Removing Confederate Generals portraits?

[J. Beckert]

I did. It's full of fire and brimstone, which I don't believe all Southerners embraced, but I don't doubt for a minute that that wasn't a view that was disseminated by many in the South. The initial focus of this thread was in regards to Lee and Jackson being purged from our national memory as being unfit to be remembered as great Americans. Here's another view of Gen. Lee that is often overlooked. Read this.

http://www.nps.gov/arho/historyculture/slavery.htm

If we're going to assign evil to the whole issue of slavery, we can't forget to include their own people, who rounded them up and sold them for profit, or the Northerners who made fortunes in the trade. Here's another view to ponder when assigning evil to the issue of slavery -

"The shameful history of some traditional leaders remains an awkward subject on which many politicians prefer to maintain silence. One exception was in 1998 when Yoweri Museveni, the president of Uganda, told an audience including Bill Clinton: "African chiefs were the ones waging war on each other and capturing their own people and selling them. If anyone should apologise it should be the African chiefs. We still have those traitors here even today."

Again - we all know slavery was wrong, but passing 21st. century judgement on those who lived in a different time is also wrong.