Nations don’t like to show their warts, those times in their history they are not particularly proud and want to cover up. The period of the Civil War certainly must be one area of our history some people don’t want to remember.
Recently the city of New Orleans, a city that can’t take care of its citizens during a disaster or hurricane having been controlled by Democrats for years, decided the removal of Confederate statues of General Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and General P.G.T. Beauregard was needed to erase the shame of that era.
Of course, the history of the United States will always have the stain of the Civil War upon the memory of Americans. We learned about it in school and its battles are still studied for the maneuvers to win battles and mount counter-offensives.
General Stonewall Jackson was the right arm of General Lee’s offensive strategy, especially early in the war when the South was winning battle after battle with all odds against them. With General Jackson, all was possible. Without him, Lee’s reality was he had no one to replace him with his knack of knowing what the enemy would do before they did it and know how to engage or evade, depending on the enemy strength and favorable terrain to place the odds on the Confederate side – a master tactician.
Evidently the mayor, Mitch Landrieu (D), could not abide the statues within the city any more and ordered them removed at night so as not draw attention and protest at their removal. I would think the statues would be a reminder of the history of the old South, and the giant progress it has made since the ending of the Civil War. Removing them does not eliminate them from the American psyche. The mayor mentioned the existence of slavery and antebellum life in the South at the time were not compatible with modern life. It is better to remember the past so it is never repeated again.
While I don’t agree with the statues removal, there are plenty of other notable presidents who owned slaves. If those three statues in New Orleans are removed because they owned or were supporting of slavery at the time, then it only goes to reason the following presidents must be removed also. Statues, schools, roads and highways, and any building named after the following must be either destroyed, removed, or renamed. Per Wikipedia, the following presidents owned slaves (and number noted):
George Washington (317)
Thomas Jefferson (200)
James Madison (100+)
James Monroe (75)
Andrew Jackson (<200)
Martin Van Buren (1)
William Henry Harrison (11)
John Tyler (70)
James K. Polk (25)
Zachary Taylor (<150)
Andrew Johnson (8)
Ulysses S. Grant (5)
I urge all our federal and state legislators to move post haste to remove, replace, destroy, or rename those things with the slave owning presidents’ names. Let’s do it right and get to it. If they don’t, will that mean they support slavery?
Yes, my reasoning is idiocy, but so was Landrieu’s. Shows just how unhinged the Democrat Party has become. And check your history – the South was overwhelmingly Democrat during that period until relatively recently when the population shift from North to South reversed and more conservative thinking took hold in the South. Republicans led the abolishment of slavery then and they are the majority party in the South now. I guess the Carpetbaggers from the North did change the South!
The rotting of America from within continues…
