Benutzer:Liberaler Humanist/RB

Das River of Blood-Denkmal ist ein Denkmal auf einem im Eigentum des Donald Trump befindlichen Golfplatz in Lowes Island, Virginia. Eine von Trump signierte Plakette behautet, dass an dieser Stelle zahlreiche Soldaten im Amerikanischen Bürgerkrieg gefallen seien. Auf dem Golfplatz fand keine militärische Auseinandersetzung statt.

Beschreibung

Das Denkmal befindet sich einem der zwei Golfplätze des Trump National Golf Club Washington, D.C. in Lowes Island. Trump erwarb den zuvor als Lowes Island Club" benannten Golfplatz 2009 für 13 Millionen USD.

Das Denkmal besteht aus einem Steinsockel mit einer Fahnenstange. Auf dem Sockel befindet sich eine Plakette mit der Aufschrift:

Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot. The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as "The River of Blood".

Die Plakette ist mit Trumps namen und dem Logo der Trump Organization beschriftet. Ein begleitender Text lautet "It is my great honor to have preserved this important section of the Potomac River!"

Rezeption

Historiker verwiesen darauf, dass auf dem Gelände des Golfplatz keine Kampfhandlungen stattfanden. Der Lokalhistoriker Craig Swain bezeichnet die Tötung zweier Soldaten durch Bürger im Jahr 1861 als das einzige mit dem Bürgerkrieg in Zusammenhang stehende Ereignis, das sich auf der Insel zutrug. The site lies near Rowser's Ford, over which on June 27, 1863, General Stuart led 5,000 Confederate soldiers with no record of fatalities, and according to the president of the Mosby Heritage Area Association, the only Civil War battle in the area was the Battle of Ball's Bluff, 11 miles away. Other historians consulted by The New York Times for a story in 2015 agree; one of them had written to the Trump Organization about the falsehood. Trump himself disputed the historians' statements:

"That was a prime site for river crossings. So, if people are crossing the river, and you happen to be in a civil war, I would say that people were shot — a lot of them."

"How would they know that?" Mr. Trump asked when told that local historians had called his plaque a fiction. "Were they there?"

Trump said that "numerous historians" had told him the story of the River of Blood, though he later changed that to say they had spoken to "his people".

The story broke while the Donald Trump presidential campaign was in full swing, and Rob Crilly noted that at that time he "had more weighty facts to clarify, such as his claim that Muslims in New Jersey cheered on the day of the 9/11 attacks – an old rumour that has long been discredited – and his latest boast, that he watched people jumping to their deaths from the Twin Towers from his Manhattan flat, four miles away". According to Jack Holmes of Esquire magazine, the ahistorical marker is symptomatic of the Trump administration; Jack Holmes points at other historical blunders made by members of the Trump administration, including Kellyanne Conway's reference to the non-existent Bowling Green massacre and Sean Spicer's claim that even Hitler had not used chemical weapons, forgetting the Zyklon-B that was used in the Holocaust.

Other commentators looked at Trump's plaque in the context of his admiration for president Andrew Jackson, expressed many times and especially in May 2017, when he appeared to suggest that Jackson lamented the Civil War despite having died sixteen years before its outbreak. Vocativ’s Joe Lemire noted, "the president has delved into revisionist history with the Civil War before".