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Pentagon is reinstalling portrait of Confederate General Robert E. Lee with slave (www.independent.co.uk)

submitted 1 week ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/news@lemmy.world

57 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A portrait of Confederate general Robert E Lee that includes a slave guiding his horse is set to be reinstated in the Pentagon.

The 20-foot-tall painting, which was on display at the United States Military Academy for 70 years, will be hung in the West Point library under President Trump’s instruction despite a congressionally mandated commission that ordered its removal back in 2020.

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[–] Zombiepirate@lemmy.world 179 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I posted this fairly recent, but I think it bears repeating:

I think the case of "southern gentleman" Robert E. Lee shows the horrors of slavery. He inherited people as property from his father-in-law and refused to free them according to the will. They escaped his plantation under the understanding that they were legally emancipated:

Lee's more strict expectations and harsher punishments of the slaves on Arlington plantation nearly led to a revolt, since many of the enslaved people had been given to understand that they were to be made free as soon as Custis died, and protested angrily at the delay. In May 1858, Lee wrote to his son Rooney, "I have had some trouble with some of the people. Reuben, Parks & Edward, in the beginning of the previous week, rebelled against my authority—refused to obey my orders, & said they were as free as I was, etc., etc.—I succeeded in capturing them & lodging them in jail. They resisted till overpowered & called upon the other people to rescue them."

[...]

Wesley Norris himself spoke out about the incident after the war, in an 1866 interview printed in an abolitionist newspaper, the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Norris said that after they had been captured, and forced to return to Arlington, Lee told them that "he would teach us a lesson we would not soon forget". According to Norris, Lee had the overseer tie the three of them firmly to posts, and ordered them whipped: 50 lashes for the men and 20 for Mary Norris. Norris claimed that Lee encouraged the whipping, and that when the overseer refused to do it, called in the county constable to do it instead. Unlike the anonymous letter writers, he does not state that Lee himself whipped any of the enslaved people. According to Norris, Lee "frequently enjoined [Constable] Williams to 'lay it on well', an injunction which he did not fail to heed; not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done."

He was too cruel for a professional slave driver to carry out his order, so he had to get a cop to do it.

This is why reactionaries love revisionist monuments while destroying other memorials like the Pulse massacre's: they want to rewrite history to make it so they don't look like villains.

[–] b3an@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago

Little wonder he’s a Republican sweetheart. A piece of shit with shit all around him and loving the smell like roses.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 9 points 1 week ago

The MAGAs don't even try to hide it. When DeSatan was announcing his "Anti-Woke"standards in Florida schools, he flat out said he didn't want white kids learning things that would make them ashamed to be white. It may be the most racist thing I've ever heard come out of of a politicians mouth. He didn't bother to code his language AT ALL.

I grew up a standard-issue white kid, and learned all about slavery and the Native American genocide, and it never made me "ashamed" to be white. Those things were horrible, but I didn't do them, and I would never participate in such actions, and that's the point. It isn't about shaming whites for their history, it's educating them properly so they don't go down that path again.

Obviously, we didn't learn that lesson well enough in school, so we're slipping back. This is the problem with not having Federal educational standards, and letting individual states prepare their own curriculums. Across 50 states, some will do it properly, but some will take the opportunity to compromise their vulnerable young students and feed them racist propaganda instead of a real education, and indoctrinate them into racist ideology.

IF we can take our country back from the MAGA Nazis, we need to crack down HARD on anyone who insists that we keep the same educational structure that allows bad-faith states to use education as an excuse to indoctrinate. Just like we forced states to abide by Federal voting laws (until the MAGA SCOTUS ended it), we need to force intransigent states to educate their children properly. If they won't do it, the responsibility will be removed, and handled by the Federal government.