Earlier this month, Washington and Lee University, as part of its contrived efforts to keep using the names of two American icons who also were slaveholders while continuing to grovel to the political correctness mob, removed markers erected in memory of Robert E. Lee’s famous horse, Traveller. The steed’s gravestone was removed (he’s buried on the campus), and a commemorative plaque came down as well.
Traveller carried Lee during the Civil War and later, when the ex-general became president of the then-Washington College from 1865 until his death in 1871. Traveller died a few months after his owner. But newly uncovered documents revealed that Traveller was a virulent racist, and worse, kept a stable of enslaved Shetland ponies on the Washington and Lee campus.
Okay, I was kidding about that last part.
“Traveller was a beloved part of the campus story,” wrote Kamron Spivey, president of Students for Historical Preservation, in an email to The College Fix, which reported on this ridiculous story. “People like to hear tales about animals because they do no wrong. That is how Traveller has been immortalized in campus history,” Spivey said. “He was a faithful horse whose beauty and loyalty Robert E. Lee said would inspire poets. Until this month, very few people seemed bothered by the horse.”
Few people were bothered by references to a famous Civil War general’s horse on campus??? Talk about being “un-woke”! Thank goodness the school has such a wise and perceptive administration that has the courage to place such historical poison in proper perspective.
Apparently there is a silly W&L tradition of leaving apples on Traveller’s grave as well as Lincoln pennies heads-down, so Abe can “kiss Traveller’s ass.” Can’t have that!
And The Great Stupid keeps rolling over this once-great land…
Ethics Alarms 
The apples are great.
Take it away, Flounder: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=horse+scene+in+animal+house&view=detail&mid=8D1B41CFCF3828C61A248D1B41CFCF3828C61A24&FORM=VIRE
“Holy Shit!”
People also leave pennies on the grave of Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia because of his “A penny saved is a penny earned”.
And on the unmarked grave of John Wilkes Booth in Baltimore…for different reasons, of course.
They’re still not certain that the blank headstone is JWB’s. And there are still skeptics who belive it wasn’t his body anyway.
Wasn’t he shot dead by a castrato?
I am so sick and tired of all the delusional wokeness, it’s as if it’s an infectious disease spreading across to weak minded people across the USA.
What’s happening in the US nowadays is very reminiscent of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and today’s social justice warriors are eerily similar to Mao’s red guard. Trump was just the excuse to unleash what the left has been preparing for long time. Trump is the left’s USS Maine
Mao’s red guard. Good analogy. Of course, it may not be analogous, it may be one and the same. So many social justice warriors are Commies.
Other Bill wrote, “So many social justice warriors are Commies.”
True, however, they are too damned ignorant to know what they’ve become and it’s quite obvious when these communist totalitarians openly call anyone that opposes them Nazi’s and racists. That kind of ignorance probably can’t be fixed because it’s pure cultish indoctrination that corrupted their mind. That kind of corrupted mind has to be reprogrammed. I knew a couple of cult members back in High School that had to go through intense deprogramming and they were still pretty f’ed up after.
All true, Steve. Just incredibly ironic. Their thinking is so shaped by Marxist thought, they can’t see it for what it is. They think it’s reality. But I guess that’s just the definition of a zealot.
The real shame is that such historical monuments present a perfect opportunity for education and understanding, but when the monument is gone, so is that opportunity.
When I was at the Bear Paw Monument several year ago, there was a sign that explained the use of the term, “Hostile Indians”. It said, in effect, that the term was in an historical context as a term that was used for Native Americans during the 19th century, and that (because of the Historic Preservation Act of 1966), the sign cannot be changed to reflect modern social norms.
This may not be the best example of how these monuments can serve educational and remembrance purposes, but destroying or hiding them away serves a much different educational purpose, albeit unintended. Memory hole ring any bells?
A further comment, since this removal is the kind of thing that I hate.
Should we seek out every plaque and monument commemorating the 7th Cav? After all, that was the unit that pursued Chief Joseph through the ancestral lands of Native Americans until he finally gave up and said (in a memorable speech), “I will fight no more forever”.
Should we obliterate every reference everywhere to Oliver Otis Howard who led the 7th Cav in that campaign, never mind that he founded Howard University?
Should we travel the Natchez Trace, as I have done, and walk some of the pathways, rich with the graves of Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War, and then decide all of those graves should be plowed under to remove those tributes to ‘evil’ men? And, if so, should we also plow under the slave graveyards because they also commemorate a part of our history that is offensive?
My god, where do you stop?
p.s. As a sort of afterthought, there is a sort of tradition of leaving a coin on the gravestone of a fallen soldier (and I saw a lot on the Natchez Trace). The meaning varies, but, one source says a penny just says you were there at the grave, a nickel indicates you had some common time with the deceased, a dime says you served together, and a quarter says you were there at the time the buried soldier was killed. Well, heck, let’s just sweep up all those coins and use them to help, I don’t know, someone.
It’s now thought that Chief Joseph’s speech was bs, written later by the soldier tasked with recording the surrender. And believe me, some people would love to do just what you said and more. One of my doctors is Korean and told me that in Seoul there is a big square with statues to Sejong the Great, who was a king in Korea in the 1400s and invented the native alphabet, among other things, and Yi Sun-Sim, an admiral from the 1500s who was the first to use armored ships, but the folks who escape from North Korea have never heard of either of them, or anyone worthy of honor except Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. That’s the world the left wants now, where you would never even have heard of Columbus or Washington, and the only people you’d think worthy of honor would be Obama and Hillary.
I read about this a few days ago. The cancellation of Lee at Washington and Lee University has a special meaning for our family. My grandmother donated a Matthew Brady photo of Lee at Appomattox before his buttons were removed from his coat. My grandmother was a Van Dorn and those from northern Virginia may know the history of the Van Dorn family. The photo came to her through that lineage.
I have the understanding that because it was a Matthew Brady image which is why that photo, apart from the subject matter, was of keen interest to the University. Before that photo was restored a photo of the unrestored photo was taken which was handed down from my grandmother to my mother. When she passed, I asked that I take custody of that artifact to prevent another brother from having the ability to destroy it; we could not trust him to preserve it. That photo hangs with honor in my home not because he was a confederate soldier but because he was a man of honor and service. People do not have to agree with his politics, but his statesmanship and leadership cannot be in dispute. Personally, I would be more inclined to learn life lessons from Lee than Grant or McClellan.
Washington and Lee University profited from that photo as they had the rights to sell copies of the image. I only wish I had the legal means to demand the return of the original image. I still have the letter of thanks from the University for my grandmother’s donation.
Great story, Chris. Thanks.
If it hadn’t been for Lee telling Confederates to lay down their arms, who knows how long the likely insurgency would have lasted. It may have even succeeded.
If the South had had the industrial might it has today, and standard gauge rail the north would have likely lost. I would venture a guess that slavery would have become economically inefficient by 1890 with the development of the internal combustion engine. Advances in technology would have required far fewer agricultural workers.
“I would venture a guess that slavery would have become economically inefficient by 1890 with the development of the internal combustion engine. Advances in technology would have required far fewer agricultural workers.”
If I remember my US History correctly, wasn’t the need for far fewer agricultural workers the reason slavery pretty much disappeared in the South after the development of the cotton gin? 😉
The cotton gin was the beginning of that transition.
Human labor will continue to be displaced by emerging technologies and unless that labor is retrained to perform higher skill tasks the use of that labor will be discontinued.
Whitney’s gin may have initially facilitated the demand for slaves because it permitted the cultivation of green seed cotton in the interior of Georgia. The cleaning of green seed cotton was harder to clean than the black seed variety grown on the coast. Whitney and his partners got screwed over because the gin was easy to pirate by planters. The gin did not facilitate the harvesting of cotton for which slaves were utilized.