Remember history by removing Confederate statues

In the early morning darkness on May 11, a crane lifted Jefferson Davis off his pedestal in New Orleans. He dangled there, to cheers and protests from the gathered crowd. Then the crane lowered the former president of the Confederacy into a truck. It took 106 years longer than it should have, but he was finally dethroned.

The empty pedestal spoke as loudly as the statue had.

New Orleans has been systematically toppling its Confederate monuments in recent weeks, sparking celebration and outrage all over the country. The city is moving fast. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard came down May 17 to similar fanfare as Davis got. Workers started taking down Gen. Robert E. Lee May 19.

Here on Delmarva we’re no strangers to the passions Confederate statues raise. In 2015 in Easton, old Civil War disputes bubbled up to the surface when the NAACP led a push to take down the “Talbot Boys” monument, which honors the county’s Confederate veterans. A century and a half after the Civil War ended, the letters to the editor section of the paper became a battlefield over states’ rights, the history of slavery and the legacy of the Confederacy.

The monument still stands on the courthouse lawn, watching over the site of the old slave market in town.

BACKGROUND:Confederate questions remain in Maryland

Those who defend monuments like those to Jeff Davis or the Talbot Boys often say we shouldn’t try to erase history just because it’s painful. Another common argument is that the Civil War was about states’ rights, not slavery.

The first argument, ironically, speaks directly to the second one. Of course the issue of states' rights was a big part of the war, but it was a fight over whether states had rights to allow the enslavement of human beings. Southern apologists try very hard to erase that part of the history, but trying to take slavery out of the Civil War’s cause is like trying to talk about eggs while downplaying the role of chickens.

As to the erasing history argument, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu addressed that well in a Tweet early Thursday: “This morning we continue our march to reconciliation by removing the Jefferson Davis Confederate statue from its pedestal of reverence.”

Nobody is trying to erase history by taking down statues. The real argument is about whom the community honors, who is a full part of the community, and whose opinion matters.

There is a risk of getting sanctimonious about it, of course. If we took down all the statues of people who did bad things at some point in their lives, we’d have no statues left. But when a statue honors someone whose fame comes from terrible errors, that’s when we’ve got a problem.

George Wallace may have done good things during his time as governor of Alabama. Maybe he always kept his word and was kind to children, I don’t know. But we’re not going to put up a statue to Wallace, because what we remember him for is his fierce opposition to desegregation and civil rights.

Similarly, we have no monuments to the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor, or statues honoring the British soldiers who burned the White House, even though those events are clearly part of this nation’s history.

The leaders of New Orleans aren’t taking down the statue of Jefferson Davis to erase history. They’re taking it down because they’ve read history.

Email Andrew Sharp at asharp@delmarvanow.com. Find him on Twitter @buckeye_201 and on Facebook @andrewsharp201.