The City of Baltimore Did the Right Thing in Removing the Confederate Statues

On Monday, August 14, the Baltimore City Council passed a resolution calling for the immediate removal of four Confederate monuments across the city. Removal of the monuments began the following day and was completed on Wednesday, August 16.

As a native Baltimorean, I am beyond happy that these monuments to treason came down. And despite what others may claim, the four monuments in Baltimore did not celebrate “Southern heritage,” as some might try to claim because Baltimore is a city in a state that NEVER left the Union!

The fact is these statues celebrated the following:

1. A Supreme Court Justice who was most famous for the Dred Scott decision which deemed that Black-Americans were not citizens of the United States and had no rights a white man was bound to respect. The statute of Roger B. Taney was gifted by William T. Walters (Walter Art Museum) in 1887. The statue was located at Mount Vernon Place.

2. Recognition of the Baltimore Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The Chapter erected the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument to celebrate their National acceptance and recognition in 1903. One side of the  statue was inscribed with Gloria Victis (Glory to the Vanquished), another side was inscribed with Deo Vindice (Under God, Our Vindicator). The statue was located on Mount Royal Avenue.

3.  A failed attempt to place a monument to Confederate women in the capital of each of the 13 Southern states that seceded from the union. The monument was originally intended to be a replica of the one in Richmond, Virginia, but the Maryland chapter of Daughters of the Confederacy created their own design. In 1914, the Maryland General Assembly passed a bill that donated $12,000 for the monument. The monument was inscribed, “To the Confederate women of Maryland, 1861-1865, The Brave at Home.” The statue was located at Charles and University Parkway.

4. A dead man’s childhood heroes. The funding for a sculpture of Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson was provided in 1928 at the bequest of  banker J. Henry Ferguson who left specific instructions for the statues. Although Ferguson died in 1928, the statue wasn’t dedicated until 1948. The inscription on the north steps said, “THEY WERE GREAT GENERALS AND/ CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS AND WAGED/ WAR LIKE GENTLEMEN.” The statue was located in Wyman Park Dell.

Look, I know that some have decried the removal of these statues as some sort of erasure of history, but nothing could be further from the truth. These statues have been used to celebrate treason against the United States and the celebrated loss of 600,000 Americans. Let’s not tap dance around this. Statues were erected on public lands and with public money in the late 1890s to early 1900s to celebrate the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy” and as a daily visual reminder to Black Americans that these metal giants were enforcing “Jim Crow”  laws.

We as a nation shouldn’t memorialize traitors. Period. We don’t erect statues to King George, Benedict Arnold or Tokyo Rose. We shouldn’t honor those who turned their back on their country and its Constitution and make no bones about it – those who fought against our union as it exist now did exactly that. That is the very definition of treason.

Baltimore did the right thing in removing these relics of disloyalty and is to be commended.