Maria S. Topalova Blog

The issue with the Confederate monuments doesn’t have an unambiguous solution and must be approached with caution. The politicians and the generals of the Confederacy do not deserve to be celebrated as heroes; however, what they stood for is a part of American history and must not be forgotten. Racism is America’s original sin. The Union was founded upon Slavery, and the Founding Fathers of the nation were slaveholders who deeply believed in the supremacy of the white race.

The American Civil War was clearly a war about Slavery that emerged to correct this original sin. The eleven Southern states that declared their secession from the Union wanted to preserve Slavery from which they benefited economically, socially, and psychologically. The president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, and his generals, led by Robert E. Lee, threw hundred of thousands of Southern men in a war against other American men for the single purpose of keeping the shameful institution of bondage.
People like Davis, his vice-president Alexander Stephens, Lee and other generals like Stonewall Jackson and P.G.T. Beauregard were not just on the wrong side of history. Due to their political ideas and personal choices, nearly 750,000 American men were killed, families were destroyed, and the whole country was devastated. What they did is a crime. To celebrate these people is the same as celebrating Nazi generals and Hitler’s politicians.
However, the Confederacy with its racism and white supremacy is a part of American history and must not be forgotten. American society has to find a way to keep the historic memory of this disgraceful chapter.
In post-communist Bulgaria, we have experienced something similar. After the fall of the dictatorship, we came to the issue of the monuments of the regime and what to do with them. That’s how the Museum of the Crimes of Communism was created. Maybe something similar could be done in the American South. It sounds easy, but it is not because such a museum would not have enough space for all monuments, and there are monuments that cannot be put in a museum.
One of them is Stone Mountain near Atlanta, Georgia. This is the largest high relief sculpture in the world. Its entire carved surface measures three-acres, and is larger than a football field. The carving depicts Confederate president Jefferson Davis, and generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. As Jay Bookman writes in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, “It is no accident that it is carved into the mountain where, in 1915, the KKK was reborn. The man who donated his land to the project was head of the national KKK. The original sculptor was a KKK member. The head of the local chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy, the woman who helped envision the project, wanted it to serve as an explicit monument to the Klan.”
It looks like Stone Mountain is the perfect place for the Museum of American Racism…
President Donald Trump has recently compared general Robert E. Lee with the Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. I understand the arguments of some historians who say that Lee was never elected as president, and even if he was, his country wouldn’t have been internationally recognized, and therefore this comparison is inaccurate.
However, this is the first time I agree with President Trump. These three personalities were slaveholders known for their beliefs in the inferiority of black people. It is OK to admit that Washington and Jefferson were racists. The conversation about racism should be open, honest and without taboos because this is the only way for this ulcer to be cured.