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* AP…
Residents of a southwestern Illinois community want a statue of the state’s third governor removed from a public plaza, arguing that he owned slaves and used his power to protect the practice.
Nearly 500 people have joined a Facebook group that supports petitioning the city of Edwardsville to tear down a Ninian Edwards statue and also rename a plaza with his moniker, according to The Edwardsville Intelligencer.
* For crying out loud, they’re not arguing that the statue be torn down…
1) Remove the statue of Ninian Edwards from the downtown Ninian Edwards Plaza.
2) Move the statue to a museum or less public city space, to be displayed alongside plaques which describe the harmful historical actions of Ninian Edwards against enslaved persons and Native Americans.
3) Rename Ninian Edwards Plaza or leave the plaza unnamed.
We are not advocating renaming Edwardsville. Our desire is to change this public honoring of Ninian Edwards, not to change the city’s name.
* Reasoning…
Why do we want these actions?
Even by the standards of his time (early 1800s), Ninian Edwards was a racist and immoral man. We know that it was not the intention of the City to honor Edwards’ harmful actions when they raised his statue and named the plaza after him. Nevertheless, such a public display of Edwards’ statue and name creates the impression of approval.
Edwards owned slaves his entire adult life. When he moved to the then-Illinois Territory, he should have been forced to free the slaves he brought with him under federal law. But Edwards did not, and in the process, helped establish slavery in Illinois, a place that was supposed to be free by federal law. Additionally, as territorial governor, Edwards vetoed a bill that would have officially abolished slavery in Illinois. Because of this, slavery persisted in Illinois until 1848, more than thirty years after Edwards chose not to stop it.
Ninian Edwards also committed harmful acts against Illinois’ Native American population during the War of 1812, massacring dozens of tribespeople who were in fact United States allies living peacefully on their own land.
For these reasons, we urge the City Council to move Ninian Edwards’ statue to a museum or community space where better information can be provided about his harmful actions, and to rename Ninian Edwards Plaza.
Thoughts?
posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 10:45 am
Sorry, comments are closed at this time.
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It’s nice to see a well throughout and reasoned approach
Comment by We'll See Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 10:50 am
There’s a big difference between being in open rebellion against the US and being a slaveowner and a jerk. The statue of Edwards was not erected to assert white superiority like statues of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and others. To call Edwards a racist in his own time is a little misleading–pretty much 99.9 percent of the white population was racist by modern definitions. I see this as more of learning opportunity than removal of a statue and renaming of a plaza. Leave them in place, but definitely put up markers there to note his pro-slavery actions, but to take the statue down because he was an a-hole seems a little capricious.
Comment by Steve Rogers Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 11:01 am
Has some taken a close look at the statues of former politicians that line the dome of the State House? In the current climate I’m not sure all those memorials can sustain modern scrutiny either.
Comment by Just Me 2 Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 11:01 am
It’s nice to have a public reminder that those who want to change the context of these statues are not blind, raging iconoclasts.
Certainly the renaming of the plaza can be done even if the logistics for the statue cannot be worked out in the short term.
To the post:
==In the current climate I’m not sure all those memorials can sustain modern scrutiny either.==
Is this your attempt at a straw man fallacy or your attempt at a slippery slope fallacy?
Comment by Nuke the Whales Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 11:11 am
Three times in my adulthood AP has written the Hiroshima B-29 pilot was Enola Gay. AP quite often descends to the level of bad transcription
Comment by Anyone Remember Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 11:11 am
I am pretty sure Edwards County, Albion, IL would have no problem taking the statue and putting it on their courthouse lawn.
Comment by Holding Back Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 11:12 am
“For these reasons, we urge the City Council to move Ninian Edwards’ statue to a museum”
The museum angle sounds good on paper. But I’m not sure their will be many museums willing to place these now-disgraced statues in their collection. They will also be worried about the impacts to visits and funding.
Comment by Donnie Elgin Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 11:18 am
Nuke the Whales - I wasn’t trying to be snarky. I was legitimately asking if someone has audited those statues as well. I looked to see if they were on-line but couldn’t find such a list. I read somewhere that early Illinois Governors were slaveholders, and I would assume some of them have statues up high in our State House dome.
Comment by Just Me 2 Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 11:20 am
What a guy. Another model Illinois statesman.
Comment by Siualum Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 11:28 am
“I am pretty sure Edwards County, Albion, IL would have no problem taking the statue”
Albion is home to a large medical/recreation cultivation and processing operation. They may be more chill now.
Comment by Donnie Elgin Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 11:35 am
== ==In the current climate I’m not sure all those memorials can sustain modern scrutiny either.==
You mean like the giant statue of Stephen A. Douglas placed in arguably the most prominent position outside the front entrance?
Comment by fs Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 11:43 am
This doesn’t sound unreasonable.
Comment by Nick Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 11:50 am
=== To call Edwards a racist in his own time is a little misleading===
The monument to Edwards doesn’t exist in his own time and you are glossing over the fact that the majority of people in the United States at that time did not specifically own slaves, continue to own slaves in defiance of law, and take action that suppressed legislative action in order to continue to own slaves.
There’s also a difference between being a racist and actually committing genocide.
The statue isn’t for Edwards or for peers of Edwards. They are all dead. Edwards can be evaluated by the living, and if the living see no need to honor such a villain, then there is no need to preserve those honors.
Edwards was more than a racist.
===now-disgraced statues in their collection===
One can actually make a museum or culture park for this specific purpose. There are quite a few in the former Soviet Union where statures are displayed on the ground at eye level and placed with information putting individuals in their context.
Comment by Candy Dogood Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 11:50 am
===the giant statue of Stephen A. Douglas ===
To the Illinois Stature Park of Shame and Historical Context with him!
Comment by Candy Dogood Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 11:52 am
I feel like I’m on a roll here so;
The Cellini Statute Park of Shame and Historical Context.
Comment by Candy Dogood Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 11:54 am
=== In the current climate I’m not sure all those memorials can sustain modern scrutiny either.===
I’ve come at this way with monuments;
Any civil war monument glorifying a traitor or the traitorous acts of those during the civil war… they need to go.
“Scrutiny” to others, and the phony “slippery slope” that then tries to drag in the founders of the country with the traitors of the nation… the slippery slope is trying more to save the traitors than those historically were bad actors that history will revisit.
We’re not eliminating or pretending that the awful history never happened, we’re, as a society, deciding not to celebrate those traitors.
Comment by Oswego Willy Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 11:57 am
The town where my mother lives now has one of the generic Confederate soldier statutes on the lawn at the county courthouse. There’s 2 relatively recent plaques. One explains the history of the generic statues and the national rise of the Klan in the 1920s when it was put there. The other is a list of black residents who fought for the Union.
Comment by Cheryl 44 Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 11:59 am
Let me be even *more* clear.”;
Those memorials, statues, parks, anything named after a traitor of the United States…
If those persons were to have won the Civil War…
…
… they were then legitimatizing… their *new* country.
Their. New. Country.
Their new country… with slavery.
Comment by Oswego Willy Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 12:03 pm
statues of Confederates, gone. traitors. statues of slave owning politicians not Confederates, more complicated. needs discussion. the people who tore down a statue of Washington would not get my support.
Comment by Amalia Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 12:13 pm
They wanted US Grant’s statue down in SF.
Why? His father in law gave him a slave. A year later Grant freed him. Not sold. Freed, with legal papers. At a time when Grant was poor and needing money.
Grant was known to work the fields too.
He was known for “being too kind with them”, as a contemporary put it.
But that one year cancels out the Donelson thing, the Vicksburg thing, the Chattanooga thing..
Comment by Fav human Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 12:15 pm
=== They wanted US Grant’s statue down in SF.
Why? His father in law gave him a slave. A year later Grant freed him. Not sold. Freed, with legal papers. At a time when Grant was poor and needing money.===
This a good point to the overall.
As in the “Grant” documentary, (which I highly recommend, working on reading the book) Robert E. Lee lost the war, but Lee won the “myth” along with the “Old South” and once those who knew of Grant, his global celebrity and celebrated role in defeating the traitors were no longer with us… the history of Grant faded… Lee’s legend and “myth” rose… along with this silly longing for a time of slavery, and a South in segregation beyond the word of segregation.
Those concerned about “forgetting our history”… I point to Grant, not the confederacy.
Comment by Oswego Willy Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 12:26 pm
===They wanted===
A handful of goofy and misguided protesters is your “they.” Not the city, not the state.
Comment by Rich Miller Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 12:28 pm
=== Not the city, not the state.===
Thinking that news;
“(City, County, State) Moves To Take Down Grant (whatever)”
That would be concerning.
Comment by Oswego Willy Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 12:33 pm
Im a strong supporter of Black Lives Matter and appreciate the spotlight on abuses within the criminal justice system. Removing statues and other relics from the past seem to be an outlet that wont produce results. In Chicago this past weekend 102 individuals were shot with 14 fatalities. A 3 year old baby lost his life. Let focus public and media energy on finding a solution to the gun battles taking place on our streets.
Comment by Barry Roth Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 12:39 pm
===Removing statues and other relics from the past seem to be an outlet that wont produce results. In Chicago this past weekend 102 individuals were shot with 14 fatalities. A 3 year old baby lost his life.===
Huh?
So keep the statues until…
Nope. They are not parallel. Not even close.
Taking them down has nothing to do with the violence, but coming down, they must.
Comment by Oswego Willy Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 12:42 pm
I have trouble when we judge people from one era by the standards of another era. King Solomon was a bigamist. So what.
Still, people alive get to choose who they honor. If the people of Edwardsville wish to rename locations and move statues, that is their choice.
Comment by Last Bull Moose Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 12:48 pm
===a statue of Washington would not get my support===
Washington himself has been heavily mythologized, but had no problem with wearing teeth that were taken from the mouth of a slave, but at the very least we can always fall back on the fact that his will freed his slaves.
The question that should be asked is whether or not the public is prepared for an accurate history of it’s founders — folks that sought to prevent folks that weren’t wealthy from voting, didn’t believe that women should vote, and enshrined slavery in the Constitution.
===Why? His father in law gave him a slave.===
Grant’s reliance on slavery is a quite a bit more involved than this. Using slaves owned by your father in law to build your property, work your fields, etc, is an issue.
And then there’s the letter from Grant’s own father admonishing him for his involvement with slavery when he asked James Grant for a loan.
I understand that maybe tearing down Grant might not be viewed as appropriate, but you’re still minimizing Grant’s involvement and personal benefit from slavery while also ignoring the slaves that his wife owned, too.
Comment by Candy Dogood Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 12:52 pm
=== Still, people alive get to choose who they honor.===
What country, over a century later, thinks honoring traitors of the current country is smart and not divisive, especially if the civil war was to keep slavery too?
They are designed as an honoring of these traitors, put in place to intimidate at times too.
Comment by Oswego Willy Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 12:52 pm
Ninian Edwards is my 3rd-great-grandfather. I’ve never done research on his life, but I remember my grandmother whispering to me once, “he apparently wasn’t a very pleasant man!” I did not know he owned slaves, and all I can say is I find that fact and his treatment of Native Americans appalling.
Kind of a funny story: About a year ago, our grown daughter was visiting from NYC, and we took her on one of our bike rides on the Madison County trails. As we cut through Edwardsville, I happened upon the Edwards Plaza, and I thought to myself, “now who is this little dude!” We got a pretty big laugh when we realized who he is indeed.
I think there are some really thoughtful comments here. My opinion is that while times do change and some societal norms also change, enslaving human beings and genocide are bad, were bad, and will always be bad. Ninian Edwards violated far too many norms of decency to ever have been honored in my opinion. We can continue to educate ourselves about the totality of his life and perhaps respect some ways in which he helped develop communities and commerce in southern Illinois. But certain of his beliefs, policies and behavior were loathsome, so we should not bestow tributes nor memorials. In this specific case, I agree that the statue should be relocated (there’s an Edwards house / museum in Springfield that might be a good fit, for educational purposes) and the plaza should be renamed.
I definitely don’t have the answers about exactly what memorials ought to be preserved / retained, and which ones should go. I certainly agree that traitors to the U.S. who fought for the confederacy should not be memorialized with public tributes. But even that one poses some level of problem for me, because my #1 American hero, Mark Twain, fought very briefly for the confederates. This is why it’s best to consider “the total body of work.” Twain’s is superlative. Edwards’ — not so much.
Comment by Short Game Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 1:02 pm
=So keep the statues until…
Nope. They are not parallel. Not even close= I don’t care if the statues come down. My concern is that there is more public and media attention being given to relics of the past and not nearly enough attention being given to the fact that we have babies being shot to death on the streets of Chicago.
Comment by Barry Roth Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 1:07 pm
=== I don’t care if the statues come down. My concern is that there is more public and media attention…===
This global movement, where British “football” has removed all the names on players jerseys with “Black Lives Matter”…
See, they ain’t the same. You can care less if the statutes come down, but why write this;
===Removing statues and other relics from the past seem to be an outlet that wont produce results. In Chicago this past weekend 102 individuals were shot with 14 fatalities. A 3 year old baby lost his life.===
What in the name of all that is holy do you mean…
“…be an outlet that wont produce results”
What results? What *results* are you concerned about?
If they’re not parallel, then what results?
Comment by Oswego Willy Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 1:11 pm
OW you need help
Comment by Barry Roth Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 1:25 pm
=== you need help===
What results?
Thanks.
Comment by Oswego Willy Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 1:26 pm
@Candy Dogood: I normally agree with your thoughtful posts, but I have to disagree with you here. How about removing this statue of an aloof person who really had no close friends, but many casual acquaintances. He was likely a racist as defined by us today because he was a white man in the 19th century. He even said that the black man was not equal to the white man in several speeches. He may have inherited slaves because his father-in-law died and had owned slaves. He also ok’d the largest mass execution of Native Americans in our country’s history. There’s a ton of statues of this guy all over Springfield and Illinois and the US because he also was our 16th president.
Seriously here–Lincoln wasn’t perfect. Neither was Edwards or anyone else who has a statue for that matter. What’s the line in the sand for relocating or removing or leaving them in place? I’ve marked my line. If you were in open rebellion against the country, you don’t deserve a statue or anything named after you.
Comment by Steve Rogers Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 1:35 pm
If a statue or memorial is created for the purpose of honoring someone for advancing or maintaining the idea that it is acceptable for one human being to own another, tear it down.
George Washington and many other founding fathers owned slaves. That is not why we honor them.
Comment by 37Bi Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 1:36 pm
Edwards’ son, Ninian W. Edwards, was married to Mary Lincoln’s sister, Elizabeth Porter Todd, which would have made Ninian Jr. Mary’s brother-in-law. I believe their home may be an historic site in Springfield.
As to the post, since we no longer erect statues to people who exploit others, there’s a certain logic in taking old statues of them down or relocating them.
The problem with this, of course, is that while we are ending the admiration of such characters, we should be careful that we don’t also wipe them out of our history. The bad should be a lesson to us as well as the good.
Comment by Streator Curmudgeon Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 1:39 pm
Oops. No, that last post was not from a new and improved model 37Bi. Just a fat-fingered me.
Comment by 37B Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 1:40 pm
===Ninian Edwards is my 3rd-great-grandfather.===
If one follows the careers of Ninian’s sons and their progeny there are a lot of really good reasons why they wouldn’t want to be associated with their father, but it does bring pause the the idea of whether or not something like A.G. Edwards & Sons would have been possible without the evils carried out by Ninian.
Comment by Candy Dogood Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 1:49 pm
Ninian Edwards is part of IL history. Do we start removing names from the top of IL State Archives? Where does it stop? I am reminded of a statue in Glen Oak Park in Peoria of RG LeTourneau. He built a factory in Peoria and gave 90% of his income to Christian causes, and 10% for himself. The Park District decided that his statue be moved to a local museum several years ago, and Robert Ingersol (an atheist) remains as a statue in lower Glen Oak Park. We had good politicians (Lincoln, Dirksen, etc) and bad ones. Perhaps both sides of Edwards needs to be told so that our kids can learn.
Comment by Top of the State Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 2:04 pm
===but it does bring pause the idea of whether or not something like A.G. Edwards & Sons would have been possible without the evils carried out by Ninian==
By that logic, I’ll point out that all of our lives, cities, homes and businesses in this country probably wouldn’t exist but for the genocidal evils carried out against native peoples by our ancestors. Not sure where you’re going with that, but I don’t include it in the “thoughtful posts” I mentioned earlier.
Comment by Short Game Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 2:16 pm
=== but for the genocidal evils carried out against native peoples by our ancestors===
Prolly why statues of Christopher Columbus are coming down too.
=== Not sure where you’re going with that===
Others do, taking down Columbus statues.
Comment by Oswego Willy Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 2:18 pm
“But I’m not sure their will be many museums willing to place these now-disgraced statues in their collection. They will also be worried about the impacts to visits and funding.”
Assuming the statue is of artistic or cultural value (some are just cheap tatty mass-produced crap, tbh), lots of museums will take them. First, museums have lots of objects in their collections that aren’t on exhibit all the time (or sometimes ever) but are still available to researchers. Second, many museums — including the ALPLM in Springfield — do an excellent job contextualizing historic racism (and slaveowning and etc) so that modern visitors can understand how racism functioned socially and culturally in prior times, and can understand the throughline from those times to today, and can see the structural incentives at play to make people do something we now understand as very evil. Having studied the Holocaust extensively in college and grad school, one of the biggest takeaways I have from that is dismissing it was the product of uniquely evil people doing uniquely evil things is a very bad idea. One of the big lessons of the Holocaust is that nearly an entire society was actively or passively complicit in it, and it didn’t take that long to make that happen. So too with slavery, and museums can help create the context for people today to understand how an entire society can be complicit in something so evil.
Comment by Suburban Mom Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 2:21 pm
===Ninian Edwards is part of IL history.===
A monument isn’t history.
===needs to be told so that our kids can learn.===
A monument in a plaza certainly isn’t there so that “our kids can learn.” Moving said monument to a museum where children are specifically sent by parents and schools to learn might be more helpful to that cause — especially with a footnote about how the statue came to be in the museum.
@Steve Rogers
=== I’ve marked my line. ===
That’s a good line, but I feel like it’s narrowly focusing the issue. While Confederate monuments are a concern, I think a community and the members of the community should be able to evaluate whether or not they continue to provide public honors to a historical figure.
Someone thinking one is fit for a monument does not mandate that the monument must remain and withstand the test of time.
Comment by Candy Dogood Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 2:21 pm
I was reading Deutsche Welle over the weekend and they had some historians talking about what to do with memorials. They suggested doing unusual things with them like putting the statues upside down or half burying them or lying them on the ground as a sign that the culture no longer accepts what they did or stood for but in a way that does not erase history. I could go along with that.
Comment by cermak_rd Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 2:48 pm
The desire to establish history in monuments and other means, and the discussion of what is to be done with old monuments or other honoria like place names (especially those that are obviously telling fake Confederacy storylines/propaganda, or ethnocentric) is discussed in a book entitled “Lies Across America: What our historic sites get wrong” (James W. Loewen, The New Press, New York, 1999). Worth a read. And I’ll argue that E-ville should be renamed for the same reasons the statue is being removed; honoring someone not worth of the honor. But that’s another can of worms.
Comment by revvedup Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 2:58 pm
Any statue of a Confederate leader who took up arms against his country should be removed. However, removing statues of our early leaders for being a slaveholder is a different matter. On October 16, 1883, The Chicago Historical Society received the first publication of “The Edwards Papers”, a portion of the collection of the letters, papers and manuscripts of Ninian Edwards by his son Ninian Wirt Edwards and edited by Elihu Washbourne, former Galena resident, Congressman and Secretary of State. The project was paid for by Marshall Field. Now is the time to revisit the primary sources for a scholarly review and to put signage at the statue to put Mr. Edwards total contributions into perspective.
Comment by Nitemayor Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 3:03 pm
“@- Candy Dogood - Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 11:50 am:
===now-disgraced statues in their collection===
One can actually make a museum or culture park for this specific purpose. There are quite a few in the former Soviet Union where statures are displayed on the ground at eye level and placed with information putting individuals in their context.”
Very well put. If we try to totally whitewash, willfully forget history or hide it away in some basement, then we risk current and future generations of our society failing to learn the lessons that history has to teach us.
Comment by Hieronymus Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 3:07 pm
A lot of statues and other monuments were erected as symbols of the Post-Reconstruction “Settlement” that authorized the Jim Crow system. There should be no problem in moving these to museums where they can be used as historical object lessons. But puritanical absolutism is always ugly, no matter the cause, so a sense of proportionality is important in all these deliberations. Otherwise, once certain NYC aldermen and others find out who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb, things are going to get messy.
By the way, have you considered that the objections to the statue of Grant in San Francisco may not be related to his being given a slave, but to his revival of the Indian Wars after the Civil War ended, and his failed policies towards Native Americans as President? (Just asking, no indirect inference to be imputed, okay?)
Comment by Comma Chameleon Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 3:11 pm
Correct me if I’m wrong. Didn’t Abraham Lincoln conduct a war of aggression and removal of Native Americans from their homeland during his presidency as commander in chief? Would this be classified as racism? If so, shouldn’t his statues come down? Wouldn’t the first 22 presidents all be guilty of this?
Comment by Johnjames Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 3:12 pm
In response to Johnjames,
Lincoln himself has a mixed record with regard to Native Americans during his Presidency. The Indian Wars subsided due to troops being needed elsewhere, but did not officially end, and Lincoln did not actively try to arrive at a general resolution. So some commanders on the ground engaged in very bad conduct, such as the Sand Creek Massacre. At the same time, Lincoln prevented the execution of several hundred Santee Sioux by rejecting their warrants for execution. So overall not the best record a President could have had, but not the worst, either.
Comment by Comma Chameleon Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 3:46 pm
The Dakota War of 1862 in Minnesota was brought about by the Indians choosing to go on the offensive against settlers. President Lincoln sent General Pope to put down the war. The results were bloody and ultimately a number of tribes were removed from Minnesota to the Dakotas.
Comment by Practical Politics Monday, Jun 22, 20 @ 7:46 pm
@Short Game interesting to hear you’re an Edwards relative still in the area. Have you reached out to the group at all? They might appreciate hearing from you.
Comment by Sheldon Tuesday, Jun 23, 20 @ 8:06 am