Not a real person.
Not a real person.
Not a real President.
Posted on 09/23/2021 6:06:06 AM PDT by Bon of Babble
Yup. Exactly.
Lee is exalted because he was a man of principal who fought for who he thought were his people.
Oh no, it’s quite contemporary.
The face is Barack Obama. A man who has no history of slavery in his family.
How did taking down the Lee statue and replacing it with this one help solve the current black crime problem and the current black family crisis? What are we doing to solve current problems rather than dealing with issues 160 years old?
Yes, those union troops and a Republican President freed the slaves from their democRAT owners. And now 156 years later the descendants of those slaves vote for the party that enslaved their ancestors.
Curious turn of events, that.
Tear it down.
disgusting
Not a real person.
Not a real person.
Not a real President.
Somehow I don’t believe they could have designed this monument and cast it in just two weeks. How long have they planned this and who paid for it?
Hope its a home for the pigeons
It’s been in planning since 2013. And it isn’t “replacing” the Lee statue. Different location entirely.
It’s obvious that it was planned all along.
And undoubtedly Virginia taxes paid for it.
The real question for a guy like Northam is...what right do you have to rule over us? He clearly disagrees with the Constitutional concept of property.
Since when did he get the right to take property for his own purpose? The Supreme Court of Virginia said it was a “free speech right” for the State, which was astonishing to say the least. The First Amendment applies to individuals, not the state. It’s a RESTRAINT on the state, not the other way around.
In other words, he destroyed the property right inherent in the contract by using an absurd argument...which the court bought. Now he went a step further and uses the property for a purpose unrelated to the original contract. He told the court they just didn’t like the implied message. He did NOT tell the court what he actually planned to do. The court SHOULD have said that if he takes down the statue, the land reverts to a trust to be held by the original owners or their descendants.
Wait, whut?
The article says “has been unveiled in the spot where the iconic Robert E. Lee equestrian stood in Richmond”
Is that a lie?
What you say is probably correct in one sense: it’s not replacing the Lee statue. However, isn’t it in a symbolic sense replacing the Lee statue? So soon after they desecrated Lee’s monument by destroying it entirely they put up this tableau? I hope this gets the same treatment as all the other statues of our founding fathers and men of renown.
We are surely in agreement.
The image of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter letters are projected onto the Robert E. Lee Statue on Monument Avenue in Richmond on June 10, 2020. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Robert E. Lee’s statue is gone. Now can we dismantle the myth, too?
by Eugene Robinson Washington Post September 9, 2021
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/09/robert-e-lees-statue-is-gone-now-can-we-dismantle-myth-too/
Now that the statue of Robert E. Lee that towered over the onetime capital of the Confederacy has been cut into pieces and hauled away to some obscure warehouse, maybe the weaponized myth of Lee as a great man — or even a good one — can finally be mothballed as well.
Lee’s bronze equestrian likeness, removed from its lofty pedestal Wednesday, was the most imposing of the “lost cause” memorials that once lined leafy Monument Avenue in Richmond. And it represented the biggest lie.
Southern propagandists concocted and embellished the Lee myth toward the end of the 19th century, as part of a larger justification for erasing the gains made by African Americans during Reconstruction and reimposing a system of state-approved white supremacy. The statue, erected in 1890, was part of that project. One of the true good things it’s possible to say about Lee, who had died 20 years earlier, is that he would have been among the first to object.
“I think it wiser … not to keep open the sores of war,” he wrote in 1869, declining to help choose the locations for memorials at Gettysburg, “but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered.”
Letting go and moving on were not on the agenda of the architects of Jim Crow repression, however. They chose Lee as the dignified, slightly tragic hero of their fanciful retelling of what they called “The War Between the States.” They painted Lee as an honorable man, personally opposed to slavery, who reluctantly chose loyalty to his state of Virginia over allegiance to the Union — and who, albeit in a losing cause, was the most brilliant general in U.S. history.
Lie after lie after lie.
Lee was, first and foremost, a traitor. A graduate of West Point, he decided to take up arms against the nation he had sworn an oath to serve. The choice he made cost hundreds of thousands of Americans their lives. Treason was, and remains, a capital crime. Abraham Lincoln was determined to seek reconciliation at any cost, “with malice toward none with charity for all.” But following the surrender at Appomattox Court House, the president would have had every legal and moral right to have Lee promptly court-martialed and hanged.
Not only did Lee and his wife, Mary Custis, own slaves inherited from his mother and her father, but Lee actually petitioned Virginia courts to allow him to keep some of those people enslaved for longer than the five years specified in his father-in-law’s will. The debts their labor helped him pay off were apparently more important than their freedom. Lee did refer to slavery in a prewar 1856 letter as “a moral & political evil,” but argued that the institution was “a greater evil to the white man than to the black race” and asserted that the “painful discipline” enslaved Black people were suffering was “necessary for their instruction as a race.”
When an enslaved man and woman escaped the plantation and were recaptured, Lee had them whipped, summoning a county constable to “lay it on well.” According to one of the escapees, Wesley Norris, Lee then ordered that their lacerated backs be doused with brine. And Lee was particularly ruthless in separating families, hiring out husbands, wives and children to different distant plantations.
When Lee’s renowned Army of Northern Virginia invaded Pennsylvania, its soldiers abducted free African Americans and sent them south into slavery. At the Battle of the Crater in 1864, as in many Civil War encounters, Black Union soldiers who tried to surrender were not taken as prisoner. Instead, they were massacred on the spot — by troops under Lee’s command.
And as for Lee’s alleged military genius? One stubborn fact interferes with the myth: He lost the war.
Lee is indeed credited as a gifted hit-and-run tactician. But his strategic decision to engage the Union in a conventional battle of massed armies at Gettysburg was a monumental blunder. Throughout the war, Lee had the advantage of fighting on friendly terrain with overwhelming civilian support. Still, he got pummeled into unconditional surrender.
There was remarkably little fanfare Wednesday about the removal of the Lee statue — except from a Florida senior citizen who apparently believes there is still political hay to be made from the “lost cause” myth.
“Just watched as a massive crane took down the magnificent and very famous statue of ‘Robert E. Lee On His Horse,’ ” former president Donald Trump wrote in a statement. “If only we had Robert E. Lee to command our troops in Afghanistan, that disaster would have ended in a complete and total victory many years ago.”
Let’s see, mounted cavalry vs. rocket-propelled grenades? Maybe Trump thinks the Taliban would have died laughing.
Robert E. Lee was a stone-cold loser
Trump’s praise of the Confederate general isn’t just ugly. It’s fake history, too.
By Dana Milbank Washington Post 2021/09/10/
Looks like a modern dance production.
Dear Dr. Scott:
Respecting your August 1 inquiry calling attention to my often expressed admiration for General Robert E. Lee, I would say, first, that we need to understand that at the time of the War between the States the issue of secession had remained unresolved for more than 70 years. Men of probity, character, public standing and unquestioned loyalty, both North and South, had disagreed over this issue as a matter of principle from the day our Constitution was adopted.
General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of his cause which until 1865 was still an arguable question in America; he was a poised and inspiring leader, true to the high trust reposed in him by millions of his fellow citizens; he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with captured enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and personally courageous in battle, and never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle. Through all his many trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his faith in God. Taken altogether, he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.
From deep conviction, I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee’s calibre would be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the Nation’s wounds once the bitter struggle was over, we, in our own time of danger in a divided world, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.
Such are the reasons that I proudly display the picture of this great American on my office wall.
Sincerely,
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.