Office Hours: If you are a paid subscriber, keep an eye out for an email with a zoom link for our conversation tomorrow evening at 8PM EST about the recent dedication of the Confederate monument on the Franklin battlefield. Eric Jacobson will join us to answer your questions.
But they are history lessons. The tax dollar issue is technically factual but tax dollars are of great interest to the general public in other unrelated areas of political life - not in this area, not on a national scale. NYC's Upper West Side as a locality has chosen to again renovate their statue. If localities want to fight over these monuments and their meaning, they will fight. You cannot dictate what people may believe.
To argue about tax dollars is to make an unspoken assumption that you have "Justice" on your side and a right therefore to control or manage public opinion. That's not what historians are supposed to do
Thanks for the follow up. My only point is that when it comes to public spaces that everyone has a stake in how they are used to commemorate the past. As you rightly point out, localities have every right to debate these issues. From a historical perspective there is nothing at all unusual about the removal of monuments. They go up for any number of reasons and are removed as well.
Finally, I am drawing a distinction between history and commemoration or memory. The former is the study of the past through the critical examination of primary sources. Monuments are intended as timeless statements of values about how a community *should* remember the past and what values they should aspire to or embrace. The latter has always been hotly contested and will continue to be.
I always felt nostalgia when passing by this monument as a child, discerning that it was about something ancient, grievous and unknowable. A somber lonely unvisited monument about something dreadful.
The war no longer seems like history for library and school books only. It now beckons one to THINK about the unbelievable reality that it was. Our own citizens killing one another with military victory the only solution.
Note that in 1902 the monument name made no reference to Union soldiers and sailors. It was just named Soldiers and Sailors Monument.
I personally feel all monuments should remain because they are history too. Plaques can explain their background. You cannot anesthetize the American mind through political correctness nor can you change peoples' ignorance and bigotry by force. You may kill the body but you can't change the spirits. Let people see the pathetic nature of mankind with their own eyes. Don't insulate the public. You cannot control what people will commemorate and you don't really have a right to. Argue and debate and teach, but don't try to control the truth. That is the way that NPR, CNN, The New York Times and even the NYRB have travelled and the public is understandably tuning them, and your apparent messaging, out at this time in our national life.
You said: "You cannot control what people will commemorate and you don't really have a right to."
This is certainly the case when it comes to how people commemorate/celebrate the past privately, but when it comes to public spaces we all have a stake in how our tax dollars are utilized.
Monuments/statues are indeed history, but they are not intended as history lessons. They are statements of memory or how a certain generation has decided to remember the past.
Well, the Morgan monument is nearly as ugly as the famous one of Forrest (?) that appeared to be made out of plastic. Confederate sculpture has really fallen off in terms of artistry, as well as numbers.
As to the Ohio statue, the Underground RR went through the state. Eliza's crossing the Ohio River, which was the seminal incident of Uncle Tom's Cabin, occurred SE of Cincy in 1838. Perhaps to salvage the casting costs, make and dedicate another statue of refugees from enslavement, fleeing him. Perhaps also add in a Friend interposing between the pursuer and the refugees.
Otherwise, I now hope for some descendant of an Abolitionist and/or URR passenger to spraypaint the uniform blue.
Re the ending line, "Civil War memory in the United States never fails to fascinate":
Amen. And concerning Civil War Memory, with a capital M, I'm grateful again, especially for the quotation from (and the link and inherent tip to read) the Atlantic article "The Faithful Slave: How Alex Tizon’s essay echoes a trope with deep roots in American history" by Micki McElya.
I also appreciated the close-up clearly showing the offensive statement on the statue. On the Confederate Memorial that was removed from Arlington National Cemetery, the faithful-slave lie was far less brazenly trumpeted.
Civil War Memory, with that capital M, never fails to educate.
UPDATE: Here is some important context that a historian friend added to the post on my Facebook page.
"The statue also has a curious inscription that the "Confederate soldier fought and won the admiration..." (of people who value duty, or something close to that) but the break in the sentence is at won, and upon first reading it seems to say that the Confederate soldier won. It is an entirely metal monument - pressed to look like stone at the bottom (which is singular of monuments I have seen in NC). If memory serves, it is the only such monument to even mention slaves or slavery in NC. There is a back story, probably several. Tyrrell County was a contested landscape with White men who joined both armies and navies (another ancestor William B. Liverman was captured at Beech Grove February 2, 1864 but rather than hanged at Kinston he was sent to Richmond and died a POW there) and African American men who joined the US forces. Men from both political backgrounds would hide in the woods to escape one force or the other. Often the enslaved community would be the ones who brought them food, etc. In another strong oral tradition an enslaved woman saved the records of the county from US troops - the county officials moved the records to her dwelling and she set up a large cauldron and filled it with water. When US troops showed up at her door she threatened to scald them if they messed with her. Apocryphal? perhaps. I can tell you that Tyrrell County's records are almost all around still - unlike, say, Currituck County or Camden County. It is perhaps this local memory of a service performed that brought about the inclusion of that plaque on the monument. The monument was originally placed in the center of the intersection next to the lot it now stands on. I can understand that some people wish it down. This is part of the back story as I know it but a local historian might have even more to share for understanding that plaque."
But they are history lessons. The tax dollar issue is technically factual but tax dollars are of great interest to the general public in other unrelated areas of political life - not in this area, not on a national scale. NYC's Upper West Side as a locality has chosen to again renovate their statue. If localities want to fight over these monuments and their meaning, they will fight. You cannot dictate what people may believe.
To argue about tax dollars is to make an unspoken assumption that you have "Justice" on your side and a right therefore to control or manage public opinion. That's not what historians are supposed to do
Thanks for the follow up. My only point is that when it comes to public spaces that everyone has a stake in how they are used to commemorate the past. As you rightly point out, localities have every right to debate these issues. From a historical perspective there is nothing at all unusual about the removal of monuments. They go up for any number of reasons and are removed as well.
Finally, I am drawing a distinction between history and commemoration or memory. The former is the study of the past through the critical examination of primary sources. Monuments are intended as timeless statements of values about how a community *should* remember the past and what values they should aspire to or embrace. The latter has always been hotly contested and will continue to be.
I always felt nostalgia when passing by this monument as a child, discerning that it was about something ancient, grievous and unknowable. A somber lonely unvisited monument about something dreadful.
https://www.westsiderag.com/2024/05/23/new-design-revealed-for-soldiers-and-sailors-monument-restoration-in-riverside-park-see-it
https://g.co/kgs/ywS1w8p
The war no longer seems like history for library and school books only. It now beckons one to THINK about the unbelievable reality that it was. Our own citizens killing one another with military victory the only solution.
Note that in 1902 the monument name made no reference to Union soldiers and sailors. It was just named Soldiers and Sailors Monument.
I personally feel all monuments should remain because they are history too. Plaques can explain their background. You cannot anesthetize the American mind through political correctness nor can you change peoples' ignorance and bigotry by force. You may kill the body but you can't change the spirits. Let people see the pathetic nature of mankind with their own eyes. Don't insulate the public. You cannot control what people will commemorate and you don't really have a right to. Argue and debate and teach, but don't try to control the truth. That is the way that NPR, CNN, The New York Times and even the NYRB have travelled and the public is understandably tuning them, and your apparent messaging, out at this time in our national life.
Thanks for sharing your perspective.
You said: "You cannot control what people will commemorate and you don't really have a right to."
This is certainly the case when it comes to how people commemorate/celebrate the past privately, but when it comes to public spaces we all have a stake in how our tax dollars are utilized.
Monuments/statues are indeed history, but they are not intended as history lessons. They are statements of memory or how a certain generation has decided to remember the past.
Well, the Morgan monument is nearly as ugly as the famous one of Forrest (?) that appeared to be made out of plastic. Confederate sculpture has really fallen off in terms of artistry, as well as numbers.
As to the Ohio statue, the Underground RR went through the state. Eliza's crossing the Ohio River, which was the seminal incident of Uncle Tom's Cabin, occurred SE of Cincy in 1838. Perhaps to salvage the casting costs, make and dedicate another statue of refugees from enslavement, fleeing him. Perhaps also add in a Friend interposing between the pursuer and the refugees.
Otherwise, I now hope for some descendant of an Abolitionist and/or URR passenger to spraypaint the uniform blue.
I wonder what William Tecumseh Sherman would think.
Hear, hear!!! 👏👏👏👏👏
Re the ending line, "Civil War memory in the United States never fails to fascinate":
Amen. And concerning Civil War Memory, with a capital M, I'm grateful again, especially for the quotation from (and the link and inherent tip to read) the Atlantic article "The Faithful Slave: How Alex Tizon’s essay echoes a trope with deep roots in American history" by Micki McElya.
I also appreciated the close-up clearly showing the offensive statement on the statue. On the Confederate Memorial that was removed from Arlington National Cemetery, the faithful-slave lie was far less brazenly trumpeted.
Civil War Memory, with that capital M, never fails to educate.
UPDATE: Here is some important context that a historian friend added to the post on my Facebook page.
"The statue also has a curious inscription that the "Confederate soldier fought and won the admiration..." (of people who value duty, or something close to that) but the break in the sentence is at won, and upon first reading it seems to say that the Confederate soldier won. It is an entirely metal monument - pressed to look like stone at the bottom (which is singular of monuments I have seen in NC). If memory serves, it is the only such monument to even mention slaves or slavery in NC. There is a back story, probably several. Tyrrell County was a contested landscape with White men who joined both armies and navies (another ancestor William B. Liverman was captured at Beech Grove February 2, 1864 but rather than hanged at Kinston he was sent to Richmond and died a POW there) and African American men who joined the US forces. Men from both political backgrounds would hide in the woods to escape one force or the other. Often the enslaved community would be the ones who brought them food, etc. In another strong oral tradition an enslaved woman saved the records of the county from US troops - the county officials moved the records to her dwelling and she set up a large cauldron and filled it with water. When US troops showed up at her door she threatened to scald them if they messed with her. Apocryphal? perhaps. I can tell you that Tyrrell County's records are almost all around still - unlike, say, Currituck County or Camden County. It is perhaps this local memory of a service performed that brought about the inclusion of that plaque on the monument. The monument was originally placed in the center of the intersection next to the lot it now stands on. I can understand that some people wish it down. This is part of the back story as I know it but a local historian might have even more to share for understanding that plaque."