Symbols in the South: A turning point for Confederate monuments
Robert E. Lee disapproved of Civil War monuments.
“I think it wiser,” the top Confederate general wrote, just a few years after the end of the conflict, “to follow the examples of those nations who endeavoured to obliterate the marks of civil strife …”
Nearly a century and a half later, the United States has been visited by civil strife again – this time over a monument to Lee in Charlottesville, Va.
This week, not just Klansmen and neo-Nazis but the U.S. President and a plurality of Americans opposed a local decision to remove the statue.
Some made the case that even ugly parts of the past should be remembered, but a far-right rally around the statue was the scene of racist chants and led to the death of a counterprotester last weekend.
