180 on Lee & Thee: The Shame of an Orange Smelter Sunset.
I
You can see where this is going. It’s the tipping point.
After 4 years of bloodshed, & this long past ’65, a few Americans got so cowed, so petrified of a bronze 26 ft high, 12 ft long, 8 ft wide statue of a guy on his horse that we tore it down then melted it into a liquid molten state 99 years after it went up.
Those with eyes squeezed shut won’t observe this as the first real erasure.
We can quote Orwell till we’re blue in the face, yet it stands that something about the memory of Lee & the war has deliberately been destroyed here. Why? Because if Lee up on Traveller, in that patch of grass didn’t matter, they wouldn’t have bothered him nor his horsey.
Nothing can make the war never to have happened. Nothing can reverse a deranged driver plowing into a group of citizens. It’s the people, not the statue.
And nothing should allow destruction of this monument to be the new best practice, the el primo procedure. No excuse in the world should allow this type of propane torch craft project to be the new strategy, the proper, admirable, ethically just, first-rate American plan of action for any other instance of American monument removal.
Should any type of violence occur around Lincoln setting up there in his D.C. chair, it will be excuse time to destroy this memorial too.
Does protest equate to placing feelings over facts. If that were the case, there’d be nothing left standing on this land called the United States, a mass colonial crime scene. And we all know it. But no. Nope. Just Lee. Lee & his horsey sent trotting off to an orange smelter sunset.
Not retired out to pasture at merely ONE of thousands of spots they’d have been welcomed, then embraced, for generations to come.
It’s a foreboding to me. Your mileage may vary. We’ll hear soon that someone, somewhere, is creating an exact replica. As they should. Why? Because this kind of thing isn’t right. Not on any level. Any level whatsoever.
II
The second time capsule, a copper box held at Lee, live at the time of opening (I watched today): https://www.youtube.com/live/IzcA-I0jYUQ?feature=share
Imagine if Virginia’s Department of Historic Resources had tossed relics out. Didn’t dehumidify anything, or even look, not a glance, at what was in this box. Why open it? There’s no display. Any contextualization is out of the question. No, it’s all gotta go. Now.
All due to a local yokel city council deciding for the *country* this box has some bad juju to it. So curators with their blue gloves scoop relics up like so many soiled tampons, then hit the dumpster with it all.
We’d have found these folks *certifiably insane.*
Just think, if State Archaeological Conservators had taken it upon their tiny group to naysay a cut from the tree at Bloody Angle, plus all the rest there laying in wait for fresh eyes 130 years later, items like the Memorial Volume of the Army of Northern Virginia, a 100,000 Confederate Bond, an 1812 English penny, a $1 silver buck, bullets & piece of shell, a bit of stone wall off Fredericksburg, & 3 Minnie balls from that field, an 1887 VA. almanac, an 1887 Report of the Mt. Vernon Ladies’ Association, a Richmond Directory, a copy of seal of the Adjutant-General of the Confederate States, a compass made from the tree over Jackson’s grave, Sir Thomas Grantham’s “An historical account of some memorable actions, particularly in Virginia,” an 1865 Harper’s Weekly with wood engraving of a woman grieving at Lincoln’s grave,
Chamber of Commerce reports from ’86, ’87, a copy of History of the First Battle of Manassas, a letter by the Hon. Corcoran regarding Lee, Knights Templars, Grand Lodge, & Masonic items, buttons, & bits of flag, the Muster Roll of VA. 21st Richmond Sharpshooters, the genealogical tree of Lee’s family, Constitution & Bylaws of the Lee camp, the 1886 Annual Convocation of the Grand Chapter of the State of Virginia, a Richmond Times newspaper, plus some Daily Dispatch copies. Straight out back for trash pickup day.
Oh, & a “Holy Bible,” for what that’s worth. You can see for yourself the inventory of what stayed quiet, placed there by other humans to await other human eyes in some coming century, to take an interest…. Carefully lift books & shards of wood & metal, hold them in a gloved palm. Turn ’em over, side by side, hold them to the light, even walk them outside to the sky, lift them toward the blue, up to say a prayer and a simple thanks.
Or is that asking too much.
So what is the difference between a time capsule buried at Lee, & the statue of Lee himself. That’s right, none.
And it’s not enough to “see the problem.” It’s how we’re resolving the problem that’s the bigger problem.
III
I think it’s clear we’re sliding down the slope now. Removals are here & there, disparate occurrences that don’t make international news like Lee waving bye bye.
They’re labelled “contentious sites.” Whether slave auction blocks on city street corners, or memorials to Confederate soldier death at Union prison camps, if a couple hundred folks show up with enough signs & mediagenic hair, these original materials (present at an historical event in real time)– or later constructed memorials (not using site-specific relics, but in enough time, like Lee, become relics in their own right )– are going down.
From one angle, they’re like the los desaparecidos, taken via state or political organization authorization. Promised to warehouses or the like, “storage,” then reneged upon. Somehow no one gets the remains. Or the remains shapeshift into an ensuing group’s preferred symbol. They get their stint, a century, say, to play with their symbol & what they say it should mean to everybody.
Until a court interval happens. Or a coup. Difference? Henceforth, the consequent most powerful group gets the goods. They keep it as long as they can.
Levin emailed out his piece “Robert E. Lee’s Final Meltdown” 10/26 with these final two paras:
“While I don’t believe that melting down monuments down [sic] is an appropriate solution for other communities, it does seem to be a way to move forward for Charlottesville.”
“I love the idea of turning an objective that once caused so much pain and division turned into something that has the potential to bring everyone together.”
Objective? There has never been an “everyone.” Naturally he knows this. “Move forward” past harms seen as emanating off how light hits Traveller’s bronze ass, I guess.
Harm-based arguments are valid at times: Toddler drowns due to toddling into neighbor’s pool that had no fence surrounding it.
We can argue this death is the babysitter’s fault. However, had a gate existed, toddler would simply have toddled off elsewhere, maybe the street.
Toddles into busy intersection. Splat. Stronger case, perhaps, to find babysitter at fault.
What we don’t do is remove 15,812,406 U.S. intersectionse here on out. 10.4 million residential pools. All that stays.
We might lower the speed limit, have signs reading “Caution! Toddlers May Cross Here.” “Fines For Toddler Aimers!”
Lee carried no animate, inherent danger but for what citizens brought to him then plopped on his lap. Short of a Cessna flying too low, or a drunk frat boy walking into him in the dark, the bronze of him held nothing dangerous. It’s all on us. We’re the problem.
IV
The whole “secret ceremony” plus picture of Lee’s melting face seem intended for clicks. Clicks=revenue.
Yes, this world-renowned statue would have been a prime addition to the newly created Lee-Jackson Memorial Park (created after Lee’s removal, not that that would have made a difference), and a thousand other places, but they knew that all along. It was THAT particular monument they had to get gone.
Interesting that if you do a search for a “Robert E. Lee” at JSAAHC, no results come up. Not a one. Cringe result for an entity so hell-bent on a craft project involving just such that’s made the national, & in places, international, spotlight this past week. At the same time, they do have a call out for citizens to “Help share authentic history by becoming a guide” then a red button to click, “BECOME A GUIDE.”
Alrighty then. But a guide to what exactly, now?
V
And like this?
Transatlantic Slave Trade – Middle Passage Monuments · Contemporary Monuments to the Slave Pasthttps://www.slaverymonuments.org/
How anyone can oppose the telling of the full story of the war is beyond me.
Any memorial, anywhere across the world, inevitably meets opposition. There’s always someone. But whittling down, then after a couple years in court, carving them out of the land cheapens history. It cheapens the dead. And it cheats us all.
It’s not even about who’s up on the pedestal at this point. Not for me.
I may be a true blue Northerner, I may not agree with the majority of CWT re causes of the war, nor why who lost did, & I may also be a far leftist, but even I have two brain cells I can rub together to see that. And the people who don’t, won’t. They won’t, ’till they themselves are come after. Then it’ll be HOLD UP! NOT THAT. You can’t take that away too. By then it’ll be too late.
VI
Why does Grant get to haunt the landscape undisturbed? Wherever he finds himself, a man responsible for 23,551 casualties, he gets to stay. Or are those deaths too old to care about all a sudden?
VII
We can wave Orwell away now, leave him to himself, let him go sit beside Lenin & Marx to share cups of tea with Vodka, talk the Lost Cause, if they can come to agreement which one they’re referring to. We can all just go ahead & quote ourselves now, carry on simply quoting ourselves in this timeline, late ’23, where instead of– and in addition to– building our own stinking statues if we don’t like the ones up, we can get court orders to do our bidding & level to our land all that marble & metal that offends our toddleresque sensibilities. Remember, this is the time anyone can tell anyone what even they are, although they’re not. Not now, not ever, but that doesn’t stop them checking off the box for “woman” when they’re male, through & through, & vice versa. So that’s my current back bearing, where a small compass has led me since starting in on the Civil War circa 2018. Were I in college now, I’d be calling for all the tear down, too, while galloping hormones down my gullet, maybe, because why be female when the condition that shunts off so much freedom turned out to be optional? It’s all tied, the big lies, & we’re all fried. Cheerio.
VIII
