Why Statues In The First Place?

[The Grand Nudger]

It's really not about egos. Monuments are state propaganda. That's what they are, that's why we need them, for certain values of need.

To return to Lee as my example, the statues are used to project an impression of victory and power. To show anyone looking who is in charge, and to lionize those subjects as heroes and exemplars. Lee, though, was known for saying shit like this;

You must endeavour to enjoy the pleasure of doing good. That is all that makes life valuable. When I measure my own by that standard I am filled with confusion and despair.

That would be a great quote for a plaque, if it were about Lee or his ego.

I suppose that we could say that they're about a national ego - kind of tortured. Statues of Lee as a hero exist, and presidents have since extolled his virtues in the way that making your enemy grand makes his defeat even grander. In the case of a civil war that's worth twice as much, a battle between heroes where the biggest hero won, and where..ultimately, all are americanized as peers in the present.

Teddy Roosevelt, on Lee, on the 100th anniv of his birth-

-extraordinary skill as a General, his dauntless courage and high leadership-

-He stood that hardest of all strains, the strain of bearing himself well through the gray evening of failure; and therefore out of what seemed failure he helped to build the wonderful and mighty triumph of our national life, in which all his countrymen, north and south, share.

For Lee, though, neither national nor personal ego explains his monuments. These are monuments to inequality enforced by the social order. Not the social order of the south, though that was it's social order...but the social order of the victorious union. The people who defend them might object to that as stridently as people who identify with the union would. Hit dogs holler, and mention that Lee had said this - in a letter to his wife.

In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages.

Which he did.....but he continued....

I think it however a greater evil to the white than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.

Or, perhaps, we can imagine that these monuments are eulogies to a committed confederate hero, who thought as they did and believed in and fought for what they believe in and wish had triumphed....Lee himself strikes again.

If Virginia stands by the old Union so will I. But if she secedes (though I do not believe in secession as a constitutional right, nor that there is sufficient cause for revolution), then I will follow my native State with my sword, and, if need be, with my life.

He declined the initial offer to lead forces.

I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home.

Then, ofc, theres his famous ride through the remains of his defeated forces, assuring his men

It's all my fault.

He was right. He was a very poor general, particularly when it mattered, no matter what Teddy decided to say about him to soothe the national psyche.
...................

All of that, however, is too complicated, it doesn't serve the purpose of the monuments to consider the man. The message in a monument is simpler, condensed, wordless, and can best be understood by looking at who those monuments loom over.

(I had to play Lee more than a few times during during our february productions. Lee, and GW Carver - they knew we grew peanuts, lol)