Indholdsfortegnelse – ATU Workshop i Amerikansk Historie

 Stanford Historical Thinking Chart

 Jourdon Anderson – ”There never was any pay-day for the Negroes” 1865

 Mississippi Black Codes 1865

 Alexander Stephens – Cornerstone Address 1861 – (Denne tekst får kun halvdelen af

holdet. Den anden halvdel får en anden tekst til en øvelse i tekstformidling)

 Herald and Advertiser – “The Lynching of Sam Newnan” 1899

 John Daniel Davidson, The Federalist – “Why we should keep the confederate

monuments right where they are” 2017

 Podcast transcript: Into America – “My body is a monument” 2020

 Optional reading: David Blight, The New Yorker - “Europe in 1989, America in 2020,

and the Death of the Lost Cause” 2020 HISTORICAL THINKING CHART Historical Reading Questions Students should be able to . . . Prompts Skills • Who wrote this? • Identify the author’s position on • The author probably Sourcing • What is the author’s perspective? the historical event believes . . . • When was it written? • Identify and evaluate the author’s • I think the audience is . . . • Where was it written? purpose in producing the • Based on the source • Why was it written? document information, I think the author • Is it reliable? Why? Why not? • Hypothesize what the author will might . . . say before reading the document • I do/don’t trust this document • Evaluate the source’s because . . . trustworthiness by considering genre, audience, and purpose

• When and where was the document • Understand how context/ • Based on the background created? background information influences information, I understand this Contextualization • What was different then? What was the content of the document document differently the same? • Recognize that documents are because . . . • How might the circumstances in products of particular points in • The author might have which the document was created time been influenced by _____ affect its content? (historical context) . . . • This document might not give me the whole picture because . . .

• What do other documents say? • Establish what is probable by • The author agrees/disagrees Corroboration • Do the documents agree? If not, comparing documents to each with . . . why? other • These documents all agree/ • What are other possible • Recognize disparities between disagree about . . . documents? accounts • Another document to • What documents are most reliable? consider might be . . .

• What claims does the author make? • Identify the author’s claims about • I think the author chose these Close Reading • What evidence does the author use? an event words in order to . . . • What language (words, phrases, • Evaluate the evidence and • The author is trying to images, symbols) does the author reasoning the author uses to convince me . . . use to persuade the document’s support claims • The author claims . . . audience? • Evaluate author’s word choice; • The evidence used to support • How does the document’s language understand that language is used the author’s claims is . . . indicate the author’s perspective? deliberately

STANFORD HISTORY EDUCATION GROUP SHEG.STANFORD.EDU “There Was Never Any Pay-day For the Negroes”: Jourdon Anderson Demands Wages

As slavery collapsed at the close of the Civil War, former slaves quickly explored freedom’s possibilities by establishing churches that were independent of white control, seeking education in Freedmen’s Bureau schools, and even building and maintaining their own schools. Many took to the roads as they sought opportunities to work and to reconstitute their families. Securing their liberty meant finding the means of support to obtain land or otherwise benefit from their own labor, as Jourdon Anderson made clear in this letter to his former owner. He addressed Major Anderson from Ohio, where he had secured good wages for himself and schooling for his children. Many freedpeople argued that they were entitled to land in return for their years of unpaid labor and looked to the federal government to help achieve economic self-sufficiency. Black southerners understood the value of their own labor and looked for economic independence and a free labor market in their battle over the meaning of emancipation in post-Civil War America.

Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Col. Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here; I get $25 a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy, —the folks here call her Mrs. Anderson),—and the children—Milly, Jane and Grundy—go to school and are learning well; the teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday- School, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated; sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks, but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Col. Anderson. Many darkies would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now, if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost- Marshal- General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night, but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the Negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve, and die if it comes to that, than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood, the great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

P.S. —Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson

Source: Reprinted in Lydia Maria Child, The Freedmen’s Book (Boston: Tickenor and Fields, 1865), 265–67.

324 PRESIDENTIAL RECONSTRUCTION ------The Mississip sions and prejudices of the masses, and commands vate conversation, but in the public press and in pi Black Codes (1865) 325 the admiration of the women. the speeches delivered and the resolutions passed 4: The multitude of people have no definite at Union meetings. Hardly ever was there an ex­ ideas about the circumstances under which they pression of hearty attachment to the great republic, live and about the course they have to follow; or an appeal to the impulses of patriotism; but o o on o o o The Missis wh se intellects are weak, but wh se prejudices whenever submissi t the nati nal auth rity was sippi Black Codes (1865) and impulses are strong, and who are apt to be car­ declared and advocated, it was almost uniformly n er U d An�re o nson ried along by those who know how to appeal to the o o o w J h 's pro r m o e placed up n tw principal gr unds: That under g a f R constr on so �cted a ser es o ucti , uther� s e s latter. n t o t o could i f laws to re e e . t�te l gi latures en prese t circumstances, he s u hern pe ple gulat th black o on ­ m o ern P 'Pul ati . Reflec n e s o o o no better;" and then that submission was s uth white e ese ti g id a deen/1, o e Much depends up n the relati n and influence "d the cultur , th law s ere m • r .,,, ro t d w a amifi esta on o e of these classes .... But whatever their differences only means by which they could rid themselves of t h at blacks would no or . ti f th widespre v e t w k without om s on ad i w to se ul i a�d ree eo may be, on one point they are agreed: further resis­ the federal soldiers and obtain once more control the cur n or er that f dp ple ose e ity a d d of so et � s � p d a thr at ci y. aw ener o o o t n o o n n o o r�s en re which � ally e o tance t the p wer f he ati nal g ver me t is f their wn affairs.... id ts, d w upon e o ve appli d nly to th ld sla �ode s e7 s black on o o o ot o o e t e : : a earlier v r n useless, and submissi t its auth rity a matter f If n hing were necessary but t rest re the mz d h lega o s ve ag a cy laws. e re o lity f la marriages v 7 � Th y c g­ n o on o n o o r t ' �a b ac s acce s o t o ecessity. It is true, the right f secessi in the ry machi ery f g vernment in the States lately in re­ igh to own ro er s t he c urts, an r n e p p ty. In other s :o d g a t d the o o o o o n o t o o t r ay , weve severe is still believed in by m st f th se wh formerly belli n i p in f form, the m vemen s made to p ivileges t nort t ey ly cur e r hat herners ons � er r, � tail d ights and believed in it; some are still entertaining a vague that end by the people of the South might be con­ c 1d e d an essen r quenty,l rme tial p a t O;•+fi re om n ala d northern o ed a d, conse o o n o o t t t t publi'c pint. n, s - h pe f seei g it realized at s me future time, but sidered satisfact ry. But if i is required ha he 1:'1_os o t e w h.i h aw these s t f h laws were s e e law as akin to s ver all give it up as a practical impossibility for the southern people should also accommodate them­ ubs qu ntly over � rne � la y. e o u d 'YC ongres n 1t1 s stati ned in e o t s a d by military or present. All movements in favor of separation to the results of the war in point of spirit, th S u h' bu t. the r n e auth - selves .t . . y we e a !1'++e c e e es • atti udes e mme t'iv xpr sion o o t r o o o o n o o m th i diate erm o f s u he n white fr m the Uni n have, therefore, been practically th se m veme ts fall farsh rt f what must be in­ aft a th ,J eman on state o t e cipati The o s o o o on t s at , and not ere . Black C de variedfirom aband ned, and resistance t ur military forces, sisted up . all w as severe as o . t h e mos n t h se 0'J+ M'iss 1ss1p• . . on that score, has ceased .. : . This kind of loyalty, The loyalty of the masses and most of the lead­ t stri gent. The s s p1, which were amon Mi si s1'pp.1 Jaw s attr e r g an e . act dpa t'icu z a r n .on however, which is produced by the irresistible ers of the southern people, consists in submission d th e R publican Chic atte ti m. the North ago T 'b bl untly n e · "tu o o t to n M.is s1s. s . . e . n une war d. vve te ll e e pressure f force, and c nsists merely in he necessity. There is, except i individual in­ 1pp1 that th men of e or th whit men of th Ni th w'll onvert e s o o o o o o o nt o o s pond o t th tate of ss ss n n-c mmissi n f acts f rebelli n, is f a stances, an e ire absence f that nati nal pirit bef re hey will. allo s l � Mi i ippi into afiro . w uch Zaws to dis e one g n t t o O;,r o r so er grac fioo t so negative character, a d migh as such, hardly be which forms he basis of true l yalty and patriot­ u ldi s sleep n over O;,+ i·z m. which the on a d which the r b es considered independent of circumstances and con­ ism. flag O;.•+fi eed om waves." tingencies .... The emancipation of the slaves is submitted to Treason does, under existmg circumstances, only in so far as chattel slavery in the old form not appear odious in the south.The people are not could not be kept up. But although the freedmanis impressed with any sense of its criminality. . . . no longer considered the property of the individ­ on o o o o Vagrant Law There is, as yet, am g the s uthern pe ple an ut­ ual master, he is c nsidered the slave f society, n isspe d what they n o ter absence of national feeling.I made it a business, and all independent State legislation will share the [November 24, 186 � ear , r do not provide 5] e suppo o for rt f themselves o t while in the south, to watch the symptoms of "re­ tendency to make him such. r hei·r ramc il'ies, or Se' c. l. depen d an s, and o n n o no o . .. Tha t a11 rogues n � all ther idle n o tur i g l yalty" as they appeared t nly in pri- d . a d vagabonds, idle o a d dis rder! y iss1pat o . and pers ns, mcludin ed pers ns ' begg a rs, g all who neg!ec t JuggI ers, or persons busm . . a11 I awful prac f ici ng· ss, habitually m n unlawful games or play � isspe d their time by co o s, runawa s quentmg o fjre ­ unkar o h uses of ill-fa :� � ds, c mmon nigh me' gami·ng -h ouses o fer � t-walkers, p�l� fipp I 'mg sho r w ' w nto o ps, shall be deem n � n, r lascivious o ed a d considered o pers ns, in grants, va- speech eha o under the pro o o v1 r, c mmon . . visi ns f th'is act, on :! � railers and brawlers co on and up persons o t , nvicti thereof . neg ec thei o shall be fine d no r calling r emplo nt n . t exceedmg one yme , hu dred dollars, with . . all accruing costs n imp iso a d be � ned, at the discr o o t eti n f he cour;, no t ceedmg ten days ex- FR---O!.!W alter L. e ., . Fleming, d D ocum construction entary History of Re- Sec 2 .. . voI. 1 (Cleveland '. : All freedmen, free neg o 1906- : Arthur H. Clark s r es and m - 1907),, pp. 281-90, Co' ) } Stat o ::�� �� !�� ver the a�e of eighteen o\ yea�, sec n Monday n m Ja uary, 1866, or

Alexander H. Stephens (1812-1883), although originally opposed to secession, was elected vice-president of the Confederacy. After the war he returned to political service in Georgia and in the House of Representatives. He was elected governor of Georgia in 1882 and died in office.

We are in the midst of one of the greatest epochs in our history. The last ninety days will mark one of the most memorable eras in the history of modern civilization.

... we are passing through one of the greatest revolutions in the annals of the world-seven States have, within the last three months, thrown off an old Government and formed a new. This revolution has been signally marked, up to this time, by the fact of its having been accomplished without the loss of a single drop of blood. [Applause.] This new Constitution, or form of government, constitutes the subject to which your attention will be partly invited.

In reference to it, I make this first general remark: It amply secures all our ancient rights, franchises, and privileges. All the great principles of Magna Chartal are retained in it. No citizen is deprived of life, liberty, or property, but by the judgment of his peers, under the laws of the land. The great principle of religious liberty, which was the honor and pride of the old Constitution, is still maintained and secured. All the essentials of the old Constitution, which have endeared it to the hearts of the American people, have been preserved and perpetuated.... So, taking the whole new Constitution, I have no hesitancy in giving it as my judgment, that it is decidedly better than the old. [Applause.] Allow me briefly to allude to some of these improvements. The question of building up class interests, or fostering one branch of industry to the prejudice of another, under the exercise of the revenue power, which gave us so much trouble under the old Constitution, is put at rest forever under the new. We allow the imposition of no duty with a view of giving advantage to one class of persons, in any trade or business, over those of another. All, under our system, stand upon the same broad principles of perfect equality. Honest labor and enterprise are left free and unrestricted in whatever pursuit they may be engaged in ....

But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other- though last, not least: the new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions-African slavery as it exists among us-the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the Constitution, was the prevailing idea at the time. The Constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly used against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it-when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell."

Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. [Applause.] This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It is so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North who still cling to these errors with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind; from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is, forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti- slavery fanatics: their conclusions are right if their premises are. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights, with the white man.... I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the Northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery; that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle-a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of man. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds we should succeed, and that he and his associates in their crusade against our institutions would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as well as in physics and mechanics, I admitted, but told him it was he and those acting with him who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.

In the conflict thus far, success has been on our side, complete throughout the length and breadth of the Confederate States. It is upon this, as I have stated, our social fabric is firmly planted; and I cannot permit myself to doubt the ultimate success of a full recognition of this principle throughout the civilized and enlightened world.

As I have stated, the truth of this principle may be slow in development, as all truths are, and ever have been, in the various branches of science. It was so with the principles announced by Galileo-it was so with Adam Smith and his principles of political economy. It was so with Harvey, and his theory of the circulation of the blood. It is stated that not a single one of the medical profession, living at the time of the announcement of the truths made by him, admitted them. Now, they are universally acknowledged. May we not therefore look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first Government ever instituted upon principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many Governments have been founded upon the principles of certain classes; but the classes thus enslaved, were of the same race, and in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. The negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, [note: A reference to Genesis, 9:20-27, which was used as a justification for slavery] is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite-then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is the best, not only for the superior but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances or to question them. For His own purposes He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made "one star to differ from another in glory."

The great objects of humanity are best attained, when conformed to his laws and degrees [sic], in the formation of Governments as well as in all things else. Our Confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This stone which was rejected by the first builders "is become the chief stone of the corner" in our new edifice.

Source:

Alexander H. Stephens, "Cornerstone Address, March 21, 1861 " in The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events with Documents, Narratives, Illustrative Incidents, Poetry, etc., vol. 1, ed. Frank Moore (New York: O.P. Putnam, 1862), pp. 44-46.

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1 3 5 7 2 4 6 8 Why We Should Keep The Confederate Monuments Right Where They Are Tearing down Confederate statues, or any monuments from our history, will not change the past. But it will make for a poorer, less enlightened future.

By John Daniel Davidson AUGUST 18, 2017

In the wake of Charlottesville, a chorus of media outlets, political activists, and random people on the Internet have called for the removal or destruction of Confederate statues in cities across the country. They say we shouldn’t honor a bunch of racists who fought to preserve slavery, and that it’s long past time for these painful reminders of our past to come down—stow them away in a museum or smash them to pieces, just get them off the streets. This iconoclastic impulse is a mistake, even after the harrowing events in Charlottesville last weekend. It’s a mistake not because there was anything noble about the Confederacy or its raison d’être, which was slavery, but because there is something noble—and, for a free people, necessary—about preserving our history so we can understand who we are and how we should live. For all the tough talk this week about the problems with these historical monuments, there hasn’t been nearly enough discussion of their history. Most of them were built a half-century after the war, as the Civil War generation was beginning to die off. Before the turn of the century, Confederate graves had for the most part not been cared for in federal cemeteries, and erecting a Confederate monument was considered treasonous.

But as the veterans of the war began to die, there was a renewed push for reconciliation between North and South, and with it an outpouring of filial piety. Of course, the monument boom across the South during the first two decades of the twentieth century came at a time of terrible race relations, mass immigration, and the pernicious influence of the Lost Cause mythos, which poisoned the South.

So the monuments reflect more than one current of early twentieth-century America. They served to venerate Confederate heroes like Robert E. Lee, thereby cementing the narrative of the Lost Cause and all its misty-eyed nostalgia about the South. But they were also an outpouring of grief and remembrance for the hundreds of thousands who had died in the war. Nearly a quarter of Southern white men in their twenties were killed or died from disease. Is it any wonder that decades later, as families began to bury Confederate veterans in greater numbers, there would be a push to erect memorials to that generation?

And for as much as Lost Cause mythology adorns so many of these monuments, their purpose was also to convey to future generations why so many people kept fighting, for years and in the face of staggering casualties. For the ordinary soldiers who fought and died, devotion to the Confederate army did not arise primarily from a devotion to the institution of slavery (just as most Union soldiers were not fighting primarily to end slavery) but from a devotion to their home states and a sense of honor and duty to defend them from what they considered to be an invading army.

That they were wrong about slavery does not excuse us today from the burden of trying to understand what motivated them to fight—and what motivated them and their families to undertake a flurry of monument-building decades later as the surviving veterans began to die off.

Speaking on Memorial Day in 1884, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a Union veteran who saw a great deal of action, talked about the importance of transmitting the emotional weight of the war from one generation to the next, and he specifically mentions the role of monuments: “I believe from the bottom of my heart that our memorial halls and statues and tablets, the tattered flags of our regiments gathered in the Statehouses, are worth more to our young men by way of chastening and inspiration than the monuments of another hundred years of peaceful life could be.” For Holmes, it was also the duty of Civil War veterans themselves to convey the significance of the war to posterity. He said, “the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire… we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after.”

This Isn’t Really About Confederate Monuments Nevertheless, a common objection to these statues today is that because they occupy public spaces, they serve to venerate their subjects, who were of course racists and fought to preserve slavery. But if we know the history, why can’t we see them in a different light? Why shouldn’t we view them as we should, as a haunting and cautionary tale?

Certainly, the statues were not originally meant to educate future generations about the evils of slavery and secession, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t take them as such today. Indeed, the fact that these statues were erected in prominent public places is itself a powerful lesson in American history—a testament to our turbulent past that would be diminished if they were removed to a sanitized display in a museum. Not every statue or piece of public art has to comfort and console us. Sometimes, they should oblige us to grapple with our nation’s history and the vagaries of human nature.

Even so, some conservatives are willing to let the things go. Kevin Williamson at NRO urges conservatives to do nothing. “The Left’s vandalism is intended mainly to get a rise out of the Right, in the hopes of getting some Republican to wrong-foot himself over a racial question,” he writes. Even if some conservatives sympathize with those who want to remove Confederate memorials—and plenty of prominent right-of-center writers clearly do— there’s no need to join them because the iconoclasm sweeping the country, says Williamson, “mainly consists of local authorities making democratic decisions about the disposition of public property,” and thus “there is a case for political quietism in this matter.” That would be fine advice if it were true that this is really just about local authorities making democratic decisions about statues. It would even be fine if it were just about the moral preening of Democratic politicians and activists, seizing on an opportunity to shame and embarrass Southerners for gradually abandoning their party in favor of the GOP.

But the iconoclasm on display now is about more than anathematizing the Confederacy or scoring cheap political points against hapless Republicans. It’s part of the Left’s overarching critique of American constitutionalism, the goal of which is to overthrow that order.

The Real Reason The Left Wants To Forget The Past President Trump was mocked for suggesting that if we tear down statues of Lee then activists would demand the removal of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson next. But sure enough, later in the week the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC was vandalized with spray paint. A Lincoln statue in Chicago was burned. Al Sharpton said the Jefferson Memorial should be abandoned. A pastor in Chicago asked the mayor to remove the names of Washington and Andrew Jackson from city parks because they owned slaves. A writer at Vice News called for Mount Rushmore to be blown up. One columnist in Philly even argued for tearing down a statue of Frank Rizzo, who served as police commissioner and mayor in the late 1960s and ‘70s. In some cases, any monument would do. All this sounds crazy, but jumping from Confederate statues to Lincoln to Rizzo follows a certain logic. For the Left, the Confederacy is just a small part of a much larger problem, which is the past. Iconoclasm of the kind we’ve seen this week is native to the Left, because the entire point is to liberate society from the strictures of tradition and history in order to secure a glorious new future. That’s why Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China torched temples and dug up ancient graves, why the Soviets sacked Orthodox churches and confiscated church property, and why various governments of France went about de-Christianizing the country during the French Revolution. The modern-day American Left isn’t as bad as all that, but its ideology about the past is more or less the same. Hence the statement issued Thursday by Seattle Mayor Ed Murray calling for the removal of all “symbols of hate, racism and violence that exist in our city.” Murray is at least consistent, as he includes not just Confederate symbols but also a well-known statue of Vladimir Lenin. These symbols, Murray says, represent “historic injustices,” and “their existence causes pain among those who themselves or whose family members have been impacted by these atrocities.”

He is not interested in the history of the statues themselves, the people or events they depict, or “what political affiliation may have been assigned to them in the decades since they were erected.” Don’t be fooled by the therapeutic language about causing pain. The statues must go because they remind us constantly of a past that needs only to be overcome and forgotten.

A more mature society would recognize that the past is always with you and must always be kept in mind. There’s a reason Christians in Rome didn’t topple all the pagan statues and buildings in the city, or raze the Colosseum. Edmund Burke had strong words for the French during their revolution, while they were doing their best to destroy a rich past and slaughter one another in the process:

You had all these advantages in your ancient states; but you chose to act as if you had never been molded into civil society, and had everything to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by despising everything that belonged to you… If the last generations of your country appeared without much luster in your eyes, you might have passed them by, and derived your claims from a more early race of ancestors. Under a pious predilection for those ancestors, your imaginations would have realized in them a standard of virtue and wisdom, beyond the vulgar practice of the hour: and you would have risen with the example to whose imitation you aspired. Respecting your forefathers, you would have been taught to respect yourself. You would not have chosen to consider the French as a people of yesterday, as a nation of low-born servile wretches until the emancipating year of 1789. That is part of why these memorials and statues are important. Perhaps not all of them need be preserved, but giving into the iconoclasm of the Left, with temperatures running high, will mean we lose far more than we gain by hiding these physical reminders of our nation’s troubled past.

Let them stand as a memorial of our ancestors who died, a challenge to understand their time and its troubles, and a warning for the present day.

John is the Political Editor at The Federalist.

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Into America (podcast)

Into ‘My Body is a Monument’

Trymaine Lee: A warning to listeners that this episode contains discussion of sexual violence.

Caroline Randall Williams: I have rape-colored skin. My light brown blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, causes of the old South. If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then my body is a monument. My skin is a monument.

Lee: Caroline Randall Williams is a poet and writer in residence at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. This weekend, she published an opinion piece in the New York Times titled, "You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body is a Confederate Monument."

The debate over monuments, and street names, and other relics of the Confederacy has intensified in recent weeks. A statue of Jefferson Davis was pulled down in Richmond, Virginia. In Louisville, Kentucky, a monument depicting a Confederate officer was removed from the city square. And on Tuesday, Mississippi decided to remove the Confederate symbol from the state's flag. What is lost and what is gained by tearing them down? Or was it always about more than the metal and stone in the first place?

Williams: I am a Black Southern woman. And of my immediate white male ancestors, all of them were rapists. My very existence is a relic of slavery and Jim Crow.

Lee: I'm Trymaine Lee, and this is Into America. Today, Caroline Randall Williams on why her body is a monument. Listening to you read those words, it's at once raw, but there is something liberating, I think, about owning a piece of ourselves that has been shadowed for a long time. But I also don't think a lot of people have fully considered the sexual violence, the white sexual violence heaped upon black women during enslavement. And those first lines, "I have rape-colored skin," how did you get there?

Williams: You know, it's a long time coming. One of the things that's always been in the back of my mind as a Black woman who strongly and solely identifies with my Blackness is that people experience light skin as a privilege, which it is. It's a profound privilege. But when I think about how I came by it, it's a privilege that aches me because of how it came to be that I am light skinned.

I think it was a long time of private examination because I didn't want to make the emotional burden of that privilege, like, anybody else's burden because the privilege has allowed me access and resources that I just want to use to, like, further the collective cause of being Black, and being free, and being safe and well in America but thinking privately to myself about the physical nature of this particular privilege, sort of examining my family trees.

And I have another privilege of knowing a lot of my family history. I've known the stories. I am the daughter of two Black people. I am the granddaughter of four Black people. I am the great-granddaughter of eight Black people. I have the privilege of knowing my great-grandmother.

But she knew her white father. She knew her white father who had raped her Black mother and in such a violent way that her mother lost her mind. And so my great-grandmother was raised by her grandmother, who'd been born a slave to the family of the son who raped her daughter and made her raise her own grandchild, right?

And my great-grandmother lived till I was 17 years old, and she was a really important part of my life. And so looking at her light skin, knowing her story, what she'd seen and lived through, I thought, "This skin is the color of that. This skin is the color of those rapes." This privilege of light skin has come at the cost of the Black women in my family who were raped by the white men who "gave us" (I'm using that in air quotes), "gave us" this strange privilege of this light skin.

Lee: The one line you have that, "My skin is a monument." And when you think about the knowledge of that history, with that history being etched in flesh and bone, how do you actually reconcile it? It's one thing to recognize it, see it for what it is, understand the history. But in your living body, how do you reconcile that history?

Williams: I think one of the strange things for me, again, because even though the light skin has afforded me a great deal of privilege, I never privileged it. I'm grateful for the one-drop rule 'cause it means that my 48% or whatever it is from Africa in my blood makes me Black.

I reconcile it by knowing that one drop covers anything that they thought was valuable about themselves. Whoever these white men thought they were, however important they thought they were, like, my one drop of Black blood makes me not theirs, not their race, not their color. But because I have that white blood, I get to use my brownness as a weapon against white supremacy because, as I wrote in the piece, I am proof. I am proof of what they did. I am proof that they are not who they think they are, who they say they are, who they are remembered to be.

Lee: When you think about, and I used the word "shadowed" earlier, and you think about the sexual torture and sexual violence that was baked into enslavement, right, you know, we don't talk about it much. I mean, Black folks, we talk about it a little bit 'cause we understand the rape history. But mainstream society, white folks don't really talk about this. Is that silence added violence in itself, of just pretending, or just ignoring, or just pushing it into the corner and being intentional about forgetting about it? Is that a form of violence itself?

Williams: Yeah. Psychological violence is the most profound violence there is, right? I mean, it's the whole idea of a bloody but unbowed head. You can decide how to stand what they do to your body. But if they silence your story and your history and your ability to express your trauma, that writes itself on generations.

But I was raised by a survivor of sexual violence. And so I believe in naming and shaming. And I was raised to name and shame. And I have seen the power of it, the healing power of it. A lot of people who are traumatized repeat their trauma. And my mother, who had just some of the craziest things happen to her, has raised me with so much love, and fortitude, and a sense of wanting to do right and continue to feel loved and supported.

And so to me, I want to empower people to adopt that model where they haven't. We have to be so vigilant about knowing what our rights can be. It's funny to me 'cause I get mad at the Constitution. I get so mad at it because it's a gentlemen's agreement. It wasn't written for us. It wasn't even written for all white men, right?

It was written for a certain group of white men with so many loopholes. It's very elegant, and it's subjective. But I love the Constitution because America as a collective identity right now, like, you know, we were raised to believe that, you know, the Constitution is for all Americans. And I am excited to find ways to make America do what its documents say instead of what its founders meant.

Lee: There's a line that you write where you say, "I've got rebel-gray blue blood coursing through my veins." You bring up this idea of redress, it's one thing. Acknowledging the past, the past act, naming and shaming. But either way, you arrive with that lineage. And part of what it sounds like you're doing is owning a piece of that history. Regardless of how it got there, you descend from these people. How does that change the way you view yourself, the way you view America?

Williams: I mean, I think there were times in American history and certainly in my own personal history where I've resisted comparing the Black American experience to the Holocaust in part because it was such an immediate and acute trauma that is still in the living memory. I mean, even now I get chills trying to contemplate that. But I also feel like, you know, there were news cameras that came and showed the video reels of the liberation of those camps. And if there had been news cameras in the bellies of the boats of the middle passage--

Lee: Imagine that.

Williams: --we would not be having this conversation. You just would not because we'd be safe and free if America meant what it says it means. And so when I think about, you know, the comparison, you know, you can't meet a group of, like, German teenagers that are traveling in America who don't, like, apologize about Hitler, like, almost on the second breath, you know?

Lee: Uh-huh (AFFIRM).

Williams: They have found a model of decency that includes claiming and shaming their ancestors. And I thought, you know, growing up in Nashville, Tennessee around all these white friends who, like, the best version of wokeness when I was growing up as just, like, saying, "I don't care moving forward. Like, I love Black people."

They didn't ever look back and reexamine or name or shame their own relatives. And I thought, "Well, hey. I got one of those in my closet, too. I got a dead Confederate in my closet." Like, allow me to model what it looks like to shame your ancestor 'cause apparently none of my white friends will do it. And I think it doesn't matter if you're the white or Black descendant of dead Confederates. It's time to acknowledge the sins of our ancestors.

Lee: That part right there though, I think it did strike me. And that's something that was new. I mean, not necessarily new to me. But, like, the idea of, you know, we too have inherited a piece of this. We too have this blood in our veins. We too are descendants of those, you know, vile men. So we should also have a say in what happens in the way we memorialize them, right? If you want to, as you say, memorialize something, memorialize this body. I think that was just really profound.

Williams: Oh, well, thank you so much. And it's so funny to me. Like, when I realized it, I was like, "Why are we not talking about this?" But I think that part of it is that, I mean, erasure is just real. You know, people go, "Well, where's the proof? You know, like, you can't prove he did that."

But then, you know, the strange blessing of ancestry DNA, like, I just spit into a tube and now I'm like, "Tell me y'all ain't my cousins when we matched on the website." (LAUGH) So the science has made it easier to not exonerate but claim and reframe.

Lee: Do you think that white women are ready to have that conversation about how complicit they've been in white supremacy and also certainly just violence period? We see the old letters from Martha Washington. Like, it's been pretty bad, but we never talk about that aspect of it.

Williams: Golly. You're gonna get me in trouble. (LAUGHTER)

Lee: We're about to get everybody in trouble in here.

Williams: I know. You know what? You're right. But I think the question of whether or note white women are ready, I don't know. My answer is I sure hope so. What I will say is I've had some really valuable and transformative conversations lately with a lot of my white female friends.

And I think there are transformations on their side that might not have happened if I hadn't been so dogged in my approach to demanding certain things. I mean, the question of white women will do, I don't know, because, you know, the Ku Klux Klan would not have gotten its traction in Jim Crow without all those nice ladies holding picnics and saying it was a community gathering, that this is a family organization.

I mean, white women were the backbone of the Ku Klux Klan of establishing the cultural norms of Jim Crow, Daughters of the Confederacy erecting all those statues, like, in the nineteen-teens, and '20s, and aughts, right. (SIGH) I don't know. I'm a little scared about it. I mean, if I'm very honest, I hope that it'll be better. I hope that it will. I don't know.

What is a monument but a standing memory, an artifact to make tangible the truth of the past? My body and blood are a tangible truth of the South and its past. The Black people I come from were owned by the white people I come from. The white people I come from fought and died for their lost cause. And I ask you now: Who dares to tell me to celebrate them? Who dares to ask me to accept their mounted pedestals?

Lee: You know, your piece, not much unlike the debate over monuments itself, I always thought it was always about more than monuments. Right? It's just that this is an edifice and a reminder of the danger that Black bodies especially have been through. Williams: That's right.

Lee: But when it comes to actual monuments, growing up were you walking in the shadow of these monuments? What role did they play in your life as you moved through your Southern world?

Williams: You know, I think that there was a sort of ubiquity to white men monuments, full stop, that sheltered me from understanding what specific ones were for when I was younger. I mentioned in the article cartoonish private statues. Now, what I will say is in the early or mid-early '90s on highway I-65 here in Nashville, some man whose name I do not know and don't care to, you know, he owned a patch of land on the highway and he, like, commissioned this (I mean, it was probably, like, 30 or 40 feet high) statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Lee: Among the worst.

Williams: Yeah. The founder of the Ku Klux Klan, right? So this statue was on the highway. And now it kills me 'cause it's on private land, which is why it can't be taken down. But the Tennessee government paid to clear the trees. And I will say I remember seeing that statue and I remember I was with my dad, who was a Black conservative Republican.

I remember even though my dad was, like, misguided in some ways I was in the car with him and I said to him. I think I must have been like 10 years old. I was like, "Daddy, don't you think that that statue is bad? Don't you think they should take it down? Doesn't it make you feel bad to see it?"

And he said, "Caroline, now, it's a terrible statue." It looks like a cartoon. His face is, like, contorted. It's a poorly rendered image. And my father said, "If they want to make themselves look ridiculous in public, I don't have a problem with it." And I think that that was a real balm. It gave me some real armor moving forward 'cause it was such a young exchange for me. It sort of freed me from feeling oppressed by them myself, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't come down.

'Cause I'm not worried about what they do to Black people 'cause we're strong and resilient. We know that those people don't matter. What I worry about is the people who come there to worship. And the statues, the false idols need to come down because they are brewing a fundamentalism that is anathema to what this country says it is meant to be.

Lee: So the one thing, and I don't think I've heard that thought, is that, you know, if we take these things down, those that worship at the feet of these idols, what's their response gonna be? Because it's gonna signal to them that these are the last days. The republic is crumbling, (LAUGH) right? Williams: I'm scared. I'm scared. I'm scared because the Constitution is just a gentlemen's agreement at the moment. But that's what a revolution looks like. It looks like finally coming to a head and then there is inevitable, like, intensity of conflict. I don't know what they'll do when their monuments come down.

I imagine that it's gonna be scary and scarier for a minute. But I also think that once they come down, you know, you look at ancient Rome, like, they torn down all those statues of those gods. Like, Zeus is just a distant idea in a book now, you know? So, like, you tear down the statues and the worshipers dissolve eventually. So I still think it's the right way. But I am scared. I don't know what they'll do.

Lee: You know, I want to get back to your piece for a second. And I want to read a portion of a letter that was sent to the editors of the New York Times.

Williams: Okay.

Lee: It says, "Miss Williams has written about the most powerful and most personal reason to tear down statues of Confederate generals and to rename U.S. military bases currently bearing Confederate military names. People can see many reasons to eliminate the glorifying of people who were traitors fighting to retain the ugliness of slavery, but Miss Williams has written her truth." Did you imagine that your essay would resonate in this way?

Williams: No. I'm so grateful that it has. I had no idea that the response would be this profound. You know, I think it kinda ties back to this question of what they'll do when their statues come down. My piece, how do I say this? People can argue about whether all lives matter, Black lives matter. They can argue about the causes of the Confederacy or whether or not you're valid in celebrating your ancestors even when they did wrong.

No decent people really argue about whether or not rape is wrong. And so I took the other questions off the table. And then it feels good to believe in the right thing. And I think that that's part of maybe why it's been resonant. And I also think, again, there's catharsis in naming and shaming, which isn't done enough.

And I say all of that 'cause I've been trying to understand why it worked and to respond to people who are responding to me. And it's really humbling, and I'm really grateful that some of this inherited trauma can do good, which is what I'd always hoped it would do, but you still get a little scared to try and say something at all. Lee: So do you think this debate and your pieces chiming on this debate over tearing monuments down, not necessarily rewriting history but reclaiming and recentering the narrative around this history, do you think that actually gets us closer to a more fair, just, equable society, tearing those things down?

Williams: Yes. I think it does because I think actions mean something even if you don't, it's like, you know, if you smile it can actually elevate your dopamine. Even if you don't mean it, if you're not happy, if you're feeling depressed, like, you might not want to smile. But if you make yourself do it, it will actually change something of your brain chemistry.

I think that whether or not they want to do it, I think that it will change some of the brain chemistry of the collective American mind to have done it. 'Cause it certainly will mean a great deal to a lot of people, Black and white, who want to be on the right side of history and who want to stop celebrating these evildoers in public.

And I think the people who don't want it down seeing the good that it does having it down, if they are good people (and I think that in an ether, in a void the state of the human condition is probably inclined towards goodness), that being true, I think that it will have to change.

Lee: Caroline Randall Williams, you've given us all the words. Thank you very much. And, you know, sharing trauma is really tough, but you've done it in such an eloquent, powerful way that I think we truly have a better understanding of who we are. So thank you very much. Really appreciate it.

Williams: Oh, thank you. That's high praise indeed. Thank y'all. Either you have been blind to a truth that my body's story forces you to see, or you really do mean to honor the oppressors at the expense of the oppressed and you must at last acknowledge your emotional investment in a legacy of hate.

Either way, I say the monuments of stone and metal, the monuments of cloth and wood, all the man-made monuments must come down. I defy any sentimental Southerner to defend our ancestors to me. I am quite literally made of the reasons to strip them of their laurels.

Lee: You can find a link to Caroline Randall Williams' full piece that was in the New York Times in our show notes and on our website at NBCNews.com/IntoAmerica.