Bacon's Rebellion

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Good Idea: Rename Jefferson Davis Highway

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by

James A. Bacon
in

Alexandria City Council has decided to hold a public hearing on the topic of renaming its stretch of U.S. Route 1 from the Jefferson Davis Highway to Richmond Highway, reports the Washington Post.

While I vigorously oppose the removal of statues of Civil War generals, I have no problem with changing the name of a highway named after the president of the Confederate States of America. Indeed, I endorse the removal of the ridiculous anachronism.

Jefferson was not a native Virginian. Neither was he a military hero celebrated for martial virtues worthy of admiration in any society or culture. Most importantly, changing the name does not require tearing down a magnificent work of public art.

I am tangentially involved with an initiative that is working to “reinterpret” the public statuary in Richmond as part of a larger effort to think about race relations and the struggle for individual liberties, and I think it would be a crime to remove statues that are such visible reminders of — and prods to conversation about — a by-gone way of thinking. I also subscribe to the idea that more is better. Instead of tearing statues down, let’s build memorials to people whose struggle for freedom and equal rights might have gone unrecognized a century ago.

But renaming public places — roads and schools most notably — does not require ditching priceless artifacts. Making the change will cost the city a mere $27,000, the Post says. And unlike the Civil War statues, place names will never become a starting point for stimulating an open dialogue about Virginia’s painful past of slavery and Jim Crow. So, as far as I’m concerned, replace the signs.

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22 responses to “Good Idea: Rename Jefferson Davis Highway”

  1. V N Avatar
    V N

    Works for me. I’m ok with changing school names also.

  2. ssurovell Avatar
    ssurovell

    The Alexandria segment is only 1-2 miles because it’s called Patrick/Henry Streets through Old Town. So the Alexandria renaming is not that disruptive.

    It’s called Richmond Highway in Fairfax County – no one seems to know how that happened.

    It’s Jeff Davis in the 1-2 miles in Arlington and south of the Occoquan. Renaming that would be extremely disruptive – cost would probably run into the millions, especially in private sector costs.

    Jefferson Davis was a non-Virginian schmuck.

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      $27,000 for only 1-2 miles of highway? Yikes, I guess it would be pretty expensive to change the name all the way down to the North Carolina state line!

  3. Acbar Avatar
    Acbar

    Washingtonians should be careful about calling Jeff Davis a schmuck. He was Secretary of the Army before the C.W., and in that capacity was the competent head of the Corp of Engineers and supervised the completion of a great many of the public improvements we still associate with Washington DC today, fending off the political machinations of another Virginian, John B. Floyd, who was determined to remove Col. Montgomery Meigs from pushing through completion of the Washington Aqueduct system from Great Falls to the City and completion of the Capitol Building itself, so that he, Floyd, could award those lucrative construction contracts to well-connected friends. Davis also oversaw the Army’s restoration of many of the coastal forts (including Ft. Sumpter and Ft. Washington) that were initiated fifty years earlier to fend off the British. When hostilities erupted, Floyd and Davis ended up siding with the Confederacy and Meigs with the Union (as Quartermaster General of the Army).

    Davis was a Mississippian, and his connection with Virginia was never close, although he lived in Richmond for a while as President. I agree with Jim, Route 1 was named for him not to honor him so much as stick a finger in the federal eye across the Potomac; in fact “Jefferson Davis Highway” was a United Daughters of the Confederacy initiative and intended to span the South. It’s time to get rid of that legacy of ill will. But Davis himself was an important part of the District’s history as well as the Confederacy’s. Some said it was his micromanagement of military affairs as a politician that lost the war, but the public improvements still stand..

    1. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
      Reed Fawell 3rd

      Jefferson Davis as a US Senator also actively opposed secession. He gave public speeches again secession and he opposed going to war over the issues dividing the North and South. On the day he received official notices of succession from Mississippi and South Carolina, Jan. 21, 1861, he called it “the saddest day of my life.”

      Nor did he later seek, or want, to be President of the Confederacy.

      He also had earlier served his country with great distinction, and was wounded, in the Spanish American War, and later served honorably as US Secretary of War.

      Jefferson Davis of a good man overtaken by terrible events.

      But I also agree with Jim. There is no good reason for a US or state public highway to be named the Jefferson Davis Highway, and that there are good and understandable reasons to remove his name from a public road or building. Like Jim, however, I believe statues and memorials are an entirely different matter, as Jim explains.

  4. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    Acbar and Reed, thanks for reminding us that the historical man was far more complex than the one we remember today. While it is appropriate to no long honor his name, he should not be demonized.

  5. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    I don’t think the honor was for his name or his other work but the role he played during the Civil War and if THAT is the reason why his name should be removed then other symbols removed for the same reason?

    I don’t know how the name came to be but we do know who sponsored most of the statues and again – all of them for the same reason – the roles those men played in the Civil War.

    The one guy that DID get recognized for his other roles besides his membership in the Confederacy was Virginia native Matthew Fontaine Maury and there ARE memorials to him for his other work – for which he was recognized as Pathfinder of the Seas and became a professor at VMI and has a river named after him.

    Look! – No Horse!

    https://rotj.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/maury2184.jpg

  6. Andrew Roesell Avatar
    Andrew Roesell

    Dear Gentlemen,

    The idea that we will selectively preserve and selectively “airbrush” Confederate, Southern, and even generically American, culture strikes me as naive. The people who are the promoters of these measures hate White people, and each of these episodes is calculated to eradicate our heritage. The Confederates and slaveholders are just the “low-hanging fruit” in this campaign. Eventually, even Lincoln will go, when it is convenient to do so. His racial views and his plans for the freedmen, sending them to Africa, were clearly and persistently stated. You are trying to compromise with people who intend on taking over everything, and they will give no quarter to any of their perceived enemies, but they will gladly accept help from compromisers, who perform a valuable service in their noble, if doomed, quest for disinterested citizenship. The basic problem is that our adversaries and us are different nations in the same womb. The center will fold, sadly, become, “political roadkill” because they don’t understand this. Malevolent aggression cannot be appeased, only resisted. Trying to compromise with them only encourages them and paves the way to their victory over us.

    Sincerely,

    Andrew

  7. Steve Haner Avatar
    Steve Haner

    The name signs and statues were put up for political gain, pleasing and appeasing groups of voters, and now they are being taken down for political gain. Big whoop.

    Reading for the first time Grant’s memoirs, and I must say they are enjoyable. His take on the period between the Lincoln election and the Siege of Sumter focuses on the hubris and over-confidence of the secessionists who assumed the Northern states could not mount effective opposition. Nobody did a better job of proving Davis and the others wrong about that than ol’ Unconditional Surrender Grant and his pal Sherman (and Virginia’s second greatest general of that preventable war, George Thomas.)

  8. Steve Haner Avatar
    Steve Haner

    “Jefferson Davis of a good man overtaken by terrible events.” Horse hockey. Nobody who defended slavery, who extolled slavery as a positive social good, as the practice had evolved by the middle of that century, can claim the title of Good Man. Americans paid a terrible price in blood for their original sin, and four generations later we’re still paying.

  9. Andrew Roesell Avatar
    Andrew Roesell

    Dear Steve,

    Another item that separates us is that to you “morality” is a rationalistic construct of the human mind. By your own reasoning neither Saints Paul nor Peter nor the Church Fathers were “good” men because their taught that slaves OWE obedience to their masters while masters owe it to their slaves to treat them kindly. We both use the word “moral” and “morality” but have a very different content. One is derived from “natural rights” the other from God’s revelation to man. At an ultimate level, Liberalism must needs be in conflict with the Christian Church, and therefore God. Liberalism preaches that man is the measure of all things, while for the Christian Faith, God is that measure.

    Sincerely,

    Andrew

  10. Steve Haner Avatar
    Steve Haner

    Right. Human chattel slavery, an institution ordained by God. One hundred and fifty-three years after that horrible war people are still making that argument, and we wonder why so little progress? That is exactly what Davis, Alexander Stephens, et. al. claimed. No kidding, Andrew, thanks for throwing that out there for the world to see. You are at least honest enough to flat out say things others merely whisper in the dark.

    1. Andrew Roesell Avatar
      Andrew Roesell

      Dear Steve,

      To say that the Apostles and Church Fathers taught the obedience of slaves to their masters is not to urge its restoration, nor to have opposed an abolition of the institution by peaceful means, nor to have opposed manumitting them by individual slave masters, nor to have a third-party pay for their freedom. All those are fine things. I wish the slave trade had never happened. But it did happen and calling the slave-owners bad men merely for being slave-owners or to require abolition by force DOES contradict Christian teaching. The contradiction of the slaveholders of the early Republic is that they were half-liberals, being both the physical and ideological descendants of the Revolutionaries. The War Between the States, its ideological component, can be read as the time when the Jacobins (Abolitionists) triumphed over the Girondists (Secessionists).

      Sincerely,

      Andrew

  11. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
    Reed Fawell 3rd

    “Jefferson Davis of a good man overtaken by terrible events.” I stand 100% behind that statement. And would add that post generational moralizers always raise for me a big red flag. Typically its cheap and tawdry conduct.

  12. Steve Haner Avatar
    Steve Haner

    I have formed my cheap and tawdry opinions over forty years of reading, and I have crossed Burnside’s Bridge and walked the path of Pickett’s Division and found where my granddaddy’s granddaddy advanced at New Market. In Illinois I visited Lincoln’s home and grave. I have stared at the census records that my own Virginia ancestors owned slaves. So I too will hold my opinion. It has not been reached lightly.

    1. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
      Reed Fawell 3rd

      Nor I have I reached my opinion lightly. You have just smeared whole generations of people out of ignorance and with the ease of a stoke of keyboard. I have no respect for such conduct.

  13. Andrew Roesell Avatar
    Andrew Roesell

    Dear Gentlemen,

    I think we just need to agree to disagree on this. The polity may have fallen, but the Church still stands as He promised it would and will.

    Sincerely,

    Andrew

  14. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    re: ” Nobody who defended slavery, who extolled slavery as a positive social good, as the practice had evolved by the middle of that century, can claim the title of Good Man. Americans paid a terrible price in blood for their original sin, and four generations later we’re still paying.”

    Yep – that seems to be the dividing line on this debate.

    Seems like those that disagree with that statement need to say why.

    was it just a “terrible mistake” that befell a lot of “good men” ?

    One might take a sympathetic view of their actions as a mistake in retrospect – but to erect hundreds of statues and names as an “honor” to be proud of – forever and taking them down is an affront to the white race er.. “history” Lord.

  15. Steve Haner Avatar
    Steve Haner

    There is no point in studying history if you do not learn from the mistakes (and the successes!) And I fully agree that there will be no lessons if the history is simply forgotten. Each community has its own decisions to make about its own monuments, but those to the common soldiers standing on a county courthouse lawn, those placed as markers on key locations and battlefields or near a key figure’s home, are vital to maintaining the opportunity to learn and reflect and do deserve legal protection. Whether a community want to have a Lee statute in a Lee park is a local decision (or state, depending on ownership.)

    And Andrew is correct that there are zealots who wish to wipe out that history and will not stop with Jeff Davis or Marse Robert. But I end where I started – these were usually put up for political advantage, and nobody should be too surprised that politics continues to determine their fate.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      re: ” And Andrew is correct that there are zealots who wish to wipe out that history and will not stop with Jeff Davis or Marse Robert. ”

      I’m pretty skeptical of that. What others have been taken down or what ones do we think/fear would be taken down?

      Monuments that commemorate history – on a one-sided basis that affirms the legitimacy of the Confederacy while not affirming the “history” for other people in that same era – is not an honest and complete history – it’s made-up history that tells what one group believes and no one should be surprised that the other group having to live with that lopsided “history” for decades, for generations – is not thrilled with it and would be fine with it going away.

  16. Andrew Roesell Avatar
    Andrew Roesell

    Dear Gentlemen,

    Meanwhile Baltimore marked its 100th murder victim of 2018 yesterday, with the slaying of a 16 year-old. The murders as terrible and final as they are, are but the tip of the proverbial iceberg of social collapse that is occurring throughout “free society”, paticularly its lower classes. This is the extolled freedom to destroy oneself. This is the extolled freedom to merely wring one’s hands and send in the occupying forces or “latter day slave patrols,” i.e. the police, into these “no-go” zones. Liberals merely sigh and celebrate emancipation to earthly masters while being indifferent to the slavery to sin and vice and its terrible cruelties. Liberals have no answer to the pandemic of slavery to sin, but Christ does. And what do Liberals do with Him? Forbid that He mentioned in the schools and that all of His teachings and claims be continuously mocked. They also promote race-hatred through the Democrat apparat, the media, and the tax-funded schools, colleges and universities they so overwhelmingly dominate. Some benefactors of humanity!

    Sincerely,

    Andrew

  17. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    re: “history” (excerpts):

    ” The group behind the Arlington monument—and, by some estimates, the majority of the 718 statues and monuments to the Confederacy that the Southern Poverty Law Center identified in April 2016—is the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). Women founded the UDC in Tennessee in 1894,…..

    About 30 women attended the first meeting, and by World War I there were 100,000 members, according to Cox. In a typical Southern town with a statue to the Confederacy, she says, “I could almost guarantee you that the UDC would be on that monument somewhere, that they had done the job.”

    http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MBtFWeZ7MFw/U9PHFOYAQFI/AAAAAAAACTQ/F1A2f78ABic/s1600/Helen+Lynn+May+25.jpg

    ” The 1890s, when the UDC was founded and monument building began in earnest, was a decade of virulent racism across the South. Not content to disenfranchise black men, Southern whites went on a lynching spree. Ida B. Wells, the African American journalist and anti-lynching crusader, documented 186 lynchings of black people in 1893 alone — mostly men, but women and children, too. As she wrote in her account “The Red Record,” these “scenes of unusual brutality failed to have any visible effect upon the humane sentiments of the people of our land.”

    Violence against blacks only increased in the early decades of the 20th century. In addition to continued lynching across the South, the Atlanta race riot of 1906 demonstrated how seriously white men took their supremacy over African Americans: An estimated 10,000 white men and boys in the city went after black men, beating dozens to death and injuring hundreds more.”

    There is a lot more for anyone who wants to take a little time to really understand the complete history of these monuments.

    And if that does not do it – consider just how many “monuments” to Slaves and significant black people were put up in that same era – or before or after it.

    So some call claim that the monuments are “history” if they want but it’s really much more than “history”… it’s a cultural statement from one segment of society and virtually none from other segments of society… the euphemism now bandied about is “context”… which means ADD in those other missing “monuments”.

    But think about it for a minute. You gonna put up a statue of Harriet Tubman a few hundred feet away from a statue of Jeff Davis wearing his uniform and astride his horse ready to go off and do battle to save the Confederacy?

    So for more than 100 years , we were content with “history” being only history relevant to one segment of our society and we were apparently fine with history for others in our society not existing in the same context?

    re: Baltimore

    What you’re looking at is the legacy of racism.. that kept generations of people in poverty – not only financial.. but cultural .. denied access to education and jobs and thrown in jail at much higher rates than whites – for lesser crimes… then released with felony convictions making it even harder to get a job and care for their families.

    Some of us point to this terrible circumstance as some sort of twisted logic that -proves that they deserve what has happened to them.

    That’s history also… continues to this day.

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