Two Confederate Statues Meet Their Fate
Two controversial monuments are gone.
Two of the most controversial monuments to Confederate generals met their demise yesterday. One was a triumph for decency. The other, I’m less sure.
The unambiguous case was reported by Nashville’s NewsChannel 5 (“Nathan Bedford Forrest statue along I-65 removed after more than 2 decades”):
For years, he peered down from a hillside overlooking the interstate — hard for anyone to miss. But now, the controversial statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest along I-65 just south of Nashville is gone.
The controversial statue came down Tuesday morning, and the decision came after the death of the property owner. The late Jack Kershaw sculpted the 25-foot statue and put in on private land owned by his friend, Bill Dorris, overlooking I-65 back in 1998.
Dorris knew thousands of people driving by would see it every single day.
There was controversy with Nathan Bedford Forrest considering his past as a Confederate General and the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
Over the years, Dorris refused to move the statue, despite pleas from those who viewed it as a symbol of racism. The statue was repeatedly vandalized — at one point splashed with pink paint.
The thing is ugly in every sense:
By 1998, when this monstrosity was constructed, there was no romanticism around Forrest. While Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and a handful of others continue to be held up by many as examples of bold generalship and exemplars of old-style Southern gentlemen, Forrest had long since been a pariah. While he was a brilliant cavalryman, the 1864 massacre at Fort Pillow was one of the most barbaric incidents in the war. And even those who still privately supported white supremacy mostly rejected the Klan.
This statue, then, was a giant middle finger to anyone who drove by it on I-65, which I did many times over the years. Because it was on private land, there was nothing anyone could do about it and Kershaw and Dorris revelled in that.
Alas, death comes for us all. He left the sculpture to the Battle of Nashville Trust and they issued a statement:
Mr. Dorris had no prior affiliation with the Battle of Nashville Trust, Inc. and the Trust had no idea it was a beneficiary of his will until well after Mr. Dorris passed.
The Dorris will leaves the Hogan Road property to the Battle of Nashville Trust , Inc. There are some restrictions and we will let the court decide all of this.
Preservation of history is critical. The Nashville battlefield was one of the largest in the Civil War and the least protected. It spans from the Cumberland River near Charlotte Pike east to the other side of Nolensville Road and South from the hills just south of town all the way to Brentwood. The core battlefield covers most of Green Hills all the way east to I-65. The citizens of Nashville tried to protect some of the site as early as the 1920s but were unsuccessful. Development and time have made the battlefield virtually unrecognizable. However, the Trust, in conjunction with its partners including Metro Nashville, have been able to save some of the sites for all Americans. The interest in the Civil War and the battle here is huge. We have had over a million visitors to our website from all over the country and the world. People want to know where their great great great grandfather fought and his roots in time and history. We are proud of what we have accomplished. Our sites are hidden gems in the community-protected forever-for all to enjoy.
The battle here was perhaps the most decisive victory for the United States during the war and it ended major fighting in the western campaign. The largest attack of the war by African Americans -the USCT-occurred here on Franklin Pike near Battery Lane and their casualties were enormous. History is important. It tends to repeat itself. And it is all in our backyards. The Battle of Nashville was a pivotal moment in our nations bloodiest conflict. The Hogan Road property is not core battlefield land. It is a sliver of the retreat. Putting aside a debate about Forrest as a person and commander and all of the related controversy, the position of the Trust on this statue is:
1. Forrest was not present at the Battle of Nashville
2. The property has no historical significance related to the battle other than a spring house and ice house that was part of a large estate where CSA Brig. General Claudius Sears was taken for a leg amputation-the home has long since been destroyed by Interstate 65
3. The statue is ugly
4. Even Forrest would think it is ugly
5. It hinders our mission and what we are trying to accomplish.
The Trust is grateful for the gift by Mr. Dorris.
While I’m sure there are those who lament that they will no longer see this statue, its loss is an unalloyed good.
The Washington Post reports (“Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee statue will be melted down by city’s African American history museum“) on the other case.
The statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that once provoked a deadly weekend of violence in Charlottesville will be melted down and turned into a new piece of public artwork, following a vote by city lawmakers early Tuesday morning.
The city had for months been searching for a new owner for the 1,100-pound monument, which served as the focal point of the white-supremacist Unite the Right rally in 2017. After the city took the statue down over the summer, six proposals on what to do with it were submitted by arts groups, historical societies or individuals, some offering to pay the city as much as $50,000 for the bronze sculpture.
But the Charlottesville City Council voted 4 to 0 to hand it over to the only local bidder: the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, a Black-led museum that proposed repurposing the metal entirely.
Called “Swords Into Plowshares,” the project “will allow Charlottesville to contend with its racist past,” Andrea Douglas, the museum’s executive director, said in an interview Tuesday afternoon. “It really is about taking something that had been harmful and transforming it into something that is representative of the city’s values today.”
The museum will consult Charlottesville residents in the coming months, including in open forums early next year, to determine guidelines for the art piece, and then convene a jury to select one idea, Douglas said. The end result will be gifted back to the city to display on public land by 2024.
So, on the one hand, the fact that this statue is gone from public display is almost certainly the right outcome. Aside from having a giant monument to the cause of slavery offend so many Black citizens, it had become a rallying point for white supremacists. But that removal was achieved six months ago.
Unlike the Bedford monument, this statue was a legitimate work of art. And it has a century-long history, having been s commissioned in 1917 and dedicated in 1924. Confederate veterans were still alive at that point—indeed, it was roughly as close to the end of the Civil War then as the end of the Vietnam War is now. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997, the year before the Forrest statue went up in Nashville. It really belongs in a museum somewhere, where it can be part of an exhibit that puts it into context.
Having it melted down—and by an African-American organization, no less—may well have some cathartic value as poetic justice. But it’ll also reinforce the impulses that spawned the Charlottesville rally to begin with.
The Lee statue is simply another Jim Crow era attempt to put black people in their place and remind them that the majority culture believed that place was as slaves. While it can be debated as to how wide spread that attitude toward blacks really was among whites, it certainly existed in the political and social leadership.
Given the tainted history of these statues, any museum that would receive and display one, risks being tarred with the accusation that the museum is perpetuating the attitudes of Jim Crow. The risk for the leaders of Charlottesville, is that the Lee statue would end up in a museum whose purpose is to celebrate white supremacy. Having it go to a local institution and melted down is the best way to put that part of the city’s history behind it.
Rommel was one of the great generals in history. I haven’t looked it up, but I doubt there are any statues of him in Germany.
Regarding the Lee statue: There are no doubt quite a lot of white supremacists who will take special umbrage at the idea of an African-American org melting the sucker down. Of course. And there were quite a lot of people who objected to the wave of Daughters of the Confederacy statues erect across the country around that time. Probably there were people in Richmond who would have preferred to not erect that statue.
It is kind of the point of the Lee statue that it was put up to show who’s idea of pro-Lee or anti-Lee was going to be judged correct by the dominant culture. In 1921, if you didn’t like it, F*@k you. That was the clear message.
Well, if they don’t like 2021, f*@k them.
For more than a century and a half the United States government and mass media have gone out way not to offend the white pro-slavery/pro-Jim Crow citizens of the Confederate states at the expense of the decent people, black and white, Catholic and Jewish, Asian and Middle-Eastern, who live in those states. And it has gotten us no-where. The bile that was the Confederacy and the Jim Crow regimes that followed have now seeped like a poison into the life blood of the whole country.
We need to stop, right now, protecting the feelings of these racists at the expense of the people they oppress.
The Lee statue is a massive bigger-than-life-sized work. I have trouble imagining any museum setting where it would not dominate the rest of a context-setting exhibit. Melting it down at least has the advantage that it won’t be possible for anyone to acquire it in the future and put it back.
@Michael Cain:
Is there an American Museum of Southern Treason and Sedition?
The statue of Colonel Lee (last rank held as a non-traitor) would make a great bank of urinals after it is melted down.
Busts of Hitler were melted down, busts of Stalin were melted down. Objections? Anyone?
Lee was a traitor directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. He is not a man, like Jefferson for example, who was an American patriot with some very bad baggage, Lee slaughtered Americans to keep his slaves. He was a traitor far greater than Benedict Arnold, and I don’t see a lot of Arnold statues.
I’m a little disappointed that the Forrest statue is gone, and if some other reports are accurate, destroyed in the process.
It was a truly ugly statue. As ugly as the racists who wanted it to stay up.
I’m not opposed to it being gone, just… couldn’t they have let that one go last? Maybe carefully move it somewhere where it can be put into a context that doesn’t glorify the racists, but just points out that there was a movement to glorify racists with statues and the racists were really bad at art.
@Michael Reynolds: When the Soviet Union fell, and all the statues of Lenin were being taken down, I was disappointed no one did anything clever with them.
I wanted some one to build Leninhenge, a replica of Stonehenge, but with statues of Lenin for the blocks. It could be a cheesey tourist trap in some small town in Slovakia.
Or arrange then like bowling pins. Lots of possibilities.
I believe you mean American Museum of Democratic Party Treason and Sedition.
No Republican owned a slave in 1860, only Democrats. It was Democrat Woodrow Wilson who segregated the federal workforce, removing thousands of blacks from good middle class jobs, at the behest of Democratic Party leaders. Removing Lee and Forrest is removing soldiers who fought for the Democratic Party’s secession of states they controlled to preserve slavery.
But then even the Library of Congress to this day tries to hide President Woodrow Wilson’s party affiliation even as they reference subsequent Republican administration that didn’t revoke Wilson’s racist presidential action.
@Gustopher: IIRC, one of those statues made it to Seattle.
There’s a photo from a flea market of the lenin statue with a sign saying something like “$10,000 OBO”.
The irony of that sign on the statue of Lenin always amused me.
@Kathy: Don’t know. OTOH, this year the Daughters of the Confederacy settled with the city of Wilmington, NC to take possession of two memorial statues the city was removing. The city was apparently unable to show that ownership had ever formally transferred from the Daughters organization to the city. I’m sure that the organization has dreams at least about some future use for them, else why claim them?
@JKB: Wow, that’s pathetic. I mean, even for you.
If I recall correctly, in the previous statue dispute the claim was that the statue being removed was a genuine work of art unlike those erected in the 1920s by the Daughters of the Confederacy. The argument appears to have moved to
It IS just me, and I AM just an ignint cracker, but the apologia to the people who were willing to tear apart the country to keep owning others they considered sub-human looks to be continuing apace from here.
The whole “malice toward none and charity for all” thing seems to have been a misplaced sentiment.
@Gustopher: “When the Soviet Union fell, and all the statues of Lenin were being taken down, I was disappointed no one did anything clever with them.”
Wha choo talkin bout Willis? Didn’t one of them end up waiting for a bus near the Freemont Bridge or something in Seattle? Or did the good citizens of the neighborhood eventually deport poor Vlad?
@Kathy: Apparently there is only one statue of him anywhere, and that’s in Egypt. However, there is a monument to Rommel (no statue) in his German hometown.
@Kathy:
For a long time there was a Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va . It’s basically been merged with the American Civil War Museum which does a good job of putting the war into perspective from both viewpoints as well as the roles of women and African slaves in the war. They’ve taken over a historic ironworks factory as their home base, and also have a similar museum in Appomattox in conjunction with the National Park Service.
The longtime President of the organization was instrumental in the founding of the Charles Wright Museum in Detroit, and is also involved with the Jamestown Historical site in Virginia.
@wr:
Do you say that because I didn’t point out that the 1868 Democratic party presidential ticket, with Forrest’s friend as VP candidate, was overtly racist?
Or was it because I left out this bit of Democratic party history?
You’d think modern Democrats would want to disassociate themselves from the name Democrat Party, and that doesn’t even consider facts such as Bull Conner being a member of the Democratic National Committee while his officers were brutalizing blacks in the streets of Birmingham, AL.
@JKB:
JKB, good points. What can I do to help you restore the GOP back to the party of Lincoln?
I love how all the “Democrats are the real racists” have (1) to constantly go back to the nineteenth century to the 60’s South and then get real quiet about more recent history (including the entire regional political shifts that happened after the signing of the Civil Right and voting rights acts) and (2) were the people who vociferously argued here on OTB about the evils of removing of Confederate Statues.
@JKB:
This is easily proven false. See for example:
@JKB: Yes. From it’s formation until roughly 1965 the Democratic Party was representative of the most degenerate and basest violations of American ideals – Slavery, Jim Crow, racist murders, theft of life and property, and on and on. And the Republican Party, from its formation until about 1870 or so stood firmly on the the opposite side – the good and noble side. You are absolutely right about that.
Since 1965, in an odd twist of fate not uncommon in history, they have completely changed sides. The Republican Party is now an overtly racist party using Jim Crow tactics to keep themselves in power, while the Democrats have embraced real American ideals.
I honestly can’t fathom what goes on in your head when you bring this up over and over. How does your mind work that you think you are scoring points, and what kind of game is it that you think you are playing?
@mattbernius:
@JKB:
This is easily proven false.
JKB=Just Kidding Because: “I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
@ImProPer:
Go back in time to 1966 and kill Nixon.
Take care, though. You may also end the Vietnam War sooner, and turn Gerald Ford into an obscure Congressman.
The calculations from Eternity’s Technician are unclear, spotty observations and all, but it seems you may then have to go back again and kill Reagan in 1972.
@JKB:
I wonder, if white supremacy was all about Democrats, why you and the Republican party have chosen to endorse the ‘Democrat’ position? Are you saying that Donald Trump is just a plagiarist ripping off 19th century Democrats? It’s Democrats taking the statues down, and your side crying about it. Explain.
@JKB: Do you really think you are scoring some kind of rhetoric points by pointing out the undisputed racist past of the Democratic Party?
Do you think anyone here is going to be stung by these historical facts?
Perhaps because you cling to party regardless of what it does that others do as well?
What argument are you making here?
@mattbernius: Indeed.
@MarkedMan:
It’s entertaining, really. @JKB isn’t clever enough to see it but his position contains within it an admission that his side is wrong. Either he’s saying Democrats were right in 1860 and Republicans were wrong; or he’s saying Democrats were wrong in 1860 which would make Republicans wrong today for taking the same positions.
The Democratic position is that the Democrats in 1860 were wrong, and that Republicans who hold those same views now are also wrong.
@JKB isn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree.
Apologies, as a Brit outsider, for relaying a rather bad taste joke:
“If the Chinese ever invade the US, they need to be clever who they pick as a commander.
If the headlines read “General Lee occupies Washington”, half the Old South will celebrate”.
@Kathy: Is there some reason to not just kill Reagan in 1966 while you’re there already?
@MarkedMan:
Except this isn’t true either, and is an overcorrection.
First, by modern standards, neither party’s history on race relations is particularly good. Yes, especially in the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the early decades of the 20th century, the Democrats had the worse track record.
However, if you isolate the South, what you begin to see is that in other regions the Democrats begin to embrace racial equity — to the point that if you leave out the South, Democratic legislators supported key civil rights bills at higher percentages than their Republican colleagues in the same regions.
It’s also worth noting that it’s during that same period that the Lilly-White began to take hold for the first time among Republicans, primarily in the South (see details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily-white_movement). Note the regional pattern and this is something that folks tend to leave out of their “Republicans were always the better party on race” screeds.
And while they were initially defeated, many Black republicans in the 50’s and 60’s came to see the reemergence of the Lily-White movement. For example Jakie Robinson wrote “The danger of the Republican party being taken over by the lily-white-ist conservatives is more serious than many people realize.” He would later write after the 1963 Republican National Convention (where Black delegates were attacked outside the center by White Republicans:
@Kathy:
I’m pretty positive there is a monument; and a barracks named in his honour.
It was mentioned to me many years ago by a former 8th Army officer with the Royal Tank Regiment, a veteran of North Africa, who found it rather amusing.
I think it safe to say, however, he would have found monuments to Waffen SS commanders extremely unamusing.
@Kathy:
Thanks for bringing up more modest goals than bringing a member of the GQP into the light, but we could be at a watershed moment.
@JKB:
Dont listen to the haters. That’s some powerful juju you are throwing down. You really owned dear leader’s enemies. Lincoln good Republican, Jefferson Davis bad Democrat! You might be experiencing a little discomfort in your head right now. This is because of the powerful truth you just enlightened all the pointy heads at OTB with. Is it in conflict with some of the teachings of the great orange one? Perhaps, but I’ll let you decide, as you are becoming quite powerful yourself now.
@mattbernius: You are right, of course. I actually contemplated adding all kinds of qualifiers to my blanket statements but felt that, at least in the case of this particular trumper, it was beside the point.
Maddow had some fun last night with the background of Jack Kershaw, the “sculptor”. (To call him a sculptor is to accept that thing as a sculpture rather than, as someone suggested, 15 car mufflers stapled together. Apparently any thought of preserving it was mooted as it fell apart when touched.) After James Earl Ray pled guilty to the murder of Martin Luther King and was serving life in prison, Kershaw became his attorney. He pushed a conspiracy theory that Ray was somehow a dupe in a larger, evidence free, conspiracy. He was a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Nashville White Citizens Council. He helped found the League of the South, which is what it sounds like, but now has added neo-Nazis. All in all a paragon of revanchist Southern society.
Hey, @JKB:, he was probably a Dem some years ago. Today he’d damn sure be a GOP grifter.
@JohnSF: I doubt there’s much memorializing of Rommel in Germany. My understanding is they regarded North Africa as a sideshow and Rommel as a mediocre general.
@ImProPer:
Look at the troll. they probably think past actions by a party excuse all the actions of individuals today. That’s moral licensing at the James Bond level.
@gVOR08:
Dunno about how Rommel was regarded in Germany in terms of popular fame.
IIRC he had a reputation as a good divisional commander from 1939/40; then got quite a bit of publicity early ’41 when he was commanding the most evident active land front in N. Africa.
But after Barbarossa was less prominent, and (rather unfairly) blamed for not kicking the Brits out of Egypt and for the debacle of defeat in Africa.
But obviously this was not universal; he was appointed as General Inspector-Commander of the Western Defences, which you would hardly give to a twerp.
The only memorials I’ve heard of are the one IIRC near his home town, and that barracks.
Which latter would probably be because Rommel garnered a (possibly exaggerated?) reputation as an anti-Nazi. He was effectively forced to choose suicide or execution due to peripheral connection to the anti-Hitler plots.
The Nazis did generally view North Africa as sideshow; which was one of their fatal mistakes of the war.
@JohnSF:
Look at it this way. If there was one monument and one barracks or even one base named after Lee, maybe in his home state, it wouldn’t be much of an issue. Ditto if other confederate generals got that treatment.
Instead there are are hundreds of monuments to the confederate traitors, all over the South, and even in places you wouldn’t think to look like Montana.
@Kathy:
Yes. At least Rommel has some (maybe) claim to being anti-nazi.
If the Germans were to erect monuments to Himmler and Dietrich and the rest of those bastards in every town square, you can be pretty certain that European reconciliation would not have got very far.
Not to mention that the BAOR would have pulled the bloody things down.
(British Army Of the Rhine)
Having frequently driven by the Forrest statue in Nashville, my thought always was that the sculptor must have really hated Forrest to create such an absurd and comical depiction of the general.
@just nutha: He’s still there, at least last I checked, but that’s one. Out of thousands. And not really clever, just randomly on display outside a sandwich shop. Sometimes people paint his hands red.
@JKB: Dude, even von Mises used more contemporary references than you do.
@JKB:
Well, to be pedantic for a moment, it isn’t called the “Democrat Party,” so I guess they don’t have to disassociate themselves.
But, more importantly, the Democrats clearly want to disassociate themselves from the CSA and Jim Crow era symbolism, while Republicans want to embrace both. This is the salient issue, not what was said by the two parties in the 1860s.
It is beyond amazing that you are trying to tar Dems with their 19th century past in the context of many Reps wanting to maintain statues and other symbols that glorify that past.