality to erect Confederate monument and memorials. And it states that "[i]f such are erected, it shall be unlawful for the authorities of the locality, or any other person or persons, to disturb or interfere with any monuments or memorials so erected, or to prevent its citizens from taking proper measures and exercising proper means for the protection, preservation and care of same."

That said, whether or not the Virginia statute covers the Confederate monuments in Charlottesville, is a matter currently before Charlottesville Circuit Judge Richard Moore.

https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacodefull/.../article3/

[L Verge]

(09-02-2017 04:02 PM)Darrell Wrote:  

(09-02-2017 11:24 AM)L Verge Wrote:  It doesn't make me happy that the protection of those statues is evidently fabricated, but thanks for sharing. Let's hope that some of the legal minds on this forum can find something different that will protect further vandalism and destruction. I'm tired of things slipping closer to anarchy.

Agreed. On the other hand, the Virginia statute does seem to protect Confederate monuments. It specifically authorizes a locality to erect Confederate monument and memorials. And it states that "[i]f such are erected, it shall be unlawful for the authorities of the locality, or any other person or persons, to disturb or interfere with any monuments or memorials so erected, or to prevent its citizens from taking proper measures and exercising proper means for the protection, preservation and care of same."

That said, whether or not the Virginia statute covers the Confederate monuments in Charlottesville, is a matter currently before Charlottesville Circuit Judge Richard Moore.

https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacodefull/.../article3/

Virginia gives me hope, but one of the causes of the War Between the States was the issue of whether or not states and localities can decide their own principles. We know how that turned out. Does anyone know the political leanings of this particular judge?

[Lincoln Wonk]

This is an interesting solution from Russia, from today's LA Times:
On the ground in Moscow
A home for Soviet symbols
A sculpture park hosts maimed, toppled statues of deplorable leaders
THE MUZEON park in Moscow may provide an answer for Americans conflicted over what to do about monuments to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. (Mladen Antonov AFP/Getty Images)
with Sabra Ayres
M arusya climbed the concrete platform to Josef Stalin’s feet, followed by her younger sister, Lilia. Ducking behind the former Soviet dictator’s red granite leg, Marusya initiated a game of hide-and-seek with her sister, and the two began chasing each other around the statue’s base.
“Marusya, don’t do that! Come down. Someone is going to fall!” her mother yelled from the sidewalk where she was pushing a baby carriage and chatting with another young mother. The two sisters continued to giggle as they circled the statue’s feet.
The girls didn’t seem to notice that the statue of the man responsible for some of the Soviet Union’s greatest atrocities — the Great Terror political purges of the 1930s, an engineered famine in Ukraine and the deportation of millions to Siberia — was missing a nose. The facial feature was probably chipped off in 1991 during its transfer from its original home in front of Moscow’s famed Bolshoi Theater to this sculpture park on the Crimean embankment of the Moscow River.
After a few turns around Stalin’s boots, the children jumped down and scurried over to the next object in their climbing adventure: Yakov Sverdlov, a Soviet Communist Party leader notable for giving the order to assassinate the Russian czar and his family in 1918.
As the debate in the United States over Confederate and other historic monuments rages on, Russians have, for the time being, laid to rest their own debate about statues here in the Muzeon sculpture park.
“It’s our history! Of course they shouldn’t be thrown away in a trash bin,” said Marina Skokova, 61, a Moscow pensioner who was taking advantage of the summer’s remaining warm days to stroll through the park with her two nephews. “We shouldn’t forget our history, both the good and the bad times.”
In 1991, when the Soviet Union was breaking up and the promise of democracy was in the air, Moscow and other cities across the former U.S.S.R. rushed to change the names of streets and squares bearing Soviet-era names. Hundreds of statues of Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, came down, some by force and some by a democratic vote.
So did monuments to many other Soviet luminaries.
A statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police agency that was the precursor to the KGB, once stood prominently in front of the agency’s headquarters in central Moscow, a place notorious for detainment and torture in its basement cells.
The Moscow City Council voted in October 1991 to dismantle the Dzerzhinsky statue, which had been toppled by demonstrators two months earlier, as Russia made efforts to come to terms with its totalitarian past. In 1994, the 14-ton bronze figure was moved to its current perch in the sculpture park.
“This work is historically and culturally significant, being the memorial construction of the Soviet era on the themes of politics and ideology,” the sign in front of the statue says.
Standing in the shadow of “Iron Felix,” as he was known, Skokova had advice for Americans conflicted over what to do about monuments to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
“You should do what we did here,” she said. “You can’t try to hide from the past.”
The statement probably had little meaning to the young girls, who were taking full advantage of the August sunshine in Moscow’s biggest sculpture park, home to more than 700 pieces, including modern works of art. But the park’s collection of former Soviet memorials is the big draw for tourists seeking a taste of what life looked like in communist Russia before the breakup of the Soviet Union.
When the Lenin busts and statues of Soviet leaders were dismantled and brought to this riverside park in the mid-1990s by the decree of the Moscow government, many were placed arbitrarily in the grassy field behind the modern art collection of the Tretyakov Gallery and Central House of Artists exhibition halls, a massive Soviet piece of architecture that today is host to some of Russia’s top art exhibitions.
But the Muzeon park received a substantial renovation in 2012, transforming it into one of Moscow’s most popular spots for strolling with friends or walking dogs. Hip cafes serving espresso concoctions — flat whites, iced lattes — are scattered among the park’s collection of sculptures, both Soviet and modern collections. Lovers sit on park benches overlooking the Moscow River, where cruise boats ply its waters on their way toward the red brick walls of the Kremlin.
Pingpong tables host spontaneous battles between rowdy groups of young men, while pensioners read their papers from benches lining the paved walkways. Across the park from Stalin’s stern gaze, a teenage rock band practiced on a concert stand for an evening performance, one of the last before the start of the school year on Sept. 1.
Today, the Soviet relics have been propped up and, like the Dzerzhinsky statue, given brief descriptions listing the subject, the artist and where the monuments once stood. There are no mentions of the estimated tens of millions of people killed by the secret police during the 70 years of Soviet rule.
To Stalin’s right shoulder there is a wooden walkway that winds about 25 feet through various sizes and shapes of Lenins and Stalins. At one end of the walkway, two shiny, black granite busts — one of Lenin and one of Karl Marx — have become popular spots for tourists to pose for the essential selfie to complete any Moscow visit.
There are still plenty of communist leaders’ busts and statues around the Russian capital and, indeed, the country. In the last year, several cities have erected or, rather, re-erected statues of Stalin as part of a resurgence of admiration for the Soviet leader in Russia.
Less than a mile away from Muzeon, Vladimir Lenin stands at October Square with his hand stretched out toward the Kremlin. It’s now a popular spot for skateboarders. The preserved remains of the Soviet leader, of course, remain on display in his mausoleum at Red Square.
Meanwhile, in neighboring Ukraine, a nationwide “de-communization” program has removed 1,320 Lenin statues across the country. Although many Ukrainians have rejoiced in the tear-down of memorials to a man who embodied domination and repression, the de-communization program has not been without its critics.
“I think it’s wrong, they shouldn’t have done it the way they did,” said Maxim Skokov, 17, who was wandering around the Soviet statues in Moscow with his aunt, Marina. The teen, who came to Moscow from central Ukraine, sees the movement there to tear down the Lenin statues as an attempt “to hide our history.”
His aunt nodded in agreement.
“If you try to forget your history, you will forget who you are and where you came from,” Skokova said. “And if you forget who you are and where you came from, it will be easy for them to just forget you!”

[L Verge]

(09-05-2017 08:46 AM)Lincoln Wonk Wrote:  This is an interesting solution from Russia, from today's LA Times:
On the ground in Moscow
A home for Soviet symbols
A sculpture park hosts maimed, toppled statues of deplorable leaders
THE MUZEON park in Moscow may provide an answer for Americans conflicted over what to do about monuments to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. (Mladen Antonov AFP/Getty Images)
with Sabra Ayres
M arusya climbed the concrete platform to Josef Stalin’s feet, followed by her younger sister, Lilia. Ducking behind the former Soviet dictator’s red granite leg, Marusya initiated a game of hide-and-seek with her sister, and the two began chasing each other around the statue’s base.
“Marusya, don’t do that! Come down. Someone is going to fall!” her mother yelled from the sidewalk where she was pushing a baby carriage and chatting with another young mother. The two sisters continued to giggle as they circled the statue’s feet.
The girls didn’t seem to notice that the statue of the man responsible for some of the Soviet Union’s greatest atrocities — the Great Terror political purges of the 1930s, an engineered famine in Ukraine and the deportation of millions to Siberia — was missing a nose. The facial feature was probably chipped off in 1991 during its transfer from its original home in front of Moscow’s famed Bolshoi Theater to this sculpture park on the Crimean embankment of the Moscow River.
After a few turns around Stalin’s boots, the children jumped down and scurried over to the next object in their climbing adventure: Yakov Sverdlov, a Soviet Communist Party leader notable for giving the order to assassinate the Russian czar and his family in 1918.
As the debate in the United States over Confederate and other historic monuments rages on, Russians have, for the time being, laid to rest their own debate about statues here in the Muzeon sculpture park.
“It’s our history! Of course they shouldn’t be thrown away in a trash bin,” said Marina Skokova, 61, a Moscow pensioner who was taking advantage of the summer’s remaining warm days to stroll through the park with her two nephews. “We shouldn’t forget our history, both the good and the bad times.”
In 1991, when the Soviet Union was breaking up and the promise of democracy was in the air, Moscow and other cities across the former U.S.S.R. rushed to change the names of streets and squares bearing Soviet-era names. Hundreds of statues of Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, came down, some by force and some by a democratic vote.
So did monuments to many other Soviet luminaries.
A statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police agency that was the precursor to the KGB, once stood prominently in front of the agency’s headquarters in central Moscow, a place notorious for detainment and torture in its basement cells.
The Moscow City Council voted in October 1991 to dismantle the Dzerzhinsky statue, which had been toppled by demonstrators two months earlier, as Russia made efforts to come to terms with its totalitarian past. In 1994, the 14-ton bronze figure was moved to its current perch in the sculpture park.
“This work is historically and culturally significant, being the memorial construction of the Soviet era on the themes of politics and ideology,” the sign in front of the statue says.
Standing in the shadow of “Iron Felix,” as he was known, Skokova had advice for Americans conflicted over what to do about monuments to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
“You should do what we did here,” she said. “You can’t try to hide from the past.”
The statement probably had little meaning to the young girls, who were taking full advantage of the August sunshine in Moscow’s biggest sculpture park, home to more than 700 pieces, including modern works of art. But the park’s collection of former Soviet memorials is the big draw for tourists seeking a taste of what life looked like in communist Russia before the breakup of the Soviet Union.
When the Lenin busts and statues of Soviet leaders were dismantled and brought to this riverside park in the mid-1990s by the decree of the Moscow government, many were placed arbitrarily in the grassy field behind the modern art collection of the Tretyakov Gallery and Central House of Artists exhibition halls, a massive Soviet piece of architecture that today is host to some of Russia’s top art exhibitions.
But the Muzeon park received a substantial renovation in 2012, transforming it into one of Moscow’s most popular spots for strolling with friends or walking dogs. Hip cafes serving espresso concoctions — flat whites, iced lattes — are scattered among the park’s collection of sculptures, both Soviet and modern collections. Lovers sit on park benches overlooking the Moscow River, where cruise boats ply its waters on their way toward the red brick walls of the Kremlin.
Pingpong tables host spontaneous battles between rowdy groups of young men, while pensioners read their papers from benches lining the paved walkways. Across the park from Stalin’s stern gaze, a teenage rock band practiced on a concert stand for an evening performance, one of the last before the start of the school year on Sept. 1.
Today, the Soviet relics have been propped up and, like the Dzerzhinsky statue, given brief descriptions listing the subject, the artist and where the monuments once stood. There are no mentions of the estimated tens of millions of people killed by the secret police during the 70 years of Soviet rule.
To Stalin’s right shoulder there is a wooden walkway that winds about 25 feet through various sizes and shapes of Lenins and Stalins. At one end of the walkway, two shiny, black granite busts — one of Lenin and one of Karl Marx — have become popular spots for tourists to pose for the essential selfie to complete any Moscow visit.
There are still plenty of communist leaders’ busts and statues around the Russian capital and, indeed, the country. In the last year, several cities have erected or, rather, re-erected statues of Stalin as part of a resurgence of admiration for the Soviet leader in Russia.
Less than a mile away from Muzeon, Vladimir Lenin stands at October Square with his hand stretched out toward the Kremlin. It’s now a popular spot for skateboarders. The preserved remains of the Soviet leader, of course, remain on display in his mausoleum at Red Square.
Meanwhile, in neighboring Ukraine, a nationwide “de-communization” program has removed 1,320 Lenin statues across the country. Although many Ukrainians have rejoiced in the tear-down of memorials to a man who embodied domination and repression, the de-communization program has not been without its critics.
“I think it’s wrong, they shouldn’t have done it the way they did,” said Maxim Skokov, 17, who was wandering around the Soviet statues in Moscow with his aunt, Marina. The teen, who came to Moscow from central Ukraine, sees the movement there to tear down the Lenin statues as an attempt “to hide our history.”
His aunt nodded in agreement.
“If you try to forget your history, you will forget who you are and where you came from,” Skokova said. “And if you forget who you are and where you came from, it will be easy for them to just forget you!”

Just in case our readers stopped reading before they got to the significant part of this:

"Although many Ukrainians have rejoiced in the tear-down of memorials to a man who embodied domination and repression, the de-communization program has not been without its critics.
“I think it’s wrong, they shouldn’t have done it the way they did,” said Maxim Skokov, 17, who was wandering around the Soviet statues in Moscow with his aunt, Marina. The teen, who came to Moscow from central Ukraine, sees the movement there to tear down the Lenin statues as an attempt “to hide our history.”
His aunt nodded in agreement.
“If you try to forget your history, you will forget who you are and where you came from,” Skokova said. “And if you forget who you are and where you came from, it will be easy for them to just forget you!”

I know it will make little difference to the pious preachers who continue to spread hatred for people and institutions that died 150 years ago, but wiping out symbols will not advance their cause. If they are so smart, let them use their intelligence and skills in constructive ways, not destructive ones. That 17-year-old mentioned above is the smart one!

Thank you, Kathy, for that post.
[/quote]

[L Verge]

Another interesting footnote to history that is very applicable today:

https://emergingcivilwar.com/2017/09/05/...ntroversy/

[L Verge]

Many of our members may be familiar with the well-established, monthly newspaper, Civil War News. I just received my October issue, and the headline reads: "Confederate Monuments are Welcome at Beauvoir: Save the Monuments Plea."

Beauvoir, the Jefferson Davis home in Biloxi, MS, and the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library and Museum are putting out a plea to have assistance in identifying further monuments designated for removal and contacts for those responsible for the removal and disposition of each. Their goal is to bring said monuments to their property in order to prevent them from lying in storage units, junk yards, scrap heaps, or museums of "contempt" (their phrasing).

The article cites the need for them to be preserved for historical interpretation (from both sides of the issue) as well as works of art. The writer is also careful to say that they are appealing to the reasonable people of our country who have no agenda and no desire to divide our country and that they want to be part of the solution in diffusing what is currently going on and to bring back the importance of understanding our history through the eyes of those who lived it.

"If we can take the heat off, then we can focus a genuine light on our history. We want to face it in a very honest and forthright manner. Reasonable people can understand it and move on. There are far more reasonable people who care about their family and heritage, who love their country and are patriotic people than there are people who do not. ... We will not get involved with politics; that is not our job. Our job is education and commemoration. ... We will be a thermostat instead of a thermometer. We are going to turn down the heat."

These words come from Dr. Tom Payne, Executive Director & General Counsel for Beauvoir and the Davis Presidential Library and Museum. The plea then goes out for citizens, local officials, and others to save threatened monuments and memorials and send them to the Beauvoir campus for historical interpretation. Of course, funding is an issue that is not stressed in this article, but an online link to the Beauvoir Legacy Campaign is gf.me/u/cfknnu The Campaign may also be reached at 2244 Beach Blvd., Biloxi, MS 39531 - 228-388-4400.

On page 2 of the same issue is a statement from the Civil War Trust declaring zero tolerance for the violence and hatred that has been on display recently...and as a non-partisan historic preservation organization, they support protection of war monuments and memorials. "Many of these monuments are historic in their own right and potentially eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. We believe that such monuments, when properly interpreted and put into context, are invaluable educational tools that teach modern Americans about the Civil War, slavery, and the nation we are today."

Too bad that most of our current "ranters, ravers, and malleable politicians" will never read these articles. They are just not interested in the reasonable and historical aspects of this controversy.