Statues and History: Preserve the Past, Look to the Future

When General Sherman marched his Union Army into Georgia in 1864, he was fighting for a worthy cause: to defeat the South and preserve the Union.

Today, there are people attacking the South by trying to tear down the memories of it.

In the wake of the riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, between white supremacist and left-wing Antifa mobs, there has been an increasing level of pressure from liberals to tear down Confederate statues across the country. Unlike Sherman, they aren’t fighting for the United States; they’re trying to rewrite history.

I read James McPherson’s “Battle Cry of Freedom” for my Civil War history class in college. I know that the majority of soldiers fighting for the Confederacy weren’t fighting because they owned slaves. The men who made of the rank and file of the CSA Rebel forces were fighting for their families and self-government.

Statues are set in stone. They’re reminders of historical events that happened in our country’s history. Yet they face resistance based on false accusations about the sculptors’ intentions for making their creative work. 

A case in point is the "Charging Bull" statue in New York City created by artist Arturo Di Modica. By itself, "Charging Bull" is a symbol of American strength and determination. 

Yet when feminists decided to systematically place a "Fearless Girl" statue in front of "Charging Bull," they in effect used "Charging Bull" as a symbol of women's oppression.

As a result, Di Modica hated this defacement of his work. 

NBC News reported on April 13, 2017, that Di Modica claims the placement of "Fearless Girl" is copyright infringement because it destroys his original intention for his "Charging Bull" statue. 

Let me be clean: I'm not saying the "Fearless Girl" statue has to be torn down. Just move it somewhere else.

Like pictures and news articles, statues are forms of artistic expression protected by the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment. 

You have to look back into the past and understand the motives behind what people did based on the time period in which they lived in. That’s what historians do.

The people who created statues of Christopher Columbus, Confederate soldiers, or even Union soldiers didn’t create them as symbols of white supremacy or Southern oppression. Those statues stand as living memorials for the men and women who served on both sides of the Civil War.

The United States of America is the greatest country in the world because of the Union victory. We should remember the men who died in that war on both sides as Americans, not white supremacists or anarchists. President Lincoln didn’t.