Charlottesville

[brtmchl]

(08-15-2017 10:14 AM)brtmchl Wrote:  If These Confederate statues are "Flash Points," although now a days what isn't a hot button topic, representing slavery...then shouldn't they also represent the sacrifice and willingness to abolish slavery as well?

If these monuments and statues were British, I would say get rid of them. We broke from British Governance and created our own Nation. A young Nation. One that has made mistakes but has also become a beacon for all people regardless of their skin.

These statues are not foreign. They are American. A part of our past that we can't run from and pretend never happened. Rife with Flaws, Honor, Prejudice, Statehood, Sacrifice, Pride, Misguided beliefs backed up by law, Loyalty, Duty, etc... You look upon anything with a preconceived idea and you are sure to find it.

It's a shame this incident happened at the Lee Monument, Robert E Lee stated "There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former."

Lee played a key role in the post-Civil War reconciliation. While a few politicians and zealots in the army wanted to wage a bloody interminable guerilla war that would have torn this country apart, General Lee would have none of that.

Many Generals such as Longstreet, did so for the good of the country. Others who perished in the Civil War, like Stonewall Jackson and Pat Cleburne, had little tolerance for racism. Even General Nathan Bedford Forrest, after forming the Klan, realized how destructive the group had become. Forrest went on to serve under General William T. Sherman, working to destroy the KKK and arrest white men who had lynched a black man.

History should be talked about. It is a constant lesson. One to be revisited in order to understand the evolution of Man and Country. I look at these statues and see many things. The most important is the reminder of how far we have come. I am speaking personally, and my views are mine alone. I am aware that everyone else has their own emotional or reasoned thoughts as to whether these monuments are offensive or not.

Mob rule has no business in society. The example in Raleigh yesterday is an example. This went beyond removing a statue. There is an unhealthy anger accompanied with violence and destruction that follows these protests groups. When we tear something down because we are offended, aren't we offending someone in turn. Possibly an ancestor who has pride in his family for making a sacrifice for his country or state, or even an ancestor of a slave who looks upon that statue and sees the History of his race and what they overcame? When we destroy a statue do we also march to a library, museum, burial space or another statue and tear down the existence of all those in Congress who appeased the South by not abolishing slavery outright through law? We should erase all History of our Nation prior to the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment.

According to David Blight, Yale University, "James K. Polk, this expansionist president, expansionist slaveholding president, now, became the sixth of the first ten American presidents who was a slaveholder. Don Fehrenbacher's book called Slaveholding Republic shows us that before the American Civil War two-thirds of all American presidents were slaveholders or deeply sympathetic with slaveholding, as in the case of James Buchanan by the late 1850s. Two-thirds of all members of the U.S. Supreme Court were slaveholders. And, so far as we know, James K. Polk was the only president in American history to actually buy and sell slaves from the Oval Office of the White House."

According to Wikipedia, "Polk is now recognized, not only as the strongest president between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, but also the president who made the United States a coast-to-coast nation. When historians began ranking the presidents in 1948, Polk ranked 10th in Arthur M. Schlesinger's poll. and has subsequently ranked 8th in Schlesinger's 1962 poll, 11th in the Riders-McIver Poll (1996), 11th in the most recent Siena Poll (2002), 9th in the most recent Wall Street Journal Poll (2005), and 12th in the latest C-Span Poll (2009)."

Hate is not a White thing or a Black thing. Hate is on the inside, where we are all the same color. Destroying and removing these monuments does not erase racism and hate from society.