By Caroline Hallemann

Aug 15, 2017

Over the weekend, hundreds of white nationalists descended upon Charlottesville, Virginia for two days of violent protests prompted by the city's plan to remove a monument to Robert E. Lee.

Those who argue in favor of keeping the larger-than-life depiction of the Virginian commander of the Confederate Army sitting atop his horse often cite Southern heritage and history as reasons to keep the monument. But like most Confederate war shrines, this oxidized green statue wasn't erected during Reconstruction as a way to honor those men who died in battle. Rather, it dates back to 1924, more than 50 years after the Civil War was over.

In 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center estimated that there were over 1,500 "symbols of the Confederacy in public spaces" in the United States. The majority of them are located, as one might expect, in the 11 states that seceded from the union, but as Vice aptly points out, some can be found in Union states (New York, for example has three, Pennsylvania, four) and at least 22 of them are located in states that didn't even exist during the Civil War.

How can that be possible? Because largely, Confederate monuments were built during two key periods of American history: the beginnings of Jim Crow in the 1920s and the civil rights movement in the early 1950s and 1960s.

To be sure, some sprung up in the years following the Confederacy's defeat (the concept of a Confederate memorial day dates back to back to 1866 and was still officially observed by the governments of Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, as of the publication of the Southern Poverty Law Center's report), and some continue to be built—USA Today notes that 35 Confederate monuments have been erected in North Carolina since 2000.

But when these statues—be they historical place markers, or myth-building icons of Lee or Stonewall Jackson—were built seems to suggest these monuments have very little to do with paying tribute to the Civil War dead and everything to do with erecting monuments to black disenfranchisement, segregation, and 20th-century racial tension.

And in our current political climate, 150 years after the Civil War, it's no surprise these monuments find themselves back in the spotlight yet again. This time, the debate for many governments is how to lessen the hate, by removing the monuments or relocating them to museums with appropriate context. Baltimore, for example, took down statues of Confederate heroes in the middle of the night to avoid conflict. The violence in Charlottesville last weekend is proof that they are not merely markers of a distant history but rather a symbol that we still have much to put right in the 21st century.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/the-stubborn-persistence-of-confederate-monuments/479751/

https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/8/15/16153220/trump-confederate-statues

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/07/27/confederate-monuments-are-about-maintaining-white-supremacy/?utm_term=.b68b084a7967

You aren't Black in the South, I assume. I am a southerner, born and bred. I can say that those who are honored by these statues fought a war so that they might keep black people in chains, literally and figuratively. The vile against black people and Mexicans that I have listened to over the years is unbelievable. If people want to hate, that's their right. For them to act upon that hate IS NOT A RIGHT. We fought a four year war for the purpose of keeping a people SLAVES. That should be celebrated with statues? Its never a good thing to romantisize a despicable action.

Robert E. Lee became a traitor when he declined Lincoln's offer to lead the Union Army and decided instead to fight with the Confederacy. He lead an Army that killed more than 350,000 Union Troops and more than a quarter of a million of Confederate Troops.
In fact Lincoln was going to prosecute Lee for Treason if not for Grant interceding on his behalf.
Had it not been for Grant, Robert E. Lee would have been found guilty of Treason and probably hanged.
It should be a lesson to us all. Just because you believe in something, that doesn't make it right. Hitler and his Nazis believed that all Jews should be killed. Should we honor him because he fought for something he believed in? I think not.

Surely you can't be sincere.

Traitors ALWAYS act on what they believe in. Benedict Arnold did. Julius and Ethey Rosenberg acted upon what they believed in.

Treason is defined by the act, acting against the best interests of your nation.

Donald Trump extolling Vladimir Putin while acting against the interests of the USA could amount to Treason.

Probably did.

Treason is an act, and a Traitor is defined by doing that act, not by being accused, not by performing sincerity, but by acting against his own country.

Robert E. Lee was a traitor. Benedict Arnold was a traitor. Selling national secrets to Russia defines a traitor. A US citizen making war against the US defines a traitor.

Sincerity be damned, The Act Makes The Treason.

"Traitor" is not some label given by a scholar or politician, but a title earne by actions of the guilty, whether the actor is named as a traitor or not. It's like denying being left-handed because no one accused you of being left-handed.

The truth is in the fact, the action, not the absence or presence of a label.

"Just the fact that now any confederate soldier is labelled a traitor and treasonous is proof that history is being rewritten.

"Just the fact that now any confederate soldier is labelled a traitor and treasonous is proof that history is being rewritten."

You may say so, but that doesn't make it so. A man who takes up arms against his own country is a traitor, in the presence of the label, or without it, just as warmth exists with or without a name and water is wet under similar conditions.

Recognizing the Robert E. Lee led an armed insurrection is not throwing him under the bus.

The moral dilemma you refer to was whether or not to take up arms against the nation that bore him and educated him and supported him for years and which he served in violence with honor, dignity, and respect.

He could decline command of the Northern forces with dignity and respect. However, taking command of troops in the act of insurrection was an entirely different matter, and only Lincoln's grace in victory saved him from a hangman's noose.