The Daily Stoic - Author Connor Towne O’Neill On the Battle to Shape History

Episode Date: December 9, 2020

On today’s episode, Ryan talks to a fellow Southern transplant, writer Conor Towne O’Neill. They nerd out over their mutual fascination with the ghosts of American history that linger in the South, and how their presence looms in the Confederate monuments that even now, unconscionably, still stand on American soil.Connor Towne O’Neill is an author and journalist based in Alabama. His new book, Down Along with That Devil's Bones: A Reckoning with Monuments, Memory, and the Legacy of White Supremacy, follows the protests and battles that surrounded recent attempts to remove monuments to Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. O’Neill has also written for New York magazine, Vulture, Slate, and the Village Voice.This episode is brought to you by Native. Native makes amazing, all-natural deodorants, and they have some great new holiday-themed scents to make this time of year more festive. Native is risk-free to try, too. Every product has free shipping within the US, and free 30 day returns and exchanges. With service like that, it’s easy to see why Native has over 14,000 5 star reviews. Visit NativeDeo.com/stoic or use promo code STOIC at checkout to receive 20% off your first order—and be sure to order by 12/7 to receive everything by Christmas.This episode is also brought to you by Optimize, the membership that guides you on the path to living right. Optimize offers services like Philosopher Notes, six-page condensed reviews of insightful nonfiction books like Epictetus’s Discourses, Ryan’s The Obstacle Is the Way, and more. Members also get access to 101 video Master Classes, each one an intensive taught by experts about a particular topic. Visit optimize.me/dailystoic and get your first fourteen days free, plus 10% off your membership with discount code STOIC.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Connor Towne O’Neill:Homepage: https://www.connortowneoneill.space/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/connortowne/Twitter: https://twitter.com/towneoneillSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoke. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. of necessary for living good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward.

Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. Tyler Cowan, one of my favorite people in the whole world. He has this great line. He says, sometimes at the beginning of his episodes, he says, this is the interview that I want to have, not the interview that you want to have. And so I, as I was telling my guests today,

I am a huge civil war nerd. I am a adopted southerner. I'm fascinated by American history. I'm fascinated by moral complexity. You'll notice that's why my books are filled with stories of Ulysses S. Grant and Abraham Lincoln and William to come to Sherman and Tom's Jefferson and George Washington. So it's just that this is the sea that I swim in. I'm fascinated by it. You know, I wrote my, Conor Town O'Neill is the author of a new book, which I loved, called

Down Along with That Devil's Bones, a reckoning with monuments, memory, and the legacy of white supremacy. It's basically a book about basic Conor studies, all these interesting confederate statues, particularly monuments of Nathan Bedford Forest all throughout the South. And he uses that as a story to tell sort of the struggle with the monstrosity of slavery, the Jim Crow, the moral dilemma and haunted past of American history. And that's a thing I'm fascinated with. But you'll see not just for its own

sake, but I think it teaches us a lot about who and how we struggle with complexity and nuance. And as Updance and Claire says that, you know, the things we don't want to understand because our salary depends on us, not understanding them. So this is a great book. Connor is a producer, the NPR podcast, White Lies, which is a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He's graduate from Vassar. He earned an MFA from the University of Alabama. And he teaches now at Auburn University. It's a great book. You should check it out. This is a fascinating conversation much more than you'll expect. And we end with a little digression about an ongoing controversy at Brown University. They're trying to pull down a statue of Marcus Realis. So the debate that happens in one place applies to another. Check out Connor's book

down along with that Devil's bones, fascinatingly cool title, if I must say so. It sounds like a be a great blues album or something too. Down along with that Devil's bones are reckoning with mind human's memory and the legacy of white supremacy. Conor town O'Neill, he told me this was his favorite interview he's done on the whole press tour, which I took to be high praise. And I think you'll like it. It sounds like it's been a busy year for you.

You said, so you put out a book during a pandemic. Yeah. You had a kid and you had to postpone your wedding. Yeah, it was, 20 joining was shaping up to be a big year. And I suppose it was just in ways that I had no way of anticipating. So it turned into a courthouse wedding and then a week in the hospital that was totally locked down. I think I spent about 15 minutes outside during that week while I was meeting my daughter. Then now the book is out and what would be a book tour has been mostly just me sitting

here and talking into this microphone. So you're telling me you didn't want to celebrate your lifelong commitment with your spouse by hosting a Super spreader event. Is that what I'm going to do? That's right. That would have, I think that would have put a bit of a damper on on the festivities. We had a, we had a very nice walk down to the, the, the courthouse and then cheers with a, a shared bottle of soda on the sidewalk afterwards. I was just reading in the news this morning that I'm also an adopted southerner. Like you, Austin is sort of a weird mix of like the South and the not South, but the mayor

of Austin was caught warning everyone in Austin to stay home and not go anywhere. And he did this from his vacation house in Cabo Senlucas, which he traveled to with his family after his daughter had a wedding and out of wedding for 20 people, including out of town guests and an out of town photographer. So there's a loveliness to all this. Yeah, I mean, I think it really is. Revealing the fact that even people who maybe have good intentions

still sort of think like, this is a thing that's happening, but it's not something that might happen to me. It's like watching a movie, almost, like watching this happen to other people and expressing concern about it But but it it if it never sort of punctures your life in any real way it does I suppose it can feel like it's just something that happens to other people Well, what I I First moved to the South I guess this would have been in 2011

I moved to New Orleans and I was writing my first book and I felt I like I don't know I maybe I had this kind of idea of what the sort of writerly life would like would be like. And there really wasn't a better place to write a book than somewhere like New Orleans where there's these big oak trees. And I was living in a house built in the early 1800s. And there's something really special about that sort of, it's like, almost that like, it's almost like history and humidity are going hand in hand.

And there's something to that, I feel like. Oh, for sure. It does, it seems to sort of hang in the air. I have, I know what you're talking about there. There's a, there's a certain smell that you get in the winter here that has, I think, has something to do with all the pine trees and the way that the humidity sort of keeps the smell sort of lingering a little bit more.

And I associate it so firmly with winter generally, but especially like sort of like on long car trips, you know, reporting through the south and that particular smell is just so evocative. My favorite little thing about those trees is like, you know, you drive on, it never occurred to me, for instance, living in LA, going to college in LA, that like the 10 freeway that you're on, you can take all the way basically to the Atlantic Ocean. But when you sort of enter the South, like right when you sort of go through Beaumont,

you enter Louisiana. To me, that's when you're fully entering the South. That Texas is like half South, half not South. But as soon as you cross over the river into Louisiana, I feel like you're in the South, but I love those pine trees that are sort of along the highway. Do you see them along all the roads? My favorite thing when I first moved to the Southwest

was that, you know, you get this sensor in this sort of thick wood. And then I forget how I saw it, but there was something, and you're like, oh, this like row of trees is like Three trees deep and then it's just like farms on the other side, you know, like there's this This there's this depth to the South and I think this goes to your book, which I'm really excited to talk about But but but there's also kind of a I don't want to say a superficiality

But it's like you scratch the surface and it's not exactly what it seems. Oh yeah, there's all number of things lurking under lurking under the surface of something. I think that's definitely true. Like in college towns to these big SEC schools, I'll have this facade, the pristine Greek revival buildings and the well manicured quad. But then there are these very strange and fascinating towns

that are lurking sort of just past the campuses. Yeah, and that's, you know, I grew up in northern California in Sacramento, so not even like the historic part of the suburbs of Sacramento, so not even like, you know, that sort of San Francisco vibe, but that was another thing that sort of hits you in the south is like, even those expressions, like the other side of the tracks, it's like, oh, that like vividly exists here. And you can kind of feel tracks. It's like, oh, that like vividly exists here. And you can kind of feel it.

You know, when the stuff with George Floyd happened in the middle of the year, I reread Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. And there's that scene where they're visiting what is like the Tuskegee Institute basically. And you know, he takes the sort of the rich donor for like a ride, which he's not supposed to do. But it's just, it's your point about college shounds. It's just like, it's like 500 yards outside the manicured lawns of the Institute

is the real shit basically. Yeah, right, right, exactly. Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned the wrong side of the tracks. So like you, I'm a transplant to the south. And when I moved to Tuscaloosa back in 2013, I moved into this sort of sprawling bungalow that was right on the train tracks. Like a butt of the train tracks.

And I lived on the west end of Tuscaloosa, which is historically the sort of a black neighborhood. And it just became very clear like, oh, that train track is absolutely the dividing line. And yeah, I mean, I think that that was a big lesson of moving here. And certainly in reporting the book is that the issues that I'm wrestling with this book, I think are issues that are present across the country and these Confederate monuments are one particular expression of them.

But it does seem that things float a little bit closer to the surface in the south, especially issues of race. And it's a little bit darker. Like the contrast has been turned up a little bit more here. Yeah, I remember. So when we first moved to New Orleans, obviously, that was very different for us. And New Orleans is one of those cities for sort of everything that's kind of stacked right on top of each other.

It's like you're in the garden district, but if you look down one of the streets, you can see not just projects, but you can see like the sirens in the project. And I remember when we moved to Austin, you know, we moved to the east side of Austin, which was 15 years ago, you know, a totally different thing.

Eight, nine years ago when we moved here, it was still sort of in it, let's call it transition. But I remember sort of being very cautioned by people as we thought about moving there. And it was like, we're coming from New Orleans. Like, none of what you're hinting at actually bothers me. And I like. And, but I remember sort of really, I was looking at the geography of the city as a, you

know, a totally foreign city to me. I hadn't spent that much time there. And it was like, why did Austin expand in all these different areas? And yet there's this area that's like closer to downtown, closer to all the things I want, then all these other places. Why is this, why is this the area that's only now, you know, gentrifying to use that word? And it was like, Oh, this was the segregated area of town. And I ended up meeting a guy named Richard Overtino I've talked about before, who at that time was one of the oldest men in the town. And I ended up meeting a guy named Richard Overton, who I've talked about before, who at that time was one of the oldest men in the world.

And it's like, he built his house in the 40s. And it was like, this was the only place he could build his house. And so I think there's also in the South, and we're gonna talk about the Civil War, people think a lot of these things from the South are like the Civil War that people think a lot of these things from the South are like the Civil War that was a long time ago. And it's like, it wasn't a long time ago. It was the

legacy of these things was up until very, very recently. And you know, someone like Richard who was, you know, forced to live in a historical or sorry in a segregated neighborhood. This is a guy born in 1906 who would have known many people who had survived slavery. That's one person's life. Like I got involved with the there's a civil war or a Confederate statue down the down the down the street from my office. I live in a town called Bastrop now. And when I was talking to people about it, I was like, I know you think this is a really long time ago, but this was put up before a guy I know, or sorry, was put up after a guy I know was born. Like, you gotta wrap your head around that.

Right, yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's not quite in living memory, but it's sort of just outside, just outside of the reach of living memory, which is close. And I think it's all of the, we're still living with so many of the consequences of it. There's a writer I really like, a guy named Wiley Cash,

who has this sort of theory of storytelling, where, you know, if you imagine a pond and someone were to throw a rock into the center of the pond, the rock hits, you hear the water splash and then the ripples come out. And you want whatever story you tell to have a rich backstory, things lurking in the past that have sent ripples out. And you'll pick up the story with the ripples. But there's movement and there's backstory of that rock hitting.

And I think that we're just a ripple or two out from that rock. If the rock is a civil war, I think we're very much still living in its wake. Yeah, and I had Edward Ball in the podcast a few months ago. He wrote a life of a clansman. And you get this. I think one of the, as someone who was fascinated by the Civil War and my books are filled with Civil War stories, you, one of the weird parts of the lost cause myth,

and I'm in the middle of a certain deep dive into the Civil Rights movement is like, we kind of told ourselves a story that these people who fought super, super hard to, you know, secede from the union to preserve slavery. They didn't just magically change their mind at the end of the war, right? Like, I read this book by Albeon Torhe, I'm sure I'm pronouncing it wrong. He was the, you know, a sort of civil rights activist. He was one of the lawyers in the Pleistee V Ferguson case He has this novel called the Fools errand about a northern or moving to

the South after the Civil War. He was a veteran and anyways He has this line in the book somewhere where he goes like slave like he's like We know slavery is illegal, but we didn't, we're not admitting it was wrong, you know, and I think that that really changed how I started to understand the South. It was like, oh, yeah, of course, these people accepted at the point of a gun that a certain thing had changed, but it took several generations for them to change their mind about the morality of the way of life. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I think what becomes so revealing when you start to look at the documents

to the the Civil War and maybe more talentally in the lead up to the Civil War era, you know, Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stevens, the Vice President of the Confederacy, are, and you know, any number of other people are really telling anyone who will listen in the lead up to the war that this is not just explicitly about slavery, about maintaining a slave system and being able to expand it into the West, but that they are in no uncertain terms, justifying that physical and spiritual torture of the slave system. They're justifying that idea on the belief that the men and women that they're enslaving

are inherently inferior, right? This is the stamped from the beginning line of Davises or that in a religious way, in a spiritual way, their souls are inferior. And so, even though Lincoln is going to claim that every drop drawn by the lash will be repaid by the sword, the Civil War really turns out to be a military victory, but not an ideological victory. And so that lie that they're using to justify slavery, this lie of white supremacy is going to live on long after Appomattox. Yeah, it's kind of a shame, too, the way we study the Civil War, either we study very simplistically on one end, is a war to free free-the-slaves or it was a war

in Northern Aggression, or it's almost like our newer narrative, this is sort of more the woke narrative, like they were all racist, they were all terrible, Lincoln was a racist, Grant was a racist, and there's truth to that, but to me, it's sort of the ultimate morality tale. It's this almost Shakespearean drama of how a society becomes corrupted by evil. And how complicated a nuance that evil is.

Like, I think what's so fascinating and maybe we don't talk about enough of you curious, your take is like, when you read most of the founders talking about slavery, there's this, there's this, although they certainly profited from it and certainly were complicit in it, there is for the most part, like a sense of conflictedness, there's a sort of a moral ambivalence about it. There's almost a resentment. I mean, in Jefferson, you get almost a resentment towards the British for bringing the institution here to begin with, and then the way of life being so dependent on it. It's fascinating that in essentially a hundred years, less than a hundred years, let's call it 50 to 70 years. 50 to 70 years. The institution manages, because the cognitive dissonance about it is so strong, you watch the

same country go from, we don't like this, we're going to gradually get rid of it, we know that it's somewhat hypocritical, given our stated ideals. ideals to this is a good thing. It should be expanded. If you even dare question this institution, you're a trader, and we're willing to destroy the country explicitly to preserve this institution, which we're not even morally conflicted about, but we now think is somehow a system of good. Do you know what I mean? It's a fascinating moral trajectory. Yeah, well, I think it's useful to think about how even though that's what the Constitution will enshrine, the convention and the points of view of the framers, they're not speaking with one voice.

I think if abolitionists at the convention or in the 18th century were to force the issue more then, it might not have happened at all. I think there was a vested interest even then by many of the founding fathers to go to the mats for slavery. And so you get compromises. I mean, all down the line, you can read the series of compromises,

things like three, three, fifth, three compromises. That's right. The Kansas Nebraska Act, the Fugitive's Flav Act, you know, the Missouri Compromise. three-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-f-th-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-fifth-f-ifth-f-th-f-th-f-th-f-f-f-f-th-f-th-f-f-f-th or in a civil war, as a series of compromises about what the country is going to do with about slavery. Yeah, it's a fascinating thing. And I think what's interesting, too, is that I think you're right to point out how

that it was not lost on them, what a contradiction. And really, to a certain extent, what a betrayal of the stated ideals of the country were. And I think when you come at it with that frame of mind, it really just goes to show how persuasive, how firmly people cling to profits. That is what's underlying this and driving so much of this. It's one thing to say, to profits, right? I mean, that's, that is what's underlying this and driving so much of this. I mean, it's one thing to say, to wonder, oh, you know, look into his heart and try and figure out if he's racist or not.

I think what's more telling and more revealing is they had profits to protect. And that's gonna be such a big motivator. And I think it's, you know, one way of reading the ideas of race that are driven by slavery and driven by this slave system in America is using race as a way of hoarding resources, a way of hoarding land, a way of hoarding opportunity, a way of hoarding well, and affording some people a sense of psychological superiority, but at the end of the day, it's a way of protecting

the interests of the wealthy. Yeah, I guess what I'm saying a little bit is like, how the, I'm just curious in sort of how moral contradiction works in the individual, right? So like when Lincoln says, you know, a house divided against itself cannot stand. He means like, you can't be half free has slave. I think that's right.

But I also think that's true. It's insidious how the mind works, right? The mind is not good at too conflicting beliefs, even if they're both true. And so we deceive ourselves with certainties or we fool ourselves, right? So I think it's like, you know, early on in the country, in someone like Jefferson, you have this sort of torn.

It's like he knows it's wrong. He knows what's right. And then he looks at what the entire, his entire system and wealth is built upon and he struggles with it, right? But that struggle can't exist very long in a human being. And so I think you watch a lot of these racial ideas get hardened in the American consciousness in that period, like from 1776 to, you know, let's say 1846, it's that period where instead of going, this is a contradiction let's solve for the contradiction by eliminating the obvious evil. What you see is a good chunk of the country insidiously managed to convince themselves

at what they're doing is not evil and it's not only not evil, it's somehow heroic or glamorous or beautiful. Do you know what I mean? It's the way that it's like the way we manage to convince ourselves against what deep down we must know at some intuitive human level. We manage to convince ourselves so we don't have to give up what makes us money or what's easiest or you know, I don't it's like they're so we don't have to give up what makes us money or what's easiest or, you know, I don't, it's like they're like, I don't want to pick the cotton or, you know, process the sugar cane. And so they convince themselves that actually, this is the way it has to be done.

Right. Yeah. I think that's a great point. And it shows up, right? Like, we did these, you know, this narrative that enslaved Africans are inherently inferior, right, a lesser species, and Christians can sort of, you know, help them along, and that very sort of, that paternalistic justification, I think, is the way to square the circle. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's like the,

the Uptonston Clare line, it's impossible to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on him not understanding it. And I think, you know, it's like, there's a reason the North had, and Lincoln, I think, most empathetically understands this. Lincoln goes, well, you're able to see it because it's not as costly for you to see, right? Like, it doesn't really, but by the 1850s, it doesn't really cost Boston anything directly

to say slavery is bad and shouldn't exist anywhere. Although ironically, all their banks were capitalized by it and they're caught in their trading. And the majority of the entrepreneurs are against emancipation even at the outbreak of the war. Yeah, yeah, it's fat. Well, this idea of profit getting the way is interesting. I was thinking of this analogy.

I heard a podcast where Ezra Klein was talking about, you know, what is the future gonna think about, you know, our relationship with meat, right? Like, let's say in the future, all meat is going in the laboratory. There's a scenario where it seems incredibly barbaric that we had factories that slaughtered animals that were raised, you know, exclusively for the purpose

of being eaten, right? Yeah. And that's gonna seem very strange. And I was thinking about that. It's like, so I live on a little farm out here in Texas. I don't have a ton of property, but I have some cows and every couple of months we sell the babies. And it's a thing.

It doesn't make me money, but it's like there's a tax benefit, too. It's a whole thing. The point being, I did something that at the time was totally legal, right? Like I spent my life savings on a piece of property, on some animals, this is how I do it. I could see where someone, again, if you've already done the cognitive dissonance

of convincing yourself that it's not evil. Now there's this political thing happening where everything you, it's like you bought into a system where the following things were allowed. And now that's threatened. And on the other side, the people who are saying like, this shouldn't be allowed, Ryan, you can't have this farm. You gotta sell your cows, you're a monster for doing it. It doesn't cost them anything to say this because they, you know, they're not, they didn't put their leg.

So, you can see how, you know, these sort of people bought into this whole system then it felt like the rules were changing. And what I learned in Edward Ball's book too was it became there was this immense social pressure in the South to like buy Confederate currency. And like, it's like, it's like they got caught up in a giant scam, basically, that benefited a very small percentage of the population. And then they couldn't get out of it without admitting that they were, they were swindled. Do you know what I mean?

Right, not just that they, right. I think that's right, not just, but not just that they were swindled, but that what they were, they were embarked on a project that was barbaric. Yeah, that they did, they were swindled and in being swindled. Like, look, I don't think Hitler obviously swindled Germany, right?

Like Hitler was a horrible human being, a demagogue who, you know, wound up a small percentage of the population that ends up forcibly, you know, overthrowing the democratic institution of the day. And, and then, you know, people sort of go along with that. But to admit that you were a supporter of that, that you were swindled, and then because you were swindled, you were complicit in the barbarism of that thing. I think that's just too much for the average person to bear.

Yeah, but I think that goes a long way to underscoring the really pernicious nature of American notions of race, because I think the distinction to make, of course, is that you're not just invested in a business opportunity that you stand to gain all these money in, but you're not just invested in a business opportunity that you stand to gain all these money in, but you're also getting, you're also afforded this sense of psychological superiority, right? So white southerners who were not slaveholders still had a vested interest in a worldview,

in an organization of a society that kept them at a higher peg in the hierarchy. And this is what WB Du Bois calls the wages of whiteness, so that you are, it's not solely, though in large part it is, a monetary thing, a financial thing. It is also at the same time this psychological thing, so that one might take up arms to protect the South and defend the right to hold slaves, even if you yourself didn't hold slaves, because that system was built on a broader organization of society that would benefit you. Well, that goes to me. I think one of the interesting parts of the book is that you sort of note, and it's

a distinction I didn't really thought about before, but it's like, you have Robert E. Lee on the one hand, and Robert E. Lee is the sort of the apotheosis of the confederacy. He's not even living in the same universe as Nathan Bedford for us. Like, they would not have been social friends in any universe except in the war, right? Even though Nathan Bedford forest becomes sort of rich, it's like Bedford forest is the populist sort of slave owner general.

Robert E. Lee is the patrician, you know, sort of maybe even wrestling a little bit internally with the ethics of slavery. But there is this diversity in the sort of common cause there that gets brushed over. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, and you know, right, so Forrest is sort of new money, you know, he was born into sort of dirt floor poverty. His family owns some property, but so he wasn't, you know, sort of dirt floor poverty. His family owned some property,

but so he wasn't sort of lowest of the low. But yeah, I mean, born pretty poor, scrappy childhood, and becomes by some counts, one of the richest men in the South by the outbreak of the war by being a slave trader. So he is this new money thing, and you're right, the petitions would sort of the Southern gentleman,

or plantation owners even, would turn their nose up at that. You know, you were sort of two, you were two implicated in the system, even if everyone else was taking part of it too. But yeah, right. So, and it's not just the Southern gentleman thing, but Lee goes to West Point as a lot of the General's North and South had. Forest hardly went to school at all. He's not unlettered, but he's not, you know, he's certain by no means well read or prolific in his writings, in his letters. So yeah, I mean, he does have this more blue collar edge to him.

You know, one of his biographers calls him a natural man, the most man in the world. He does fit with their sort of obvious echoes in the present, this disdain for expertise and a love for a more, like you say, kind of populist, grittier, someone, someone ghost figure. No, and I wanna get to the statues in a second, but I think, because I read,

I think the biography you used in your book, I'm forgetting who it's by, but the sort of the classic biography of Jack Hurst. Jack Hurst, by everything. When I read that, but the sort of the classic biography. Yeah, Jack Hurst. Jack Hurst by everything. When I read that, I couldn't escape the conclusion that he was just a fucking psychopath. Like, wasn't, like, was not even, like, I mean, he, like, killed several of his own soldiers in duels

and was a slay, like, was there's a big difference between being a slave owner and a slave trader, especially then when it's, you know, is illegal. in like was a slay like was there's a big difference between being a slave owner and a slave trader. Yeah. Especially then when it's you know is illegal in some you know to some degree like I mean he was a he was a murderous a social like animal basically for my reading. Yeah yeah I mean I think he you would not have you you would not have wanted to get on the wrong side of him or get close to him really. I mean, I think he was just volatile, violent, depraved. But yeah, you know, and I actually start the book, you know, after

a bit of an introduction to sort of set up what this book is about. I started with this scene of him, laid on in the war, pacing, his cavalry troop is in camp and he's pacing around, almost kind of into a trance, it just kind of hypnotizes himself by walking and one of his soldiers comes up to him to just, you know, talk to him about something and he just punches him without breaking stride, just knocks him unconscious with a single blow. That's what a psychopath would be. Yeah.

And so I very much wanted to, you know, like, you know, there's the Hearst biography, there's a number of other biographies. I wanted to avoid sort of the pitfalls of one version of what this book could have been, which is much more biographical about Forrest, but I did want to give a sort of biographical snippet right at the beginning of the book just to cast that shadow. Like, this is who this guy was. It's so fascinating too.

Like, it's really a, I'm cursing a lot of this episode. It's really kind of a mind-fuck the way that like, okay, so if you ask your average person who doesn't know much about the Civil War, Nathan Bedford Forest, maybe they know he's this cavalry commander or maybe they know they've seen the statues over from the south, but then it's like, and what about Sherman? And they're like, well, Sherman's a monster, you know? And it's like, how did you manage to take a guy who was actually successful in the Civil War? And I was strategically, you know, sort of brilliant and actually managed to pull the thing off.

And does so, I mean, War is hell, as he says, Sherman's a hero of mine. You know, sort of says War is hell, but for the most part, you know, is not guilty of these heinous war crimes, the way that someone like Forrest is. And then Forrest somehow manages to, because of the lost cosm mythology, get statues all over the South. I mean, it's a very strange how, and I think this goes to the cognitive dissonance, the way that people were managed to be convinced afterwards that up is down and down is up and good is bad and bad is good. It's like, you have to

really read like dozens of books and really dig into this to like to come close to the truth. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think it points up how so much of what we take for being history is really more memory, right? So in the South, Sherman is thought of for, you know, his March the Sea, that total war approach, you know, generations of southerners, white southerners anyway, raising kids to shake their fists at Sherman, that bastard who burnt our crops. And then turning a blind eye to everything that forest was implicated in, but admire his heroics and his shrewd military tactics.

Yeah, I mean, but of course that's what memory does, right? Memory is ideological. Memory is about reinforcing certain tenants of our identity and not taking a more comprehensive or complicated and more comprehensive and complex view at things because we would then stumble into contradictions about our identities, about our communities, you know, and so it's easier than to avoid it. To avoid the alienation that would come if we really tangled with it. Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the

world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Cotopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together, they discussed their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to

learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. And then when we get into the statues,

which is obviously a big focus of the book, and I think this sort of a hot button issue. To me what's so interesting is that it's sort of like there's kind of two motivations to me of the statues. The first is the sort of cognitive dissonance we're talking about. So instead of having to own that we fell for the greatest swindle of all time, you know, that you sided with in like Grant says in his memoirs, like, of all the wars that have ever been fought, the cause of the Confederacy may be the worst thing that anyone has ever fought for. Yeah.

And it's true. I mean, you could argue that the revolution in 76 is morally complex. The revolution in 61 is very black and white, right? Like there's one reason the South is doing what it's doing. And so instead of owning that, instead of disavowing it, instead of learning from it, you get this cognitive dissonance of like,

they were heroes, they were defending their homeland, they were all this nonsense. That's like 50% of it. And then the other 50% of it gets darker if it could get darker, you know, as the decades pass, which is we're putting up these monuments to intimidate and suppress and essentially as an exercise of raw political power. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. of raw political power. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think they are, one way of thinking about the, to further that second point, one

way of thinking about these monuments are, they're, they're the sort of other side of the coin of all of the images that are coming out of that time meant to demean black Americans, right? The, the, whether that's minstrelty, whether that's, the way black characters are depicted in films like Birth of a Nation are gone with the wind, to massively success, the cornerstones of Hollywood, all of the illustrations, the sort of Sambo type,

the watermelon, all of those, those debasing, dehumanizing caricatures that, that fix, you know, Henry Louis Gates has a great book on this stony of the road. And the argument, it's amazing. And, and, and the argument there is that, that, that fix is sort of deep into the psyche, you know, into the nerve endings of Americans, this sense of, of, of, of, of black inferiority. And, and I think the, the And I think the heroism in Shrine and these Confederate monuments is the other side of that coin.

So here are the heroes and here are the, here are the sort of subhuman second class citizens of our society that we're intimidating with these statues. What's fascinating to me about the psychology of it, so the monument down the street from my office, it was put up in 1905, you can read the newspaper article that says this is a monument to the greatness of the white, sold south and blah, blah, blah.

There wasn't even a civil war battle in Bastard, Texas. But there definitely were veterans from here and I think a few different Confederate generals came from here. Anyway, what was fascinating to me, so there starts to be discussion about moving it. I ended up donating, I put up $10,000, so we can move the statue and it was sort of kicked off this discussion and I went to some of the city hall meetings.

What was, like what you and I are talking about seems really straightforward to me, right? The logic of why the statues went up, the logic of the war, and it's like, okay, so, you know, 115 years ago, some people did this thing for those reasons, right? And I can wrap my head around those reasons. I mean, I think they're insane, but I can understand the sort of twisted psychological logic and bias that created it, right? What was fascinating and confusing to me, and you opened the books,

you're talking to a woman who's like standing in front of the statue, it was like, in one of the, there was like a rally where people went to, you know, talk about why they should bring it down. And it's like a handful where people went to, you know, talk about why they should bring it down. And it's like a handful of people got up really early that morning and staked out chairs in front of this monument,

essentially becoming a human shield for it, even though it was a peaceful protest. And it was like, I guess what I'm so baffled and fascinated by and find nearly unbelievable, is that 115 years later, someone with essentially no dog in the fight would look at it and go, I'm picking that side. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think at a certain level, it's about control,

right? And a sense that the world that you grew up in and the world view that you grew up with feels natural and feels right. And often when they get challenged, it feels very personal. And it feels like, you know, the thing that your granddaddy loved, the thing that you were taught was, you know, admirable, the bravery of the soldier. You know, magical thinking about that aside, it, the consequence of it is not diminished by the fact that it's magical thinking, right?

And so when, when, when, when it's threatened, it's a sense that I, the world that I know and my status in the world that I know is now under threat and, and people are willing to defend that, Even if it means defending symbols of a cause, a society, a system that is apporant to a lot of people. No, that's a great point. Paul Graham, the technology investor, he had this essay many years ago called Keep Your Identity Small. And he had this line and he's like, the more things you identify with, the stupider you are.

Like, you become stupid when you identify with things, right? And I think what he meant is like, if you call yourself a Republican, if you call yourself a Democrat, if you call yourself a Communist, if you call yourself a whatever, when you pick labels or you associate your identity with a thing, you immediately kind of become very fragile and in a way become very vulnerable because you can't change, you can't adjust, right? And yeah, it struck me watching these people

sort of get up and make these preposterous defenses of the thing, like I can't even recall, but they were like, it was so silly, like just demonstrably untrue. You know, like a bad assumption, built on top of a bad assumption, bad assumption leading to a silly conclusion, right? And you're like, I think it goes to your point, which is like, yeah, if you think,

because you love your grandfather and your grandfather love this and you can't possibly see yourself as questioning your grandfather. And if you can't embrace the complexity of like good people do bad things and bad people do good things and nothing is, you know,

like if you're as soon as you become a fan of a thing, it makes it really hard for you to adjust. Absolutely. Yeah, right, because it's an in-group thing, right? You have these markers of identity, and this is how collective memory works, right? Is that you buy into, you don't even buy into it because it's happening often subconsciously. So you're not sometimes not even making the choice to buy into it because it's happening often subconsciously. So you're not sometimes not even making the choice to buy into it, but it's the water that you're swimming in. It's the family you grew up and it's the church you were raised in. It's the community that you live in. There are certain ideas and memories and perspectives on the past and the past role in your present that you sort of take for granted, but shape your consciousness

and shape your identity. And because it forms your sense of identity opting out of it, or opting out of it means opting out of an identity, a loss of identity. And often, as a scholar of collective memory, Erica Afobom writes, you sometimes can't even hear a challenge to it. Because of that cognitive dissonance, it will just sort of ping off you and not almost not register.

And the great Robert Penn Warren talked about white southerners having to experience a kind of symbolic rebirth that they had to die in a way. And sort of their worldview had to die to be able to live in a south and live with the worldview of the south that rejected segregation. Yeah, there's a great Walker Percy line where he was like, you know, there's lots of things special about the Southern way of life. Black people not being either the same restaurant

as you is not what it is. You know what I mean? Right. But it, yeah, it's like, so you identify as a southerner, it makes you really vulnerable, because now you can't accept that there are bad southerners. Like, I know Robert Penn Warren wrote this essay, I think it became a book too,

whereas like in the 60s or the 70s, in response to some of the backlash about civil rights, like the South Southern senators, like, re-in-state Jefferson, they give Jefferson Davis his citizenship back. Yeah, in his hometown. Yeah, and you're just like, what the fuck? Like this is correct. Like we could, you could, you could, you could look at all the moral ambiguity about the Civil War that you want. But like this dude sucked.

Like, like not only did the cause that he supports sucked, but like he sucked at it too. That was like the craziest part. And you're just like, oh yeah, you're on team self. And that's forcing you to, that's not for it. But that's compelling you instead of having to reckon with that, it's compelling you to go deeper, deeper, deeper into the mud of it. Yeah.

And often then, but when you do have to double down on it, or when you do have to push really hard on it, it kind of, it exposes the cracks in the project, right? So I spent a lot of time writing about them reporting in Selma, and because of this statue of forest that's in Selma, and his admirers, this group called the Friends of Forest, put as one of his monocurs

on the under the statue, on the pedestal of the statue, Defender of Selma. But the Battle of Selma lasted all of like two hours and wasn't much of a fight and Forest lost it. And yet, you revere him just for passing through your town. Well, I think he's revere for other reasons that maybe they didn't carve into the granite of that pedestal, but at least publicly, they're talking about these reasons

that are pretty insignificant, or minor. Well, now I remember I was in New Orleans, finishing up one of my books when they took down the statue of Robert E. Lee. And these circles and iconic, it's actually, it's like, it's an incredible, they call it, the circle, the monument itself is incredible, like it's this tall statue in the middle of town,

it's around about, and I remember watching it come down. And, and you know, these people are complaining about it or, you know, it's contentious. It's like, guys, Robert E. Lee has never, he was never even went to New Orleans. Like, like, literally never stepped foot in the town. He's not from there. He, he did a crappy job defending it as the strategy. Like, it's like, he has nothing to do with your town.

But again, you get sort of morally conflicted. And I think, you know, we're kind of being kind of ascending here sort of laughing at this. But I think it affects smart people too. I remember after Charlottesville, I watched an interview with John Kelly, who is a smart person, and you know, an American, you know, long time member of the armed forces, like, you know, whatever you think of his politics, like, you know,

he lost his son in the war on terror. And you watch him, it's like because he was on team Republican, and because he was on sort of team army, let's say, you know, where there's been, unfortunately, a bit of a cult as far as the southern cause, over the couple hundred years or 150 years, he was like, you know, I'm just saying like, maybe the Civil War didn't have to happen, maybe there could have been more compromises. That was like, you know, he was like that. And remember what I know is like, dude,

there are several seminal moments in American history called the compromise, uh, you know, the three fist compromises, the compromise of this, the compromise of that, you know, three fist compromise is the compromise of this, the compromise of that, the, the, the Missouri compromise. It's like, if you, if you, if you, if you look at history with any sort of dispassionate view, you're like, wow, the North continually compromised with the slave holding class. And what happened was this moving of the goalpost to sort of aggression, like the aggression,

aggressive expansion of slavery that causes civil war. But like when you get on that team, all of a sudden you end up twisting events to fit this sort of perverse narrative. Yeah. And I think that there's, I think there's the individual psychological motivations here that we've been talking about. I think there are also policy motivations too, though, because I think if you are to sort of look at the ledger, if you really are to lay out all of the ways in which the project of the Confederacy was wrong, all of the ways in which the American system leading up to that,

you know, the Confederacy being an extension of an American project before that. But then all of the ways after the war ends, whether that's Jim Crow, whether that's convict leasing, whether that's who is eligible for the Social Security Act, whether that's who qualifies for the GI Bill, for FHA-backed loans. I mean, in all of these ways, the pernicious systems that maintain the racial hierarchy of this country play on, hardly interrupted, briefly interrupted by reconstruction, but then it's back to business afterwards. So if you, from the present, if you are to square up to the totality of the wrong of American slavery and the lie of white supremacy told to justify it, then you're so much closer, you're all the more closer than to building consensus for

policies in the present that might address the racial wealth gap or the gap in who has access to good healthcare, you know, or all of these ways in which there's still, there still is the second class citizenship in America. And so I think there's a political interest too in people who don't want to support big, progressive legislation in thinking about the Civil War in a particular way, which is to say, thinking about the Civil War in a way that makes no claim on

the present. Because once you start to do that, it becomes almost morally imperative to do something to address a 10-to-1 racial wealth gap, right? Yeah. No, it's the funhouse mirror-ness of the lost cause is, it's like, I had the more, I've read and studied it, it's, you start to go, okay, look, look, not a good chunk of the North was, you know, not particularly interested in abolishing slavery, sort of happened as a byproduct of it blah, blah, blah. But, you know, there, there was a line, uh, Churchill said of the Marshall Plan that it was the most unsorted act in world history. Right? That the United States did this magnificent, magnanimous thing that it didn't have to do.

But you could argue that reconstruction is the most unsorted act in American history, right? Like, we passed the 13, 14, 15th amendments. We send teams of people to educate the slaves. We rewrite the constitutions in all these states. Like, and instead of it being a moment, like, obviously, it doesn't end up working, but instead of it being the high watermark of, you know, the American experiment, where we almost did it. It's the average, I mean, myself included.

You get this sense because it's not really taught in school and then what you do here about it is the sort of denigration of it. You not only see it, you not only don't see it as an unsorted act, it's like one, it's sort of, you see it as one, like a shameful odious part of American history. And so it's, it's, it's really, it's, I don't know, it's, it's, it, it, it'd be like if we looked at, you know, America's response to the great depression as like one of the most shameful events of her history or something. You're just like, what, how, how did, how did that get flipped upside down? Yeah, no, I think that's right. But again, it's part of, part of that project of of denigrating the project of reconstruction is part of the lost cause myth as well,

to impune black leadership, essentially, that these were, you know, incompetent corrupt people who, you know, ran their cities or counties or states into the ground. And so the re-imposition of, you know, or the return of ex-confederates to power after reconstruction is undermined feels inevitable, feels right. And that there was this spell in the last cause of you, there was this spell of, you know, like corruption. And, you know, only to reinforce this idea that they're second-class citizens. Well, one last thing on this, and then I wanted to,

I have an interesting thing to close with with you, but isn't it, and I guess this is semi rhetorical, I'm trying not to get too political, but isn't it interesting And I guess this is semi rhetorical. I'm trying not to get too political, but isn't it? Isn't it thing that could take reconstruction, you know, again, being a beautiful, you know, pure thing and turn it into a nasty thing. And I actually was just reading a civil rights book and Kennedy as he's trying to integrate like University of Mississippi or something. And he's dealing with the insanity of Mississippi's governor. He goes, man, it really makes me question some of the things I learned from my Harvard professors

about reconstruction. And it's like, he looks at it for a second and then he looks away. You know, like, you can't quite come to terms with it. But I guess what I'm saying is like, isn't it fascinating that that energy is still with us? And in in in some sense some sense like ascendant culturally right now? Oh, absolutely. I mean, Reverend William Barber calls it with the moment that we're in the third reconstruction.

Although maybe, you know, that was, he, that's a phrase of his from 2015. Maybe we're in like the third redemption now. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, we're the neo-confederacy. Right. You want to put the negative spin on it. Right.

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I think, of course, the civil rights movement being the second reconstruction then for those keeping score at home. Yeah. I mean, I think it's something we'll keep wrestling with until we live in a society in which you're unable to predict outcomes based on, you know, your zip code, essentially. I think there are so many inequities that are still with us that have its roots.

Not just in the Civil War, long before the Civil War, but its roots in this frankly psychotic idea of race that we have in America. And I think we'll have a fourth one if we keep building society along these lines that are inherently unequal. Yeah, it's like, look, the police brutality, policing, systemic racism, these things are complicated. There's data. I can get why some people are having trouble wrapping their head around it. But, you know, when you watch that video of, of, of Armand Arbery, yeah, be chased down by a group of white guys in a truck with a Confederate flag on it and shoot him down and cold blood, calling him, you know, the N word,

you go, oh, as Faulkner said, the past is not only not dead. Like the past is not dead, it's still with us and that energy is real. And it's not the majority energy, but it's their course in coursing through certain people's veins. Yeah, yeah, it's chilling. That video is horrifying in so many ways.

Partly it's horrifying because it does feel like it touches on. It could have been a video shot at any point over the course of American history and that it's happening now. It's just, yeah, I mean, terrifying. Yeah, so I don't know. I mean, I think one of the important things to, to underline though too, is that like some people want us to argue, right, that the past is past or that, oh, these are just statues, like who cares about them. But I think that the statues

are a way of doing some, making an intervention into American collective memory and saying, no, no, no, no, no, the story that we've been telling ourselves to a greater or lesser degree, whether we're in the north or the south, that, you know, as the phrase goes, the half has never been told that American history is far more terrifying than we like to think. And then that it continues to shape our present in so many ways. And so to make active interventions into American society to try and address those things

isn't giving a false leg up or, you know, giving, you know, cutting the line and giving, you know, giving handouts, but it's instead a way of making some portion of a redress to this longstanding and often violently enforce inequities in this country that break down by race. Yeah, when Steve Jobs took back over, over Apple, he said something like one of the ways to get back on track is for us to remember who our heroes are. And that's where the famous thing, different ad comes from, I think, sort of who are we lionizing, right?

Like who are we about? And I think that to me is a big part of the statute discussion. It's like, this is the best of us. Like this is the memory we're honoring. You know, like I wanna remember the people that did something, like you go, oh, you wouldn't understand it's a product of your time.

Sure, I'll concede that argument, but that's not what I wanna be celebrating 150 years later. I wanna celebrate the people who were able to do that extraordinarily difficult thing and see beyond the moment of their time. So speaking of which, I'd be curious because I think it pertains in that, as someone who's talked about this Confederate statue stuff

quite a bit, one of the rejoinders I get from people go, well, you know, you talk about Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius was a slave holder. Should we take down the statues of Marcus Aurelius? And I go, look, first off, all the Marcus Aurelius statues are an Italy, it's not really, you know, and I have a good response. I mean, my response is like, look, if Marcus Aure really has waged a war that explicitly for the expansion of slavery that killed, you know, half a million people and destroyed the empire, you know, maybe he wouldn't be worth putting a statue up. But what I think is interesting is I was actually just reading there is a big debate right now at Brown University, where in the early 1900s, an industrialist paid to put up a statue

of Marcus Aurelius. Oh, wow. Certain students are petitioning for it to come down because it's a symbol of colonialism, which I find to be a bit, I mean, sure, the Romans were imperialists in the, like, literal sense 2,000 years ago. That's not quite the same as, you know, King Leopold's ghost, but what do you, as you think about these monuments, I think one of the arguments people use to, like, not have to have it as you go, well, where do you stop? Or what about this? As you've wrestled with that, have you come to any clarity about it?

Yeah, well, I don't know clarity, but I think that I'm all four, let's hit the slopes. The slippery slope, you mean? Well, yeah, I mean, let's have these debates. Where does it stop? Well, let's figure it out on a case-by-case basis. We don't have to make some statue decree across the board. It seems like it's what started with a referendum on Confederate monuments, which I think

We haven't reached consensus on but I think at this point I think a lot a lot of people have have come to see them as wrong and and to to a greater lesser extent can Understand by their wrong Of course not across the board, but you know the debate in the summer of 2015 is way different than the debate on Confederate monuments is now. If I were to go on a radio show, I'm on this press tour right now. If I were to go on a radio show in the fall of 2015,

it would have been a very sort of both sides debate. Now, it's mostly consensus, at least on the sorts of public radio type shows that I'm going on. But, and now it seems like, well, where does it stop? What about Jefferson? What about Washington? And so, I think it's totally fine to have a referendum on the meaning of Jefferson and Washington's legacy in the present. I think that's actually healthy, especially in a moment where the prevailing idea on our country's highest court is that the founders did no wrong and everything that they've written is how we should, we can't depart from what was in their mind at the time.

You know, I think having a more complicated and nuanced view of who they were and what their legacy is, I think is important, you know, whether or not the debates about their monuments get us there or not, I think it's an opportunity to introduce some nuance to their memory. And I think, let's just keep taking it on a case by case basis. I mean, with figures further in the past and figures maybe like a really a suit, it's not a figure of America,

maybe that gets harder, a little bit foggy or, but I think for the most part, it's not necessary, I don't think of it as much as a slippery slope and more of just a chance to have refereedums on our past consistently. I think we should be doing that anyway.

I think that's what a healthy society does. So, maybe some statues come down, maybe some stay up, but if there is an active and consistent re-evaluation of the meaning of this country's past, I think on some, that's a good thing. I think that's a healthy thing. No, I think it's a good debate to have. And also, I think it maybe it says something about where we are as a society that we seem to only be able to have this discussion in the negative, right? Like, who should we take down instead of who should we

be putting statues of up, right? Like that they just put up an Eisenhower memorial in Washington, DC. like that they just put up an Eisenhower memorial in Washington, D.C. It took like 30 years and it was like horrendously over budget. It's like we're not even up to world war two as far as celebrating heroes.

You know, like it's interesting that, I guess it goes to the point about how polarized and sort of in our own bubbles, we are that we can't as a society though, like who are our heroes, who should we honor? Who do we wanna put up, you said you just said a young, you have a baby, it's like, who do you want your baby to walk to school looking up at? And it shouldn't just be the absence of bad people.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's a tricky question. I mean, I think in some ways, I'm drawn to other kinds of public history and public art, things that aren't just about the individual and getting away from the kind of like great man of history, point of view that these statues come from. And I think there are some examples that are more sort of community-based,

more sort of people's history installations. But I mean, I think again, it may be that back to that Walker Perseq that you mentioned. There's no short, they're amazing Southern heroes. That we could have statutes to, you know, and we started off this conversation thinking about the, you know, the fights in the 1960s at universities. Statues of the people who, you know, had the courage and bravery and to...

Yeah, where's the James Meredith statue? Right, exactly. Or Jameshood. Yeah. Yeah, it's... I get your point about the statues that you're right like some of the monuments they put up about lynching or memorials I think those are all an important part of it too But I think there is something to a statue and I think that's why you were drawn to them yourself Yeah, there's no long the long fellow poem is the the lives of great, remind us we can make our lives sublime

and leave our footprints in the sands of time. I think there is something about like this person earned that could I do something like that. I think you wanna put your heroes up for display. It's just who are heroes? We gotta figure that out. Yeah, yeah, I think it's a complicated question. But maybe then, let's try it.

Let's put some heroes up. But then welcome the referendum when it comes. Which it seems like you say given the polarized nature of American political debate, the referendum seems inevitable. But to welcome it, that we don't need to have a fixed or one-dimensional views of these people from our past. There's a great Nell Irving-Painer line who was a professor at Princeton, and she was involved in the debates that Princeton had about Woodrow Wilson and then the sort of public honorifics of Wilson.

And she says, we keep writing history because we keep asking new questions. Sure. And I think that that's a, I think, yeah, let's try it. Let's put up some new statues to new people. And if and when referendums come, let's have them. If only just to keep a healthy and complicated sense of who people are, right? Because that's the thing.

As important as statues are, I love that longfellow quote. As important as they are and as useful as they are in some ways, they, one of the follies that they might lead us to is that they are one dimensional and not the complicated human beings. And of course they were. So yeah, so let's, they can, these debates can keep us honest, you know.

Connor, thanks so much. I love the book. Super important and also you mentioned Nell Painter. Her book, Old and Art School is incredible. If you haven't read it. Oh, I haven't. I'll look for that though. Awesome. All right, talk to you. Great. Thanks, Ryan. Really enjoyed it. If you're liking this podcast, we would love for you to subscribe. Please leave us a review on iTunes or any of your favorite podcasts listening apps.

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