Removing Monuments Was Never About Slavery: How to Rebuild America
By Carole Hornsby Haynes November 12, 2023
Charlottesville Was Not About the Confederacy or Robert E. Lee
For the first time in America’s history, a memorial has been savagely cut into small pieces and set ablaze as Marxist activists gleefully watched at a secret location. The Charlottesville statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee was melted down with the brass to be recast into “public art that expresses the City’s values of inclusivity and racial justice,” according to the proposal submitted to the city. The left brazenly published a ghoulish video showing Lee’s dismemberment — his face being cut off and melted.
Since inclusivity and racial justice are Marxist code terms, the public is forewarned that only art representing the new utopian view for America will be acceptable in the public arena.
In Charlottesville, Virginia, a 2017 protest over the planned removal of Confederate statues and Marxist claim that America is “systemically racist” erupted in deadly street violence between white nationalists who were met by counterprotesters carrying banners that read “Black Lives Matter” and “F**k White Supremacy.”
Charlottesville officials removed statues of Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and a statue that was a tribute to explorers Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and Sacagawea.
After a series of lawsuits, the Lee statue was donated by the Charlottesville City Council in 2021 to the Jefferson School of African American Heritage Center. It sat in a warehouse in an undisclosed location until even more lawsuits made their way through the justice system. On September 26, 2023, the final lawsuit ruled that the statue could be melted down.
This past week, the museum announced that the statue had been chopped into small pieces and melted down by a foundry “somewhere in the South.” Its black owner said it was an "honor" to melt down the statue.
Charlottesville was not about the Civil War or slavery. It was about power and the intention to polarize mainstream Americans into a crude left and right tribalism. Author of Brave New War John Robb blogged,
Charlottesville wasn't a standard protest. It was a social blasting cap. An open invitation to a public fist fight between the left and right. A fight orchestrated to create widespread social disruption. A fight the police didn't want to referee. A fight that was allowed to escalate for hours.
The Left’s Revision of American History
George Orwell in his novel, 1984, wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” He further wrote, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
Americans have been conditioned to hate General Robert E. Lee, depicted as an aristocratic “slave owner” who was the face of the Southern Confederacy. The fact is that Lee did not own slaves. Following the death of his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis who was the grandson of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, the wife of George Washington, Lee was charged with managing for five years the 200 slaves at Arlington Plantation. Even prior to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Lee freed the slaves as instructed in the Custis will and stayed in touch with them. Because he opposed slavery, Lee did not fight to preserve slavery, but rather for the right of southern states to secede from the Union. After the war Lee said, “So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished.”
Even the “conservative” Newsmax, parroting the Marxist line in its article about the meltdown, reported that “the Confederate South seceded from the United States and fought to maintain slavery, which the rest of the country had abolished.” Newsmax demonstrated extreme historical ignorance in its comments about when and where slavery was actually abolished in the U.S.
Many Americans today believe the historical myth that the War Between the States was fought to abolish slavery. Clear thinkers ask: If the war was waged to end slavery, why was the Emancipation Proclamation issued a year and a half into the war? Since 90% of Southerners did not own slaves, why would hundreds of thousands of Confederate soldiers risk their lives to end slavery? Why did the Union army invade only those slave holding states that seceded from the Union but not those slave holding states that did not secede from the Union? Why did Lincoln send 75,000 volunteers to Fort Sumter to enforce the tariff in the South yet did not call for an invasion to free any slaves?
In reality, the war was fought not over slavery, but whether the Southern states had the right to secede from the numerous abuses of Lincoln toward the South just as the 13 colonies had seceded from Great Britain over the King’s numerous abuses. The fact is that the North was just as intertwined with slavery as the South. The agrarian South had no ships. It was Northern ships that sailed out to buy African slaves from other black Africans. When slave importation became uneconomical in the North, the remaining slaves were sold to the South rather than emancipating them in place and having to associate with them as free men as Northerners were demanding of the South.
It was the tariff that drove a wedge between the North and South and sparked secession by the South.The Northern economy was dependent upon manufacturing for the South and shipping of Southern cotton. By 1860, the Federal budget was $80 million of which $70 million was paid by the South. Of that, four out of five dollars were being used for internal improvements in the North and subsidies to Northern industries. This was not good enough for Abraham Lincoln. In his 1860 election campaign, he supported the Morrill Tariff which more than doubled American tariffs and greatly expanded the list of taxable items. By 1865 the averaged rate was 47.5% and, except for the Wilson presidency, the tariff did not fall below 40% until Franklin D. Roosevelt became president.
Lincoln’s 47% tariff could not compete against the Confederacy 10% rate. Lincoln feared the Northern economy would crash into a depression, forcing the federal government into a desperate financial position. He dispatched Union troops to invade the seceded state of South Carolina and maneuvered Jefferson Davis into firing the first shot to make it appear the South started the war.
In his first Inaugural Address, Lincoln stated that he had no intention or lawful right to interfere with slavery in any state. He also swore to enforce the tariff in the seceded states because the Northern economy could not withstand the loss of import duties. Even the Emancipation Proclamation, which came later in the war, stated that it was a war measure intended to provide moral justification for a war of aggression against the South to force foreign nations to continue their economic ties with the North and not the South.
Although there were 17 states which had black slaves, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the 10 states which had seceded and were under Confederate control. Slaves were not freed in the parts of Virginia and Louisiana occupied by Union troops and, therefore, under Union control. The proclamation also did not apply to seven other slave holding states under Union control: New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri.
From the time of the erection of Southern monuments the Northern lie has been that the statues were not memorials to those who died, but rather a nostalgic rewriting of the past by descendants of the defeated Confederate force. This historical lie about the causes of the War Between the States has been repeated so often that now even conservative Southerners believe it and have actually supported the removal of an important part of American heritage.
The essentially leftist message in Neoconservative Dinesh D’Souza’s film, “Death of a Nation: Can We Save America a Second Time,” which compared Trump to Lincoln, abetted that lie. Historically ignorant D’Souza omitted Lincoln’s repeated wish that blacks be sent back to Africa. He also omitted Lincoln’s declaration to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, just three months before the formal issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation:
If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.Dismantling Confederate statues has never been about slavery in the South but, rather, the destruction of America. Destroying Confederate monuments, on the grounds they conjured up painful memories of slavery, was the Cultural Marxist justification to lay seige to America’s heritage with final eradication of every vestige of our founding ideals and culture.
Cultural Marxists Target the South
Marxist Black Lives Matter members, including the co-founder of BLM Charlottesville chapter and University of Virginia professor who said the event felt like an “execution,”were prominent at the first melting down of American heritage.
Dismantling Confederate statues has never been about slavery in the South but, rather, the destruction of America. Destroying Confederate monuments, on the grounds they conjured up painful memories of slavery, was the Cultural Marxist justification to lay seige to America’s heritage with final eradication of every vestige of our founding ideals and culture.
Even laws making it illegal to remove statues did not stop violent Marxists. Unlike conservatives, they did not bother to go to court to demand removal. They simply toppled them and even threw one into the lake, while hogging media exposure to strike fear into anyone, including lawmakers, who might try to stop them, either physically or legally.
Global Goal of Marxists
The mission of the BLM organization goes way beyond toppling statues and violent protests across America. The BLM Chicago chapter publicly backed Hamas, the Palestinian terrorists who killed more than 1,400 Israelis on October 7, with a post that read: 'I Stand with Palestine.'
The BLM Grassroots organization also posted a statement on X (Twitter) of its solidarity with the Palestinian people. “As a radical Black organization grounded in abolitionist ideals, we see clear parallels between Black and Palestinian people. We, too, understand what it means to be surveilled, dehumanized, property seized, families separated, our people criminalized and slaughtered with impunity, locked up in droves, and when we resist they call us terrorists.” They called for the United States government to stop funding the Israeli military.
America's Leaders Bow to Marxists
In 2020, not only did liberal Democrat Governor Ralph Northam do nothing to stop the destruction of Virginia heritage, he even approved the removal of Confederate statutes from the century-old Monument Avenue. That could have been stopped with the changing of the guard on January 15, 2022 with Glenn Youngkin as Republican governor. He pretends to be a populist even though he has done nothing to stop the leftward march other than to appease parents.
Youngkin has a golden opportunity to stop national destruction of Virginia heritage yet he has negotiated with the enemy. The now disbanded Congressional Naming Commission targeted for removal the Arlington National Cemetery Reconciliation Monument that was conceived and built with the sole purpose of healing the wounds of the Civil War and restoring national harmony. Moses Ezekiel, a world renowned American sculptor and first Jewish cadet at Virginia Military Institute (VMI), was chosen to create the Memorial to mark Section 16, the burial plot for the reinterred graves championed by President McKinley, and to commemorate the reunification of North and South. The Memorial became the gravemarker for Ezekiel who is buried at its foot.
Youngkin wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin requesting that the Memorial be moved to VMI’s Virginia Museum of the Civil War. Removing a headstone in our national cemetery is akin to Nazi destruction of Jewish graves in Czechoslovakia in World War II.
The Republican Party, deemed the party of conservatism and tradition, has remained silent or apathetic about the unprecedented destruction of historical statues in the United States. Presidential candidates Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley have been complicit in the removal of Confederate statues from their state capitols. If they are too weak to protect our past, how can they be strong enough to guide our nation in these turbulent times of a communist revolution?
Other Monuments Toppled
During the 2020 riots, Marxists also toppled memorials on the renowned Richmond, Virginia Monument Avenue. The statue of Jefferson Davis, president of the Southern Confederacy, that had been erected at the site in 1907, was torn down, followed by that of Confederate General Williams Carter Wickham. The statue of Christopher Columbus was torn down and dumped in a lake.
Part of Richmond’s $1.7 billion tourist industry and listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, the District was also home to the Confederate monuments honoring Generals Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, and Thomas Jonathan (Stonewall) Jackson and Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury.
The Richmond City Council removed the remaining statues from the boulevard and placed them in an open-air industrial areain Richmond, Virginia.The location, whose exact location in the South has been withheld for security reasons, is referred to by the media as a “carefully organized graveyard of America’s racist past” -- Marxist code. In February 2023, Richmond transferred ownership of the memorials to the Charlottesville-based Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia. It’s up to the museum to decide what to do with the disassembled and damaged statues.
Are Marxists Really Concerned About Slavery?
Since Marxists are so obsessed with America’s past with slavery, why are they not concerned with the modern day slavery of human trafficking occurring daily on our open Southern border? Where is their outrage over that? Where is their outrage over the different forms of slavery that still exist in every country in the world? Why do they not concern themselves with abolishing that?
Marxists Target Religion
Cultural Marxism has infiltrated every area of our society, including religion. In Washington National Cathedral, the four windows honoring Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were replaced by new stained-glass windows with the Marxist theme of racial justice.
Cultural Cleansing and Rebuilding of Hungary
The radical left in the United States is following a path which is very similar to that in Hungary during its 40-year Soviet occupation. Communists wanted to erase all narratives of the people’s history and replace them with an alternative narrative. They changed the names of important historical figures who represented the classist past of Hungary while streets received new progressive names such as “Moscow Square” and "Engels Square.” Statues were torn with one melted and remolded into a red star.
Beginning in the mid-2010s, Hungary began to rebuild and to restore the statues and monuments that communists destroyed. In Kossuth Square today, every monument that existed before the Soviet invasion has been replaced.
The cultural revolution in America also has a parallel in Chinese history. Chairman Mao Zedong literally destroyed thousands of years of Chinese culture. His goal was to erase all memories of the past with people knowing only culture under communism. Just as we have George Floyd Streets across America, there were Mao Zedong Streets thoughout China.
Cultural Cleansing and Rebuilding of China
Yet this civilizational loss is being countered by Falun Gong, the new religious movement that seeks to bring back the magnificience of 5,000 years of Chinese civilization on the world’s stages. The United States-based Shen Yun Performing Arts company is a brilliant classical artistic revival and celebration of China’s rich cultural heritage before communism.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) views Shen Yun’s mission to revive traditional Chinese culture as a direct challenge to its authority. It has gone to great lengths to interfere with performances worldwide. Shen Yun has multiple companies that perform in more than 180 cities on five continents, yet South Korea has been a struggle forthe organization for the past 17 years. Government operated theaters refuse to rent their venues to Shen Yun, claiming pressure from the Chinese regime.
Rebuilding America After the Cultural Revolution
America is on a treacherous path toward the annihilation of our founding principles. Destruction of Southern culture is only the beginning of this revolutionary movement. “American heroes” have already been targeted along with historical buildings and Western classical arts.
Thanks to leftist judges, lawsuits rarely result in keeping our heritage intact. Ignoring laws, Marxists destroy whatever they want while conservatives plead for justice in the courts. Are we Americans going to continue to allow domestic terrorists to destroy our nation and our memories or are we going to do whatever it takes to physically stop them? And what are we going to do about what has already been destroyed or revised to create a Marxist utopian hell in America?
Before it’s too late, Americans must stop being so passive and hoping for divine intervention. We must aggressively stop the radical left from further destruction to our culture or there will be nothing remaining from our past. At the same time, we must begin to restore what has been lost.
Virginia Flaggers provide us an example of what can be done to restore Southern culture, the bedrock of Christianity and conservatism in the nation. When a Confederate flag is removed, the organization, led by the indefatigable Susan Lee, finds a new location and raises a flag there. For the Memorial Day weekend, Confederate heritage groups joined forces with an estimated crowd of 350 just outside of Lexington, Virginia on Saturday to raise a huge Confederate Battle Flag and dedicate a new Confederate Memorial Park.
Following the Lee statue meltdown, Susan Lee sent an email to members: “We can and WILL raise new monuments, memorials and flags. We can and WILL continue to teach the next generation the truth about their immortals deeds.”
Lee noted that while most Republicans remained silent, Philip Hamilton, who is a candidate for the Virginia State Senate, fearlessly posted on his social media page a photo of himself and his wife with a large Confederate flag behind them.
Other organizations like the Virginia Flaggers can rise up to find new private locations for the statues in the monument graveyard in Richmond. There are monuments in other areas that need to be erected somewhere on private land. If these are not moved to a new location in the next few years, they likely will be destroyed or perhaps melted down and the tons of marble and granite used elsewhere. We must find the will and means to reproduce those statues that were destroyed. We must restore the original signage so that new context does not provide a leftward description for monuments or even museum displays.
Marxists have ramrodded through the changing of Confederate names, ignoring the wishes of the local community. In Virginia, two schools are changing their new names back to the original Confederate names. On a broader level, we must organize to force the reversal ofnot only Confederate name changes but of American heroes. Woke stained glass windows can be replaced with the beautiful original windows of the past. When visiting historical sites, take an aggressive approach at getting the wokeism out of the guide’s narrative, pamphlets, and signage.
Mainstream denominations are expected to decline dramatically by 2050. If clergy want to reverse this, they must return to Biblical principles and throw out all vestiges of Marxism that have infiltrated them.
Local citizens can organize and fight back against woke school boards, city councils, county commissioners and judges.
We must remove children from woke schools that teach them to hate America. There are many free market choices with homeschooling being the fastest growing type of education.
We must re-educate people about our Constitution and our founding principles and teach them an unrevised version of American and Southern history.
We cannot allow the Left to serve as speech and thought police. We must refuse to use their words, their ideas, their narratives. Recall the past and return to that. Call out your real estate broker when he says a “master bedroom” is a “primary bedroom.” Refuse to identify your gender with any idiotic pronouns.
This will be a gargantuan undertaking, but a necessary one if we want to restore our precious heritage and live once again with the freedoms bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers.