Look out, Lincoln, Washington, Alamo: Memorial take-downs won’t stop with Confederates

“In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil in any country.”

— Robert E. Lee, 1856

Lee’s sentiment, expressed years before the Civil War, suggests that our history isn’t as simple as we think. That suggestion is apparently being ignored.

Tarrant and Denton counties have sheepishly joined the nationwide stampede to remove Confederate monuments. But Confederate tributes won’t be the end of it for the gutless politicians and the clueless rabble removing and defacing monuments across the country.

CNN’s Angela Rye opined that Washington and Jefferson monuments “need to come down.” A monument to black soldiers who served in the Union Army has been vandalized in Boston. The Lincoln Memorial Plaza and the World War II memorial in Washington have been defaced with spray paint.

Here in Texas the same historical, perhaps hysterical, stupidity has emerged. A San Antonio Express News reporter described a Black Lives Matter throng as headed to the Alamo because of the “Confederate monument there.” No such thing exists.

There is a Cenotaph monument to the Texian and Tejano Alamo defenders who died there. That didn’t deter someone from spraying slogans on the Cenotaph anyway.

This is beyond the proverbial slippery slope. It’s best described as a tsunami of stupidity.

And because it will be difficult to go back, we need definitive criteria going forward. Which monuments are to survive?

Historical figures who supported white supremacy, advocated secession or made racist comments might be good candidates for banishment from public view. We could free up a lot of public space because virtually all of our past, and once revered, historical figures would fall short to some degree.

Let’s consider Abraham Lincoln. During one of the 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas, the future “Great Emancipator” explained: “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. … I am not now nor have ever been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. … I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

Lincoln’s prejudices weren’t limited to Blacks. During another debate with Douglas, Lincoln opined: “I understand that the people of Mexico are most decidedly a race of mongrels … there’s not one person there out of eight who is pure white.”

In Lincoln’s 1861 inaugural address, he endorsed a constitutional amendment that would forever protect slavery where it then existed.

“I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable,” he said.

Lincoln’s overriding goal was to save the Union, and wrote to abolitionist Horace Greeley: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it.”

One more discomforting fact for advocates of retrospective cleansing of history: Buffalo soldiers were the iconic black U.S. cavalrymen who served on the frontier during the Indian wars. In 2011, I sponsored a commemorative license plate to raise money for the Buffalo Soldier Museum.

But couldn’t Native Americans claim Buffalo Soldiers were participants in a genocidal war against an entire race of people — the American Plains Indians — resulting in their enslavement on reservations?

If we’re going to measure Confederates of 150 years ago by today’s standards, who’s next? Lincoln? Buffalo soldiers? Our nation’s founders? Our Texas heroes?

They are all next.

This story was originally published June 15, 2020 at 8:04 AM.