VA: Gen. Robert E. Lee Statue in Richmond Has Been Taken Down

[Frodo]

After the Virginia Supreme Court gave the green-light to do so:

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1435212102432665600

[Frodo]

Wasn't this on land given to the state on condition they respect the statue?

Times change:

Virginia promised to forever maintain the statue in the 1887 and 1890 deeds that transferred its ownership to the state. But the justices said that obligation no longer applies.

“Those restrictive covenants are unenforceable as contrary to public policy and for being unreasonable because their effect is to compel government speech, by forcing the Commonwealth to express, in perpetuity, a message with which it now disagrees,” the justices wrote.

And it was a unanimous decision. 

[Frodo]

Wasn't this on land given to the state on condition they respect the statue?

Times change:

Virginia promised to forever maintain the statue in the 1887 and 1890 deeds that transferred its ownership to the state. But the justices said that obligation no longer applies.

“Those restrictive covenants are unenforceable as contrary to public policy and for being unreasonable because their effect is to compel government speech, by forcing the Commonwealth to express, in perpetuity, a message with which it now disagrees,” the justices wrote.

And it was a unanimous decision. 

That's called judicial tyranny.

LOL

The Confederacy fought for states' rights.

No, they fought for slavery, and the way of life that went along with it.

[Frodo]

Wasn't this on land given to the state on condition they respect the statue?

Times change:

Virginia promised to forever maintain the statue in the 1887 and 1890 deeds that transferred its ownership to the state. But the justices said that obligation no longer applies.

“Those restrictive covenants are unenforceable as contrary to public policy and for being unreasonable because their effect is to compel government speech, by forcing the Commonwealth to express, in perpetuity, a message with which it now disagrees,” the justices wrote.

And it was a unanimous decision. 

That's called judicial tyranny. The Confederacy fought for states' rights.

Just one states' right really.

Property rights are very important.

Every slave owner agrees. 

[Frodo]

Wasn't this on land given to the state on condition they respect the statue?

Times change:

Virginia promised to forever maintain the statue in the 1887 and 1890 deeds that transferred its ownership to the state. But the justices said that obligation no longer applies.

“Those restrictive covenants are unenforceable as contrary to public policy and for being unreasonable because their effect is to compel government speech, by forcing the Commonwealth to express, in perpetuity, a message with which it now disagrees,” the justices wrote.

And it was a unanimous decision.  

That's called judicial tyranny. The Confederacy fought for states' rights.

Just one states' right really.

Property rights are very important.

Every slave owner agrees.  

"Hitler ate sugar. So eating sugar must be bad" that's basically what your argument sounds like.

Santander is clearly wedded to the Lost Cause mythology.  White supremacy and property rights were central to the arguments that John C. Calhoun and other slaveowners used to justify slavery of an entire race.  If you are going to use property rights in your argument, be prepared to deal with the shadow that slavery's defenders cast over it.  

[Frodo]

In the winter of '65
We were hungry, just barely alive
By May the 10th, Richmond had fell
It's a time I remember, oh so well

The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the people were singing
They went, "Na, na, la, na, na, la"

Back with my wife in Tennessee
When one day she called to me
"Virgil, quick, come see,
There goes Robert E. Lee!"

Now ah don't mind choppin' wood
And ah don't care if the money's no good!
Ya take what ya need and ya leave the rest
But they should NEVER have taken the VERY BEEEEEESSSSSSST!

This was my grandfather's (yes, the same one who stormed Normandy on D-Day) favorite song by the way. HIS grandfather fought for the Confederacy as a rural Appalachian North Carolina man who probably never saw a black person in person his entire life, let alone owned a slave or approved of such a thing.

Turns out people and massive wars are complicated and not as black and white as commonly portrayed! Who would have thought???

And before anyone takes this as a defense of slavery or the Confederacy, no it absolutely is not. The plantation system of chattel slavery was abhorrent, reprehensible, one of the greatest moral evils of all-time. It and the rebellion ABSOLUTELY deserved to be put down.

HOWEVER... My point, and the point of the song, is that the people who suffered and died in the name of the Confederacy were in 99%+ cases NOT slave owners. These people were barely literate if at all. Many didn't own f--king shoes. They literally had no access to any information about the outside world besides what they were spoonfed by their state governments (ESPECIALLY in particularly isolated places like Western North Carolina). And they certainly didn't own slaves, and couldn't afford to even if they wanted to. THEY were nonetheless the ones used as cannon fodder in the Confederacy's "lost cause." Blame the plantation class, not my ancestors. And while it is true Robert E. Lee was part of that plantation class, and in most cases I agree his likeness has no business on the streets of modern America... To deny just how powerful an influence the image (if not the reality) of this man was on generations of Southerners is just to deny reality and history. And if it's going to be preserved anywhere, it absolutely should be Richmond, Virginia.

I have no idea who your ancestors were or what they did, but I would not be so quick to absolve poorer white southerners, since it is they who allowed themselves to be manipulated by those same slaveowners.  It is they who manned the slave patrols, who served as overseers as well as slave bounty hunters, and aspired to own slaves themselves as a mark of social standing.  Without them, the system of slavery would not have survived as long as it did.  Without them, there would have been no one to enforce Jim Crow on a day-to-day basis.  It is from their ranks that the Ku Klux Klan (and other white terror groups) drew from in their campaign to undermine Reconstruction. So we shouldn't pretend that the responsibility for slavery and its legacy is the burden of only slaveowners.  

[Frodo]

And it’s gone:

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So with the process of reimagining Richmond's Monument Avenue having begun, it seems only fitting for its namesake to remain an avenue of monuments, only this time dedicated to prominent Virginia Unionists, abolitionists, and African Americans instead of traitors.

Here is my list of suggestions to replace the five Confederate statues that have all finally been removed:

General George H. Thomas (replacing General Robert E. Lee's statue)

Elizabeth Van Lew

Mary Richards Bowser

William Harvey Carney

Mary Jackson (hers should be closest to Arthur Ashe's monument)