Robert E. Lee Statue Removed in Richmond — Debate Over Monuments Continues
Virginia’s largest remaining statue of General Lee was removed on September 8th, 2021. Source: ABC News
On Wednesday September 8th, a massive bronze statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee was removed from its pedestal on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. The actions in Virginia’s capital city were met with cheers and song from the crowd that gathered to watch the state’s largest statue of Lee finally come down. Governor Ralph Northam originally ordered the statue’s removal in June of 2020, though a series of lawsuits and court battles prolonged it ultimately leading to a ruling from the Supreme Court of Virginia.
For many, news such as this is not unfamiliar. The debate surrounding confederate statues has been a prominent focus of political conversation in the U.S. over the past several years, and more recently has re-entered the spotlight in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and subsequent national protests. In fact, the UNC community will recall our own recent history with a confederate monument: Silent Sam.
If the news about confederate statues being torn down and the dizzying barrage of court cases concerning them seems overwhelming, you may not be alone. Many articles and various other media have been produced by scholars of the American South and experts on the history of confederate monuments to try and take a step back from the headlines, and to dive deeper into the root of the issue. Writing for Vox in 2017, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, the William Umstead Distinguished Professor of history at UNC, gave his analysis of how many of these statues came to be and why their removal is so difficult.
Professor Brundage maintains that the installation of over one thousand Confederate memorials and monuments across the U.S. was due primarily to the efforts of white Southerners with clear political aims. Chief among these aims was fighting against political rights for black citizens. Their schema for erecting the monuments was through groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy which claimed to represent the interest of the whole community. As Brundage writes, “Most Confederate monuments were, in short, the result of private groups colonizing public space.” Furthermore, Southern state legislatures enacted laws requiring approval from the legislatures before a monument could be removed or changed, essentially making the decisions of these private groups permanent. Many of these laws remain in place and this is the reason why the Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond faced long legal battles before its removal.
Furthermore, one of the main political arguments for keeping confederate statues in their place has to do with history itself. It is in fact the misrepresentation of history and the mischaracterization of Lee himself which leads to these talking points. Most recently, just after the statue was removed, former President Donald Trump released a statement calling Lee “the greatest strategist of them all” and stating that “He should be remembered as perhaps the greatest unifying force after the war was over, ardent in his resolve to bring the North and South together through many means of reconciliation and imploring his soldiers to do their duty in becoming good citizens of this Country.”
Trump’s words echo a popular pseudo-historical ideology that developed in the post-Civil War South known as the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy”. Those who espoused this view saw the Confederate states as heroic in their fight against the oppressive North, proposed that the war was not fought over slavery, and that removing Confederate monuments is erasing history. Modern notions of the “Lost Cause” feature prominently in many Southern-U.S. history textbooks and in political rhetoric such as that from the former president.
As the debate over Confederate monuments continues in America, it is important for everyone to do their own research and to be informed about the history of the issue to try and avoid misconceptions and historical inaccuracies. Having an informed debate is crucial to finding a positive resolution. Partisan talking points, historical falsehoods, and cheap rhetoric will do nothing to reconcile opposing voices and bring closure to this issue that has pervaded American public life for over a century.