Contemporary Iconoclasm and King George III

Guest post by Jay Anderson.

Every time this story makes the rounds of social media, (See above.) I can’t help but feel like the Christian in a debate with an atheist who just came across a bit of scripture that he’s SURE will shut down the Christian’s argument. As if the Christian is unaware of that bit of scripture and doesn’t have a ready answer for it. Or that the Christian hasn’t already heard the same tired, tenuous prooftexting 20 times before in debates with out-of-their-depth atheists.

In the case of the linked story, the confrontation goes something like this: “You say you’re against removing statues, but look at this. The patriots in New York City tore down a statue of King George III after hearing a reading of the Declaration of Independence! So you disagree with that? Of course it was ‘liberals’ back then who wanted to remove the statue and ‘conservatives’ who wanted to remain loyal to the King and leave it up; just like today it’s ‘liberals’ who want to remove statues of the ‘enemy’ and ‘conservatives’ who want to keep them.”

Are you done yet? I’ll save addressing the conflation of “liberals” and “conservatives” of today with “liberals” and “conservatives” in 1776 America for another time, and will instead address three points: First of all, I find it amusing that you just assume that I’m not already aware of this bit of history. In fact, I have visited on multiple occasions the Bowling Green in lower Manhattan, which is the site where this statue once stood. I’ve seen firsthand the 244-year-old damage to the wrought-iron fence surrounding Bowling Green Park where the royal crests were knocked off the tops of the posts. I’ve seen replicas of the statue (and even surviving pieces of it) at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia and the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown. Believe me, I know the story.

Second, I bet I know some things about the story you don’t know. Like, for example, the fact that the statue of George III hardly had any established history in that location — it had been placed there only 5 years before by some of the grateful citizens of NYC in celebration of the repeal of the Stamp Act. The point is that it’s not as if the statue had been in that location for close to a century or more — just a few years.

And, third, I bet I know something else you don’t know: General George Washington was not at all amused by this bit of iconoclasm in the newly minted United States and was, in fact, critical of the mob action that led to the statue’s destruction. In his orderly book on 10 July 1776, His Excellency expressed his disapproval of this sort of mob action and his hope that in the future the military would leave this kind of work “to the proper authorities“:

“Tho the General doubts not the persons, who pulled down and mutilated the Statue, in the Broadway, last night, were actuated by Zeal in the public cause; yet it has so much the appearance of riot and want of order, in the Army, that he disapproves the manner, and directs that in future these things shall be avoided by the Soldiery, and left to be executed by proper authority.”

So, yes, I’m fully aware of the “precedent”. I know that it is unlike the current iconoclasm in that there was no long history of the George III statue being in place, having been erected only 5 years prior. And I also know that, whatever decisions are to be made regarding statues should be left to the law — the “proper authorities” — and not the result of direct mob action.