Disappearing Plaques in New Orleans
Just a note, I wrote this in 2022. It was delayed, and I did not return to it until now.
With each year the removal of monuments, dedications, and references to the Confederacy accelerates. New Orleans was one of the first cities to do so in 2017, although some statues remained and streets still bore names such as Beauregard, Bragg, and Early. By 2024, most of those streets have been renamed, and those not yet renamed soon will be as well. As for the Confederate statues that were ignored, nearly all are gone, and the Albert Pike one is defaced.
One trend that is interesting is the disappearance of references to Confederates that sometimes dotted historic homes. Where P.G.T. Beauregard died had its plaque removed sometime before 2012, I have been told. The ones I have noticed most are those in the French Quarter and the Garden District.
Two prominent Confederates died in the Garden District. One was John Bell Hood. To my knowledge there was never a plaque on his home, but the location was known. Today, almost no tour guide ventures there, although to be fair it is a small detour from the main tour route and the home is not particularly beautiful. It was never a tour fixture. Jefferson Davis’s death site sported a stone monument and a plaque put up by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
The plaque went missing in the fall of 2020. The monument is covered up to look like a kind of electrical box. The home was rarely featured on tours, but it is also a bit of detour from the main route. That said, a few guides do still go there, particularly if their tour starts on Magazine Street instead of Prytania Street or near Lafayette Cemetery No. 1.
Another plaque that was removed is at the Elms Mansion on St. Charles Avenue. The old plaque referenced Captain Watson van Benthuysen’s Confederate service and the building’s nefarious role in World War II when it was the German consulate. Both references are gone for a more anodyne description. It also features a growing trend of referencing free people of color whenever possible. Sometimes these references are jammed in. One home at Coliseum and Fourth Street has a plaque that mentions that a man related to Homer Plessy worked on the home. This is like saying Elvis Presley’s cousin held a private concert at the home. It is a desperate attempt to make something more important. The row of homes was designed by William A. Freret, who served in the Confederate army. This is not referenced, but is not that important to be fair, and the plaque predates the current trend.
The most dramatic removal was the cannon that sat atop a monument at Washington Artillery Park. The park existed after Mayor Moon Landrieu had the old doors of the Washington Artillery (since lost) removed in the 1970s. The cannon, which is from the Civil War, was added as a compromise. In 2022, it was decided not just to remove the cannon, but the whole platform as a Confederate symbol. This was done in spite of the monument celebrating the unit’s whole service, including during the Italian campaign of World War II. The park is now named after Oscar J. Dunn, America’s first black lieutenant governor. There is currently nothing there, although the cannon was moved to Jackson Barracks.
One might note a neutral tone here, and that is on purpose. I neither condemn nor celebrate the changes. They are inevitable, not because of progress, which I do not believe in. Everyone thinks what they are doing is right, and in America all movements, even the Confederacy, wear the clothes of progress.
I do think destruction and change are inevitable, and each era decides what to celebrate and what to condemn. The Maoists destroyed old Chinese art and symbols as readily as the Christians did when they made their religion the only faith in the Roman Empire. If this era cared more about the indigenous, statues of William Tecumseh Sherman would be falling en masse, but those doing the removing often portray Sherman as an avenging angel against an evil South.
I post this to chronicle a trend, which has no end in sight. And with the last low-hanging fruit gone, I predict Confederate Memorial Hall Museum and the cemeteries, where we even have two monuments that feature Albert Sidney Johnston, are next. Also, the statues of slaveholders that dot the city (Margaret Haughery, Andrew Jackson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Clay, etc.) are targets. In 2019 Richard Taylor’s grave was desecrated, and in 2016 someone tried to burn down Confederate Memorial Hall Museum. Granted, Taylor’s grave was repaired ,and the arson attempt in 2016 was a rather poor one.
But to destroy, all you need is one good shot. I doubt such destruction will be halted. Several non-Confederates have already had honors taken away, and both busts of John McDonogh were destroyed in 2020. One could discuss the good each person did or the nuances and tragedies of history. You can defend them as public art, worthy at least of a museum display. That is not our era, though. To borrow from Sherman (my favorite general), if you fight this “You might as well appeal against a thunderstorm…”
Erasing history is, well, so anti-historic.
The cleansing of our history is appalling and the glee with which so many ‘historians’ support this is especially disturbing.
I find interesting parallels between the erasure of history in the United States and Germany. In Germany, there are laws against the celebration of the NSDAP and its despicable persona and horrific events between 1933 and 1945. The theory is to reminisce the Nazi era is to reawaken the social movement that gave it its support. Here, the deglorification of those individuals and institutions that went to war to preserve the moral depravity of slavery are becoming heroes to the extreme right who celebrate the political zeitgeist of white supremacy. There is a delicate balance between historical preservation and the glorification of an era built on a despicable subjugation of others which, in both cases, has yet to come to an equilibrium.
The South did not go to War to preserve slavery, nor did the North go to War to end slavery, so your House of Virtue is built on sand. Are you familiar with US Treasury statistics, 1849-1860, and the Corwin Amendment? Lots of ground to cover here, but those will get you started.
Thank you for the referral to the failed Corwin Amendment, which I knew about but not by name. I agree that the North did not go to war to end slavery (Ithat came later with the Emancipation Proclamation), but I question that the first canon shot at Fort Sumter that resulted from Edmund Ruffin jerking its lanyard would not have been fired but for the fear of dismantling the economic and social systems built on the ownership of other human beings, especially Black ones. Reference Alexander Stephens’ speech as the CSA’s Vice President given on March 21, 1861. I have yet to browse the US Treasury statistics for the decade preceeding the Civil War, but I can only imagine the huge number of slaves held as collateral to assure the repayment of loans made by the Northern financial institutions to Southern plantations. Concrete is 75% sand and has held the marvels of Roman architecture together for two millennia, and the violent virtues the Roman Empire still permiate the human race in spite of Edward Gibbon’s assumption of its decline and fall.
An excellent comment, though I respectfully disagree with what I see as an overexaggeration – not yours, but current historians’ – of the value of slavery in America. Three books’ worth of information could be offered to support my view, but essentially – only 20% of the Africans brought to the New World went to what became the United States; the rest went to Latin America. From the beginning of that process until the 1800s, slavery was – like it always is – unprofitable in America, and was dying out, until the invention of the cotton gin made it, for a brief time, profitable. But before that period, and during it, the wealth of the United States was built by other means, not slave labor. It was small in size in terms of numbers, location and effect; working solely in agriculture, it was far outdistanced by other means of wealth creation. The best example of this is that the North specialized in manufacturing – and the value of 25% of New York State’s economy alone was worth more than the value of all manufacturing in the 11 states that seceded combined. It is a myth that “slavery built America.” On the Economic Radar, it was little more than a blip – and the Industrial Revolution, coming at the pace of a locomotive at full steam, would have obliterated slavery by 1880.
As to the denial of the accumulation of wealth of the White population by slaves, I submit the example of Charleston, the 18th cenury’s weathiest city in America, all due to exportation of rice. The European settlers had no idea how to grow rice, but when the Black slaves were bought in the Charleston area, they knew how to grow rice and saw that its wetland environment was ideal to produce rice to feed themselves. Their White owners took notice and began expanding fhe production of and exporting the rice grown by their slaves to the area’s economic betterment. Your comment as to the extinguishment of slavery by the Industrial Revolution does not account for the resultant inherent Racism that institution depended upon that continued to limit and deny the accumulation of weath by America’s Blacks. Reference the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 and the destruction of the booming Black Wall Street
Well said. Historians today, basing their writings on the corrupt and illegitimate CRT and BLM, try to hide Corwin, and when brought up, note that it was not brought to a vote in February 1861 – more’s the pity – but try to cover up the fact that, following the debacle at First Manassas, did revive and offer it to the South – and it was rejected, proof that the war was not about slavery. Yes, certain elements of the North did go to war to end slavery – the Abolitionists, New Englanders, the Radical Republicans – but most were like my 22 Pennsylvania ancestors, who were Democrats because they did not trust the Republican Party, wanted to preserve the Union, and wanted the country to function properly in its Democratic Republican form of Government – e.g. ending slavery by legislative process, not by making war on their fellow countrymen. For a great look at the political attitudes in the Army of the Potomac, read Zachary Fry’s outstanding book ‘A Republic in the Ranks,’ for my money the most valuable CW history book published in the last 30 years.
Germany has many memorials to its soldiers. Correct that there are no memorials to Nazis. But, comparing 1950’s German to 1890-1920 US is apples to oranges, on many levels. Folks viewed history different pre-WW II. The view was more the “great man” than today. Memorials in the North – largely built at the same time – also generally depicted generals. But, depicting generals does not in itself display a desire to “glorify” a perceived cause. Just as Northern memorials depicting generals were not intended to display any cause other than service in perceived time of need. Folks could travel to the local Union memorial when they could not make the long trek to Gettysburg cemetery or to wherever their loved one was actually buries.
Tom
Mixing apples and oranges creates fruit salad, generally (pun intended) welcome to everyone’s appitite
Comparing wokes to Maoists is correct.
This desecration of priceless American history is being committed only by Woke-Democrats (read: Communists), without the knowledge, permission or approval of the People. And why? Well, read Mao Tse-Tung: “If you want to subjugate and control a people, first you must destroy their history. If they don’t know where they came from, then they will not see where they are going – and you will then tell them where they’re going.”
I looked all through my copy of Mao’s “Little Red Book” to find the quote to which you refer, but was unable to find it. When I tuned to the next most reliable source, the Internet, I initially found that the source of the quote was supposedly in George Orwell’s “1984.” However, a word search for the term on Kindle’s “1984” came up empty. The closest I could come to that quote was from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “To destroy a people you must first sever their roots,” who would roll over in his grave at the thought of being a Communist. If you could be so kind, please send me the source of Chairman Mao’s quote for future reference from your copy of the “Little Red Book.” I, too, am not a Communist, but do not object to being called a “Woke-Democrat” but know full well where I am going. I have yet to see any of my kindred burning history books, and certainly not challenging accepted facts as “fake news.”
I suppose only one version of the past is now correct.
Thanks for chronicling this, Sean. I think you draw an important distinction between monuments/memorials/markers with commemorative vs. interpretive purposes.
Sad commentary. Thank you for sharing. Most importantly, what good each individual did is forgotten, and their name, and hence, their family is besmirched. If these men and women of bygone era are so onerous, then the ones tearing them down and removing them are worse, for their motives are all hate.
And hate seldom solved anything.
Well said!
Erasing our history is not a thunderstorm, it is a decision, although I agree with you that the momentum is on the side of those who are erasing that history. If we wanted to, we could learn a great deal from prior generations, including those who fought the Civil War. We could learn courage, reconciliation, humility, and sacrifice. Unfortunately, the only things future generations can learn from us is arrogance and the folly of moral certainty.
One of the saddest articles I have ever read. The “legal” ? eradication of uncomfortable American history.
There are some success stories when monuments can be relocated. Two years ago, Talbot County, Maryland voted to remove a Confederate statue named The Talbot Boys erected in 1916 in front of the county courthouse to honor county residents who served for the Confederacy. The Shenandoah Valley Battlefield Foundation agreed to relocate the statue to ground it preserved at the Cross Keys battlefield in VA where the 1st Maryland (CSA) fought. I happened to be there this past weekend and was pleased to find it in its new home. Still, I wonder what my GG GF who was from Talbot County and served in the 3rd Maryland (USA) thought about that statue when none was erected his honor and other Talbot County boys who fought for the Union. He died in 1924.
Wonderful! This is far better than those who have said, “The statues should be removed to museums, so people can be educated about them.” What this means is, the museum guide will then say, “And here, schoolchildren, are the Nazis who attacked our country!” We must be very careful with our history, or, like Chairman Mao did in China, it will be erased. Remember, there is nothing Mao hated more than China and the Chinese people – and if you’ve noticed, all the people who are removing statues and signs and monuments are simultaneously chanting, “Death to America!” Think about it.
Thanks for the inventory. The same category of people removing history from New Orleans have also engaged in the “mostly peaceful” removal/destruction of public and private property across the country, and are still indulging in some unusual practices , e.g., violent robbery to acquire retail goods, with no consequences. These people, as well as many less active and perfectly nice people, prefer their history in soundbites and have never taken the trouble to study the true causes of the Civil War. But as with all extremist movements, the pendulum is now correcting toward the center. The Confederacy (155 years ago) has always been an easy punching bag for current day political gain; but the ongoing attacks on our institutions and foundations, by many who have never read the Constitution and know zero about law, reveal clearly that this was never just about Confederates. The goal is the eradication of conservatives, wherever they are and from whomever they are descended, and subsequent total control of US resources. As noted above, the removal of history to eradicate the past is in line with the stance of ISIS and other terrorists; that fact is not something that suits being dismissed by “time marches on”. Re Sherman, removing him for his views on extirpation of all Indians would also entail removing a whole raft of other well-known names, so that’s not likely to happen. The large gilded equestrian statue at 59th and Fifth in New York City will no doubt stay where it is for the foreseeable future, with his horse’s right rear hoof crushing a branch of Georgia pinecones. Nice touch, but none of us have felt compelled to tear it down and melt his head.
Beautifully said.
I don’t take such a placid, defeatist attitude as the author, though perhaps his is done in a tongue in cheek manner. If the sole modern criteria used to justify vandalism, looting or removal is “Ooooo, he owned slaves”, then it is merely a matter of time before the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial and the national capital’s name itself is removed or “contextualized”. One could even target Lincoln over the mass Sioux hangings under Pope. It would be nice if these guardians of civic virtue actually did something with their lives, rather than merely destroy, in their Dionysian caperings.
… and the effort by the leftists/marxists to erase history marches on….
A note from the Editors: We have had to take down a number of comments for racist content. That language does not meet our guidelines, which state “Emerging Civil War encourages a free exchange of ideas. We do encourage those with differing opinions to express their disagreements, but we expect the exchange between all to be respectful. Vulgarity and personal attacks will not be tolerated.”
A good idea, though while vulgarity and attacks are obvious, America has been shoved into a place now where stating facts that have nothing to do with race are now labeled “racism,” to the point where people lose their jobs, are removed from social media, have 51 Intelligence Community experts lie that it was racism, etc. so I recommend that anyone having their post removed be notified of such. Thanks!
I am very disappointed as I was very careful to only state facts in my removed post re/ an article that has race at its core. Your site, guess you get to decide.
It’s also worth noting that posting links will also get comments stuck in the spam filter for review.
Yes, I was surprised on a recent trip to New Orleans to see no more, the Washington Artillery memorial in its long accustomed place of honor. And, as the author mentioned, the Washington Artillery did much more than simple Civil War service. Their war time service includes every major U.S. war since the “little” one in 1812. This assault on the service of one significant generation of soldiery is very unfortunate. A society that does not recognize the service of its military is not a durable society. To consign Confederate memorials to the over-simplistic dustbin of “racism” or “white supremacy” is ignorant and uneducated. Much of the country refuses to indulge the self-delusion of tens of millions of Americans that the election of 2020 was stolen. Yet, that same contingent of American voters readily indulges in the fiction that the Confederates were fighting for slavery.
And, in the end, New Orleans has lost significant points of interest. What U.S. city does not have a cannon or two in central locations? Martial art has always commemorated those who fell in battle or those who won that key battle. Now, our Southern towns and cities are becoming boring. There is no greater Southern sin.
Tom
I am quite baffled ECW even posted this but not as surprised by some of the stubborn responses. I hope we can all agree the American Civil War was a complicated and layered war, due to the nature of how the country operated at the time economically, as well as the many, many years prior of ongoing division, etc. Not everyone involved was fighting for slavery or vice versa. If you remove slavery from the causes that eventually led to the split of the country, I ask those who claim slavery wasn’t a big part or even a part of it; what were the other causes you allude to? Again, keep in mind that slavery doesn’t exist in my hypothesis I am offering you to prove incorrect.
Well, as I’ve said elsewhere in this issue, What Ifs are dangerous. Or, as my Vietnamese wife is fond of saying, “N?u n?u n?u. N?u bà tôi có bánh xe thì bà s? là m?t chi?c xe ??p” – “If if if. If my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a bicycle.” It’s better to debate what happened, rather than what might have been. However, the debate surprises me. I grew up reading Civil War, and listening to my grandparents’ stories about their 25 grandfathers, great-uncles and various cousins who served in Pennsylvania and North Carolina regiments during the war, and for 40 years, in all the talk and all the great books by America’s great historians, I clearly learned that slavery had little to nothing to do with the war. Slavery to the Civil War is like a drop of blue ink in a tumbler of water – it has no substance, yet colors everything. (No puns intended.) The war was about sharp regional cultural differences, the economic oppression of the South by powerful interests in the North, the ongoing – to this day, in fact – attempt by corrupt politicians in Washington, D. C. to destroy Federalism and drain all power and wealth – even borders – to the Great Dismal Swamp of Washington, where they can feast on the people’s blood and money. It is exactly what the Founding Straight White Males sought to prevent with the Constitution. Countless examples exist to support this and I won’t list them here, except to point out a mere few: If the war was about ending slavery, why did six slave-holding states remain in the Union, and hold their slaves for most if not the entire war? Why didn’t the Federal government immediately end slavery in these states? Why did the Federal government take until January 1865 to ban slavery by Amendment to the Constitution, it then taking another 11 months to ratify the act and put it into law?
Only 7% of people in the seceding 11 states owned slaves. Those valiant young men did not fight for slavery; nor did my Pennsylvania ancestors fight against it. They were Democrats who believed in our Republican form of Democracy, and thus, while they were willing to fight to preserve the Union, they vigorously opposed the government making war on their brethren to end slavery instead of ending it by legislative process. The South’s grievances were legitimate, and secession was not illegal, though it was a grave error to secede. A gross failure of leadership in America is what brought about the war. The issues could have been solved without use of arms – and look what happened following the war: the most corrupt period in American politics, lasting roughly from 1865 until 1901.
So if asked the question, “What if slavery didn’t exist – would the Civil War still have occurred?” the answer must be Yes.
I do not disagree that slavery was a – perhaps “the” – leading cause of the war. But, do dispute that the average Southerner, or even the majority of Southerners were fighting to maintain slavery. There was a time when Historians, Northern and Southern, understood that distinction. But, it was much too complicated for just one cause. Civil wars are ever complicated.
Tom
A fine history to read is McPherson’s ‘For Cause & Comrades,’ in which he admits that he was wrong to believe that the Civil War was “the greatest Civil Rights movement in American history” and found, to his great surprise after reading 3,000+ letters by Northern and Southern officers and soldiers that hardly anybody was fighting over slavery. As one slave said when asked, “I think they’re not fighting over us. They’re fighting over each other.”
Interesting to hear people complaining about “erasing history.” White people in the United States “erased history” for two hundred years of People of Color…
Two wrongs don’t make a right. And when you look at the massive amount of history that whites created…
…because you never learned about any other history.
Nonsense. I have a Masters Degree in Latin America History with a specialization in Mexico, and lived five years in Argentina and Chile. I have a Masters Degree in 19th Century American History with a specialization in Plains Indian Tribes. I lived 15 years in Vietnam and am the foremost expert in America on the Vietnam War 1946-1975, and speak six languages. I interviewed more than 300 veterans of the Viet Minh, Viet Cong and People’s Army, something that no one – no American, no European and even no Vietnamese – has ever done.
If you think that the Confederate statues were erected because of “the massive amount of history that whites created,” then you seem to be ignorant of United States history.
I am impressed with your credentials, but you appear to missing one important point. History is mostly the recording of past events as you are doing by your interviews with the former enemies of the United States and drawing conclusions therefrom. However, the recording of Black history by Blacks was severly hampered by the laws in most slave states prohibiting the teaching of slaves to read and write. Of course, their history is not erased simply because a recording of it does not exist. Historians draw conclusions from the collected written records that do exist, and their inferences, to determine historical facts. The erasure of which we complain is not only of the historial facts, but also from the conclusions drawn therefrom. The “illegitimate CRT” of which you complain is the conclusion of certain historians of the historical facts from which those historians draw their conclusions. Laws against examining Critical Race Theory unfortunately fit the description of erasing history of which you also complain. As for the dismissal of those conclusions labeled CRT based upon labeling its historians as Marxist brings to mind a reaction to studing the subject that I recently heard. “As medical students studying syphillis do not do so for the intent of experiencing the disease, just as studying Marxism does not mean that the students are doing so to become Communists.”
Wellll…I have to disagree with much of this. First of all, a huge amount of black people’s history – slave or free – was indeed recorded, both in contemporary examples and many years later. There are countless examples of people who were slaves, and their children who were born free, being interviewed by American historians and journalists from the 1860s through the 1960s. And, many wrote books.
However, CRT is not a development of historians’ work – and any historian who has established his legitimacy and then taken up the CRT banner has immediately forfeited his legitimacy. Critical Race Theory is a derivation of Critical Theory, designed in the 1920s by German Communists. The method was to take history, distort it for their own propaganda purposes, suppress any contradictory facts, and then use their “new” version of history to destroy society from the top down. One of their key targets was the family unit. This is why, in their published manifesto, Black Lives Matter exults in being “trained Communists” and takes particular aim at the family unit. As has been already amply demonstrated, the 1619 Project is 100% fraud, invented out of thin air, thick fantasy and vicious racism. Because it has been totally debunked, Harvard gladly brought its creator teach at the university – and doubled down when legitimate historians asserted the invalid nature of this move. One look at what Harvard has become – a safe haven for Islamic terrorists, anti-Zionists, Communists and Nazis (who were, as everyone knows, Socialists) should easily point anyone to the correct decision on the 1619 Project.
But to continue, CRT is completely invalid; it is a Communist method to do what Communists always do: Use lies and propaganda to divide, destroy, conquer, set up a police state in which they rule with absolute power, and send any dissenters to death camps. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, valid history nor a valid method of researching or analyzing history. Publishers got fooled for a brief period and published a number of “histories” written on CRT, but the public didn’t get fooled. They refused to buy the books, and dreadful sales numbers saw publishers quietly backing away from continuing the fraud.
I have been away due to work and personal things only to find this blog post blew up more than I expected.
Nothing lasts forever. Every era decides what to keep and what to throw away. Every hero becomes a villain, or at least does not matter to later generations. I have seen the importance of Jesus in American culture decline rapidly, for instance, and the word “damn” hardly passes as a curse anymore. I have seen Gandhi go from a beloved figure (at least in America) to much more controversial. No one is safe. What I find interesting is people voluntarily deciding to erase even a neutral mention of a building or site being associated with anything Confederate. “Learning from history” (which people rarely do) is not enough to keep anything. It must be something that makes people proud. Which is why the Arlington monument was on borrowed time, and so are battlefield monuments.
That is why I am a nihilist and why people on both sides of this argument do not like me. Because I am telling you, all this is pointless, and perhaps you should enjoy the ride.