Removal of all signs of the Confederacy in the USA    

                                                      

Why do so many people in the Southern States of the United States want all signs of the Confederacy to be removed from public locations?  Their motive is no different that the motives of Germany. Both Germany and the Southern States advocated racism. The Nazis denounced the Jews and murdered millions of them and the Southern States advocated the slavery of the blacks and enslaved thousands of them.   

In Germany, it is against the law to display in public the swastika flag or place the swastika on any plaques or clothing including displaying in public any other Nazi paraphernalia. The use of flags from the German Third Reich (1933-1945) is currently subject to legal restrictions in a number of countries, especially in Europe where the Nazis ran havoc over most European countries. 

Further, Germany has demolished many statues of Hitler and Nazi buildings and even went so far as to not only demolishing the Spandau prison where the Nazi leaders were kept, they even  crushed the bricks and threw them into the sea so that neo Nazis wouldn’t use them to honor the dead Nazis leaders.

Slavery in America began in the early 17^th Century and continued to be practiced for the next 250 years by the colonies and states. Slaves, mostly from Africa, worked in the production of tobacco crops and later, the crops of cotton. With the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 along with the growing demand for the product in Europe, the use of slaves in the South became a foundation of the economy of the Southern States in America.

In the late 18^th century, the abolitionist movement began in the north and the United States began a division over the issue between North and South. In 1820, the  Missouri Compromise banned slavery in all new western territories, which Southern states saw as a threat to the institution of slavery itself. In 1857, the Supreme Court decision known as the Dred Scott Decision  said that Negroes (the term then used to describe the African race) were not citizens and had no rights of citizenship; therefore, slaves that escaped to free states where not free but remained the property of their owners and as such, was to be returned to them. The decision antagonized many Northerners and breathed new life into the floundering Abolition Movement.          

The election of Abraham Lincoln, (who was a member of the anti-slavery Republican Party) to the presidency in 1860 convinced many Southerners that slavery would never be permitted to expand into new territories acquired by the US and might ultimately be abolished even in the Southern States. It was then that eleven Southern states attempted to secede from the Union, thereby precipitating the American Civil War.                

During the war, President Abraham Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in all areas of the nation that were at that time in rebellion. Those areas were the Southern States which were subsequently referred to as the Confederate States.

Now before I go any further into this article, I will say that there were at that particular time in history some very brave Confederate generals and soldiers fighting the UInion Army during that war. 

Naturally, I have no idea at all if all of them approved of slavery. What they did believe in however was that the Southern States should secede from the Union. Now as it turned out, that would be a foolish thing to do considering just how powerful the United States is with all of its states intact as one nation.

A great many Southerners (mostly black) want all signs of the Confederacy removed from public places and that includes the statues of prominent Confederate figures

The famous outdoor relief sculpture depicting Confederate leaders on Stone Mountain in Georgia has come under attack from the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP. The chapter's leader is calling for the removal of the Confederate Memorial Carving that depicts Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

That would be a real shame if that huge magnificent stone carving on the side of a mountain was to be destroyed.

Ex-Confederates came to appreciate Jefferson Davis role in the war, seeing him as a Southern patriot, and he became a hero of the Lost Cause in the post-Reconstruction South.

In May 2015, the student government at the University of Texas at Austin voted almost unanimously to remove a statue of Jefferson Davis that had been erected on the campus’ South Mall.

The University’s President, Gregory Fenves announced on August 13, 2015 that the statue would be relocated to serve as an educational exhibit in the university's Dolph Briscoe Center for American History museum. The statue was removed from the Mall on August 30, 2015.

When Virginia declared its secession from the Union in April 1861, Robert E. Lee chose to serve his home state, despite his desire for the nation to remain intact and accept an offer to be head of the  Union command.

Ever since the end of the Civil War, it has often been suggested that Lee was in some sense opposed to slavery. The argument that Lee had always somehow opposed slavery helped maintain his stature as a symbol of Southern honor and national reconciliation. In Lee's 1856 letter to his wife, he said, “…slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country.

The Confederate General Stonewall Jackson actually owned slaves, and members of his family did also. Despite that, even when it  wasn’t legal in Virginia at that time to teach slaves to read and write, Jackson defied that dictum. Although it was against the law for slaves to be educated at that time, Jackson taught his slaves to read so they could study the Bible, thus Jackson risked arrest for himself and his slaves. During the war, Jackson occasionally sent money back home to support the black Sunday school class he had established.

Stonewall Jackson’s descendant Jack Christian, calls for removing all Confederate statues in public display. He said that the time for their removal is long overdue.

Fewer than half of African American voters in Louisiana favor removing or renaming monuments and places that honor Confederate leaders, according to a recent statewide poll sponsored by WWL-TV and The Advocate.

The survey put the question this way: “It has been proposed that monuments and place names that honor Confederate leaders and soldiers from the Civil War should be removed or renamed. Do you favor or oppose doing this?”

More black respondents supported removal (46 percent) than opposed it (31 percent), but the poll showed there was nothing close to consensus on the issue in the African-American community.

White voters, on the other hand, were far more unified in their opposition to removing the monuments. About 85 percent wanted to keep the monuments in place. Only 5 percent want them taken down.

That was another surprise. Voters, especially white voters, around the state had very strong feelings, even though the debate has been focused on New Orleans, where Mayor Mitch Landrieu is leading an effort to remove statues of three Confederate grandees—Robert E. Lee, P.G.T Beauregard and Jefferson Davis as well as a monument commemorating the Battle of Liberty Place, the bloody culmination of an 1874 coup launched by ex-Confederates against the integrated Reconstruction government.

Last summer, Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat for Mississippi urged Congress to hold a hearing on his resolution to remove items from House grounds that feature Confederate flag emblems.  Democratic lawmakers, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Democrat for California joined Thompson in the effort. But little has really happened since then.

Thompson, civil rights groups and others argue that the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism and a reminder of the South's long history of segregation. Some communities, towns and universities in Mississippi have removed the flag. Carlos Moore, an attorney from Mississippi, recently filed a lawsuit to remove the Confederate flags from public spaces. One town has it flying atop of a public building.

Supporters of leaving the flag alone say it is part of the South’s heritage. Supporters in Mississippi have held rallies. Gov. Phil Bryant, acting at the request of Sons of Confederate Veterans, recently proclaimed April as Confederate Heritage Month.

A renewed national debate over the Confederate battle flag began last year when white gunman, Dylann Roof shot nine people, all black, at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Roof had used the flag in promoting his racist views. South Carolina later removed a Confederate flag from its Capitol grounds.

What began as scattered calls for removing the Confederate battle flag from a single state capitol intensified with striking speed and scope into an emotional, nationwide movement to strip symbols of the Confederacy from public parks and buildings, license plates, Internet shopping sites and retail stores.

In Charleston, the board that governs the Citadel, the state’s 173-year-old military academy, voted, 9 to 3, to remove the Confederate Naval flag from the campus chapel, saying that a Citadel graduate and the relatives of six employees were killed in the attack on the church.

In Tennessee, political leaders from both parties said a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and an early Ku Klux Klan leader, should be moved out of the State House. In Virginia, Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, ordered that the Confederate flag is no longer to appear on license plates, and political leaders in Maryland, North Carolina and Tennessee vowed to do the same.

Removing statutes of so-called undesirable leaders is not new. In Halifax, Nova Scotia there is a large number of people who want the statute of British Admiral Cornwallis who governed Nova Scotia centuries ago removed. He mistreated the aboriginal Indians in that province. 

If the statue is removed, what will the federal government do about the name of the Canadian naval training base (Cornwallis) where I was trained as a seaman in 1951 and 1952?  Will its name be removed also? If so, then the name of the county the base is situated in must also be removed.

I would be amiss if I didn’t add this extra comment made by Nathan Ince from the Toronto Star. In his article, he said;

It’s fair to acknowledge the 40,000 Canadian residents who fought in the (American) Civil War, but the design fails to mention the South was fighting to preserve slavery—and so were 4,000 Canadian volunteers.

With the ongoing debate in the U.S. over the appropriate place for statues glorifying the pro-slavery Confederate States of America, news recently surfaced of a proposed monument to be built near Cornwall, Ont. to commemorate the Canadians who fought in the American Civil War.

The organizers behind the project say the memorial will recognize residents of British North America (the first name of Canada) who fought for both the North and the South, but that rather than glorify either side, the monument will simply serve to remind people of this overlooked event in Canadian history.

The organizers, The Grays and Blues of Montréal, are right about one thing, the American Civil War was an important event in Canada. Alongside advancing the discussions that led to Confederation, that some 40,000 Canadians fought in the war is a significant and underappreciated fact.

But monuments are not built to tell people about facts. That is why we have books. Monuments are constructed as public statements about what deserves to be remembered and celebrated in our society. Once unveiled on Sept. 16th, this monument will make a claim about what the Canadian public should commemorate. The problem is, this monument’s statement appears to be one that is unintentionally, yet inescapably, reprehensible.

By commemorating both sides of the Civil War in a neutral manner, this monument suggests a moral equivalency between those who fought for the South to defend white supremacy, and those who fought for the North to oppose it. The image that appears on the monument of a Union and a Confederate soldier amicably shaking hands reinforces this suggestion.

While the organizers note that 90 per cent of Canadian volunteers fought for the North, this does not change the fact that they have decided to also commemorate the 4,000 residents of British North America who fought for white supremacy.

This decision to commemorate those who fought for both sides leaves no room for any mention of the inconceivably violent ideology that was the foundation of the Confederacy’s existence.

At the heart of the Civil War was a conflict over whether people of African descent should be considered human, or whether they could be owned, beaten, tortured, raped, and killed with impunity by whites. This is the single most important fact about the American Civil War, and it is this fact that should matter most to US citizens of the 21^st century.

This issue of removing historical statues, emblems and flags is a really contentious issue. It is one that I find difficult to form an opinion. That being as it is, I won’t form an opinion on the issue. If some of my readers wish to publicize their opinion at the bottom of this article, please do.