What Were You Thinking..

On May 23, 1861 Virginia seceded from the United States by a vote of 132,201 to 37,451. A month earlier Robert Lee had resigned his commission in the United States Army and was placed in charged of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Now that was his azz. You see Lee’s home was just across the river from Washington DC in Arlington, Virginia and the Union doubled dared him to come back there and try to run an traitorous insurrection against them. Well Lee did try the Union… and he sent the Virginia militia to take up positions on his property at Arlington House. Colonel South: “Private South, send word to the Yankee’s that the only way we gonna leave from up here is ten toes down!!” Well we all know if you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes… so they say the Colonel is the real reason there is a cemetary up there… I don’t know… I’m just saying… anywho.. Arlington House was formerly known as the Custis Lee Mansion (CLM). It was built by the grandson of Martha Washington. Now although Martha Washington’s maiden name was Dandridge, she went by Martha Dandridge Custis Washington. Dandridge was her maiden name, Custis was the name of her first husband and of course Washington was her current husband’s last name, George Washington who she married after Custis died. Anywho, it’s the Custis part which we will shed a little light on right now for a historical perspective. Daniel Custis was a child molesting ( he married Martha when she was 16 and he was 37), slave owning, entitled brat and heir of a 27 square mile estate left to him by his father John Custis who himself left 30 slaves to his son upon his death. John died in 1759. A slave in 1759 average price was 25 pounds. The buying power of 25 pounds in 1759 is the equivalent of $3000 today. So doing the math, Daddy BigTyme Curtis left his son 90,000 dollars worth of human slaves. Not to out done by his old man, when Daniel died he left Martha north of 200 slaves. By the time her great granddaughter took over Arlington House there were over 300 slaves. That was in 1831 and the cost of an average slave during that time was $400, which equates to $14,000 in today prices. Martha’s great granddaughter’s name was Mary Anna Custis Lee, wife of Robert Lee and it was Mary Anna who inherited Arlington House. In 1922 Congress changed the name from the Custis Lee Mansion to Arlington House. Its official name is Arlington House Robert E Lee Memorial. That’s right folks, there is a memorial to a confederate general right in the middle of Arlington National Cemetery. Not just any general, but the general who led the war against the United States. It is a tribute high on the hill overlooking the graves of 16,000 Union soldiers who died fighting against everything Lee stood for… just to be overshadowed by a monument to the memory of the man responsible for their deaths. Ain’t that a ( fill in the word).

In 1898 while the racist were hanging more black folks than laundry down south, the United States was involved in a conflict called the Spanish American War. Now believe it or not the United States was fighting for the independence of Cuba! Funny huh…there were more black folks in Cuba than at a Perdue chicken wing party in Harlem. One of the reasons that America backed Cuba was that it did not want any European powers to expand their territory in the Americas. It was promulgated by a document that basically said if any European power comes over here “ucking” with anybody in the western hemisphere, we gonna regard it as a violation and we will probably start throwing hands. It was called the Monroe Doctrine and was signed by President Monroe in 1823. So although Europeans had been the bad asses of the world for the last few hundred years or so, they wasn’t trying to mess with the U.S after they saw the kinda shat they did in the Civil War. The Civil War produced battles that killed tens of thousands at a time… and that was their own people.. imagine what they do to us. You can chalk up the casualties of WWI, around 10 million military deaths, to the tactics learned in the Civil War. Anywho, Europe backed down as far as interfering from that point on in western hemisphere politics. However the US did not forbade interference in already established colonies and Europe could do what they wanted with them. At that time Cuba was a Spanish colony. As an aside, just before the start of the Civil War, Southern interest tried to buy Cuba from Spain and turn it into another slave state. It was call the Ostend Circular of 1854. It said if Spain refused to sell it, they was gonna bring Mr Ugly out. Mr Ugly’s full name was “Gatt Len Gunn Willoughby Ugly”. Of course it was rejected by anti-slavery forces. So how does all of this tie into our article about confederate monuments at Arlington Cemetery and our title, “What Were You Thinking…”? I’m about to show you.

Although the populace was in favor of the war, mainly the southern democrats because they were still feeling some kinda way about the azz whipping they had recieved in the Civil War and wanted to take their frustrations out on a Moe, the business community however feared the war would pull them into another depression from which they had just emerged. That depression was called the Panic of 1893 and it lasted until 1897. This wasn’t the one where folks were actually jumping out of skyscrapers.. but they was leaning out the windows. That jumping stuff was in the Great Depression, which would start in March of 1929. Anywho, McKinley was president and after the explosion of the Maine in Havana Harbor.. oh yeah that was the reason… a US warship mysteriously exploded and the Democrats said it was time to do some work. They then forced McKinley into a war he wanted to avoid. Now who blew up the Maine.. history doesn’t say… it just says it was mysterious… and Ima leave it at that.. okay? In the meantime let’s all start whistling Dixie.. so yeah we went to war after that. Well Mckinley wanted a peaceful settlement to the war and he started to take his peace initiative on the road down south because he need their support. While he was down there he notice how the graves of the confederate soldiers were unattended and it bothered him. I don’t know why.. like Geico says sprinkles are for winners. Personally I think he was taking the “A” train but we will talk about that in a minute. Anywho on December 14 1898 at the Atlanta Jubilee, he announced that the federal government would start taking care of confederate graves as a “tribute to American valor.” Now the last time I saw that kinda of “A”zz kissing was when Dick Cheney shot a moe in the face and made him apologize on national TV for getting in his way and making him miss the target… Anyway the south ate that shat up and as a consequence and subsequently by popular demand a special section was set aside in Arlington Cemetery for confederate soldiers. Now before we move along, here is a little bit of history you might have not known about Arlington Cemetery. At first when they started counting the confederate graves at Arlington, there were officially seven or eight. However they found over 136 confederate graves at Arlington and another 189 at Soldiers Home in Washington DC. Do you know how they determined the graves were those of confederate soldiers? The headstones were the same as the African Americans runaway slaves buried there. Yep, some unknown hero slipped that one past them and their grave markers were the same as the grave markers of the people they had fought to enslave. Anywho that pissed them Southern racist down to the minus 600 degrees below zero and “they” was gonna do something about it! So the next time you are at Arlington Cemetery, take notice of the confederate gravestones. While the rest of the soldiers and civilian headstones in Arlington have rounded edges, the confederate soldiers headstones are pointed. Pointed headstones… I could take that shat to the next level.. but Ima be respectful… and I ain’t gonna say anything about the devil… Anywho, some people say they were made pointed so that Union soldiers wouldn’t leave “stuff” on top of them or sit on them. There is no official reason for why the headstones were changed… people started wondering why the headstones were changed, especially in light of the fact that all the confederate soldiers were buried in the same location and it really didn’t matter… so what was the “point“…? I’ll tell you what the point is. The point means they were still laid to rest in a national cemetery next to the people they killed and are regarded as honored… and that African Americans would still be viewed as inferior to white people no matter who won the war. That’s why they wanted a point on them. Anyway, there was opposition to having a confederate section at Arlington Cemetery too, but not by who you think might be opposed to it. The United Daughters Of The Confederacy opposed the interment of confederate soldiers at Arlington Cemetery because some thought the soldiers should be buried in southern “soil.” Others said they should be buried next to other confederate soldiers who were their comrades, while others viewed the offer to bury them in Arlington Cemetery as charity. After a whole lot of arm twisting by a man named Samuel Lewis who finally had to tell them, “Either this shat happens or Im’a put a Popeyes right in front of the church and give out free biscuits and chicken wings every Sunday!!” I’m kidding.. he said grape soda and watermelon… chicken wings cost too much… Anywho, the opposition gave up and in the spring of 1901 a delegation of several confederate war veterans groups convinced Secretary Root of the War Department to dig them up and bury them in Arlington. On June 7, 1903, the first Confederate Memorial Day observances were held in the confederate section. The day is still celebrated by several states, but was rescinded by Virginia in 2020. Do the hoods still meet at the cemetary on June 7th? Personally I ain’t trying to find out…

So after McKinley’s speech opened the door to having confederates soldiers interred at Arlington Cemetery, the next logical step for the racist was to have a monument dedicated to them… besides the aforementioned Arlington House which was actually dedicated to Marse Lee. Marse is a fancy word for massa and what Lee was called affectionately by some of his men. It took a few years, but on November 12, 1912 the cornerstone was laid for the monument. The laying of the cornerstone also coincided with the presidential election between William Taft and Woodrow Wilson. Taft lost the election to Woodrow (If You See One, Shoot One) Wilson. It was during the Wilson administration that the Klan resurgence came about after he had a private viewing of “Birth Of A Nation”… In The Mo-blickity White House!! Wilson went to work right away setting back the few gains African Americans retained after the end of the reconstruction and the beginnings of Jim Crow. We are going to do an article on Wilson “soon” because he violated and needs to be exposed. Anyway, so Taft lost to Wilson and you might have thought that Wilson would have been the one to speak at the laying of the confederate monument cornerstone, however it was taft that spoke there. Over 6000 people turned out for the event. A time capsule was buried under the cornerstone and after the ceromomies a tree was planted nearby honoring Marse Lee. The time capsule was opened in 2020 and contained a noose and a book entitled “Your Property Did What?” Okay… for real… there was a copy of the Constitution, a flag, some coins, a map of L’ Enfant Plaza design, and an autographed picture of Wilson.

The monument is in section 16 and sits in the center of Stonewall Jackson Circle. Stonewall Jackson was Lee’s right hand man and is credited with having one of the most brilliant military minds in American history. He must have turned that shat off on May 10, 1863, because while he was out scoping out the north’s positions at the battle of Chancellorsville… at night.. without telling nobody.. his men mistakenly shot him in the azz and he died from pneumonia eight days later. Anyway, the monument topmost figure is a statue of a woman representing “the lilly of the south.,” I don’t want to say from a distance it looks like a black woman.. cause it might get some folks into they feelings and they might start shooting through my window.. so yeah.. it’s a statue of a white woman.. okay? The statue is 32 feet tall and is surrounded by 32 lifesize statues around its base. So besides a bunch of lifesize white men statues at the base, slaves are also represented in the monument…
* A uniformed black slave following his master to war. So that we are on the same page.. it’s a servants uniform, although some people mistake it for a soldiers uniform.. but you and I know if a slave even dreamed he was wearing a confederate uniform, he better also be dreaming that he’s hanging at the end of a rope with it on… (That’s him in the picture above.)
* A military officer kissing his infant child, who is held in the arms of a weeping black mammy while another child clings to her skirts. She probably crying for joy because after he leaves she is gonna whip that azz if them kids call her a n-word again.. (She is shown in the featured picture.)
The artist included black servants on the memorial on purpose to counter the narrative of Uncle Tom’s Cabin which depicted southern slave owners as cruel and vicious. He wanted the monument to portray the slaves as devoted and loving to the confederacy and their massa’s. Nevermind all the thousands of black folks escaping to the north with the flesh beat off their backs, rope burns around their necks, or missing eyes, fingers and toes because of some sadistic azzhole. Naw they didn’t want to put that on the memorial. So at its inception the monument was to paid for by private donations and donations would also be used for its maintenance, but in 1915 the US said they would take care of the memorial too. That’s right fellow black folks of the United States.. our tax dollars go into maintaining a memorial for the Confederate States Of America on a street named after a confederate general, in a cemetery where confederate soldiers are buried right next to the men they killed.. who were fighting to free us. But wait…

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. An independent commission has recommended that the statue be torn down and ground up to make half dollar Obama coins.. Okay they didn’t say make any coins, but they did recommend that it be torn down as part of the renaming of confederate bases and military assets. These changes include everything from Navy ships, Army vessels, street signs, water towers, athletic fields, hospital doors and even decals on recycling bins. Now that’s saying something when they put confederate decal on recycling bins and hospital doors… if you see one on a hospital door, you bedda go someplace else… anyway… the panel determined that the memorial at Arlington was “problematic from top to bottom,” and it should be removed right down to the granite pedestal. They particularly took note of the inscription which was meant to equate the South’s secession to a “noble lost cause.” The term “lost cause” means that there is nope hope of changing things for the better… excuse me while I yak.. “Cough cough cough.. yak.. yak yak…” Anywho the naming committee met this month and begin receiving names for replacing the confederate monikers. It is estimated that by January of 2024 the renaming will be complete.

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