New York/Richmond

Today, the Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond came down. My book, Monument Avenue, documents the brief moment when protesters took possession of the Confederate statues along the grand boulevard of the Lost Cause. The Lee statue was the centerpiece of the ensemble of statues arrayed along Monument Avenue, and with a broad grassy circle surrounding it, became the natural location for demonstrations, performances, and occasionally, confrontrations.

The most terrible thing about war, I am convinced, is the monuments – the awful things we are compelled to build in order to remember the victims. In the South, particularly, human ingenuity has been put to it to explain the Confederacy on its war monuments. Of course, the plain truth of the matter would be an inscription something like this: “Sacred to the memory of those who fought to Perpetuate Human Slavery.”