May 2018

MALE MATTERS
will
Poor Bobby Lee,
Washington
be next?
by Elliot Goldenberg
Poor Robert E. Lee, as great
a general as George Patton.
First ol’ Bobby Lee, as he was
probably known below the Mason-
Dixon Line, had to surrender to Ulysses
S. Grant. Then, Bobby Lee must have
been rolling in his grave as, a century
and a half later, magnificent statues
of himself and other leaders of the
Confederacy were destroyed, or were
being threatened with destruction, all in
the name of political correctness.
Of course, the fact that the Civil War
was a harsh reality, and however
by tragic, Palmer represents Peters a major fact of
American history, has obviously been
lost on some who want to change
the narrative. But what happened
– happened, like it or not. For the
most part, those beautiful statues pay
deserving homage to some truly brave
and heroic southern gentlemen – not
to the inhuman institution of human
slavery.
At least that’s how this transplanted
Yankee sees it.
Locally, part of the controversy reared
its politically correct head in the city of
Hollywood, Florida, where there are
more than hundreds of businesses
located on streets named after leaders
of the Confederacy. The money and
time needed to change the names to
names more “acceptable” is no joke.
But as the queen in Wonderland once
62
said to Alice, “Off with his head!”
So as another President’s Day
approaches, you have to wonder: Will
slaveholder George Washington be
next? How about another slaveholder,
Thomas Jefferson? In the name of
political correctness will their faces be
erased from, say, Mt. Rushmore? What
about the dollar bill? And what about
Washington, D.C. – do we need to
change its name too?
Washington, after all, was a major
slaveholder before, during, and after
his presidency. Actually, he had 317
slaves, which according to his will,
were to be freed upon the death of
his widow, Martha, who actually took
it upon herself to free them after the
father of our country went on to that
big plantation in the sky.
Jefferson, with more than 600 slaves,
was also a major slaveholder — we
know all about his relationship with
Sally Hemmings — but was personally
opposed to the institution of slavery.
Okay, so can we now leave his stonecarved
head on Rushmore and not
replace it with, say, Bill Clinton or
Ronald Reagan?
In the brilliant Broadway mega-hit
Hamilton, Jefferson, for some weird
reason, is portrayed as an African-
American who can rap. Talk about
political correctness and turning history
MAY 2018
on its head. I mean this Jefferson is
not the hilarious George Jefferson,
husband of “Weezie.” I’d like to see
someone explain that one to Tom’s
descendants.
Truth be told, besides Washington
and Jefferson, slave owning was
actually quite common among the
early presidents. Of the first 12
commanders-in-chief – the 13th
president was Lincoln who freed
the slaves – only John Adams, and
his son, John Quincy Adams, never
owned any. Martin Van Buren owned
one slave, but not while he was
president. That slave, Tom, perhaps
named after Jefferson, escaped and
remained free.
Others who owned slaves included
James Madison, James Monroe,
Andrew Jackson, William Henry
Harrison, John Tyler, and James K.
Polk. The last president who owned
slaves was, ironically, Ulysses S.
Grant, elected in 1868 after he had
commanded Union forces to victory
over the Confederacy in the war that
led to the abolition of slavery. For
anyone who believes that a statue
of Grant should be removed and,
perhaps, be destroyed, I doubt you’ll
ever find one in the south.
The moral to the story: Why not just
let sleeping dogs lie – and old soldiers
rest in peace. P