Even when they’re not honoring slavers I’ve personally always found the placement of any equestrian statue on top of a tall pedestal to be a little unsettling. I instinctively feel that that’s just not a natural location for a horse to be, and that the horse is in need of immediate rescue. With humans on tall pedestals you can imagine them finding a way to climb down or at least call out for a ladder. The taller the pedestal the worse the effect for me. (Plus it’s difficult for the public to really admire the artistry of a statue or sculpture from a low angle over 40 feet below.)
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Sounds like it’s a good time to do sculptures regarding notable black Americans from the era in the South rather than glorifying slavers.
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I’d accept a statue of Virginia’s native son Nat Turner. He didn’t win but at least he put in a good effort.
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Leave the horse. It can be a monument to the wild horses of the Barrier Islands.
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I’m not sure that you’re aware how very large it is… I’ve been there and it is absolutely massive and on the vertical side of the mountain, too boot. I heard a story once about how they clean the thing. They repel down from the top. You can stand on top of their heads, as it’s the size of a dinner table… You’d get some good chips out of it, but you would not get very far, sadly.
Oderus Urungus…
I’m guessing Dave would agree…
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Should remelt the bronze to make american currency.
That’s what a traitor’s statue is fit for.
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That old expression — “Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on” — may have been applied here. 
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That’s what Nobel invented dynamite for. Apparently in some states you can just go buy tannerite at the hardware store. That stuff is pretty brisant (high speed shock wave, good for cracking rock), and you can set it and detonate from a safe distance with a rifle. Don’t even need complicated paraphernalia.
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As a kind of sidenote. How would people feel about these statues being moved to a museum?
Sure these people are vile, but it is the country’s history…
IMHO they should very definately be moved out of public general display. But what i’m not sure on is them being possibly erased from public knowledge altogether…
A section on a museum on old normals that do not fit with modern morals or similar maybe?
I’m from the UK, if you actually look into our history we’ve been a blight on the world at times. That is not something that should be hidden…
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We have plenty of statues of racists traitors in museums already.
If anything, a lot of those museums are setup to hagiography the antebellum south. At least a lot of the ones in the south are.
Losers like to try and make their inhuman treatment of slaves not seem as bad as it really was. And they like to think they had a noble history, instead of the reality that most of their grandpappies were dirt farmers tricked by aristocrats into fighting pointlessly to defend an economic system that actively oppressed everyone but the rich.
But hey, at least they were white, no matter how poor they were, that couldn’t be taken from them. And that was what was really important to white non-slave owners.
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I don’t disagree there.
And honestly i don’t know what to say.
I don’t know what we should do. What has happened was vile. Do we censor the lot? Publish everything? Or somewhere inbetween?
I’d argue the latter, say what happened and also why it was wrong…
History is history, we need to learn from it IMHO
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Yep. And like I said, there’s already lots and lots of museums.
Nothing is being censored. We’re just deciding these people don’t deserve big fancy monuments.
In some towns, statues like these are an open threat to black people. “Don’t move here n@@@er, this is confederate country”.
You’re from the UK, so maybe this would be a fitting analogy: it’s a bit like german towns getting upset that their statues of Hitler are being taken down. After nearly all those statues went up in the 1980s, because neonazis wanted to intimidate Jews.
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I think i may have not been articulate enough here.
My view is these statues are part of our history, but they should not be on public display in towns. But maybe a section of a museum would fit? Especially if it explaned why it’s no longer displayed in said town.
Hopefully that makes sense?
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Sure maybe?
“Hey kids, this statue used to be in the town square. It was put up in 1998 as part of a promotion for the release of American History X, and racists imprinted on it like a baby duckling imprints on its mother.”
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Perhaps one for Henry “Box” Brown. Mailing one’s self to freedom inside a box labeled “dry goods” deserves a monument.
(Looks like there is a small metal box somewhere on Richmond’s Canal Walk in memory of him.)
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Well, we still have slave owners on our money. We have over a 100 Civil War museums, Books and the internet exist. Not sure why we need a statue, a picture of the statue would convey needed information, don’t really think we need something large enough to be a shrine. ETA: There are gentleman like this who would make pilgrimages to wherever the statue was kept. ‘I’m not racist’: Driver with Confederate flag cited for 'burnout' near Richmond's Robert E. Lee monument - Raw Story - Celebrating 17 Years of Independent Journalism
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On that subject (but not to be equated with statues of Hitler or Nazi leaders), quite a few artists favoured by the Nazis continued to enjoy public commissions in post-war West Germany.
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