Tea at Trianon: Talbot Boys: Take It Down Already!

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, July 2, 2020

Talbot Boys: Take It Down Already!

My letter to the Star-Democrat in response to an ongoing controversy about a civil war statue they are all crazy about taking down:

To the Editor:

The purpose of art is to uplift and inspire. If the Talbot Boys statue in front of the court house is causing angst among the citizens of Talbot County, then it needs to go. It is not worth such anguish. I never noticed the statue until people started writing the paper about it. I was always captivated by the magnificent statue of the great orator, author, and diplomat Frederick Douglass. When I finally did notice the Talbot Boys I would never have known that it honored Confederate veterans except for the controversy.

What did strike me, when I finally decided to see the statue up close, is that the soldier boy is holding a furled banner in surrender, as if he is surrendering to Frederick Douglass. My initial impression was that the Talbot Boys statue symbolizes Southern humiliation and defeat; there is nothing triumphant about it. In fact, it gives context to the statue of the true hero, Frederick Douglass, for it symbolizes what Mr. Douglass was up against. On that spot men, women and children were sold at auction, as in that court house, bills of sale for human beings were recorded. Mr. Douglass not only overcame incredible obstacles but he acquired the prestige that few people, of any color, ever received. He was honored at the White House; he lectured around the world. He is the pride of Talbot County. The Talbot Boys statue is a nonentity in comparison.

When the Talbot Boys was originally erected, why did they not also put up a statue to those who fought for the Union? Surely there were men from Talbot County who fought for the Union? I come from Frederick County, where we had brother fight against brother. I know that many of the boys who fought for the Confederacy did not have enslaved persons at their homes and in fact had nothing to do with slavery. They saw their state as their country; it was being invaded, as they saw it. Similarly, of the men who fought for the Union, some of them had enslaved persons at home. We forget that in Washington City a huge slave market operated in front of the White House during the first year of the Civil War. Furthermore, in the North, Irish children were forced to work in factories and coal mines, forced to work or starve. But I would not blame young Union soldiers for those injustices; they fought to preserve the Union, making great sacrifices to do so.

Why did the Talbot Boys statue not come down during the Civil Rights movement? I guess it was because Congress had passed a law that all veterans were to be honored, no matter what side they had fought for, in order to bring healing. But if the wounds are opening again, then perhaps a certain general was right when he said that there should be no Confederate monuments, at all. The money was better spent on education. Perhaps the attention given to a statue should instead be focused on ending the modern slavery of human trafficking, which is going on in our own state. It is a situation which we have the power to fix, now. We can't fix the broken past. But we can end the varieties of human exploitation that are destroying lives all around us.