Daniel Shays was born in 1747 in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. Shays was central to a rebellion against the USA that included a raid on the federal armory in Springfield Massachusetts. It failed, he was captured, convicted and sentenced to death, but eventually pardoned and lived out the rest of his life in Sparta, New York, and was buried at the Union Cemetery in Scottsburg New York. Shays is part of American history, same as all of those who in later years joined the Confederacy against the USA. There are no statues honoring Shays in Hopkinton, Sparta, Scottsburg or Springfield, nor should there be. Why are there statues honoring Confederates in the South?
Please share widely!
I give Kansas a ton of credit for honoring John Brown-the rest of America should do the same.
There is a great deal of sympathetic information about John Brown at Harpers Ferry.
It’s a lovely place to spend a day, easily accessible by rail and by car.
Harper’s Ferry from nearby overlook
John Brown’s fort
Armory site, Harper’s Ferry WV
Harper’s Ferry RR station (current)
Hmm … there are “img” links in the above.
Perhaps the editors can help?
Hm … I don’t see the image addresses in the code …
“Why are there statues honoring Confederates in the South?”
Because the social attitudes and forces that led to the Civil war remain unresolved and undiminished nearly two centuries later.
The twisted “morality” that not just enabled but that actually celebrated the unique brand of southern slavery remains engrained in southern culture. We Americans are to quick to absolve ourselves of our collective immorality during the aftermath of the civil war. As a nation — not just in the south — we embraced Eugenics, targeting black populations in particular. That embrace of Eugenics was a significant contributor to an extreme form of the same ideology that produced Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.
There is, in fact, very little distance between American-style Eugenics and Hitler’s “Aryan Race”. The gas chambers were, for Hitler, a way to accelerate the elimination of “inferior races” — an elimination that was spearheaded by the American Eugenics movement.
We should also not ignore the significant role that sexuality plays in our racial attitudes, particularly in the south. Slaves were valuable as property, and were therefore intentionally bred to be fertile. Southern white plantation owners viewed female slaves as sexual objects for their gratification whenever they chose. The belief system that treated those women as sub-human provided a convenient exception to religious teachings about fidelity and marriage. Male slaves were, simultaneously, viewed as dangerous threats to white women. Bred like stud horses, male slaves were violently punished and killed for even looking at white women — largely because of insecurity about the sexual prowess of those black men.
These are belief systems, moral frameworks, and religious rationalizations that change with glacial slowness. It is particularly difficult to bring about change when one of our dominant political parties openly, explicitly, and flagrantly reinforces these beliefs and prejudices at every opportunity.
Many Americans were aghast and appalled by the “Tea Party” movement, which itself pandered to these evils. The GOP, rather than rejecting these appalling demonstrations, embraced them.
“Make America great again” summons these demons, and we see the result in the hate of Charlottesville.
The genie is now out of the bottle. The question facing each of us today is “What do we do now?”
was a bit of a rhetorical question, but I appreciate your input.
The shorthand answer is to oppress the non-white population and to give the poor white working class population someone to look down on instead of the few rich who are behind all things that plague this nation.
I find it interesting that the attitudes and moral values that I describe above were held not only by the slave-owners (who were in what today we call the “1 %”) but also the “poor white trash”. As you observe, these attitudes gave those poor whites somebody else to look down on.
One of the cruel realities of the post-civil war era was the elevation of these non-slave owners to positions of extreme power, after the wealth and power of the elites was destroyed in the defeat of the Confederacy. They had all the racial animosity, bigotry, and insecurity of their elite counterparts, and none of the education and experience to even begin to balance it.
In my view, it is completely impossible to understand today’s white supremacist movements without understanding these cultural traditions and history that nurture them.
A good piece on why the Nazi comparisons are not hyperbolic, and why real neutrality and objectivity requires erasing the Lost Cause narrative.
LBJ nailed it when he said. “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Whenever I talk to any working class Republican, it’s always the same canard that they cling to, the welfare cheat, the lazy minority, the illegal stealing health care….
I am still looking for a way for Democrats to fight this.
I’m actually surprised there are no statues of Shays and would not be bothered if there were. I ran across this article on such matters, which reflects my own views pretty well.
This is a lousy argument. First off, comparing Lee statues to FDR or the Pyramids of Giza is a massive redirection and false equivalency. Like shouting “what about her emails” when confronted with Trumps multiple acts of malfeasance, racism and his total lack of qualification to be president.
Secondly, historiography by nature evolves as we learn new facts and incorporate new perspectives into our collective narrative about American life. These statues were constructed at a time when African Americans were denied the vote, denied education, and denied the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness we take for granted. They were erected by a revanchist Jim Crowe eager to reinstitute racial hierarchy in the aftermath of Hayes withdrawal of federal enforcement for reconstruction.
The Lost Cause narrative relied on Northern accommodation and a misreading of “malice toward none and charity toward all” that asked nothing of the South to “bind the wounds” their war they started to preserve their peculiar institution caused. I think you and this author repeatedly make this same mistake, as so many pre-Civil Rights era historians did.
Read Barbara Fields, an expert on this topic for over 40 years and get back to me. These are not value neutral monuments to begin with but tools of terror used by the ancien regime and its counter revolutionary successor. There’s a reason it’s flown at Klan rallies and a reason white supremacists venerated these icons for decades, and do today. You’re on the side of the of marchers who came to the birthplace of Thomas Jefferson to keep the statue up. Even if you reject their racism and violence you endorse their narrative and overlook the narrative of the marginalized.
Two prominent Southern Democrats strongly disagree with you. Bill Clinton, and Moon Landreiu who eloquently summated why the statues must go:
The historic record is clear, the Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard statues were not erected just to honor these men, but as part of the movement which became known as The Cult of the Lost Cause. This ‘cult’ had one goal — through monuments and through other means — to rewrite history to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity. First erected over 166 years after the founding of our city and 19 years after the end of the Civil War, the monuments that we took down were meant to rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of a defeated Confederacy. It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America, They fought against it. They may have been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots. These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.
See and the final argument is the one I have to push back on. There needs to be an alternative to the cycle of some people act like jerks regarding race, so others react by acting like idiots regarding history. I’d much rather the monuments be reinterpreted rather than removed entirely and part of me even feels that we actually play into the hands of the Lost Causers either by conceding they are right about the history and we can’t have that or giving them another excuse to play victim. As someone who both believes that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it and feels that we are collectively horrible at remembering our past, I’d prefer to expose these to the light of day to get people interested in further study and reflection rather than pursue damnatio memoriae. You may recall I’ve also advocated keeping and possibly expanding statewide, what some call the “hack holidays” of Bunker Hill and Evacuation Days, and while of course I realize the backgrounds of those days are less controversial, in my mind it is for very similar reasons – maintaining public awareness. If these were cult of personality statues erected contemperaniously to their leadership and pulled down in a fervor of regime toppling a la the statue of King George III in NYC or Saddam Hussein in Baghdad I might be singing a different tune, but as many of them were erected as veterans were dying off I see them as more about history from the getgo.
There are a multitude of ways to preserve the historical record. A common practice for government is to relocate these monuments to a museum or other setting where they are rightly interpreted as historical artifacts.
A monument is, by definition, a celebration of an individual or event. There is a reason why the Vietnam veterans memorial in Washington DC is NOT a statue, why it was so controversial, and why it is so well-loved — it is because it evokes history and tragedy without glorifying the event.
These monuments were intended to glorify their subjects when they were erected. That’s why they were erected, and that’s why they should either be relocated or destroyed.
I would argue being an idiot about history is valuing the feelings of long dead veterans of a seditious cause and modern day white supremacists over the feelings of the people these statues were designed to intimidate. Read the Landreiu speech, read Barbara Fields who’s a history professor at Columbia and hardly an idiot. I didn’t argue destroying the statues, but in no way do they belong on public property. We do not to honor any of these people.
We renamed a school in Cambridge after a brave 19th black female educator who was the first principal of that school over the racist eugenics proponent it was originally named after. There’s a plaque explaining why and a documentary graduates of that school are required to watch on why. That’s how you do history, not pretending imagery and narratives are neutral when they were designed to oppress.
You cite Landreiu and also Clinton above, both of whom presumably grew up seeing these monuments, yet somehow they didn’t turn into racists. This oh my virgin eyes attitude is kind of childish. No statue or flag creates or permits racism. Such attitudes are going to be in the hearts of some regardless, though if they can be placed in more appropriate contexts and interpreted appropriately that would be fine. I tend to err on the side of seeing history through the eyes of the participants as opposed to evolving historiography you have mentioned a couple of times. Before you bring up the Third Reich again, I would say that was so obviously evil at the time that Nazi’s don’t get that excuse. I do have the history degree and license remember- you don’t think I’ve given this quite a bit of study or thought? After all, I got my license in part by turning an essay asking us to discuss what caused the Civil War other than slavery on its head. I rejected the premise and forcefully argued that it would not have happened without slavery. It’s ironic that between us I’m the one who gives Trump voters no quarter for supporting such an obvious bigot, yet you seem to be questioning MY racial sensitivities?!
You obviously didn’t read their speeches, their remarks, or talk to black people from the South who grew up with these monuments or taught black students who have to deal with white supremacy on a daily basis. I’m really really disappointed in you Christopher.
You continue to act as if black men and women dont have a valid perspective about American history. After all, it’s their history too and their lives that continue to be held back by our failure to reconcile with it.
If South Africa could ban the Apartheid flag not a year after Mandela took office, surely we can remove it from state flags and government buildings and consign it to history. The German and South Africans have done a much better job than we have.
I’ve never argued that they didn’t vote for a bigot or didn’t hold some bigoted views themselves. I have argued that we can win a small persuadable percentage of them back by amplifying how aligned with hatred this President is and how aligned to corporate America he is. Democrats are finally figuring out how to do both.
My best friend phrased it well, referring to my German-born wife:
“Ask your wife how many statues of Nazi war heroes are in Germany”
The answer, of course, is NONE.
The Germans remember more about their history than we do. They have done a better job eliminating the antisemitism and bigotry that epitomized the Nazi era than we have done about our racism and bigotry that epitomized the Confederacy.
We do not and should not need statues and monuments of the Confederacy to remember its sordid history.
The monuments must go, along with the Confederate flag.
Their history is also more recent and more evil. Show me a Confederate Auschwitz and we can discuss comparisons. It would be more akin to disavowing the history of East Germany, despite that country’s backstory.
It was called Andersonville. You’re really sounding like a Fox Nees host now.
Do you know anything about the Civil War? Did your all white Catholic school have textbooks printed after 1970?
“Show me a Confederate Auschwitz”
This is a bizarrely inappropriate standard. It joins your equally inappropriate comment elsewhere that (to paraphrase) “there have been many genocides, and only one Holocaust”.
I suggest that if we elevate the Holocaust as you suggest, we increase the likelihood that it will happen again. If we truly believe that such evil shall NEVER AGAIN happen, then surely we must analyze its causes and stop it when we see it emerging, rather than steadfastly excusing inaction by reminding us of the uniqueness of the Holocaust.
Is a serial killer who murders 60 victims more evil than one who murders “only” 10? Is genocide a numbers game, where the millions of people killed in the Armenian or Cambodian genocides don’t count because they didn’t reach the standard set by Adolph Hitler? Is it like your view of racism, where it doesn’t count unless a deranged dictator intentionally selects a particular religious or ethnic group because of his or her personal hatred of them?
To me, such machinations remind me of the theologians who argued about the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin — it colossally misses the point.
” We cannot continue to glorify a war against the United States of America fought in defense of slavery. Civil war history doesn’t belong in a place of allegiance on our Capitol grounds. ” Governor Roy Cooper (D-NC)
The Baltimore monuments are being carted off to a warehouse and they’ll be placed in a museum. The Lee statue in New Orleans will be displayed in a museum. And this is absolutely dismantling a cult of personality around venerating evil men.
The founders had a mixed record on the issue from banning the slave trade to their example of manumission. Lee, who inherited some of Martha Washingtons slaves, refused to follow. He forcibly castrated and enslaved thousands of free blacks he encountered on the road to Gettysburg, some of whom had been born freemen. The ones that tried to flee he hanged or burned alive. This is a war criminal, not an honorable foe.
We need a bit more nuance. Lincoln DID offer him Union command after all. Books are the place to go after the good, the bad, and the ugly. Lee is recalled for military leadership, not for his slaves.
Tell that to the slaves he beat, castrated and murdered.
Robert E. Lee made a knowing and intentional choice to command a full-bore military assault against the US. That is treason by any definition. It is also a moral choice.
His moral choices are clear, whatever his military record. The statues were not erected to applaud his military record. There were two distinct periods when these monuments to oppression were created — at the turn of the twentieth century, while the Jim Crow laws were being created, and during the civil rights era while those Jim Crow laws were being forcibly repealed.
You REALLY need to spend more time in the South — especially VA and MD — before attempting to analyze the motivations for these monuments and the ideology and prejudices that they celebrate.
You might, for example, consider the militarily undistinguished career of James Ewell Brown (“Jeb”) Stuart. Though temporarily successful at creating celebrity for himself by showboating, historians agree that his military blunders contributed to the Confederate loss at Gettysburg.
Fast forward nearly a century, during which Mr. Stuart was largely forgotten, to a Virginia suburb of Washington DC in 1958. The Supreme Court was forcing southern states, including Virginia, to dismantle their segregated schools systems. Virginia and the residents of Falls Church, Virginia, vigorously opposed this court-ordered desegregation.
That context is crucial in understanding the 1958 decision to name a then-new high school after Mr. Stuart. The school opened in 1959.
The school board of Fairfax County, VA, finally voted just a few weeks ago to change the name of the school.
Your desire for “nuance” in understanding these matters ignores the clear and long-lasting racism that motivated the civil war, motivated the creation of these monuments to oppression, and that motivates resistance to their removal.
I’ll echo everything Tom is saying.
Also as for the Maryland monuments the history is prettty obviously racially motivated. This was a state that remained within the Union after all (even if Lincoln had to disband its legislature to stop it from leaving) and sent equal numbers of sons to fight on both sides. Yet-the City of Baltimore, a majority black city for most of its 20th century history, decided to only honor the losing and wrong side of the war, a side it actually didn’t fight on. When did they put these up?
In the 1920’s, long after most veterans were dead and when the KKK reached its apex of national prominence and political power after being aided and abetted by Woodrow Wilson’s endorsement of Birth of a Nation and the revival of a Lost Cause narrative even among northerners.
My own grandmothers was seduced by the imagery of Gone with the Wind and had a huge collection of grey soldiers, lawn jockeys, and sambo figurines that we were happy to throw away. They may have has value as antiques but I am glad we threw them out. Especially now that none of her great grandchildren are white.
America can only move on by throwing out this garbage and writing a new chapter that’s inclusive for all American histories.