Memorials to former slaveholders: How far do we go?
What will we put in place of the Jefferson Memorial? Ok, even in light of today's protest at the Jefferson Memorial, it's a little early to ask, and I hope we never actually have to address that question. It never ceases to amaze me how people no longer have the capability of recognizing nuance in complex situations. In the debate about how to deal with memorials to former United States leaders who owned slaves, nuance is everything.
One problem in this debate is many Americans have trouble with complex situations and make statements like, "George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, so if we take down Confederate memorials we have to take down memorials to Washington and Jefferson.”
No, we don't. There is a difference, and that difference should be discernible to people who know and understand United States history. People must be judged by their actions in the sociopolitical context of the times in which they lived. Washington and Jefferson recognized that slavery had to end, but compromised to mitigate the effects of slavery while trying to preserve unity among the newly form United States. No matter how bad that seems to our political sensibilities today, these men were on the cutting edge of applying the Enlightenment principles of equality and liberty to an antiquated, barbaric system that had existed for over 200 years.
Over half a century later, leaders in the Southern States were willing to secede from the United States and go to war to preserve slavery and its future, perfectly comfortable with keeping people in bondage with no end in sight. Long after the families of Washington and Jefferson had freed their slaves, these Confederate leaders had rejected any notions of equality and liberty concerning slaves.
These Confederate leaders went to extensive lengths to make their case and rally average southerners to their cause. Though less than a third of southern households owned slaves, the wealthiest plantation owners stirred the emotions of non-slaveowners under the guise of state’s rights and by fomenting fears of unrestrained, "savage negroes" roaming the countryside and preying upon white women and children. They repeatedly warned non-slaveholders that freeing the inferior negro slaves would be an affront to their white nobility and a challenge to their God-given superiority. In their minds, even if white people were poor and uneducated, by God they were white, and that made them superior to the savage negro race (see Why Non-Slaveholding Southerners Fought).
After the war, some former Confederate Generals and political leaders sought to violently oppress former slaves, resulting in the KKK and other such groups. When Reconstruction ended, Jim Crow laws made discrimination and oppression the law of the land. It is that principle of perpetuating racism, slavery, and oppression which most Americans seek to stand against rather than honor or memorialize.
The following are excerpts from a published address by State Representative John Townsend, a plantation owner form Edisto Island, SC, dated October 28, 1860. The language is typical of pro-slavery literature of the time, and very telling of pro-slavery views.
. . . the turning loose (of Negroes) upon society, without the salutary restraints to which they are now accustomed, more than four millions of a very poor and ignorant population, to ramble in idleness over the country until their wants should drive most of them, first to petty thefts, and afterwards to the bolder crimes of robbery and murder. . . .
It will be to the non-slaveholder, equally with the largest slaveholder, the obliteration of caste and the deprivation of important privileges. The color of the white man is now, in the South, a title of nobility in his relations as to the negro. In the Southern slaveholding States, where menial and degrading offices are turned over to be performed exclusively by the Negro slave, the status and color of the black race becomes the badge of inferiority, and the poorest non-slaveholder may rejoice with the richest of his brethren of the white race, in the distinction of his color. He may be poor, it is true; but there is no point upon which he is so justly proud and sensitive as his privilege of caste; and there is nothing which he would resent with more fierce indignation than the attempt of the Abolitionist to emancipate the slaves and elevate the Negroes to an equality with himself and his family.
Sadly, these sentiments concerning African-Americans have been passed down through generations and still serve as the basis of racism and white supremacy today.
Washington, Jefferson, and many others embraced the Enlightenment principles of equality sweeping through Europe and the colonies in the late 1700s. They and many other slaveholders knew the institution of slavery could not long survive, but they and other leaders opposed to slavery sought a compromise to preserve unity among the States, a unity that they felt was necessary for the survival of the country. The issue of slavery would have to wait. So would the liberation of the slaves they owned until the financial future of their families was secure. We may find it hard to understand such attitudes today, but remember that at the time women did not have the right to vote in all but one state, and would not have it for another 130 years. Different times, indeed.
By 1860, the issue had become stopping the spread of slavery to newly acquired territories and states. It was hoped by many that eventually, if slave states did not willingly abandon the practice, a constitutional amendment could be passed abolishing slavery. Even at this time, Lincoln, too, preferred compromise over immediate abolition. In his first inaugural address he made it clear that he had no intention as President of abolishing slavery in States where it existed, but would seek to prevent slavery from spreading into newly acquired territories or states.
The United States government along with state and local governments must preserve the complex history of slavery without honoring the most egregious defenders of the system and opponents of abolition: the Confederate leaders who sought to justify slavery and who compelled others to fight to keep the institution alive. Robert E. Lee is, unfortunately, part of that group, though any fair student of history must admit that he was not among its more radical advocates. In accordance with the wishes expressed in the will of his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, Lee returned home in 1862 to free the slaves at the Curtis family Arlington home. The fact that the leader of the Confederate forces personally attended to that matter naturally drew criticism from fellow southerners. That act alone does not absolve Lee of his part in attempting to preserve a barbaric institution that had outlived the tolerance of the majority of civilized people, but it is an example of the complexity of the situation at the time. The National Parks Service, the caretaker of Lee's former home at Arlington House, maintains the home for its historic value, not as a memorial to Lee. No attempts are made to justify slavery or the Confederate attempt to preserve it. That is as it should be.