- Position1 of 2›
- Yes, confederate monuments should be removed
- Argument1 of 2›
Confederate monuments are a representation of slavery
Slavery was a horrible time in history. It was a time where people were abused and deprived of their human rights.
The argument
Confederate monuments represent and celebrate slavery, and that is the whole of the case for removing them. The argument turns on what a monument is for. A statue is not a record; a country keeps records in archives, textbooks and museums whether or not it raises anything in bronze. A monument is an act of public honour, and what it honours is the cause its subject fought for. Removing one therefore subtracts nothing from the historical account. It withdraws an endorsement. What is being endorsed is not in doubt. In the south, slavery was a way of life that gave provision for plantations, and the people it rested on were held as property. Slaves were often abused. They did not have the right to read or write, and they could be sold no matter what age they were or what family they would leave behind, which meant that the ordinary attachments of a life — parents, children, husbands and wives — could be ended by someone else's transaction, leading to intense heartbreak. That system is the thing the Confederate states went to war to preserve. The war itself settled the question the monuments reopen. During the Civil War the northern states, the Union, fought the southern states, the Confederates, for the rights of enslaved individuals and to unite the States again, and by the end of the war slavery was illegal. A nation that reached that verdict and then continues to display statuary honouring the side that lost it is holding two positions at once. Leaving behind the remnants of a bitter past rooted in abuse and pain is a slap in the face of the human rights America strives for today, and it is a slap felt most directly by the descendants of the people those remnants commemorate owning.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Slavery is unconstitutional and the monuments aren’t going to spur people to try and make people slaves in America again. They pose no harm. They should be looked as part of our history no matter how painful it is.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P2] Slavery is part of American history, like it or not. Getting rid of monuments will not change this.