Historians explain the difference between George Washington and Confederate monuments

Rss@dailykos.com (laura Clawson) · Wednesday, August 16, 2017, 1:22 pm

Donald Trump thinks it’s a slippery slope from taking down statues of Confederate leaders like Robert E. Lee to taking down statues of Founding Fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson because they were slave owners. Donald Trump either does not understand or hopes we do not understand that there is a difference between someone who has a place in history because of his attempt to split the nation in a violent defense of slavery and someone who has a place in history because of his role in founding the nation, however much we abhor that he also enslaved people. The New York Times’ Jennifer Schuessler talked to some historians to explain the differences Trump is missing:

“This is not about the personality of an individual and his or her flaws,” [Harvard professor Annette Gordon-Reed] said. “This is about men who organized a system of government to maintain a system of slavery and to destroy the American union.”

As for the idea of erasing history, it’s a possibility that most scholars do not take lightly. But James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, said that Mr. Trump’s comments failed to recognize the difference between history and memory, which is always shifting.

When you alter monuments, “you’re not changing history,” he said. “You’re changing how we remember history.”

And Donald Trump wants to remember history with Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson as heroes. Or at least, the white supremacist core of his base wants to remember it that way and Trump, ignorant and uncaring of history, is happy to see it their way—after all, if they like him and they like the Confederacy, that says something, right?

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