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.
The SCV needs to stop their Nazi-like smear of the United States and Abraham Lincoln.
Walt
Walt
You still haven't told me where you got these numbers you are parroting on the other thread like I asked. You do have a source to parrot, don't you?
As to the statue, at this time and in this atmosphere, it is just another attempt to remind people of their differences. Not only does the left want to remove all signs of the Confederacy, it believes it is time to restart reconstruction. Move in a few more little reminders and try to shore up the Black voting bloc against any shift away from the democrat's emotional foundation.
(With a nod to Grand Kleagle Byrd)
From Jim Epperson's website:
J.E.B. DeBow was the publisher/editor of DeBow's Review, a leading antebellum monthly magazine, published in New Orleans. DeBow was a committed pro-slavery Southerner who felt that the North was oppressing the South. He also, contrary to the beliefs of most white Southerners, passionately wanted the South to move away from agriculture and develop an industrial base. He was fascinated by numbers and had served as director of the 1850 United States census and had argued that the collection and distribution of statistics was an important task which required a professional staff, serving not just every ten years but all the time.
DeBow was concerned about the claims of people like Helper that the average Southerner, being a non-slaveholder, had no stake in the success of the Confederacy. It is an interesting turn around from those late twentieth century Confederate supporters who argue that the Peculiar Institution had nothing to do with the Civil War.
DeBow disagreed with that philosophy and the January 1861 issue of the Review carried an article by him refuting the claims that the average Southerner did not have a stake in the survival and expansion of slavery. Reprinted below is his analysis of the 1850 census and what it showed about the actual percentages of Southerners who were part of slave holding families, not just the more limited numbers counting only the actual (usually the senior male member) owner.
[The] non-slaveholding class ... were even more deeply interested than any other in the maintenance of our institutions, and in the success of the movement now inaugurated for the entire social, industrial, and political independence of the South. …
When in charge of the national census office, several years since, I found that it had been stated by an abolition senator from his seat, that the number of slaveholders at the South did not exceed 150,000. Convinced that, it was a gross misrepresentation of facts, I caused a careful examination of the returns to be made, which fixed the actual number at 347,255, and communicated the information, by note, to Senator Cass, who read it in the Senate. I first called attention to the fact that the number embraced slaveholding families, and that to arrive at the actual number of slaveholders, it would be necessary to multiply by the proportion of persons which the census showed to a family. When this was done, the number was swelled to about two millions.
Since these results were made public, I have had reason to think that the separation of the schedules of the slave and the free was calculated to lead to omissions of the single properties, and that on this account, it would be safe to put the number of families at 375,000, and the number of actual slaveholders at about two millions and a quarter.
Assuming the published returns, however, to be correct, it will appear that one half of the population of South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana, excluding the cities, are slaveholders, and that one third of the population of the entire South are similarly circumstanced. The average number of slaves is nine to each slaveholding family, and one half of the whole number of such holders are in possession of less than five slaves. It will thus appear that the slaveholders of the South, so far from constituting, numerically, an insignificant portion of its people, as has been malignantly alleged, make up an aggregate greater in relative proportion than the holders of any other species of property whatever, in any part of the world; and that of no other property can it be said, with equal truthfulness, that it is an interest of the whole community. While every other family in the States I have specially referred to are slaveholders, but one family in every three and a half families in Maine, New-Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, are holders of agricultural land; and in European states the proportion is almost indefinitely less. The proportion which the slaveholders of the South bear to the entire population is greater than that of the owners of land or houses, agricultural stock, State, bank, or other corporation securities anywhere else. No political economist will deny this. Nor is that all. Even in the States which are among the largest slaveholding, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, the land proprietors outnumber nearly two to one, in relative proportion, the owners of the same property in Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut; and if the average number of slaves held by each family throughout the South be but nine, and if one half of the whole number of slaveholders own under five slaves, it will be seen how preposterous is the allegation of our enemies, that the slaveholding class is an organized wealthy aristocracy. The poor men of the South are the holders of one to five slaves, and it would be equally consistent with truth and justice to say that they represent, in reality, its slaveholding interest."
Walt
Perhaps.
Walt
Interesting. This could be the first documented example a politician adjusting the variables of an equation to achieve the desired results. Fuzzy math, to borrow a term from our modern day internet inventor.
But, he actually went there.
The statue commemorates an historic event no different than the Marines at Iwo Jima raising the flag statue, or any other historical statue.
Lincoln was a US President, he and his son did go to Richmond.
Men fought bravely at Richmond, but they lost it. The victors get to raise the statues...
I don't see the problem.
It was not, perhaps, in the best interest of the slaves!
Debow was not a politician, but thanks for the Soviet style disinformation. That's a typcial neo-reb technique.
Walt
The statue commemorates that. The victors get to erect the statues.
Thus it is, thus it has always been, and will always be; everywhere. Amen.
This insistence on being "victors" and demanding the rights of "victors" carries with it the idea that those who lost the war and their descendants are not fellow citizens but a conquered and subject people.
Keep reinforcing that stupid, destructive idea.
That is the problem. People from all over the country coming to the town I live in, just to stir up $h!+, then go back home and leave the mess. I guess that's better than them staying though.
And Bismarck actually marched into Paris - but curiously, there are no statues erected to him there.
Boy, wouldn't it be a helpful and smart idea for a group of civic-minded Germans to erect a statue to the Iron Chancellor on the Champs-Elysee to commemorate victory in the Franco-Prussian War?
After all, it was 130 years ago, and the French and Germans are both partners now in the EU.
Only so long as you try to argue against the historical reality and delegitimize the capitulation that your ancestors accepted with grace and dignity.
This is not outcome-based history to improve your self-esteem.
Old Town Albuquerque still has on display the Texas cannons captured at the Battle of Glorietta Pass.
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