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  • 2017-08-23 (xsd:date)
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  • Was Robert E. Lee Opposed to Confederate Monuments? (en)
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  • A century-and-a-half-old debate over the propriety of erecting statues and monuments to the Confederacy in the post-Civil War era came back with full force in August 2017 when a white nationalist rally protesting the planned removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned violent, culminating in a vehicular attack that killed one person and injured 19. The incident sparked an accelerated effort by states and municipalities in various parts of the country to remove such monuments, of which there are approximately 750 spread across the U.S., according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Proponents of their removal say the continued presence of the monuments confers undue dignity on a faction that fought to preserve the institution of slavery and the ethos of white supremacy that underlays it. Those who defend the markers, on the other hand — among the most prominent of whom is President Donald Trump — say they deserve to stand as reminders of America's past: A majority of Americans side with the president, an August 2017 PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll found, with 62 percent of respondents agreeing that such monuments ought to remain in place as historical symbols. One of the most frequently cited voices in opposition to Confederate monuments, ironically, is that of the white, slave-owning Confederate General Robert E. Lee: That Lee expressed such views, and did so more than once between the end of the Civil War and his death in 1870 is confirmed by historian and biographer Jonathan Horn, who wrote in 2016: It's not strictly accurate to say that Lee's objections to memorializing the Civil War applied only to Confederate monuments, however. A letter he wrote to David McConaughy of the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association in 1869, in which he turned down an invitation to participate in their preservation efforts, made clear his conviction that it was more important for the nation to heal than to perpetuate the memory of the civil strife it had so recently undergone. The letter was quoted in a 21 November 1957 article in the Chicago Tribune: Horn quotes this passage as well, saying of Lee Lee's zeal for North-South reconciliation verged on the evangelical, judging from some of his postwar statements. Another of his biographers, Charles Bracelen Flood, recounted an anecdote that speaks to Lee's conviction that the formerly warring factions — particularly the side that lost, his side, the South — needed to forgive and forget and get on with the business of being Americans: Little could he have imagined that we would still be debating the issue some 150 years hence. (en)
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