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Statue of Abe Lincoln: "...a slap in the face of a lot of brave men..."
The Cincinnati Enquirer ^ | Friday, December 27, 2002 | AP

Posted on 12/27/2002 6:50:38 AM PST by yankeedame

Friday, December 27, 2002

Lincoln statue won't be embraced by all

The Associated Press

RICHMOND, Va. - Abraham Lincoln is returning to the capital of the Confederacy, much to the chagrin of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Five days before the Civil War ended in April 1865, the president and his youngest child, Tad, traveled to still-smoldering Richmond soon after Southern forces abandoned the city in flames. On April 5, 2003, the 138th anniversary of that visit, a bronze statue of the pair commissioned by the United States Historical Society will be unveiled at the Civil War Visitor Center of the National Park Service.

"Here is a national hero, a small boy, and a beautiful city by the James River, all united again," said Robert Kline, chairman of the nonprofit group society, which works on behalf of museums and other groups on projects of historic and artistic value. "This time Lincoln's in Richmond for all time."

Richmond, home to towering statues of Confederacy figures including Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart, was abandoned after Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant attacked on April 2, 1965.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans view the Lincoln statue as "a slap in the face of a lot of brave men and women who went through four years of unbelievable hell fighting an invasion of Virginia led by President Lincoln," Brag Bowling, the SCV Virginia commander, said Thursday. The group had only recently learned of the statue, and had no immediate plans to protest.

The life-size statue by sculptor David Frech will show Lincoln and his son on a bench against a granite wall. The words "To Bind Up The Nation's Wounds" will be etched into a capstone.


TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: dixie
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To: putupon
I give up....

I'll sign your petitition to rename New York as New Amsterdam so the people of Dutch extraction don't have to have their noses rubbed in it, though.

OK, no statue of Lincoln, but I want Richmond re-renamed back to whatever the Indians called it.

101 posted on 12/27/2002 9:58:25 AM PST by Cogadh na Sith
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To: wardaddy
It will never end.

Very few Yankees, even self-styled conservatives, fail to appreciate the balancing effect that the South and West have had on the Northeast and the Midwest.

These are the same people who bitch and moan about the socialist governments of Massachusetts and New York, the excessive taxes in the US in general and loss of a sense of freedom and self-reliance among the "sheeple" - yet they imagine that without the South there would be any freedom left in America.

Without the South America would be in the same spot England is in now.

God bless the Confederates.

102 posted on 12/27/2002 10:00:32 AM PST by wideawake
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To: chookter; wideawake
Your argument is twofold: there should be a statue of Lincoln in Richmond because he went to Richmond.

Erm, no.... I see no problem with erecting a statue where an event actually occurred.

Wowie zowie. Let's make a list of all the places where a statue of Hitler could be erected simply 'cause "he went there."

103 posted on 12/27/2002 10:06:13 AM PST by PistolPaknMama
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To: wideawake
The Confederates saw themselves as the most patriotic and loyal followers of the Founding Fathers.

I'm sure they saw themselves this way, but that doesn't make it true. I'm sure Timothy McVeigh felt the same way.

As for reading The Federalist Papers, maybe you should read The Anti-Federalist Papers. They strike me as much more Confederate in their thinking.

ps. No Confederate would have bothered to pick up a rifle if he didn't want to be part of a violent rebellion against the Constitution of the United States. I believe that's called treason.
104 posted on 12/27/2002 10:06:43 AM PST by Your Nightmare
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To: WhiskeyPapa
All Lincoln had to do to stop the war was not start it in the first place. Yes, he tried his best to keep the South from seceeding. Yes, he was the best how for reconciliation when the South lost. None of this negates the fact that Lincoln did not believe that

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

All he had to do was recognize the liberty and right to seceed upon which the country was founded and let them go peacefully, and there never would have been wounds to bind.
105 posted on 12/27/2002 10:06:58 AM PST by sparkydragon
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To: chookter
Why would New York be renamed New Amsterdam? The British never conquered it - the New Amsterdamers preferred British rule to battle and negotiated the terms of a transfer of sovereignty.

If the Dutch had cared enough for New York to remain Dutch they would have fought for it.

Though, since you believe that the English conquered New York, why is Harlem permitted to remain Harlem? Why is the Bronx still the Bronx? Why does the Onderdonk House keep its name? Or Wyckoff Avenue? Or DeKalb Avenue? Why is the basketball team called the Knickerbockers?

Most importantly, why is there a statue of Peter Minuit in New York and no statue of the Duke of York?

106 posted on 12/27/2002 10:08:22 AM PST by wideawake
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To: sparkydragon
Yes, he was the best how for reconciliation when the South lost.

change "how" to "hope."
107 posted on 12/27/2002 10:08:57 AM PST by sparkydragon
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To: wideawake
The Confederates saw themselves as the most patriotic and loyal followers of the Founding Fathers.

Another point. I really doubt that the Founding Fathers would want any true American to be loyal to them. In fact I think they were purposely trying to avoid that. They created a document called The Constitution of the United States that they wanted people to pledge their loyalties to.
108 posted on 12/27/2002 10:12:23 AM PST by Your Nightmare
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To: wideawake
yet they imagine that without the South there would be any freedom left in America.

Without the South America would be in the same spot England is in now.

God bless the Confederates.

Oh, please.... It's the collective guilt over the iniquities of the south that is constantly used to dudgeon the rest of us with.

During the Civ War, my Scottish Great, Great Grandaddy was a buffalo hunter on the plains and lived with the indians. Great-great grandma was an indian.

If your ancestors hadn't tried to maintain an agrarian feudal social heirarchy well after the industrial revolution, Grand Ave here wouldn't be MLK Blvd; There would be no Jesse Jackson, no such thing as 'white guilt', lower taxes, and a helluva lot less racial problems.

109 posted on 12/27/2002 10:12:53 AM PST by Cogadh na Sith
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To: wideawake
To pretend that the Republican Party today is the logical heir of the pro-tariff, big-government, Midwestern party of 1860 is as sensible as pretending that the Democrats are the agrarian, localist freetrade party they were in 1860.

Either may be more sensible than pretending that a "big-government" party in 1860 is the same as a "big-government" party today.

Tariffs, a national bank, and internal improvements were all a part of Washington's and Hamilton's Federalist program in the 1790s. They were also all a part of Madison's and Monroe's Jeffersonian Republican policy in the 1810s. To defend a new and weak country and settle its open spaces made some role of the federal government necessary. And a weak federal government would not necessarily have meant greater freedom if state governments did as they pleased.

Radical Jeffersonians or Jacksonians might have taken such policies as "big government," but by today's standards the power and intrusiveness of the federal government under Washington or Madison was negligible. The same was true of Lincoln's initial program, though the requirements of war led both the union and rebel governments to intervene more and more in the lives and finances of the citizenry.

If "big government" meant the same thing in 1860 or 1810 or 1790 as they did today, then we have always been a big government country. Such a conclusion is absurd. The meaning of "big government" was transformed in the 20th century by Wilson, the Roosevelts, Lyndon Johnson and others.

One can certainly disagree about tariffs and internal improvements and national currency, and certainly take objection to high taxes and intrusive government regulation. But to take state sovereignty or near anarchy as the sole standard of true constitutional interpretation is to leave out a large part of American history.

There is a lot of room for a Republican party that supports less government and it will do well, but not if it dumps on or trashes valuable American traditions. If it becomes the party of Calhoun and Jefferson Davis and says that it is the party of freedom, the result would be laughable, and their support will tumble, and rightly so.

110 posted on 12/27/2002 10:13:15 AM PST by x
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To: PistolPaknMama
Wowie zowie. Let's make a list of all the places where a statue of Hitler could be erected simply 'cause "he went there."

No. He lost. Just like Lee. Just like the American Indians. If he had won, you bet there would've been statues...

111 posted on 12/27/2002 10:14:55 AM PST by Cogadh na Sith
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To: Your Nightmare
I'm sure Timothy McVeigh felt the same way.

Uh-huh. And if Timothy McVeigh could show me where the Founding Fathers included blowing a few dozen children to smithereens in a sneak bombing as armed resistance to tyranny, he'd win a prize.

The Anti-Federalist is even more Confederate by its nature. I'm just pointing out that the Federalist more closely resembles the Confederacy than our current system.

No Confederate would have bothered to pick up a rifle if he didn't want to be part of a violent rebellion against the Constitution of the United States. I believe that's called treason.

The Confederates believed that the Union was violating the Constitution. They believed that they were rebelling against tyrants on behalf of the Constitutional principles of the Founding Fathers.

I believe the British Parliament called the American War of Independence treason as well. And it was. And thank God for it.

112 posted on 12/27/2002 10:14:58 AM PST by wideawake
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To: chookter
Everybody gets to raise statues in Richmond. It's full of 'em!
113 posted on 12/27/2002 10:21:05 AM PST by muawiyah
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To: wideawake
My point was that just because somebody believes something, it doesn't make it true. Even though the Confederates "believed that the Union was violating the Constitution" doesn't make it true. And because they thought "they were rebelling against tyrants on behalf of the Constitutional principles of the Founding Fathers" doesn't make that true either.
114 posted on 12/27/2002 10:22:42 AM PST by Your Nightmare
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To: wideawake
At this point, you can no longer wrap yourselves in the garb of the founding father's--it would be more appropriate to wrap your head in a kaffiya... as the Palestinians of America.
115 posted on 12/27/2002 10:24:12 AM PST by Cogadh na Sith
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To: yankeedame; stainlessbanner; shuckmaster
(pings to stainlessbanner and shuckmaster for their ping lists)

Feh, let 'em build the statue. Richmond's been trying for two generations to forget its history and turn into Indianapolis anyhow. The only other town I've ever seen that's more self-loathing about being Southern is Atlanta.

If the NPS wants to put a Lincoln statue in their visitor center (I assume it's the building that's the old Chimberazo Hospital, up on the hill in the East End, right?), it's their call. I think it's a little insensitive, personally, but I'm sure the administrators of the NPS are all northeastern liberals anyhow and give exactly zero-tenths of a damn about our sensibilities. And, if the visitor center is the place I think it is, with the neighborhood still being the same, the statue'll be stolen soon enough anyway.

Let them have their statue. That way, when the whiners from the NAALCP and friends start screaming yet again to remove the massive statues of Maury, Jackson, Lee, Davis, and Stuart from Monument Avenue, we can simply point them to the statue of Their Hero and tell them, "We have ours, you have yours, can't we all just get along?"

}:-)4

116 posted on 12/27/2002 10:27:41 AM PST by Moose4
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To: chookter
As each of your "points" have been demonstrated to be sheer foolishness and pique, you've descended to the depth of inanity.

You know nothing about the Founding Fathers, as is quite clear from your posts. If you could cite for me any quote from the Framers calling for the establishment of a National Park Service and the requisitioning of tax dollars from the public to build supernumerary statues, please present.

Otherwise, stop babbling.

117 posted on 12/27/2002 10:29:27 AM PST by wideawake
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To: sparkydragon
All he had to do was recognize the liberty and right to seceed upon which the country was founded and let them go peacefully, and there never would have been wounds to bind.

The framers of the Constitution clearly meant for it to be binding on the states in perpetuity. See the Militia Act of 1792 as amended in 1795 and the Judiciary Act of 1789. The Militia Act requires that U.S. law operate in all the states. The Judiciary Act requires that "Controversies of a civil nature" between the states be submitted to the Supreme Court.

THAT is U.S. law, which the Declaration of Independence is not.

"South Carolina...cannot get out of this Union until she conquers this government. The revenues must and will be collected at her ports, and any resistance on her part will lead to war. At the close of that war we can tell with certainty whether she is in or out of the Union. While this government endures there can be no disunion...

If the overt act on the part of South Carolina takes place on or after the 4th of March, 1861, then the duty of executing the laws will devolve upon Mr. Lincoln. The laws of the United States must be executed-- the President has no discretionary power on the subject -- his duty is emphatically pronounced in the Constitution. Mr. Lincoln will perform that duty. Disunion by armed force is treason, and treason must and will be put down at all hazards. The Union is not, and cannot be dissolved until this government is overthrown by the traitors who have raised the disunion flag. Can they overthrow it? We think not.

Illinois State Journal, November 14, 1860

The secesh cretins went looking for a fight with the wrong prairie lawyer, and the wrong people.

Walt

118 posted on 12/27/2002 10:29:43 AM PST by WhiskeyPapa
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To: Your Nightmare
And just because you believe that the Confederates' beliefs were wrong doesn't make you right either.

Every argument you make against the Confederacy can be made with equal justice by an Englishman against the United States.

119 posted on 12/27/2002 10:31:52 AM PST by wideawake
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To: FreedomCalls
The War of 1861 was complicated and it cannot be reduced to simplicity. There were extremists on both sides. There were moderates on both sides. You can make an argument for either side using your moderates and their extremists or you choose the opposite depending on what point you are trying to make.

"Disunion by armed force is treason, and treason must and will be put down at all hazards."

--Illinois State Journal, November 14, 1860

Walt

120 posted on 12/27/2002 10:32:27 AM PST by WhiskeyPapa
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