We Petty Men
The statue of general Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia ought not be removed as a result of the outrage surrounding George Floyd and others. Nor should those of J.E.B. Stuart, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson or Matthew Fontaine Maury. It is a small issue, perhaps, but it largely indicates the petty men — and women — we are in danger of becoming as a country, a country with neither leaders nor historical leadership to turn to.
The preservation of Monument Avenue's Confederate military leaders was not a novel opinion, or even a contentious one, until recently. A 2018 committee appointed by the city of Richmond found that the statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis — a louse of a man, remarkably similar to current politicians — should be moved elsewhere and the remaining Confederate figures be given context by way of amendment, not modification. The level-headed plan attracted praise and doubtless smothered violence on par with that experienced by nearby Charlottesville the year prior.
That changed when the vile acts of a Minneapolis police officer prompted a Virginian governor — sadly known for his collegiate yearbook's blackface photos — to proclaim the removal of Robert E. Lee's statue. It is the only state-owned property in the national landmark of a street, with Richmond's city council signalling an equal desire to take down the rest belonging to the city.
But Robert E. Lee, and those alongside him on Monument Avenue, deserve their fixtures in both the hearts of a modern Richmond and a modern America. Of Lee, much can be — must be — said.
Lee, as many ought to know from the drama of America’s history, was Abraham Lincoln's desired choice to preserve the union at the dawn of civil war. He was a pronounced critic of slavery who dreaded the bloody war he knew it would engender. And he was a man who former president Dwight Eisenhower — who pushed for the earliest and most formative civil rights victories — called “noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.”
He was an embodiment of an old sort of patriotism, one which placed a value on patria that seems quaint in our modern age in which American companies headquarter themselves in Ireland and Chinese investors purchase bits of Chicago. For the sin of committing himself to his home — against a country for which he had already risked his life longer than the lifespans of most protestors — Robert E. Lee is to be ironically torn down by the state of Virginia as an icon of white supremacy.
I have rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be great for the interests of the south. So fully am I satisfied with this, as regards Virginia especially, that I would cheerfully have lost all I have lost by the war, and have suffered all I have suffered, to have this object attained.
— Robert E. Lee, 1870
Lee's ultimate counterpart, Ulysses S. Grant, similarly appears to have only one quality to moderns, which is that he Won, a simplification that denies the roughhewn Ohio son his own shades of complexity. Like Lee, he lamented the inhumane tragedy of slavery, its victims and its perpetrators. He emancipated his single slave on his own, cautious terms ("I never was an abolitionist," Grant wrote in 1863, "nor even what could be called anti-slavery..."). As was true for Lee, Grant's pressing goal was peace and a conclusion to the war; slavery's abolition was secondary, albeit inevitable and necessary. He was less, it may be said, beholden to the civil contract which the British and Spanish imported with greed, being a poor farmboy from Ohio though he married (like Lee) into a slave-holding family. Still, Lee's efforts at manumission, education and repatriation of his slaves are not eager enough for us, though they were eager — and somewhat illegal — at the time, paired with a cautious eye towards a prevention of lawless anarchy or the war which eventually occurred.
The vehemence with which some moderns damn and dismiss Lee is indicative of both the ignorance of his real traits and a vague awareness that he and countless others do not deserve to be ranked alongside villains, but it is too much work to extricate them versus more favored heroes like Grant. Even the giant sitting in the Lincoln Memorial, for instance, once advocated Constitutionally-guaranteed slavery in order to preserve the Union. I evince these things not to suggest we topple their monuments, too; I admire Lincoln and Grant both. But we must know and understand the complexity with which our history is woven — and the fact that there were many roads to equality. We chose perhaps the bloodiest.
To act as if history is not so nuanced requires a mass destruction of monuments not seen in this century — yet. Perhaps it is better to have no monuments at all except ones maintained at private expense, since the dominant social preferences change with the generations. But in beginning the project, we have given those misappropriating Lee's memory yet another martyred statue over which to spill blood — and denied ourselves a point of good faith and dialogue, those things so destructive to prejudice and sentiments of supremacy. In contrast, what greater disarmament to hate, what greater edification of peace could there be than to add to Monument Avenue new Virginian heroes in equal glory?
One recalls the proverb: "Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set." Unfortunately, the removal of Lee's monument is typical of our epoch's scorched-earth discourse which ignores most advice of Solomon's. Brilliantly re-shareable, easily communicated in two hundred forty characters and thirty-second videos. It is done in lieu of actually wrestling with the complex characters of our history, or really any history. It denies an opportunity to have a conversation with intelligent Americans who have, defying the imaginations of our politicians, managed to have pride in their history while condemning without exception prejudice of all kinds.
A modern-day judgement of Lee requires undoing a swathe of attached historical figures, a reality only the most radical among us are comfortable with. Shall we undo Lincoln? Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Johnson — all champions of civil rights and admirers of the man whose statue's removal is celebrated on our social feeds? John F. Kennedy, who recalled a "Robert E. Lee who, after gallant failure, urged those who had followed him in bravery to reunite America in purpose and courage"? Our generation's one-sided fury against the man is a historical reading suggesting no history whatsoever.
Do we truly long for peace and listening, dialogue and understanding over centuries-old wounds? Then let the United States have Lee back for the citizen he was until the end. Let the nation have the civic memory of a man who did more for equal reunion than many have since. Tearing furiously at his memory reduces only our stature, not his — and in doing so, it empowers the hateful few whom we ought to deny the gravity of his company. Stifle them by raising new heroes to his level — not pulling him down to the oblivion in which they would place you.
