Time to Remove the Monuments to the War to Perpetuate Slavery

A “a peaceful, nonviolent protester” from Pensacola attended the neo-Nazis and white supremacists rally in Charlottesville carrying his pistol and assault rifle to protect ‘the true history and heritage of the Confederacy and the American South.’

Our local congressman, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, says that removing a Confederate monument in Pensacola would be “whitewashing history."  President Trump would agree.

But Pensacola Mayor Ashton Hayward wants the monument to come down.

What might he understand that the others refuse to acknowledge?

More than 240 years ago, our country was founded on the principle of life, liberty and property protected by the rule of law, enshrined in the Constitution adopted in 1787. What many people forget is, at the time, property included people held in slavery, an abhorrent practice. The founding fathers knew the contradiction, but made a bargain with the understanding that the Constitution provided a peaceful method of change in the future by amendment.

As the U.S. moved toward that change to end and outlaw slavery, Southern states, which benefitted economically from free labor at the end of a lash, refused to accept this change and decided to create a new country that would protect their right to enslave people.

It wasn’t a War Between the States, to protect states’ rights, except to the extent it was meant to allow the continuation of chattel slavery. The Southern states said so, read their declarations of succession defending the practice and angry with the states that were refusing to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. The Southern states were also being denied “equal rights” in the new territories, which meant the days of slavery were near an end. And many Confederate politician and soldiers freely acknowledged, before and after the war, that they would and did fight to stop the abolitionists who were rallying support to end slavery, which was so important to the way of life in the South.

These states renounced the bargain, rebelled and used violence and war to prevent that change. This was treason plain and simple. Thankfully they were defeated.

But in the years after, Southerners created an heroic myth, the Lost Cause, to convince themselves that the war was “just” and noble and the Confederate flag represented freedom, not slavery. Reconstruction was abandoned in the 1870s, and the terrorism of the freed men and women began in earnest. Jim Crow laws, violence, lynching, the KKK, and White Citizen Councils were just a few of the methods used. (Ask Rep. Gaetz and that young man celebrating his history about Rosewood, Florida.)

Confederate flags were adopted and monuments were built, many between the 1890s and 1930s. The whole point of these methods, and the Confederate flags and monuments, was to institutionalize and celebrate white supremacy.

Substantial movement toward equal protection under the law began in the 1950s, and continues today, despite the ignorance of some, and the efforts of others. (If “national unite” is so important, why the effort to undermine the right to vote.)

So Rep. Gaetz, tell me a little more about “whitewashing history,” I find your use of the term a little ironic.

Maybe that is the reason that young man who attended the rally has so little knowledge of ‘the true history and heritage of the Confederacy and the American South.’ If he is a peaceful, nonviolent protester, he should leave the pistol and assault rifle at home. Our understanding, empathy, laws and Constitution – not violence – are all that are needed for change.

And thank you Mayor Hayward for agreeing that it is time for Pensacola's Confederate monument to come down.