(September 11, 2017 at 10:51 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote:(September 11, 2017 at 10:38 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: I don't think any of that justifies maintaining statues of him on public grounds. Wherever his loyalties lay, we may be sure that his loyalty to his home state led him to taking up arms in service to an odious cause ... unlike Jefferson.
Put the statues in a museum.
Davis' cause was not exactly Lee's cause. Though no abolitionist, he did not seem to have any particular investment in the perpetuation of slavery, and even hoped that some day it would be abolished (although he expected that God would take his sweet-ass time on that). He even had his own slaves freed in 1862 (admittedly as part of his father-in-law's will), something even Thomas Jefferson failed to do. In the last days of the war, he even lobbied to allow the Confederate Army to allow black soldiers in combat. The war ended before they saw action. Useful idiot, perhaps, but I think "taking up arms in service of an odious cause" might be over-stretching it a bit, since it implies a sort of unanimity of purpose that simply isn't in the historical record.
It is no overstretch; it is exactly what he did. Whether he was a pawn or not is not germane. Whether he compromised his own values is not germane. He could presumably read, and it's no "overstretch" to think that he knew why the Confederate states seceded.
I understand he was no slavering monster with blood dripping literally from his hands. But the facts are the facts. And the fact is he led armies in defense of a regime whose raison d'etre was the furtherance of slavery. All your apologetics can't change that fact.
