With the Confederate Statues down, are the Lee Counties next

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Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas all have Lee Counties named after General Robert E Lee, and possibly Iowa and Kentucky too. If Confederate imagery is being removed from this nation, are the counties going to be renamed. Should the Jeff Davis Counties in Texas and Georgia be renamed, as well as Jefferson Davis Counties in Mississippi and Louisiana.

And what about Georgia's "General Beauregard Lee"!?

Presumably named after both Confederate General Beauregard, and Robert E. Lee, he is the South's answer to Pennsylvania's Paxatawney Phil (the ground hog who predicts the weather on ground hog day).

Not a serious question. Anything connected to Groundhog Day is too dumb and silly to be offensive.

I certainly hope so, and on both counts!

While it seems ethically proper to honor the victims of slavery (e.g., slaves, former slaves, and descendants of slaves), it also seems just plain stupid to honor the losers of the Civil War (e.g., the Confederacy, its military, and its supporters).

Here in the Spokane area of Washington state, we have place names connected with Col. George Wright, who with the US army had massacred local Native tribes. After well over a hundred years, his name is being stricken from said locations, as well as names such as Hangman creek, and Hangman valley, both of which were named for George Wright. So far, nobody around here seems to be shedding tears for Wright.

I suppose that the state legislatures could claim that the said counties are all named after Bruce Lee.

Or after film director Spike Lee.

Actually Spike Lee, one suspects, might be descended from slaves owned by Robert E. Lee (freed slaves often took on the same last names of their former White owners).

Maybe they should be changed and statues removed, like why do we need to keep Confederate imagery anywhere outside of a museum?

I wouldn't know about Spike Lee, but like most such things we've sort of accepted through the years the truth is actually a bit more complicated.

Robert E Lee, while he had slaves, wasn’t radically into the ideology of the Confederacy.

He only became Confederate because his loyalty was to the State of Virginia. Had Virginia not seceded from the Union, he would have been a great Union general. That he was not loyal to the Union over his loyalty to Virginia, does not give him brownie points.

The issue with Lee is complicated. He was a Confederate general....and he shouldn’t be commemorated as a Confederate general. However, he wasn’t as avid a Confederate as many.

But the following-orders defense has been shown not to be a basis for absolution. Lee fought against the the United States of America. And as you pointed out, nothing prevented him from choosing his loyalty to the Union over the Confederacy. It really is not complicated even if it is painful emotionally for some.

I am more interested in what we should do with U.S. statespeople such as Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, et al.

Some people want things named after them renamed.

I said "freed slave often took the names of their former masters". I didnt say 100 percent of freed slaves took the names of their former masters. The article pretty much confirms what I said. Not all, but a large fraction did.

Actually thats a good interesting article.

Sometimes local White officials would just arbitrarily give freed slaves goofy random names (like "Raspberry" and "Strawberry"). Sometimes freed slaves got to make up their own names. My guess is that is why so many living American Blacks have names like "King" (whats better to call yourself than a king?), and "Washington" (why not pick the name of a great man in history?). In America today you NEVER meet, nor even hear of, any living White person named "Washington". But everyone, Black and White, in the US has Black coworkers named Washington, and roots for Black athletes named Washington( at one point the Washington Redskins had three players named "Washington"). Rocknroll was largely invented by four guys named "king" ( BB., Albert, Freddy, and Ben E. ).

Having counties in America named after Robert Lee and Jefferson Davis is like if we had counties in Britain named after George Washington.

From here, it would be more like if England had a county named after Guy Fawkes or Charles Radclyffe.

There is a well-known statue of Abe Lincoln in London.

There is a statue of Ronald Reagan in Budapest, granted that fact does nothing to advance the point intended by the example of an imaginary George Washington statue in London.

Gosh! You folks cant even grasps for straws.

You want an analogy to a "statue of George Washington in the UK"?

Ok, here it is:

A British movie director, Richard Attenborough, making a movie honoring Gandhi.

Gandhi being the guy who lead an even bigger population of people (ie all of modern India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) to secede from the British Empire than did George Washington.

So...A British movie director honors Gandhi. Outwardly that would seem analogous to statues to Lee in the modern USA.Except for two things: Gandhi won, and Lee's confederacy lost. And Gandhi was morally vindicated (even India's former British oppressors admit that India was right to seek freedom). Lee may not have been a villainous individual, but he was famous for serving a cause (the Confederacy) that has not been vindicated because the Confederacy's whole reason for being was to preserve slavery. So even though Attenborough's film may seem equivalent to a statue of Lee, it isnt really.