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You are here: Home / Politics / domestic terrorists / Saturday Evening Open Thread: Thus Always to Traitors

Saturday Evening Open Thread: Thus Always to Traitors

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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Four years after a woman was killed and dozens were injured when white nationalists protested the planned removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Va., workers removed the statue on Saturday, along with a nearby monument to Stonewall Jackson, another Confederate general.

The larger-than-life-sized statue of Lee was hoisted off its granite base shortly after 8 a.m. as a crowd of about 200 looked on. As the flatbed truck carrying the bronze statue rumbled down East Jefferson Street, a toot of the truck’s horn prompted cheers and applause…

John Edwin Mason, a history professor at the University of Virginia, scurried around the perimeter of the park as the removal of the Lee statue was underway to keep a close eye on the proceedings. “I’m really happy it’s a boring morning, and boring means that no bad things happened,” he said, adding, “The ordinariness of this occasion is fine.”…

Mike Signer, an author and lawyer who was a city councilor and mayor when the “Unite the Right” rally was held in 2017, called the removal “a real step forward.” He said the statues had become “totems for these terrorists.”

“In so many ways, Charlottesville was a microcosm for what’s happened in the country: the advent of flagrant, open, violent white nationalism in public streets,” he said. “The ‘Unite the Right’ rally was clearly a prologue for the insurrection on Jan. 6.”…

President Biden, who has said that Charlottesville inspired him to run for president, also welcomed the removal of the statues, according to a spokeswoman, Emilie Simons. “The President believes that monuments to Confederate leaders belong in museums, not in public places,” Ms. Simons said…

Reader Interactions

136Comments

  1. 1.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    In theory, I suppose those statues could be an opportunity to learn about our history. But in practice, the people supporting them don’t seem to be learning a thing. Even helluva good signage wouldn’t do it.

  2. 2.

    debbie

    I can’t tell, in the photograph of the statue’s dedication, are the women in white dresses or are those KKKers proudly wearing their costumes?

  3. 3.

    Honus

    I know Jock Yellot. Jock Yellot is an asshole.  And as a Charlottesville resident for the past 50 years, I say good riddance to those statues.  My office was about a block from them. As a friend of mine said, “I didn’t think too much about them but now I think they should take them down. Because they attract vermin”

    -Honus UVA ‘77 W&L Law ‘95

  7. 7.

    Anotherlurker

    All these Jim Crow era statues should be placed on a barge and sunk onto a sandy area in 120’+ ft. water, South of Long Island, NY.  These symbols of hate, racism and white domination could then begin to attract sea life. The resulting haven of marine life would be the first time these statues actually did something good.

    We can call these havens “Traitor’s Reef”.

  13. 13.

    Geminid

    @debbie: The city council voted funds for the purpose Thursday evening. Tree trimming to make way for the crane was done Friday, and fencing was put up. They wanted this done quickly.

  15. 15.

    Geminid

    @Baud: I would like to see a statue of a Black Union soldier put up. I think there were local men who helped Lincoln and Grant liberate Virginia.

  16. 16.

    Kay

    Is there another country where there was a civil war and the loser got statues?

    I don’t know why they have so many statues in the first place. Is it like “the bigger the loss the more statues you get to make you feel better”?

  23. 23.

    Geminid

    @Honus: Some twitter wag pointed out that Yellot’s monument fund web page has lasted longer than the Confederacy.

  25. 25.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Kay: I visited Gettysburg for the first time in my life a few weeks ago. There are tons of monuments to the traitors there, erected by their descendants. I was astonished.

  26. 26.

    Another Scott

    A very good day.

    A little over a year ago, the Appomattox statue was removed from S. Washington Street in Alexandria, VA. That was a very good day, too.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  30. 30.

    FelonyGovt

    Open thread? I’m working on data collection for our “Taking Action to Defend Democracy” (formerly “We Have Agency”) project for Arizona. 75 (!) bills covering election matters have been introduced since right before Biden’s inauguration, the vast majority by Republicans, including the one recently upheld by the Supreme Court.

    Reading about them produced incandescent rage. Failed or enacted, they feature various different approaches, all designed to make it harder to vote and/or easier for Republicans to overturn votes or substitute their judgment for that of the voters.

  31. 31.

    Honus

    @Geminid: I was really happy when the Va Supreme Court reversed the circuit court’s order awarding attorneys fees. Yellot is a lawyer without a license who was awarded over 100 thousand dollars for “paralegal services” on the case.

  32. 32.

    Kay

    @Gin & Tonic:

    The timing is bizarre too. You lose the war and 50 years later you start churning out statues? I don’t know- that seems very divisive to me. One could even say “controversial”. Can’t they just get along with others and stop bringing up that they waged war on their own country? We were willing to put it behind us and here they come with a truckload of statues. Does that “bring us together”? I think not.

  34. 34.

    Honus

    @Steve in the ATL: yep, 15 years working as a carpenter.  On hot days like today I go outside and think about humping plywood and shingles onto a roof and say “this is why I went to law school”

    That said there are times when I miss building bookcases for Jessica Lange.

  44. 44.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Baud: if it funnels money to the right wing dark money groups, then definitely, by a 6-3 vote

    @Honus: I haven’t, but he looks like an impressive guy

  47. 47.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Honus: @Steve in the ATL: I know Ty, but not well. He was one of the other people volunteering with the group I’ve been volunteering with on getting the bases renamed. He’s now on the renaming commission.

  50. 50.

    Honus

    @Steve in the ATL: check out the video of the lecture he gave in Lee Chapel about Robert E.  Lee being a traitor.  (I dont have the link, but it’s easy to find on YouTube.
    Seidule grew up in Arlington and like most Virginia youths of his era learned to worship the lost cause.  Several decades of studying and teaching history led him to reconsider that.

  54. 54.

    Honus

    @Geminid: that was my company. You probably know me. In the 1980s in Charlottesville I provided almost every musician in town with a day job.
    “Framus et mort”

  59. 59.

    Geminid

    @Honus: Yeah, it was your company. We know each other. You knew me as Matt, a friend of Ricky’s and Shelton’s.

  67. 67.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: It was a project of the Daughters of the Confederacy to erect many of those statues. There are statues of Confederate soldiers in places like Montana, that didn’t even fight in the Civil War!

  68. 68.

    Honus

    @Geminid: and you are also a lawyer if i recall correctly.  Saw Shelton not long ago.  I need to check up on Ricky, haven’t talked to him in a while.

  69. 69.

    Honus

    @WaterGirl: no, but I did some for Sissy Spacek.  And I cooked breakfast a few times at the Virginian for Muhammad Ali when he lived here.

  70. 70.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Soprano2: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544266880/confederate-statues-were-built-to-further-a-white-supremacist-future

    “Most of the people who were involved in erecting the monuments were not necessarily erecting a monument to the past,” said Jane Dailey, an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago.”But were rather, erecting them toward a white supremacist future.”

    The most recent comprehensive study of Confederate statues and monuments across the country was published by the Southern Poverty Law Center last year. A look at this chart shows huge spikes in construction twice during the 20th century: in the early 1900s, and then again in the 1950s and 60s. Both were times of extreme civil rights tension.

    They’re a message: “we control everything, even the *past*: don’t even think about trying for equal rights, know your place”

  75. 75.

    Baud

    @debbie:

    I think I heard it happened during WWI to get southerners soldiers more gung ho about fighting.  Of course, Wilson being president at the time helped.

  79. 79.

    Mary G

    @Yutsano: Can I ask for free tax info? I filed electronically on May 17 or whatever the last day to turn in income taxes was and the return was accepted. I owed money and gave my checking acct & routing no. so they could deduct from my bank account. They still haven’t taken it, which pissed me off because I thought I had more money than I actually do.

  80. 80.

    debbie

    @Chetan Murthy:

    Thanks. My dad served at Ft. Benning. I probably already should have known this.

    Jesus. “These Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage, and a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom.” He thought the Confederacy was winning?!?

  81. 81.

    Chetan Murthy

    @debbie: There’s a *ton* we don’t know about our history.  B/c it was hidden from us.  The Dunning School has a lot to answer for.  I didn’t know that the Texas Revolution was largely due to slavery: two rounds of Texas History in middle/high school, and they never got around to mentioning that.  I never knew about the Tulsa Massacre, even though my hometown was 300mi away.  Lots I only learned here and on LG&M.

  84. 84.

    Geminid

    @Honus: I am glad to hear that. I may contact you some time, now that I know how to find you. I was living in Lyndhurst for a while. Now I’m in Greene.

  87. 87.

    Dan B

    @Chetan Murthy: We have my mother’s Daughters of the Confederacy* certificate on the dressing room.  I doubt that our mostly black or immigrant neighbors would appreciate the irony.

     

    *It’s likely her aunts signed her up because it dates from when she had lived for a decade, or more, in the North.  Southern women had to rebuild the South because so many men died in the war.

  88. 88.

    Honus

    @Geminid: please do. I’m out here in Free Union, I’d love to see you and talk over old times.  My home address and phone is in the Va Bar Register

  90. 90.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    Daughters of the Confederacy

    And that. Happened other places or just here and just with this war? We’re still doing it. We can’t have a Voting Rights Act because that casts aspersions on their honor.
    Back the trucks up. Beep beep beep.

  91. 91.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay:

    I don’t know why they have so many statues in the first place. Is it like “the bigger the loss the more statues you get to make you feel better”?

    Deliberate efforts by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and other neo-Confederate orgs to rewrite history in the late 19th and early 20th century. Border areas that mostly went for the Union got huge numbers of Confederate statues.

  95. 95.

    Matt McIrvin

    We needed something like the de-Nazification efforts in Germany after World War II. They complain over there that those weren’t nearly complete enough. But we had nothing like it. Reconstruction was tepid and over too soon.

  96. 96.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: The bases were built during the Jim Crow period and they left the naming up to the local authorities who made recommendations.

  98. 98.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Soprano2: There was a Confederate monument on Georges Island in Boston, where some Confederate soldiers had been imprisoned. Put there by the UDC in 1963. They removed it just a few years ago.

    There’s another one on Martha’s Vineyard–a monument to Union soldiers apparently has a plaque on the back giving a nod to the Confederates, put there in some kind of bygones-be-bygones spirit in the 19th century.

  99. 99.

    Jackie

    @WaterGirl: She “said she wants to stay in DC.”

    New ABC honcho basically said she was done – after the other four ladies said it was either her or them. I used to watch it religiously. I put up with her about a year or so then stopped. She was intolerable always, then got worse after her Dad died.

  100. 100.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: There were a lot of American units in World War II that carried the Confederate battle flag and raised it when they took territory–it was a popular thing for white Southerners.

  102. 102.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    But we had nothing like it.

    Well, they felt bad. So we all said “let’s pretend they won- what could it hurt?”
    And here we are. Now they think they really did. Disaster.

  103. 103.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    We’re still doing it. Remember when Donald Trump lost the election and no one was allowed to call it because he would feel bad and (maybe) hurt us?  They’re pretending to count ballots 6 months later. In 50 years he’ll get a statue.

  104. 104.

    Another Scott

    The Cyclorama in Atlanta is quite a thing:

    Created at the American Panorama Company in Milwaukee by 17 German artists, The Battle of Atlanta cyclorama took five months to create before it debuted in Minneapolis in 1886. Painted 22 years after the Battle of Atlanta, the painting originally depicted the battle from a Northern perspective as a heroic Union victory so that it would appeal to Northern audiences. When the painting relocated to Atlanta in 1892, it was slightly modified and advertised as “the only Confederate victory ever painted” to appeal to its new Southern audiences that maintained Confederate sympathies. The 1864 Battle of Atlanta was not a Confederate victory, and most of these changes from 1892 were reversed in the 1930s.

    […]

    Atlanta History Center uses this restored work of art and entertainment, and the history of the painting itself, as a tool to talk about the ‘big picture.’ How can perceptions, memory and interpretations be shaped, or mis-shaped, by a combination of art and entertainment, myth and memory, cultural context, and current events during different eras?

    […]

    I saw it sometime in the late ’60s-early ’70s. I don’t remember too much about it, but do remember that the Confederacy was very much still part of the culture.

    It sounds like they’ve done a great job in recontextualizing it.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  106. 106.

    WaterGirl

    @Jackie: Interesting!  That makes it even more intriguing to think about who they will choose next.  I don’t watch the show so someone will have to report back.  :-)

  107. 107.

    Mike in NC

    @Kay: Imagine if Putin’s puppet had been installed by Republicans as a new Kim Jong-Un. He’d try to put his fat ugly mug on the $1 bill and declare his birthday a national holiday. Bullet dodged.

  109. 109.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @Matt McIrvin:

    We needed something like the de-Nazification efforts in Germany after World War II. They complain over there that those weren’t nearly complete enough. But we had nothing like it. Reconstruction was tepid and over too soon.

    The Union won the Civil War but lost the Peace.

    I share the joy people are expressing over the removal of this horrible statue, but for fuck’s sake Robert E. Lee’s birthday is still celebrated as a holiday in several states.  There’s still plenty of work yet to be done. Worst of all, Donald Trump in spite of his despicable record as President is still a lock to be the Republican nominee in 2024 if he chooses to run again.

  111. 111.

    debbie

    @Matt McIrvin:

    some kind of bygones-be-bygones spirit in the 19th century

    Stupid to think, I know, but how different would today be if Lincoln had lived? I don’t think he would have been as accommodating as the North ended up being.

  115. 115.

    Adam L Silverman

    @zhena gogolia: No issues whatsoever. Basically several hours of torrential rain and some moderate wind gusts. That’s it. Not even thunder and lightning. The center of the state, which got the outer bands of the storm had the thunder, lightning, and tornadoes.

  116. 116.

    Chetan Murthy

    @debbie: IIRC, Martin van Creveld (well-known Israeli military historian, coined the term “fourth generation warfare”) made the argument that there was no way the North could reform the South: the population of unrepentant was too large for the North to be able to police them, and it would have required too great of a committment.  He argued that unrepentant Southerners would have started guerilla tactics (kind of like the paramilitiares of the KKK) and that would have worn down the North.

    In short, the only way it gets fixed is by out-populating the Deplorables.

    Susan Neiman has a good book about this: Learning from the Germans, too.  It discusses how the Germans came around to repenting for their past, and tries to argue that some of those lessons could be applied to the South.  But (a) she’s pretty clear that it required the overwhelming defeat of the Nazis, followed by 40+-year occupation by the US Army (and Soviets, too), and (b) her arguments for why there are lessons for the South …. are the most unconvincing part of her book.

    I came away really depressed, b/c her book was a good argument that there is no way the South will repent, except by being out-populated.  And that was definitely not her intent (AFAICT).

  117. 117.

    Anoniminous

    For some reason the thread caused a couple of neurons to fire and I remembered this.

    The brief shot of the RayGuns, most likely

  118. 118.

    Kay

    @Mike in NC:

    We still need to fix the situation where the low quality hires of the losing candidate get to hold everyone up and still collect a paycheck. THAT was sort of embarrassing, where we had to beg that Trumpster to release our transition funds. Kid gloves.

    She was sad so 350 million people had to give her time to come to terms with her loss. I still worry about her. Did she find work? Hope she’s ok!

  119. 119.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @Mike in NC:

    @Anoniminous:

    I’m trying to hold out a glimmer of hope that the rat bastard Allen Weiselberg starts singing and more indictments start coming along.

    Trump, his scummy children, and Rudy Nosferatu Ghouliani need to be brought to justice.

  122. 122.

    Chetan Murthy

    @debbie: Well, short-term yes.  But long-term?  It’s a lock.  I’m quite convinced that long-term, America will be the first multiracial democracy, and that’ll be a lovely thing.  The Deplorables are losing, and they can’t keep it up forever.

    The problem is that in the long run, we’re all dead, and if we don’t solve climate change and other environmental problems in the short-term, the living will envy the dead.   So that’s awful.  But we can win, and living in California, I can see what that future looks like.  Every immigrant is a soldier in this struggle, especially the undocumented.  They’ll save our country.

  124. 124.

    Geminid

    @Chetan Murthy: I think that the U.S. Cavalry could have suppressed Confederate guerrilla warriors for as long as it took. They handled guerrillas fairly well* by the middle of the war, even better once equipped  with repeating rifles. And there would have been plenty of motivated Black recruits to help with the task.

    The repeating rifle was a real difference maker. In his Personal Memoirs, Confederate artillerist E. Porter Alexander estimated that the Union could have won the war two years quicker had they adopted repeating rifles in 1862. But the penny wise, pound foolish Ordinance Department thought the ammunition would be too costly. Alexander noted that even if Confederates had captured these weapons, they could not have produced cartridges for them. They were scavenging copper from turpentine stills just to make percussion caps.

    *Union cavalry commanders had no compunctions about hanging captured guerrillas. That happened a lot west of the Appalachians,  even more west of the Mississippi.

  125. 125.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    @Kay: Apparently a lot of the statuary had to do with legislation allowing pensions to the widows of soldiers on both sides.  The presence of statutes legitimized the claims for the pensions.

  126. 126.

    Jean

    @Kay: You made me laugh out loud!  When we moved to VA from Wisconsin, we drove down Monument Avenue, and I remember being astonished: They have a whole avenue devoted to Losers?”

  128. 128.

    Kay

    @Jean:

    Schoolchildren in this part of Ohio go to a reconstruction of a “settlement” in 3rd grade. It’s the little tiny log houses, a blacksmith. the one room schoolhouse, people dressed in period clothing, etc. It’s really pretty realistic- they talk about them freezing and starving, no sugar coating. Two of mine were talking about it after and they had this whole scary story worked up about “settlers” – they thought of them as stern and dour and frightening. I just thought it was hysterical “ugh, the SETTLERS. They were scary”.

  129. 129.

    HalfAssedHomesteader

    @Kay: I imagine a lot of folks here know this already but just in case: the vast majority of those statues sprinkled across the South were erected around 3 or 4 significant events: 1) shortly after Plessey v Ferguson, 2) around the Red Summer massacres, 3) shortly after Brown v Board.  I think there was one other event in the 30s but can’t remember.

  132. 132.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @debbie: This reminded me of my sibling’s comments on how it would have destroyed the Lost Cause narrative if Lincoln had gone out into the field and down to Richmond to punch out/wrestle Jeff Davis in person, after I sent my sibling Angry Staff Officer’s account of how Lincoln took members of his Cabinet out to retake the naval base at Norfolk in 1862.

    If I was a better historian, I’d try my hand at writing that alternative history…

     

    @debbie:

  133. 133.

    Chris Johnson

    The whole confederate statue thing is literally critical theory. In fact it is critical race theory, to be specific (just veiled).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory

    Rather than make use of authoritarian control they put up statues, influenced media, and tried to sway the marketplace of ideas in favor of the Ku Klux Klan and murderous lynchings, since they didn’t technically have what they wanted under cover of law and government. This seeking to produce actual results through influence of people’s awareness of the context of everyday things is what critical theory MEANS and it was being done in the service of racism.

    And it clearly fucking worked. We should be embracing critical theory, especially since we seem to like market capitalism so damn much. Critical theory is a really effective lens for facilitating social change. WE should be using it, not the Confederates.

  135. 135.

    Skookum in Oly

    I am very curious what will happen to the Robert E Lee statue – and all the other statues.  Where did that flatbed truck roll down the street to? I would hope they are melted down in some dark and sweltering forge to be re-cast into something less hateful would be a great start… but I suspect they’re just being moved out of the public’s sight, not destroyed. A quick google search suggests they’re often offered to museums. Taking them down is great, getting them out of the public view is necessary, but I’m not sure I agree with the idea of preserving these monuments in any way. I suspect the confederacy’s racism would be much less a problem today if we had dealt with them as the losers they were and are.

  136. 136.

    Richard

    @NotMax:

    I didn’t catch the audio. To me it sounded like they were saying “comme la va” there it goes. Probably not , but that’s how it sounded,  and good riddance.

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