Greg Krasovsky: Some people have started to demand removing statutes of Confederate soldiers, officers and even generals -- because they are offensive to African-Americans who the Confederate patriots wanted to keep in slavery.
If that's the morally right and politically correct course of action, then shouldn't we demand that statutes of war criminals and perpetrators of genocide be removed as well -- regardless if these gentlemen were on the winning side of American history (at the expense of Native Americans)?
Smack in the middle of Washington stands the statute of General Phillip Sheridan, to whom the following quotes have been attributed:
"The only good Indians I ever saw were dead."
"Let them kill, skin and sell until the buffalo is exterminated."
Just based on that, I would venture to say that Gen. Sheridan's statute is offensive to Native Americans, not to mentions those residents of The Shenandoah Valley whose innocent civilian ancestors suffered and died at the hands of Union soldiers under Gen. Sheridan's command.
After all, the proponents of removing statutes of anti-heroes don't think that they're erasing history, but just correcting historical bias by making sure that people who today we consider criminals don't get to stand on pedestals that should be reserved for true heroes and people with morally positive accomplishments.
Obviously, killing Native Americans, destroying buffalo as their food source and scorching entire regions to punish civilian populations doesn't seem to qualify one for a glorious statute in the middle of Washington, DC, even if you were a General and the city still has a football team called The Redskins.
What do you think?
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Sheridan Monument - a statute tp General Philip Sheridan, Union general of the American Civil War and later general of the United States Army. The statue was dedicated on November 27, 1908
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheridan_Circle
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The bronze statue of Major General Philip Henry Sheridan is located in the center of Sheridan Circle at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue NW, 23rd Street NW and R Street NW in Washington, DC.
The figures of Gen Sheridan and his horse are approximately life-sized.
Gen Sheridan is depicted with his right arm extended, hat in hand, as if commanding cavalry forces in action.
The bronze figures are mounted on a concrete base, about three feet in height.
The horse, Rienzi (later re-named Winchester), is depicted with all four hooves planted.
The statue was executed by Gutzon Borglum, better known as the creator of the massive presidential sculpture on Mount Ruchmore in South Dakota.
See http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM8M5_Sheridan_Philip_Maj_Gen_Washington_DC
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Philip Henry Sheridan (March 6, 1831[2] – August 5, 1888) was a career United States Army officer and a Union general in the American Civil War.
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In 1864, he defeated Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley and his destruction of the economic infrastructure of the Valley, called "The Burning" by residents, was one of the first uses of scorched earth tactics in the war.
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Sheridan fought in later years in the Indian Wars of the Great Plains.
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Under pressure from the governors, General Grant turned to Sheridan.[44] In September 1866, Sheridan arrived at the former Fort Martin Scott near Fredericksburg, Texas, where he spent three months subduing Indians in the Texas Hill Country.[45]
In August 1867, Grant appointed Sheridan to head the Department of the Missouri and pacify the Plains. His troops, even supplemented with state militia, were spread too thin to have any real effect.
He conceived a strategy similar to the one he used in the Shenandoah Valley.
In the Winter Campaign of 1868–69 (of which the Battle of Washita River was part) he attacked the Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Comanche tribes in their winter quarters, taking their supplies and livestock and killing those who resisted, driving the rest back into their reservations.
When Sherman was promoted to General of the Army following Grant's election as President of the United States, Sheridan was appointed to command the Military Division of the Missouri, with all the Great Plains under his command.
Professional hunters, trespassing on Indian land, killed over 4 million bison by 1874, and Sheridan applauded: "Let them kill, skin and sell until the buffalo is exterminated".
When the Texas legislature considered outlawing bison poaching on tribal lands, Sheridan personally testified against it, suggesting that the legislature should give each of the hunters a medal, engraved with a dead buffalo on one side and a discouraged-looking Indian on the other.[46]
Eventually the Indians returned to their designated reservations. Sheridan's department conducted the Red River War, the Ute War, and the Great Sioux War of 1876-77, which resulted in the death of a trusted subordinate, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.
The Indian raids subsided during the 1870s and were almost over by the early 1880s, as Sheridan became the commanding general of the U.S. Army.[47]
Comanche Chief Tosawi reputedly told Sheridan in 1869, "Me, Tosawi; me good Injun," to which Sheridan supposedly replied, "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead."
Sheridan denied he had ever made the statement.
Biographer Roy Morris Jr. states that, nevertheless, popular history credits Sheridan with saying "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."
This variation "has been used by friends and enemies ever since to characterize and castigate his Indian-fighting career."[48] In Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown attributed the quote to Sheridan but did not provide documentation to support his contention, so the quote may be more apocryphal than real.[49]
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Sheridan
