For months in 2015, Talbot County residents argued over the propriety of the Talbot Boys Confederate statue in front of the courthouse. Should it stay, or should it be removed and relocated?
I thought that the Talbot County Council’s decision to keep the statue where it was and support construction of one paying tribute to county soldiers who fought with the Union forces was a reasoned and even a reasonable one. Like many in the county, I am bothered by the Confederate flag being held by the color bearer; the racism symbolized by the flag is tough to take.
Now, after reading about the renaming of Byrd Stadium at the University of Maryland’s College Park Campus, the renaming of Robert E. Lee Park in Baltimore and the recommendation by a commission to move two statues in Baltimore—one showing General Lee and General Stonewall Jackson and the other one showing Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney (he of the dreadful Dred Scott decision in 1857 declaring that black Americans were not citizens and therefore could not sue in court)—I have serious misgivings.
The present is trumping the past. It doesn’t seem that the widely accepted premise that one should be very careful to judge the past by today’s values and mores has substantive merit to some decision-makers. It’s okay now to say we disagree with the past—understandably in some cases—and then act to erase it by removing statues that sear our moral and cultural sensitivity.
I find it telling that Jews are intent to retain concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald as shrines of abominable inhuman behavior because they don’t want citizens of the world to forget what happened in the 20th century’s worse attack on humanity. A visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC illustrates the intentional policy by Jewish leaders to preserve the past to ensure it is not forgotten, nor repeated.
So, my thinking is this: the past stinks in many instances, particularly in our nation where slavery imprisoned people because their skin was black, and whites treated them with disdain and depredation. This behavior was horrendously wrong and evil. For that reason, we should retain statues of Confederate generals and soldiers and a Supreme Court, if only to remind us that our past was ugly and disrespectful.
Much respected leaders like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and therefore tolerated the degrading treatment of individuals who craved to be free, to enjoy our new nation like anyone else. Though neither fought in the Civil War to preserve Southern values, or issued a court decision, they did nothing to rid their plantations of this noxious institution. Shall we rename our Nation’s Capital, or suggest that the University of Virginia minimize its reverence of its founder?
While clearly I question the removal and relocation of statues, as suggested by the commission appointed by the mayor of Baltimore, I do support the inclusion of “context,” that is interpretive narrative that offers another viewpoint. For example, I would support—should a statue honoring Union soldiers not be built—a plaque stating that 50 Talbot County residents (if that’s the correct number) also fought in the Civil War. I think that historical fairness is far more preferable than a one-sided perspective. Distortion is undesirable.
Some years ago, I visited the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon. What I found remarkable and insightful was the museum’s effort to present a fair picture of how Native Americans were treated by white Americans. I learned that schools set up to remove Indian children from their homes on reservations to assimilate them into white American culture implicitly denigrated the culture in which these children were raised. It was wholly unsuccessful. It was a social experiment gone awry.
A Baltimore Sun columnist recently wrote, “As with many controversial issues, it is difficult to draw lines. Reasonable people can disagree as to what should be done with individual symbols. This however is no reason not to engage in such line drawing where it makes sense to do so. One such way to decide which monuments should be removed would be to see if the person represented on the monument was identified in a significant way with the particular evil at issue.”
This writer uses this argument to endorse the removal of monuments honoring General Lee, who fought for the Confederacy and therefore the retention of slavery, and Curley Byrd, who led the University of Maryland at College Park to great achievements but was known for blocking enrollment of African-Americans based on their race.
While I agree we should not venerate evil, I think that reminders of abhorrent behavior, like the killing factories in the German concentration camps, have deeply absorbing meaning: not again.
Columnist Howard Freedlander retired in 2011 as Deputy State Treasurer of the State of Maryland. Previously, he was the executive officer of the Maryland National Guard. He also served as community editor for Chesapeake Publishing, lastly at the Queen Anne’s Record-Observer. In retirement, Howard serves on the boards of several non-profits on the Eastern Shore, Annapolis and Philadelphia.
Bob Ingersoll says
Howard: What a well reasoned piece with what I consider sensible conclusions. Even though I abhor what Roger B.Taney’s Court decided in Dred Scott, it would be another huge wrong to remove his statue and pretend that what he did, did not happen. We can not erase who we were or how our nation began, and operated up to and after the Civil War.
I am presently reading “The American Slave Coast” by Ned and Constance Sublette, and its point is clear; we all share our past, our ancestral association with slavery, and a connection to one of the root causes for our countries’ huge disparity of wealth. This is history, not the misguided thoughts of a bleeding heart liberal. To try and bury that history by removing statues of our past will not change that past. Instead, read “The American Slave Coast” (available at KCPL), and learn about Chestertown’s beginning. It is mentioned by name more than once in an unvarnished history of our past. A better understanding of our past will make hopefully show us a better future.
John Kramer says
While I am proud abolitionist (there is still slavery, see ISIS for example) and liberal, who marched on Washington with Martin Luther King in August of 1963, I take exception to the statement that “we should retain statues of Confederate generals and soldiers and a Supreme Court, if only to remind us that our past was ugly and disrespectful.” My exception is to the conflation of General Robert E. Lee and common Confederate soldiers with ugly and disrepectful. You are painting with a single simplistic brush and the economic and politicially powerful elite that supported American slavery with those whose conscience lead them to fight for the Confederacy. You will not find a Confederate flag hidden in my closet, but you will find respect for those people that who made their choices in that sad era even if it would not have been mine.
Jay Falstad says
If we’re going to take down statues because those who were once revered did bad things, then get ready to take down not only lots of monuments, but rename schools, parks, federal buildings, etc. Just about every American Presidential Administration from the time of George Washington to William McKinley was part of a systematic effort to exterminate entire populations of native Americans. It was wholesale slaughter, vast killing of men, women and children. That’s genocide, and many of our American presidents were directly responsible for making those decisions. It is unfortunate that the most convenient way to shape American history is to simply ignore the bad stuff.