Four summers ago, my friend Roger and I took a road trip through the battlegrounds of the American civil war. For me it was a chance to visit old friends with whom I had fought and beat the Disney Corporation’s plans to put an American history theme park close to the Manassas battlefield. Roger loves battlefields, memorials and monuments, so we saw lots of those, along with eating great barbecue and experiencing wonderful hospitality.

Perhaps our favourite monument was a 1920s General Stonewall Jackson statue by Charles Keck in Jackson Park in Charlottesville. We remembered it last week when neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan marched in Charlottesville, ostensibly to show their displeasure at the relocation of that statue and a monument to Confederate General Robert E Lee, but really as a coming out party for resurgent white supremacy.

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