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The problem is that the implicit point of public monuments is to celebrate historic figures. The fact that Lee is well-known is purely due to his decision to take up arms against the United States; the same can be said of almost every other Confederate. And it's not appropriate to celebrate those who opposed us in war. In other words, Lee's stature as a war hero is comparable to that of someone like General Howe or Santa Ana or Erwin Rommel. There may be statues of the former two in the United States, but if there are I guarantee they're somewhere like a battlefield where the context is clear and they generally build statues of every prominent person who fought there. But I doubt anyone would advocate for putting them in a position of honor such as a town square, and if you built one on your own property people would be right to suspect your motives.
Add to that the fact that they weren't seceding because of tax policy or some other anodyne complaint but to preserve an institution that's now globally recognized as a reprehensible denial of the most basic human freedoms, in a country whose founding principles were explicitly meant to advance those freedoms, however imperfect the execution was in its infancy. I don't see any situation where you can have a statue of a person whose entire professional career was at least implicitly dedicated to such an institution on the courthouse lawn or the park in the center of town and excuse it by saying that you don't celebrate it too much.
There are many examples in the world of veneration of an "honored enemy". Turkey hosts thousands of descendants of failed invaders every year at Gallipoli. 'Celebration' isn't the correct term to be used. Respect for a worthy adversary who believed in their cause is more appropriate.
I have no problem with respect. But I don't think anyone would argue that the South's erection of statues in prominent places was merely out of sober respect for an enemy. Are there any other of America's war foes who you feel we should be "respecting" at that kind of clip?
https://www.nps.gov/places/loyalist-monument.htm
https://mobridge.org/sitting-bull-monument
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None of our other war foes were also Americans. None of our other war foes went on to be Americans, and to serve America to the best of their ability by accepting and trying to live by an honorable peace.
The white South didn't accept their defeat and try to live an honourable peace. They launched an insurgency (the 1st Klan), and when that failed they waited out the presence of federal troops in the South and then staged a series of coups against the Reconstruction-era State governments (elected by multi-racial electorates) in order to introduce Jim Crow. The North, to their shame, tolerated this due to exhaustion during the Gilded Age, and enthusiastically embraced it due to political corruption in the New Deal era.
Jim Crow was a dishonourable peace, and the Civil Rights movement was right to seek to overturn it.
And yet we are still Americans no matter how much you hate it. Maybe the only solution is for the sainted North to secede from this blighted land?
No. It is for us all to bind up the nation's wounds. It's like your great-great grandfather dumped a bunch of toxic waste in the town square or something. You didn't have shit to do with that asshole's deeds. Maybe you benefited from them, but it's far enough in the past that you're just some guy that lives in the town...and if we're going to clean it up, both of us ought to pay into the town tax fund or something to clean the mess up.
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