Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has drawn controversy for appointing Ann Hunter McLean of Richmond to the Virginia Board of Historic Resources. The board addresses issues of historic preservation in the state. Ann Hunter McLean has drawn fire for denouncing opponents of Confederate memorialization, saying that Virginia’s history is “under attack.” According to the Washington Post, Hunter McLean spoke about the removal of Confederate statues during an interview on a Virginia radio station:
“This whole tragedy is that these statues were built to tell the true story of the American South to people 500 years from now,” McLean said to a Richmond radio host on Dec. 23, 2021, after state archivists opened a time capsule found under the site where the statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee once stood on Monument Avenue. “People want to destroy the evidence of that story,” she continued, saying the Civil War was fought for the “sovereignty of each state and constitutional law.”
She has characterized those opposed to Confederate statues in public squares as “cultural Marxists” and Robert E. Lee as a “Christian soldier.”
In a July 18, 2022 WRVA radio interview Ann Hunter McLean said that the Constitution was “broken when Lincoln called up 75,000 troops to fight against secession,” ignoring the fact that the troops were mobilized after the Confederate forces had already been mobilized and had begun attacking Federal installations at sites including Fort Sumter. She also told the radio audience that Lincoln’s effort to preserve the Union and end slavery was akin to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine! Here is what she said::
“Invasion, just like we see Russia invading Ukraine, invading a new territory was wrong. And so many people want to just flatten the whole Civil War to slavery, and of course we know slavery is not good. But I think…slavery would have been outlawed in the South within 5 or 10 years, but they wanted to do it on their time.”
Her contention that slavery would have been ended in the South by 1866 (or 1871) is not supported by any evidence. The original seceding states announced that they were leaving the Union to preserve slavery and it is unlikely that they would see any reason to end the enslavement of Black people within a decade.
Ann Hunter McLean wrote a doctoral dissertation on Confederate monumentation in Richmond while she was an Art History doctoral student at the University of Virginia. A section of the dissertation is available here.
Hunter McLean refers to the Confederate statues on Monument Avenue in Richmond, and other Confederate memorialization as “Lost Cause” art and artifacts.
Although she now decries efforts to remove some Confederate monuments as an attack on the truthful telling of history, in her younger days Hunter McLean seems to have recognized the politics embedded in the statuary. She wrote that the monumentation was “evidence of mankind’s penchant for myth and tradition.
In her Introduction to her dissertation, Ann Hunter McLean says that the role of an art historian like herself is to “uncover the origins” of the works creation and the “factors which shaped it.”
Hunter McLean summarizes her assessment of the deeper meaning of the Confederate Avenue statuary. She wrote that “they reveal the dominance of a white, patriarchal, Protestant society and women’s willingness to uphold that societal norm.”
Ann Hunter McLean also saw the well-known stained glass windows at Blandford Church in Petersburg as part of the effort to bolster the “Lost Cause” and sanctify the Confederates.
Hunter McLean acknowledges that the Richmond Confederate monuments were “political statements,” not simply a truthful retelling of history.
The “modern social movements” Hunter McLean says that the monuments were designed to opposed included, at their core, the Black civil rights movement. She wrote that the monuments “testify to a societal condition, the lack of racial equality.” She argued that Confederate monuments “support Jim Crow laws which denied power to minorities.” Hunter McLean’s analysis is that the works are multivalent, but that racial supremacy is an aspect of them.
Hunter McLean’s 2021 statement that “these statues were built to tell the true story of the American South to people 500 years from now” would not have been supported by Hunter McLean circa 1998.
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The argument in the above post-
“He(r) contention that slavery would have been ended in the South by 1866 (or 1871) is not supported by any evidence. The original seceding states announced that they were leaving the Union to preserve slavery and it is unlikely that they would see any reason to end the enslavement of Black people within a decade.”
I am not going to enter into comment in any other aspect of the post above at this time. Keeping with the issue of Confederate emancipation, the above line provided in quotes is disproven with a high amount of primary evidence.
It fails to openly concede that per the terms of the near-clinched 1862 Confederate Emancipation Treaty between the South and France and Britain, all Black Americans who would otherwise be born into bondage in the CSA were to be freed from the date of the Treat’s signing.
Very clearly, this was far from an ‘ideal or perfect’ end to the institution of slavery, (the best result would indisputably have been for it never to have existed). In no uncertain terms can it be debated that a measure of fair and balanced criticism be put to this emancipation measure.
At the same time, it ought be noted that this process of Emancipationism, not Abolitionism, was the means by which slavery came to an end in a high number of Northern states by about the end of the 18th Ce. In other words, such a measure of historical criticism to such manumission methods ought to likewise just as much impinge upon the North in any discussion. That the Treaty was never clinched is like to be disclosed openly, but the fact that the South was willing to enter into it is proof that claims the South would never have given up slavery are false.
As well, the 1864 Duncan F. Kenner Mission, launched in that year’s December, came much closer to success. This would have seen each individual state of the CSA abolish slavery within its state constitution, (exactly like Maryland did in November of 1864 or Missouri did in January of 1865 within the Union, in advance of the 13th Amendment).
When Duncan F. Kenner met with Napoleon III in Paris in the new year, the Emperor accepted the terms and agreed to recognise the South, provided that Britain recognised the South first. By the time that Kenner gained an audience in February with the British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, it was clear the North was going to prevail and would not relent until this happened. Palmerston could see no gains for Britain and its Empire from further angering the North and informed Kenner that not even emancipation could impel British recognition.
While neither measure was ultimately successful, they nevertheless prove that the common line of argument the South was absolutely committed to slavery is incorrect. This is not to hagiograph such measures in any way, (it is impossible to hagiograph the end of American slavery in any context).
The Confederacy did not need a treaty to abolish slavery. It could have been done entirely domestically if it was desired. Not only was slavery not abolished across the Confederacy, not a single state in the Confederacy abolished slavery.
In addition, Article I Section 9(4) of the Confederate Constitution said: “No…law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.” A treaty does not modify a Constitutional provision.
No, the CSA didn’t technically need a treaty to abolish slavery; the fact of the matter was that that emancipation was almost achieved by design and intention in this manner by as early as around Christmas of 1861, as announced in the British press. The 1862 treaty would have convened trade and recognition of Confederate sovereignty by Britain and France in exchange for long term emancipation in the pre-stated terms.
Is it true that the Confederates had as much political considerations in this as anything of noble intent? Certainly, exactly as Lincoln did in seeking to ‘re-take the lead’ from the South on this measure to prevent British/French recognition.
And pressing that these measures were not ultimately passed is really an argumentative means of trying to minimise any concession about the inaccuracy of a long-standing falsehood; that the CSA was ‘permanently and absolutely’ committed to slavery, and to deny the fact that, exactly as the reality of slavery was the responsibility of all sections of the country, so, too, is the credit for ending it.
Harriet Beecher Stowe very publicly stated that the Confederates may well be the first to turn to emancipation early in the war, and we know the Union government took this possibility very seriously.
Not to mention that the South was willing to annex the Mexican provinces of Nuevo León and Coahuila, governed by the uncompromising Abolitionist, Santiago Vidaurri, as free territories within Texas.
They might have been annexed as slave areas and a law passed by the Texas Legislature would have immediately rendered them off-limits to slavery.
Which brings me to the next point; the aforesaid Constitutional tenet in the CSA ONLY pertained to federal measures; that is, the NATIONAL Confederate government could never pass any law that interfered with slavery, and this only pertained to things within the jurisdiction of the national Confederate government.
Emancipation was the pertain of the Confederate states; there was nothing to force them to KEEP slavery within their state constitutions.
W/o the Confederacy making the first moves, and others it did, to seek emancipation, emancipation at all would likely never have been sought out by the Union to counter. All of America is to share in the credit for ending slavery in an intertwined, if begrudged, narrative.
I am glad to see someone telling the truth, as far as the statues I see no reason to visit Virginia. I hope I can find away to save this artical.
Thank you