Template:Statues

Statues and History

People want to destroy statues of Americans that fought on the side of the south during the Civil War and think that is making things better. That, of course, is nonsense. That is also true of those who are destroying statues in Europe of people who lived in the colonial era. The correlate it to the destruction of statues of Hitler or Stalin and Lenin and justify that tearing down of symbols as if they have reached a more woke view of the world.

It is true that we should not be so accepting of the propaganda of victors. But the true historical account of the events of history or the War between the States may be more remote from our or their thinking.

We should always try to deal in facts and the underlying causes and motivations of people as individuals when looking at history. It is the individual who writes history with the sweat and blood of their lives. There is no brush so broad that it can paint a large group or a nation without doing injustice.

You study history to learn from the mistakes of individuals so that you do not repeat those mistakes in your own life.

Real history is the Human experience and that is complicated because humans are complicated. They are seldom just good or bad. When you divide whole groups of people into north and south or Germans and Americans, or Jews and Palestinians or White and Blacks, that is where you start getting into trouble.

There were racists in the south and the north but most of the people fighting in the south against the people who came from the north were clearly fighting for "State's rights". They also fought for the rights of the individual because only the individual is endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That was not only self evident but it was once hailed as the foundation of the American way.

One of the best history books I ever read was The United States 1492 to 1892 and it was just stories of people as individuals and their experiences. It was enlightening to know the whole story of individuals who were key players in steering the actions of larger societies. It is often not those who are appointed to power that steer the courses society might take.

It was the prolific Carl Sandburg that first gave me some understanding that the Civil War was not merely a conflict over slavery.

Some are still saying "The American Civil War started due to the secession of Southern states who then went on to form a new federal government, the Confederate States of America." There are several reasons why this is a distortion of the history of governments.

The Southern states had the right to secede from the Union. They were simply going back to a Confederation, not a federal government, like the Americans States had before the federal Constitution. After the Revolutionary war each State had its own government. They formed a confederation through the Articles of Confederation. What that means can only be understood by a deeper understanding of the conflict between these to forms of governments and the status of the States and their citizens. Flags and statues or phrases and slogans do not impart that understanding.

A Yankee soldier reportedly asked his Confederate prisoner: 'Why do you fight us so hard, Reb?" The response was simple, "Because you are here, Yank.”

It was the factories, money, and navy that won the war for the north. There were courageous men on both sides of the conflict. To say that it was a "war to end slavery" is devoid of understanding as smashing statues as if you are some kind of advocate of freedom by doing so. Before you judge men of history and whole nations you should find out who they were and what they were doing.

In those days people were a citizen of the State they lived in not citizens of the United States. State citizens were not the "We the People ". They were not even a party to the US Constitution. Numerous cases verify that fact.

States, before and after the federal Constitution was created, were “as foreign to each other as Mexico is to Canada” Clark’s Summary of American Law, Constitutional Law.

Even Lincoln knew the south could go, but they could not pick federal apples on their way out. They also had to pay debts to merchants with just weights and measures. These two sentence are at the root of the motivation for many to go to war. And then there is the profit and power wars may bring.

To think the war was fought to free slaves may make people feel better about the destruction of the lives of so many people living in the South and the death of 600,000 Americans but it was still a blight on the history of humanity.

Most of those who suffered and died never owned slaves or profited from their bondage. In fact slavery as a cheap source of labor impoverished more so called white people than it made rich. Many in the south wanted to see slavery end for a variety of reasons.

Only 4% of Americans even owned slaves. Some of those slave owners were Blacks and Indians. You could have bought all the slaves and set them free for far less than the war cost without all the death and destruction.

Who financed the first army that marched into the south?

How many Federal Officrs were with them and how many died?

The answer is one US Officer was with them and he is the only one who died. They were not there to free the slaves and he was not killed because he was going to free slaves. They were there for the money.

The officer who was an observer was killed because he wanted to take down the flag of the confederacy flying on the roof of a hotel. The hotel manager that shot him was immediately killed with a sword of the man next to him.

It might be called idolatry to hold an object dearer than another mans life. Such extreme reverence is certainly misplaced. But there is something almost delatorius, even demonic, to imagine that the destruction of those objects or symbols can be hailed as virtue.

We also revere the constitution that moved American states from a confederation to a Federal form of government. But do we understand what that means and meant to Americans at that time.

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Confederate vs Federal

The men who signed the Constitution of the united States beginning “We the People” had been given no authority to sign anything, much less invent a new government. At the time they scratched their John-Hancocks to that parchment, “We the People” consisted of the names on that document. Patrick Henry, who opposed the Constitution, aptly asked “Who authorized them to speak the language of ‘We the People’, instead of ‘We the States’?”.Prior to the Fourteenth Amendment, “No private person has a right to complain, by suit in court, on the ground of a breach of Constitution. The constitution it is true, is a compact, but he is not a party to it. The states are party to it”.

If the individual freeman was not a party to the Constitution, then the constitution was not “a government of the people” or “by the people”, at least as “private persons” but only those people who signed the compact and those state governments in their limited and legal capacity. If the Constitution is a compact or contract then there is no contract or contracting away of rights of the people in general at its signing or ratification. Those who signed did not have the rights of the people in their possession at the time. The States could invest no rights in the Federal government that were not theirs to begin with and if they did so they would have to do it according to the contract that granted their existence. In any case the people were not a party to the Constitution.
“Hence the attempt of the constitution to establish a federal government, without these natural souls, was preposterous, unnatural, and void...”

Today, many consider the constitution as sacred - but not those who had won a great freedom through a century of sacrifice and hardship. They feared and opposed this Constitution of the United States. And that generation who had secured their free dominion against an unwarranted usurpation and tyranny opposed those “great words” and its compact. They did not war against it because it was not a compact with them nor did it have much influence over them or their lives at that time.

• “Just as the revolutionary Adams opposed the Constitution in Massachusetts, so did Patrick Henry in Virginia, and the contest in that most important State of all was prolonged and bitter. He who in Stamp Act days had proclaimed that there should be no Virginians or New Yorkers, but only Americans, now declaimed as violently against the preamble of the Constitution because it began, ‘We the People of the United States’ instead of ‘We, the State’. Like many, he feared a ‘consolidated’ government, and the loss of states rights. Not only Henry but much abler men, such as Mason, Benjamin Harrison, Munroe, R.H. Lee, were also opposed and debated... others in what was the most acute discussion carried on anywhere...”

• “Owing to the way in which the conventions were held, the great opposition manifested everywhere, and the management required to secure the barest majorities for ratification, it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that the greater part of the people were opposed to the Constitution.”

• “It was not submitted to the people directly, and in those days of generally limited suffrage, even those who vote for delegates to the State conventions were mostly of a propertied class, although the amount of property called for may have been slight.”

In 1787, when the Constitution was ready to be submitted to the Governors of the states for ratification, Patrick Henry lectured against it in the Virginia State House for three weeks, criticizing the Constitution, warning that it had been written “as if good men will take office”! He asked “What will they do when evil men took office?”! “When evil men take office, the whole gang will be in collusion”, he declared, “and they will keep the people in utter ignorance” and “seize the public liberties by ambuscade”. He further warned that the new federal government had too much money and too much power and it would consolidate power unto itself, converting us “into one solid empire”. And the President with the treaty power would “lead in the treason”.

From the book the Contracts, Covenants and Constitutions

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People do not take the time to really learn history. You do not and have not been taught it in your schools and universities which have become propaganda machines. Smashing statues is a pointless exercise and nothing more than virtue signaling, especially if you do not want to find out the deeper causes and motivators of the actions of humanity, both good and evil.

You must look deeper into the lives and hearts of your fellow man and care about his pain in a way that might make him and his life better. To do that you may have to look deeper into your own heart and mind.

If you want to smash statues of pro slave owners then you need to destroy Grants Tomb. Robert E Lee freed the slaves he inherited before the Civil War started. Grant on the other hand did not do that with his slave until after the war.

Ever Changing

Thing are changing as they have already changed. History is the story of individual men and their relationship with other men and the elements of the world.

History is complicated because relationships are complicated.

Black people risked their lives to save white people and white people did the same to save black people by the millions. The same is true of native Americans. The same stories are rampant in the colonies and countries throughout history. As soon as you label a group with the actions of an individual you become a racist and bigot. It is always dangerous to start identifying people by groups it is a disaster when you do it by geography, or race, or even religion.

Thousands of Germans risked their lives to save Jews. 10 of thousands lost their lives resisting Hitler and his schemes. Some served his government. In fact, NAZIs were not only in Germany. Certainly socialist were everywhere.

There are more than a dozen streets in Germany named Rommel, at least one or more army barracks and some statues and busts. Germany systematically destroyed statues of Nazis but many of the laws created by Hitler are still in place. You go to prison if you try to home-school your children just for one. Does destroying the statue change the course of human events? Does it repair the human heart to wreak revenge upon an object that never had life in it to begin with?

Socialism sees individualism as an enemy of the State. Individuals are created in the family and some of that animus for the individual will seek to undermine the autonomy of the family in every socialist state. FDR was a socialist and between him and LBJ they did more damage to America than Hitler. Their socialist approach to American politics and culture has killed more Blacks than the KKK.

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