The True Forgotten History

We have forgotten our history. The North believes in "freedom" and the South is "racist." This is far from the truth and is much more complicated than people think.

With recent events, the focus has turned to Confederate monuments and whether they should be taken down. I have mixed views about this. I'm not only one of those "Damn Yankees" but I was born and raised in Illinois. The Land of Lincoln. "Honest Abe" appears on the state license plates. And since 2002, I have lived in one of the first states to secede from the Union.

Add to that the fact that the one thing that I love to hate is hate and that one of my two favorite presidents is Abraham Lincoln (Obama coming in second,) and I'm sure that most of you think that I'm all for taking them down.

I'm also a history geek and analytical. Since one of my favorite presidents is Abraham Lincoln, I have read a lot on the Civil War. And like many things in life, there is a big huge grey area when it concerns Confederate monuments and their roles then and now.

Culpeper National Cemetery Confederate Monument

The fact is, 60% of Americans believe these monuments should be left alone. Out of African Americans polled, 65% believe the monuments should be left alone. Probably most Americans just don't give a hoot about them. When you think of Charlottesville, do you think of the Robert E. Lee statue or do you think of the white hate groups that came armed to the hilt and ready for a fight? 



Charlottesville happened not because they voted to take down a statue of Robert E. Lee. It happened because the Alt-Right/Neo-Nazi/White Supremacist groups used Charlottesville's decision as

Covering the Robert E. Lee Statue in Charlottesville
after the riots.

an excuse to rally and demonstrate their violent nature. And the media ate it up and gave it more significance than it certainly deserved. Monuments themselves aren't good or bad. They are only representations of the power people give it. And in the grand scheme of things, whether or not a monument is going to be removed or allowed to stay just isn't important to everyday lives. 

Monuments aren't history - they can mark a historical time or place like those at battlefield sites, but we're not going to lose our history

if they're taken down. They are a hunk of rock or metal. While the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of our country and all the immigrants that passed by her on their way to New York City revered her, she wasn't put up until 1886. There were a lot of immigrants who entered our great country that never saw her. Emma Lazarus' famous poem: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door." were inscribed on a plaque and placed on the Statue of Liberty in the 1920s, some 40 years after she entered it in a contest to fund the pedestal Lady Liberty would stand on. In fact, she wasn't supposed to represent immigrants and immigration at all. Her association and symbolism with immigrants comes from her stately form being one of the first things that they saw upon entering New York Harbor. It would be a powerful thing to see and associate with starting over in America. However, immigrants that came over and landed in Boston Harbor or other places didn't feel any less patriotic than those that sailed by the Statue of Liberty. Our patriotism isn't limited to emblems or monuments.

The Confederate Area of Arlington Cemetery where
Confederate graves circles the monument concentrically

 

Personally, I believe that any Confederate monuments on public lands (unless it's a historical site,) should be moved. Not destroyed, but moved to an appropriate platform in which to display it. Monuments on former Civil War battlefields, in Civil War Era

Louisville, KY

National Cemeteries, at museums, among other places, are important as it honors the history of the Civil War helps us to learn about our past. However, there are also a lot of Confederate monuments that were erected in early to mid 20th century as Jim Crowe laws were passed. The only purpose of these monuments was to show African Americans EXACTLY what their place was in society.

Those monuments' only historical context and symbolism was hate and intimidation. They weren't put up to demonstrate the pride of the Confederacy or connected to a historical place, they were erected decades after the Civil War ended. And yes, they should be taken down. The Robert E. Lee Statues in New Orleans and Charlottesville are such monuments. What is the historical significance of having Lee astride his horse Traveller in the middle of a traffic circle in New Orleans? Now, if they just wanted a statue of Traveller, that would be another story...

Bloomfield, Iowa Confederate and Union Monument

On the other hand, should a Confederate memorial dedicated to the place of the northernmost excursion in southern Iowa be taken

down? Actually, no, it shouldn't. It's there in the historical context that tells a story of the actions of some marauding Confederates entering the area. It should be noted how far the Confederates traveled in northern states and when I read about it, I found it interesting. 

The plaques on the Iowa Confederate Monument. Notice the one on the left recognizes the Union

There is a difference between taking down a monument that was put up for the sole purpose of intimidating and a monument that was put there to honor something of historical significance. This country builds monuments to horrific parts of our history. We have memorials at the sites of Japanese American internment camps, at the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, the World Trade Center buildings, Civil War battlefield sites, the American Revolution, the Alamo, WWI and WWII memorials, Civil Rights Era, and Vietnam Memorial War. It's a major part of our history, and it should be reflected. The Civil War is the bloodiest war this country ever had, killing over 600,000. Both sides were American and both should be represented. 

And frankly, you can't just wipe out one side's monuments, heroes, and ideals when it represents a major part of the history of this country - before and after the Civil War. When a gentleman with the surname of "Lee" can't call a football game on TV because of his name in the aftermath of Charlottesville, it's gone to far (shame on you ESPN!) And when there is an insistence on taking down any monuments that represent the Confederacy because they were

Really? I mean, REALLY?

proslavery and racist, when does it stop? There are ten military bases named after Confederates. There are schools named after Confederates, and there are streets named after Confederates. Hollywood, FL is changing the names of three streets named after Confederate Generals. The offensive street names are Lee Sreet, Forrest Street, and Hood Street. I'm sorry, but those don't stand out exactly as overtly offensive Confederate memorials. Lee could be the first name for both genders, or it could be Tommy Lee from Motley

Jake E. Lee...talented musician, easy on the eyes,
should have a street named after him. I WISH I
HAD HAIR LIKE HIS!!

Crue, former Ozzy Osbourne/Badlands guitarist Jake E. Lee or possibly Harper Lee. If it's for "Lee Greenwood"...well, I'm glad to be an American, where at least I know I'm free. Forrest is commonly used as a boy's name - though, come to think of it, I can see it being used as a girl's one too. Ancient Greek translates it as "large penis." (I officially am asking you to not name your baby girl "Forrest!") And what if it's named after Forrest Gump? Life IS a box of chocolates, after all. And finally, there's Hood...childhood, adulthood, livelihood, personhood, selfhood, manhood, girlhood, womanhood, boyhood, monkhood, kinghood, babyhood, parenthood, motherhood, fatherhood, neighborhood, likelihood, bachelorhood, priesthood, statehood, knighthood, lustihood, a thing that kept my head warm in the winter, the thing that allows you access to your car engine. My point...it's ridiculous. And it will affect the residents on those streets because they have to change EVERYTHING to the new street name, and some of that costs money. It is simply impossible to wipe away the Civil War and what the Confederates stood for.

And what would the criteria be for taking down a monument? Robert E. Lee served the United States in the Mexican-American war. Many Confederates served in the United States Army before and after the Civil War. Or they held places in government or universities. I'm going to have to repeat my new favorite word: ambiguous.  The old one was "plethora."  So there are a "plethora" of "ambiguous" criteria that should be considered before deciding to take down monuments.

And one more thing to throw in the mix, which I get into below. The fact that the North didn't believe that a person should own another person like an inanimate object, didn't mean they weren't

William Tecumseh Sherman -
Union General - White Supremacist

racist either. Should we start taking down Union monuments? We can start with one of the most famous: William Tecumseh Sherman was a white supremacist who believed that Southern secession was akin to treasonous. If his loyalty wasn't to the Union, he would've been a Confederate.





The history of slavery, racism, and civil rights is complicated and has yet to be figured out. Today, a Civil War era ardent abolitionist would be considered very racist by today's definition. Most white abolitionists were definitely against a human owning another human. That didn't mean they weren't racist, though. Those same people would not want black people moving next door or taking a job that a white man should hold. Free blacks were exposed to the

Solomon Northup, a free man, was
kidnapped and forced into
slavery.

same amount of racism that southern slaves were. Perhaps more. They were considered free but were treated, just like the slaves, as subhuman, without the intelligence or class that even the poorest white person had. They could only work certain jobs, most subservient, hard, dirty, and menial. They could only live in certain places. They could only enter certain buildings. As if that wasn't enough, after 1850, they could legally be kidnapped off the street and forced into slavery after the "compromise" of the Fugitive Slave Act. As horrible as it may sound, the slaves were probably better off. They never were under the misrepresentation of freedom. Not that I'm saying that slavery was okay, just that they knew they were slaves while free blacks lived under the assumptions of freedom. The way black people were treated, slave or free, was heinous and unconscionable. 

Just like everything else with the Civil War, the emancipation of slaves was also romanticized. They were hated in the south, and not welcomed with open arms in the north. They had limited skills, live working as a maid or nanny or working the fields, and no education. If they were able to get a job, exploitation was common.

Even after the war, people found ways to keep people as "slaves." The 13th Amendment's Section One contained a loophole... "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Untold numbers of innocent blacks and other minorities were arrested where they were "convicted." Punishments were either convict leasing, sharecropping, and peonage - a form of forced labor where the person is employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence, compulsion or any other threat to that person or family. Peonage was not made illegal until 1966 by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

A Freedman Bureau Agent between freed slaves and southerners.
It only lasted for a year and was a total failure.

A lot of African Americans didn't know what to do after they were freed, so they stayed with their masters. Since the masters didn't have money to pay them, they became sharecroppers. They worked a parcel of land and gave a large portion of their crops to their former masters. After their rent was paid, they never had enough money to sell any of their own crops so they never were able to lift themselves out of their situation. Like the north, cities provided the most jobs, where they worked hard manual labor or worked as servants.

But the general consensus was that freedom wasn't an improvement upon their lives. It was possible that it was worse. There was the Freedmen's Bureau that helped with purchasing land, education, and legalizing and performing marriages. It only lasted a year and really wasn't effective due to lack of funds, personnel, and

corruption. Freed African Americans found themselves without a home, no education, and extremely limited jobs, made more so by the fact that they had even more limited skills, and no money. And after Reconstruction, which is seen as a huge failure, Jim Crow laws began.

When it comes to our disgusting enslavement and treatment of African Americans, it is not just limited to slavery and the Civil War and not one era represents it. Sadly, racism is deeply woven into the fabric of this country from the beginning to this very second, no matter how wrong and abhorrent it is.

Between 1882-1968, 86 lynchings occurred in what were the Union states in the Civil War. While that is just a drop in the bucket of the numbers of lynchings in the south, it does demonstrate how the

<sarcasm> The perfect family outing. </sarcasm>

north felt. Out of all 50 of our states, as they are today, only a handful didn't commit lynchings. They are Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Alaska, Hawaii, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Wisconsin, and Nevada. However, some of those states along with the rest of the union lynched white people as well. Out in the west, it was because of horse stealing and other lawlessness of the Wild West, but for the rest of the country, it was because white people were helping African Americans. What was even more disgusting was that families would bring food and have picnics under the swaying bodies. 

Though not lynched, something that comes to my mind was the

three civil rights workers, Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andy Goodman went down to Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964 and were murdered by the Klan that including two members of law enforcement.

The Civil War was the first test of our country's Democracy and our Constitution. Both sides thought they were defending the Constitution. The union between states, according to the Constitution was to be held together "in perpetuity" and the South thought that not only was it feeling pressure from the North to abolish slavery, but that their rights were being violated when they couldn't move to territories with their slaves. When Lincoln was elected, thinking he would abolish slavery, they seceded. The truth is, they probably didn't have to do that. It would have set human rights back God knows how long, but they didn't have too.

So what does the Constitution say on slavery? It seemed that the Founding Fathers considered it an embarrassment, and there appears to be a deliberate ambiguity to it. On the other hand, 10 out of 11 clauses deals with issues involving slavery, the institution of it, consideration of slaves as property, and the powers of the masters. 

One example is the census. By law, slaves were considered 3/5 a human. While this didn't affect a state's representation in the U.S. Senate, where there are always 2 members per state. It did heavily affect the House of Representatives where the number of a state's representatives depends on its population. Here the southern slave states were heavily overrepresented by a whopping 60%. This meant that Congress could call up a militia for slave uprisings in the south, thanks to their overwhelming voting power.


Then there is the Fugitive Slave Act. Article 4, Section 2, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution states that "No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from Such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due." Basically, if a slave runs away, he or she must be returned to the state that they escaped from. The Fugitive Act of 1793 was passed to guarantee that slaves were rightfully returned to their owners. In 1842, the Supreme Court ruled that states did not have to participate in the slaveholder's attempts to find any slaves. The pendulum shifted again in 1850 when in a compromise, the south demanded stricter enforcement of the Fugitive Act. This time law enforcement had to arrest anyone who was considered a runaway slave based on as little as a claimant's sworn testimony. Runaway slaves could not petition the court or ask for an attorney and anyone aiding a runaway slave could be arrested and fined $1,000 ($29,000 in today's currency) and one year in prison. All a slaveholder had to do was show a Federal marshal an affidavit stating that he had slaves missing in order for the marshall to arrest them. This meant that free blacks were often kidnapped and forced into slavery.

So while the Constitution may have been deliberately ambiguous, it operated in a manner that was definitely proslavery.

We have romanticized the Union, the Confederates and the Civil War in this country. The old plantation families with genteel

What better example of the romanticized
South than "Gone With the Wind?"

gentlemen and strong God fearing women who can handle the household and slaves with compassion and dignity ala Gone With The Wind (one of my favorite books/movies.) 

However, Robert E. Lee wasn't the tragic figure in the "Lost Cause" and Abraham Lincoln was not as much a "Great Emancipator" as people would us think.

The "Lost Cause" - a myth created by the south that espoused Southern gentility, plantation life, Christian piety and happy slaves, loyal to their masters and treated well, who were just overpowered by the Yankees. Battle losses were attributed to the lesser generals as Robert E. Lee was held sacrosanct. It wasn't preservation of slavery they were fighting for but state's rights. It's the perfect story - and completely false. And the fairy tale of the gallant antebellum south is still believed to this day.

Robert E. Lee was against secession but reluctantly resigned his commission in the U.S. Army when his home state of Virginia seceded. 

The romanticized General
Robert E. Lee

His thoughts on slavery are rather ambiguous and historians have focused on this quote to his wife: " In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think however a greater evil to the white than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare and lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence."

According to that quote, Lee's thoughts weren't that much different than a lot of people at that time. He swings from hating the intstitution of slavery to justifying it as the only way to teach "painful discipline" in how slaves were going to be taught as a race to lead them to better things. 

His history with slaves, though, seems to be misleading in a lot of sources found online. Lee married Mary Custis, great-granddaughter of Martha Washington and step-great-granddaughter

to George Washington. When Lee's father-in-law died in 1857, Lee became the executor of a will that included three plantations and the slaves. To pay off the debt and satisfy requests of the will, Lee kept the slaves as long as he could, as set forth in the will and held up by a court. Five years later, every slave that was a Custis/Washington slave (with families kept together, these slaves actually went back to before George and Martha Washington) were set free. Included were also a woman named Nancy and her children, who Robert E. Lee inherited from his mother. There are accounts of Lee ordering or punishing himself three runaway slaves, and he did hire out slaves, separating families. That's horrible and against what the Custis family believed. These families suffered, but it was for a limited time of five years and not permanently. Not an excuse, but factual. Forcible separation is agonizing and dehumanizing no matter what, but there is a difference between separating families in the manner he did and separating families by selling the husband hundreds of miles away, while the wife stays - where she can only hope that they don't sell her children anytime soon.


I know I keep on saying this, but really, it's necessary. We're not talking about things that happened in the present day, we are talking about things that happened over 100 years ago in an era where the institution of slavery was dying slowly. After the war, General Lee did not think that freed slaves were equal to whites, or that they were intelligent enough to vote. However, he supported free public schooling for black children. When talk of another war or violence

broke out, General Lee admonished them and he definitely did not want to see Confederate monuments, especially of him, for the simple fact that the Confederates lost the war. They must look to the future and become apart of the United States once more. On that he was adamant.

Though against slavery, Abraham Lincoln also did not think that blacks were intelligent enough to vote or should be free to live around white people, either. While in the House of Representatives, he supported Compensated Emancipation and creating a colony in Africa for them to go. His views more closely followed those of the south in regards to segregation...equal but separate. The Civil War wasn't about slavery. When he entered the office of president, his view was that

though he hated it, slavery was protected by the Constitution. He couldn't stop slavery in the South, but he could prevent it from spreading to new territories and states. The Civil War was fought to force the southern states back into the Union. Towards the end, thanks to people like Frederick Douglass and all of the stories he heard, Lincoln's opinion changed, and I would have been interested to see what Reconstruction under his control would look like.

"The Great Emancipator" passed the Emancipation Act as a war strategy. Slaves owned in border states or any American held territories were NOT freed. The sole purpose of doing it was to

further cripple the south. Plantations could not be run or harvested if there were no slaves in the field to work and without cotton, the South's economy would collapse. The Emancipation Act as the 13th Amendment became law in December 1865.

Again, Abraham Lincoln was a man of his times. Have things gotten better since then? Yes, of course, but so much more needs to be done...in our hearts, and in our minds. Not in what monuments are standing or going down. It doesn't take an object to spark a fire. All it takes are people who hate and want to commit violence.

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The Civil Rights Era was before my time. But the images from that time are powerful, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. truly an

Selma

inspiration. Whenever I hear Representative John Lewis speak of Selma march, my eyes tear up. Of the four little girls that were killed when someone bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. I can't fathom treating someone differently because of the color of their skin or their religion.

Since the captions are too small, top, from right to  left, Funeral of lynched American black veteran George Dorsey and his sister Dorothy, sign for separate drinking fountains, Rosa Parks, black and white holding hands in a march, a high school age girl followed by mob of angry women during desegregation, lunch counter sit in, and a little girl being escorted during desegregation. MIDDLE ROW: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King during the "I Have a Dream" speech, the gravestone for Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King, and the King family in front of Dr.King at his funeral. BOTTOM ROW: Protest pictures: A woman being dragged off with a dog held by an officer, A man holding a sign saying "Give Us American Rights" while the man to his right has a sign that says "Go Home Negro." Three school-age boys protesting desegregation, the mantra of the movement: "We shall overcome.", and finally, a cross burning with the KKK.

History is amazing and interesting. But you're not going to learn it by standing in front of a monument. A few years ago, I came across a Confederate grave and two C.S.A. grave markers. It was shocking and humbling at the same time. At that moment

Francis M. Townsend, 30 Sep 1838 — 15 Sep 1912
He was a good Father to his children. Soldier Seminole war 1856-1857 Captain H. Hendricks Co. Confederate Soldier 1862-1865, Captain Dykes Light Artillery, Hernando Tax Collector 1879 — 1882, representative from Hernando County 12 session Fl Leg. 1883, Metal C.S.A.
New Hope Methodist Cemetery, Floral City, FL

I felt connected directly to the 1860s to a man who fought in the Seminole War, the Civil War, and afterward, served admirably in local and state politics. It affected me in a way that standing in front of a monument that was placed there to intimidate never will.

.