[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 115 (Tuesday, June 23, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3144-S3146]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                Protests

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, the late historian, Arthur 
Schlesinger, Jr., said this: ``Self-righteousness in retrospect is 
easy--also cheap.'' The late Samuel Huntington, who was a Harvard 
professor of U.S. history and politics, wrote, in effect, that most of 
our politics is about setting great goals for ourselves--we, the 
American people--and then the struggle we have with the disappointment 
we feel when we don't reach those high goals, like ``all men are 
created equal.''
  Ben Hooks, who was from Memphis and a well-known citizen of our State 
and a good friend and once president of the NAACP, used to tell his 
students at the University of Memphis:

       Remember that our country, America, is a work in progress. 
     We've come a long way, but we have a long way to go.

  It is in light of those three comments that I would like to discuss 
the effort that some people made last night to tear down President 
Andrew Jackson's statue in Lafayette Square across from the White 
House.
  I believe it is always appropriate to review the monuments and the 
places that we name to see if there is a more appropriate name in the 
context of today's times. For example, in this Capitol, every State has 
two statues. From Tennessee, it is Andrew Jackson and John Sevier.
  Senator Blunt, who is the chairman of our Rules Committee, tells us 
that, at any given time, some of those statues are in rotation because 
the State of Mississippi or Tennessee or Oregon or some other State may 
have decided, instead of those two individuals, we would like to send 
up another statue. We would like, in the context of today's times, to 
name somebody else.
  As we think about statues that are already named for generals in the 
Confederacy or the Union--a war that was fought a long time ago--it is 
appropriate, I think, to keep in mind that we have had a lot of wars 
since then: two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam. We have had a lot of very 
distinguished generals. We have had courageous Congressional Medal of 
Honor winners. Maybe in the context of today's times, there is a place 
for Camp MacArthur or Camp Eisenhower or Alvin C. York, who is a 
Congressional Medal of Honor winner and hero from Tennessee. It is 
always appropriate to review the places that are named and the 
monuments we put up to see if there should be a better name or a better 
place for a monument in the context of today's times.
  But what about Andrew Jackson, whose statue is one that the State of 
Tennessee has sent here, whose statue is of him on a horse outside the 
White House at Lafayette Square? The similar statue is in Jackson 
Square in New Orleans. What about Andrew Jackson? Let's make the case 
for Andrew Jackson.
  Presidential historians, almost without exception, put him in the top 
10 of America's Presidents. They see him as the sophisticated, often 
subtle political actor that he really was. What they realize--and, 
unfortunately, what only dedicated students of the American Presidency 
often realize--is that Jackson was arguably the most important American 
President between Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln because, much 
like Lincoln, he preserved the Union. If not for Jackson's devotion to 
the Union against his own local

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political interest, the Union might well have fallen apart in 1832 and 
1833.
  Jackson risked everything to keep our Union together instead of 
siding with South Carolina's U.S. Senator John Calhoun's doctrine of 
nullification. When a serious conflict of crisis arose, when South 
Carolina decided that, following Calhoun's doctrine of nullification, 
it could decide which Federal laws it could follow, it was Jackson who 
stood up and said: Our Federal Union must be preserved and Jackson who 
had the political will and the skill to make sure it was preserved. 
Jackson's decisions as President gave us an additional three decades to 
form what Lincoln eventually called ``the mystic chords of memory'' in 
his first inaugural address. Surely--surely that is worth recognition.
  Andrew Jackson was our first nonaristocratic President. When he was 
born in 1767, it was not possible or plausible that the young boy, 
orphaned at 14, could someday rise in an emerging Republic. Jackson 
wasn't born rich. He wasn't born into privilege. He fought for 
everything he had, and he rose to our government's highest office 
through the sheer force of personality and political courage. That is 
the case for Andrew Jackson.
  Let us also recognize that Andrew Jackson was not perfect. In fact, 
he was at the center of the two original sins of this country: slavery 
and the treatment of Native Americans. But if we are looking for 
perfection, we are not likely to find it in American history or the 
history of almost any country or in human nature.
  The historian Jon Meacham, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography 
of Jackson and who wrote a biography of Thomas Jefferson, said that 
when Jefferson wrote the words, ``all men are created equal,'' he was 
almost certainly writing about all White men. Those were the context of 
the times for Thomas Jefferson.

  So what do we do about Jefferson if he was writing that all White men 
are created equal in the context of those times? What do we do about 
Jefferson, who--the only slaves that he freed, apparently, were those 
that he fathered with his slave mistress, Sally Hemings? What do we do 
about George Washington and Mount Vernon and the slaves that he owned? 
What do we do about Abraham Lincoln, who some people say was slow to 
act on emancipation? What about Franklin D. Roosevelt and his 
internment of American citizens who were Japanese in camps during World 
War II or, more recently, what do we do about Bill Clinton, who signed 
the Defense of Marriage Act, which would not be in the context of 
today's times, if two recent Supreme Court decisions are to be 
followed, as they will be?
  Let's not just pick on our Presidents. What are we going to do about 
the Congress, the Senators, and the Members of the House? They approved 
the Trail of Tears, Andrew Jackson's removal of the Cherokees to 
Oklahoma. The Congress did. And they approved the laws requiring 
segregation. Congress did. And what about the people who elected the 
Congress? They approved those Members of Congress who approved of 
segregation, who approved of the internment of Japanese in camps.
  What are we going to do about us, the people of the United States? Do 
we pretend that we didn't exist during that history, when decisions 
were made that we would not make today or we would not approve of 
today, some of which would be abhorrent today? Do we try to burn down 
all the monuments, burn down Mount Vernon, burn down the Jefferson 
Memorial, Hyde Park, home of Franklin D. Roosevelt? Do we try to erase 
all of that from our history? That is not what we should do. We should 
not try to erase our history. We should not try to pretend it doesn't 
exist. We shouldn't ignore our history.
  Here is what I think we should do. No. 1, as I said earlier, 
recognize that it is always appropriate to review the places that we 
have named or the monuments that we put up--just like the monuments of 
States in here--to see if there is a more appropriate monument or named 
place that is appropriate in the context of today's times. Remember, as 
Ben Hooks said: America is a work in progress. It is always changing, 
and our monuments or the places we name can change with that. That is 
an appropriate, healthy exercise to go through. That is No. 1.
  But, No. 2, with the history that includes things we today abhor, we 
should try to learn from those things and build a better future. Let me 
give an example.
  Each year, I bring onto the floor of the Senate teachers of American 
history who have been selected to attend the Academy for Teachers of 
American History that I helped to create when I first came to the 
Senate. I thought it was important to learn American history so 
children can grow up knowing what it means to be an American.
  When they come to the floor, they look for the various desks because 
the desks of the Senate are what best describe them. They will go to 
find Daniel Webster's desk, which is still there. They will go to the 
back over there and find the desk that the three Kennedy brothers used, 
where they sat. The ones from Tennessee will come here because Howard 
Baker had my desk and so did Fred Thompson, the desk I now have. They 
are interested in the desks of Senator McConnell and Senator Schumer 
because they are the leaders, and they go to Jefferson Davis's desk.
  Jefferson Davis was a U.S. Senator who had a great deal to do with 
the building of this Capitol. But he, like many other U.S. Senators in 
the South, resigned from the Senate and joined the Confederate Army. 
Jefferson Davis became President of the Confederacy.
  When I take them to Jefferson Davis's desk, these teachers of 
American history, this is what I tell them; that there is on that desk 
what looks like a chop mark. The story that is told is that it was 
created by a Union soldier who came into this Chamber when the Union 
soldiers occupied Washington, DC, and began to destroy the desk of a 
man who was the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, until he 
was stopped by his commanding officer, who told him: Stop that. We are 
here to save the Union, not to destroy it.
  What do we do with Jefferson Davis's desk? I say keep it there. I say 
to learn from it, to learn from the fact that there was a Civil War; 
that there was a Confederacy; that Senators left this body; that Union 
soldiers were here; that one wanted to chop it up and another one would 
say, his commanding officer: Let's bring a better future. Stop that. We 
are here not to destroy the Union but to save it.
  There are lessons in American history. There are lessons that we 
should learn. The lesson of Ben Hooks: We are a work in progress. We 
have come a long way. We have a long way to go; the lesson of Samuel 
Huntington, that most of our politics is about setting high goals for 
ourselves, that all men are created equal, and then dealing with the 
disappointment, struggling with the disappointment of not reaching 
those goals, deciding what to do about it.
  Do we dishonor Andrew Jackson's effort to keep our country together 
between Jefferson and Lincoln? Do we dishonor Thomas Jefferson's 
eloquence? Do we dishonor George Washington's probity in character or 
Lincoln's courage or FDR's grand leadership during World War II all 
because they weren't perfect, all because they did things and lived 
things and said things that today we wouldn't say? I think not. Doing 
any of this would be a terrible misunderstanding of American history 
and of human nature. It would be ahistorical.
  In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln appealed to the 
better angels of our nature. If there are better angels of our nature, 
I guess that means there must be worse angels in us as well, not just 
in Washington and Jefferson and Jackson and Roosevelt and great men or 
great women but in all of us. There are the better angels, and there 
are the worst angels. In this country, our goal is to bring out the 
best in us, which does not mean ignore the worst.
  We need to be honest about our weaknesses. We need to be proud of our 
strengths. We need to learn from both to create a better future for the 
United States of America.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCOTT of South Carolina. Madam President, I ask unanimous

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consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.