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Politics: General Removal of Statues Thread

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Bamaro

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Tidewater said:
There are demands that the Emancipation statue in Washingon, DC be removed.
View attachment 9191
Ex-slaves raised the money for that statue, and demanded that the slave figure of the monument be wearing shackled which the slave himself has broken, showing black agency in the process.
Frederick Douglass himself spoke at the dedication of that monument.
He said, (in part):

"That we are here in peace to-day is a compliment and a credit to American civilization, and a prophecy of still greater national enlightenment and progress in the future. I refer to the past not in malice, for this is no day for malice; but simply to place more distinctly in front the gratifying and glorious change which has come both to our white fellow-citizens and ourselves, and to congratulate all upon the contrast between now and then; the new dispensation of freedom with its thousand blessings to both races, and the old dispensation of slavery with its ten thousand evils to both races—white and black. In view, then, of the past, the present, and the future, with the long and dark history of our bondage behind us, and with liberty, progress, and enlightenment before us, I again congratulate you upon this auspicious day and hour."

Douglass closed his comments this way:
"Fellow-citizens, I end, as I began, with congratulations. We have done a good work for our race to-day. In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors to ourselves and those who come after us; we have been fastening ourselves to a name and fame imperishable and immortal; we have also been defending ourselves from a blighting scandal. When now it shall be said that the colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of benefits or benefactors; when the foul reproach of ingratitude is hurled at us, and it is attempted to scourge us beyond the range of human brotherhood, we may calmly point to the monument we have this day erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln."

The DC delegate to Congress introduces legislation to remove the emancipation monument.

I imagine if we could revive Frederisk Douglass and explain the situation to him his would reaction would be:
View attachment 9192
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Hopefully calmer heads will prevail.
 
Tidewater

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92tide said:
from the article.



i guess she is referring to this. his reaction upon being revived would probably be a little more complex and nuanced.
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I read the speech and Douglass was more criticizing Lincoln for his tardiness and incomplete devotion to the cause of abolition.
As for today's demands to have the statue removed, I see this as some attempting to be "more Catholic than the Pope." The statue was commissioned by and paid for by slaves. Douglass was willing to give the dedicatory address,
I look at the statue and I see not a slave crouching, but a slave rising after having broken his shackles.
 
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92tide

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Tidewater said:
I read the speech and Douglass was more criticizing Lincoln for his tardiness and incomplete devotion to the cause of abolition.
As for today's demands to have the statue removed, I see this as some attempting to be "more Catholic than the Pope." The statue was commissioned by and paid for by slaves. Douglass was willing to give the dedicatory address,
I look at the statue and I see not a slave crouching, but a slave rising after having broken his shackles.
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i think a lot of the issue with the statue is that it completely diminishes and dismisses the role of slaves and freedmen (i think that's the proper term) in the abolition of slavery and casts them as helpless victims that had to be rescued.
 
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Bamaro

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92tide said:
from my limited understanding, the issues are more about the statue itself and not lincoln
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The first time that I saw this statue ever mentioned for removal, the pic was from an angle where it appeared like Lincoln was patting the slave on the head, thus attempting to change the intent of it.
 
Tidewater

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Interesting development.
Jonathan White or Christopher Newport University is debating Scott Standage of Carnegie Mellon University poverties what to do with the monument.
In the process of researching the monument, it turns out Douglass wrote that 1876,

“There is room in Lincoln park [sic] for another monument, ... and I throw out this suggestion to the end that it may be taken up and acted upon.”
So Douglass did not suggest taking the Lincoln monument down, but adding to it.
img_9792.jpg
 
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chanson78

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Tidewater said:
Interesting development.
Jonathan White or Christopher Newport University is debating Scott Standage of Carnegie Mellon University poverties what to do with the monument.
In the process of researching the monument, it turns out Douglass wrote that 1876,

“There is room in Lincoln park [sic] for another monument, ... and I throw out this suggestion to the end that it may be taken up and acted upon.”
So Douglass did not suggest taking the Lincoln monument down, but adding to it.
View attachment 9240
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So when I read your posts like this, I get the impression that you feel as if the fact that Frederick Douglass felt that it was enough to put up a statue in the park adjacent to the existing statue, that he tacitly approved of the statue that is in question.

If I am making an incorrect assumption then please forgive me.

However, I do believe that at the time that Frederick Douglass wrote that opinion piece, the political times were vastly different. I would be hard pressed to believe that any black man in 1876 would feel as if they had a snowballs chance in hell of getting a statue that they disagreed with removed/replaced/reworked. Now, I understand that there are likely no historical documents where Frederick Douglass was asked his opinion on the piece, should the political climate ever change that a black person could freely speak out against monuments.

So while I understand the fact the Frederick Douglass did not directly indicate that a statue should be removed, he did in fact make his distaste of the monument understood. I do not believe that is the same as approving of the monuments existence given todays political climate.
 
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Tidewater

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chanson78 said:
So when I read your posts like this, I get the impression that you feel as if the fact that Frederick Douglass felt that it was enough to put up a statue in the park adjacent to the existing statue, that he tacitly approved of the statue that is in question.

If I am making an incorrect assumption then please forgive me.

However, I do believe that at the time that Frederick Douglass wrote that opinion piece, the political times were vastly different. I would be hard pressed to believe that any black man in 1876 would feel as if they had a snowballs chance in hell of getting a statue that they disagreed with removed/replaced/reworked. Now, I understand that there are likely no historical documents where Frederick Douglass was asked his opinion on the piece, should the political climate ever change that a black person could freely speak out against monuments.

So while I understand the fact the Frederick Douglass did not directly indicate that a statue should be removed, he did in fact make his distaste of the monument understood. I do not believe that is the same as approving of the monuments existence given todays political climate.
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There is a difference between the thoughts of the freedmen who paid for the monument and approved the design and the man they selected to speak at its dedication.
This was a monument envisaged and paid for by ex-slaves.
They asked Douglass to deliver the dedication address. If he really objected, he could have (and would have) declined.
The design, however, was controlled by ex-slaves. Today's beef is with them.
Douglass offered a way out: erect a monument to an ex-slave standing erect and on his own.
Far be it for me to inhibit folks from taking down a statue of Lincoln. Demolish them all as far as I am concerned.
 
CharminTide

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TexasBama said:
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The most important piece of American history that I never learned in school was Alexander Stephens' Cornerstone Speech and the Lost Cause propaganda movement that successfully wiped it from the history books. The biggest mistake made in the reconstruction period was allowing southern states to write their own history.

"The new Constitution [of the Confederate States of America] has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right... The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error...

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
 
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The Myth of the Kindly General Lee

The legend of the Confederate leader’s heroism and decency is based in the fiction of a person who never existed.
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To describe this man as an American hero requires ignoring the immense suffering for which he was personally responsible, both on and off the battlefield. It requires ignoring his participation in the industry of human bondage, his betrayal of his country in defense of that institution, the battlefields scattered with the lifeless bodies of men who followed his orders and those they killed, his hostility toward the rights of the freedmen and his indifference to his own students waging a campaign of terror against the newly emancipated. It requires reducing the sum of human virtue to a sense of decorum and the ability to convey gravitas in a gray uniform.
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