Update: Here are some details about yesterday’s vote.
Earlier this evening the Dallas City Council voted 11 to 4 in favor of removing a large Confederate War Memorial located in the Convention Center District. The decision is a reminder that this debate about Confederate monuments is far from over.
This is a large memorial. The pillar measures 60 feet and is topped with a Confederate soldier. Surrounding the base are statues of CSA Generals Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Albert Johnston, and CSA president Jefferson Davis. The memorial was dedicated in 1896.
Earlier this year a plaque was removed from inside the state capitol in Austin that for decades reinforced the myth that slavery was not the central cause of the Civil War.
The vote to remove this memorial can be viewed along similar lines. The Confederate soldier and statues of Confederate military and political leaders avoid any discussion of what caused the war or any reference to their struggle to breathe new life into the institution of slavery through a nation dedicated to its protection and expansion.
In short, the Lost Cause lost tonight in Dallas.
There’s a call for protesters to come out Sunday, but “please no guns and no bullhorns and no racism.” Why do they feel the need to specify that last one? Who are they inviting, again?
Funny how the story makes no mention of the fact that this monument is in a cemetery!
“They belong in cemeteries” they used to say!
“They belong in museums!” They used to say!
This has less to do with the “lost cause” and more to do with controlling interpretation of history.
Funny how this vote jumped up as soon as Amazon decided to look at Dallas again as a new second headquarters. Just a coincidence?
That is a beautiful work of art, and as people have pointed out, it’s in a military memorial park, not on the courthouse lawn. This feels like grave desecration. It’s nothing to be applauded.
It’s not grave desecration because there is no grave.
Just more empty posturing and phony virtue-signaling. When the monuments to slavers like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison come down, and similarly, when the monuments to white-supremacists like Ulysses Grant, William Sherman, and Abraham Lincoln come down, we will know they are honest about the matter. Until then, it is all just phony grandstanding.
which of the six you named took up arms against the United Sates?
It’s time.
More destruction of our cultural landscape. Monuments were dedicated on the battlefields, , and in the towns North and South, on the anniversaries of the battles and the war. 10th, 20th, 25th 30th, 40th, 50th ect. The South was financially devastated after the war It would take ten long years for the women and survivors in the South to raise enough funds to remove the Southern dead from the battlefields. If they were going to erect a monument, they would not place it on a Northern battlefield where they faced a major defeat. And they were not going to visit. They would place it in their town where they could see it.
I am pleased and surprised by this vote. I am saddened but not surprised that so many people will never understand why these removals are not erasing history.
Keep in mind that Dallas removed a large equestrian monument of Lee and Jackson a couple of years ago.
Excellent news, thank you.
NOT remove from “the Convention Center District”, but remove from historic Pioneer Park Cemetery Dallas oldest public sculpture AND a war memorial IN A CEMETERY.
Interesting to see that people are so willing to get rid of American history. The war was not over slavery alone, has anyone ever seen real history books or seen the letters from the soliders? No one has ever heard of the Carwin Amendment? Which made slavery permanent in the United states, before the Confederacy was ever thought of? What about the Morrill tariff that increased taxes on the southern ports from 20% to 45%? Maybe that might be a cause of the war? Or maybe that the united states government was raising troops to invade the southern states? just a thought for people to think before they start tearing down beautiful monuments that are only dedicated to the memories of the soldiers who decided to fight for their homes and their families. If you dont believe me then read it yourself, no Confederate monument says anything about preserving slavery or about white supremacy, hell the Confederate monument in Arlington national cemetery has a black Confederate solider on it. People of this generation need to wake up and realize that tearing down monuments to Brave American soldiers is destroying our country from the inside out.
We’ve thoroughly explored the Corwin amendment proposal and the Morrill Tariff. Neither was the cause of the war. You’re off on your time line which is why neither of those were the cause of the war. We do know what the cause was because the people that chose treason took great pains to write down why they chose to commit treason by seceding and then starting a war.
Do these monuments explain the Confederacy was an act of treason against the lawful government of the United States of America? Do these monuments explain that every man and woman that took up arms against the US or willfully aided and abetted the Confederacy were traitors? Do these monuments explain that the cause of secession was slavery? Of course they don’t. They were erected to support white supremacy.
It’s up to the people of a community to decide what they want to display to the world about their community. Dallas has chosen to get rid of monuments that lie about history and do not represent what the people in Dallas believe in.
Removing these monuments is not the removal of history. It’s the removal of a lie.
End the Hate, Support Our Confederate Brothers and Sisters! How can all other phobias not be tolerated but Confederaphobia be acceptable! This an attack on United States history!
Good on Dallas. Like New Orleans, the other year (last year?), these things are done best as local 𝒅𝒆 𝒋𝒖𝒓𝒆 decisions. imo. Richmond’ll get there by and by, I expect, as will others.
Far better than in states like North Carolina, where a backwards-looking (and obscenely gerrymandered) state government has arrogated to state authority what localities can properly do in this regard. (Not that that arrogation will prove to be the last word, as a 𝒅𝒆 𝒇𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒐 matter; 𝒄𝒇. Silent Sam at UNC).
Anyways, Good on you, Dallas. Bit by little bit, the edifice is re-built.
Well we minus will have a nuclear war and it’ll get rid of everything nobody will have to worry about anything not even waking up in the morning that will make the left very happy.
This is so sad to hear. My ancestors were some of the early settlers of Dallas and just happened to be Confederates. This is a legacy I hate to see gone. My grandchildren and great grandchildren will be deprived of this historical memorial of their place in history. this is so very sad to me. I am a sixth generation Texan. My third cousin , Earle Cabell was a mayor and a congressman of Dallas. Without these historical monument is removed there will be a tear in the history of Dallas and the people that went before and after.
My family came to Texas in the 1830s, and I’m thrilled to see the back of this very ugly monument, as well as the lying plaque in the Capitol in Austin.
Now, how about an attractive monument to Sam Houston, who accurately prophesied the outcome of secession, or the Nueces Massacre or any of the people lynched in Texas?
When you destroy history, you destroy what made America the great country that it is
Before long we will have no history left. What happened to “Don’t mess with Texas”? Deo Vindice.
Nice to see some good news in an otherwise time of trouble and travail in the world.