The city of Memphis recently took down two Confederate statues, prompting retaliation from the Tennessee state legislature. While this Republican driven imposition on local government seems to be within the law, there is also the question of whether the removal is right or not. While there are various arguments advanced to defend keeping Confederate monuments in place, I will consider two: the appeal to heritage and the appeal to history. While the two are similar, they are distinct enough to warrant considering them separately.
Heritage is something inherited from the past and, in this context, it would be a feature of the culture. While the term usually has a positive connotation, it is neutral in actual meaning since a heritage might include terrible things. In terms of how heritage differs from history, a heritage belongs to a specific group and is thus limited. History, though it is about particulars, belongs to everyone and more will be said about this latter.
The appeal to heritage argument is typically quite simple: Confederate statues are part of the heritage of certain people, heritage should be preserved, so these statues should be preserved. The obvious challenge is showing that this sort of heritage should be preserved.
One way to do this is to own the evil of the Confederacy, specifically the fact that it existed to defend slavery. This is, of course, part of the heritage of the United States as whole. This approach obviously justifies the preservation of such monuments to evil as Auschwitz. Unfortunately for this approach, these statues praise their subjects rather than condemning their misdeeds and memorializing their victims. Obviously enough, defenders of these monuments generally do not own the evil that is the heritage of America as such they are advancing a narrative that is contrary to the facts of history and more will be said about this later. As such, the heritage argument only has merit if the truth of the heritage is owned. To embrace a sanitized version is to reject the facts of history. This, appropriately enough, takes us to the appeal to history.
History, in the sense of Herodotus, is not merely the recording of events but their analysis. History, as an academic discipline, is supposed to be as neutral as possible. Unlike heritage, which is inherited by specific people, history is for everyone. As should come as no surprise, appealing to historical value can be a very reasonable way to argue for preservation of artifacts.
It is easy enough to make a case for preserving artifacts of terrible and evil events. As noted above, Auschwitz is rightly preserved as an historical site—it is a place of great significance. The same is true of memorials to victims of lynching. These examples show that historical value is consistent with moral value judgments, so the Confederate monuments could be defended on the grounds that keeping them preserves history.
In terms of preserving these monuments, the key concern is the justification of the preservation. It could be claimed that the monuments are being preserved in a neutral manner: they are simply historical artifacts preserved because they are old and supposedly significant. While some monuments to the dead were constructed after the war, the vast majority of Confederate monuments were raised during the Jim Crow era and obviously intended to send a statement to African Americans. As such, claims about historical value have little merit—unless the argument is that the tools of intimidation from the Jim Crow era should be preserved as relics of evil.
A rather obvious problem with arguing that these monuments are neutral historical artifacts is that they clearly honor the subjects—while a statue can have historical value, merely representing an historical figure is obviously not a good reason to preserve them. We do not, for example, have statues for Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer or mass shooters simply because they are historically important. Interestingly, there is a statue for Benedict Arnold that honors his heroism before he became a traitor.
If the statues are defended in terms of moral values, it would have to be claimed that slavery, treason and racism are good and should be honored. This is absurd on the face of it, though certainly appealing to modern racists.
One interesting variation on the appeal to history argument is the erasing history argument. This argument is that the monuments should not be removed because doing so would erase history. There is usually an analogy made to ISIS and how they endeavored to destroy various historical sites.
While historical artifacts should be preserved, this argument is easy enough to counter. As already noted above, the monuments are not historically significant in the sense being claimed. They were constructed during the Jim Crow era to send a message to African Americans. As such, they would be worthy of preservation in a manner similar to having monuments on the site of a lynching—they are artifacts of something awful. There is also the rather important point that keeping them in place means that they continue to function as intended: as statements of racism and instruments of intimidation.
In terms of erasing history, removing a monument that honors the Confederacy does not erase history: the artifacts will, in general, be preserved and the historical record remains. While there have been attempts to revise the history to make it about things other than slavery, the history of the South remains recorded. As such, removing the statues does not erase history. Rather, it expresses a rejection of the values of racism and slavery.
Phil Tanny says
April 25, 2018 at 6:32 pmAmerican racism will finally be resolved by a thousand Russian ICBMs quietly arcing over the poles while the intellectual elite blogosphere is so very busy writing about anything and everything else.
DH says
April 27, 2018 at 4:02 pmWell, my first comment contrasts your statement
“…this Republican driven imposition on local government …”
with your other one,
“History, as an academic discipline, is supposed to be as neutral as possible”.
You are hardly being neutral in your opening remarks, so it’s a little difficult to read the rest of it outside the context of your own bias.
I realize that’s not the heart of the matter, but for clarification I think it’s important to point out that the laws of statue removal were passed by a majority of the legislature before the city of Memphis decided to take down the statues of Forrest and Davis, and they acted deceitfully and dishonestly by selling the land the statues were on at a loss to a private entity, who removed them. It’s a loophole, reducing this entire debate to nothing more than a pissing match between the Democrats of Memphis and the Republicans of Tennessee.
I’d also point out that this is an example of the kind of self-determination fought for by the Confederate states in the Civil War. Don’t forget that in the South to this day, this is often referred to as “The War of Northern Aggression”.
Beyond that, I think it’s a real slippery slope, one where it’s difficult to draw any kind of line. Specifically to this incident, Nathan Bedford Forrest definitely had his despicable side – aside from his allegiance to the South, he took part in at least one pretty deadly massacre, and was the first Grand Wizard of the KKK. He was a wealthy planter who owned slaves.
To the last point, well, so were George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, among others. Shall we declare “open season” to the NRA on Mt. Rushmore?
Regarding the KKK, while it’s true that he was one of its leaders, in 1869 he ordered the organization’s dissolution, he ordered the destruction of all the costumes, and he himself withdrew. Without leadership, the organization (at the time) disappeared.
It also should be noted that the KKK at the time was a loose band of white supremacists who, through violence and intimidation, sought to maintain control over newly liberated and enfranchised former slaves. At the time, these were called the “Black Codes”, which were far more heinous than the “Jim Crow” laws. Jim Crow sought to maintain “Separate but Equal”, whereas the Black Codes were more about an overt return to subjugation, repression, and slavery. The point is that these codes were staunchly supported by Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat and the President of the United States. Johnson went against Lincoln’s blueprint for reconstruction and his underlying theme of “Charity for all, Malice Toward None”, so enraging the Republican-controlled House that they impeached him. (Incidentally, the Republicans of the time who supported abolition were called “Radical Republicans” because of their shockingly extreme liberal views about race).
The point is – does Johnson belong on the list? What about Robert Byrd, the longtime Senator from West Virginia, who himself was a member of the KKK during the Jim Crow period, acting as a recruiter for the organization?
Our history is filled with people who did both great things and awful things, and it is impossible for us to judge them accurately on their actions with only the context of today’s morals. I think we can probably sit down with a yellow pad and make a case for the tearing-down of just about every monument to every prominent figure in American History for some heinous act or another – or some act that was perfectly acceptable in its day but viewed as heinous by today’s values. I just wonder where we stop.
I think it’s unfortunate that the Civil War is now being painted as only about slavery, and is thus being compared to Nazi Germany without any of the extremely important political issues that went along with the institution.
The struggle between the self-determination of smaller governments and the control of the central government is a vital debate that has raged in this country since its inception. The fact that slavery was such a prominent issue in the mid 19th century was because it was such a vital part of the economy – not because the southerners were racists. Nearly everyone at that time was a racist. The southern plantation owners, who held much sway over their representation in Congress, had to choose between an immoral institution and their own economic survival.
As did the slave-owning founders of our country. They knew that to abolish the institution would lead to their fiscal demise, so they allowed themselves to keep their slaves until their deaths, in another kind of legal loophole. Shameful, yes – but do we tear down their statues?
Because I side pretty strongly with the “states rights” side of this argument” (except in obvious cases like slavery, of course), I would probably say that the city of Memphis should be able to do whatever they want with their monuments as long as they are on city property. If the state objects, so be it – it’s not proper for them to retaliate in the way they did.
It should be noted, however, that this was exactly the kind of control/retaliation that was exacted by the Obama administration with welfare funding and the adoption of the ACA reforms. Business as usual in our government, and the struggle for self-determination goes on.