Boarded-up memorial to American traitors.
A memorial to the 13 Confederate soldiers who died while held on Georges Island - out of some 1,000 kept prisoner there - is now covered with wooden boards as the Baker administration determines if and how they can just get rid of the thing.
The state can't simply remove the marker - placed there in 1963 by the now defunct Boston chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy - because Georges Island is considered a "national historic landmark" due to its role in US military history, from early coastal defense to housing all those Confederate soldiers, officers and even politicians during the Civil War.
When WGBH took a look at the only Confederate memorial in Massachusetts in June, a spokesperson for the governor said he'd rather the thing be gone, because it's hardly something that would "support liberty and equality for the people of Massachusetts."
Before it was boxed up, visitors to the island could see a relatively anodyne memorial that listed the names of the dead - but one with the Confederate seal and motto - the Latin for "With God as our defender."
As with other chapters, the Boston chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy did its part to drum up the legend of the Lost Cause, of a noble band of freedom fighters set upon by evil Northerners, rather than the South being a construct aimed at enslaving millions and starting a war that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
In 1927, for example, the Globe reported on the chapter's new president, Mrs. Cecil B. Taylor (ladies of means back then used only their husband's name), who said
I shall endeavor to serve faithfully and well this organization, and I promise the same degree of devotion which animated those who, 65 years ago, gave lasting evidence of such courage and high purpose that the world still holds in affection the men and women who fought for the "lost cause."
The year before, the chapter erected a flagpole on Deer Island to fly the Confederate flag, over the grave of a Southern naval officer shot while trying to escape Georges Island, according to a Globe account at the time.
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Comments
It all kind of reminds me of book burning
By Westie
Tue, 08/15/2017 - 10:07pm
Why is it impossible to use objects like this as an opportunity to actually understand our history, rather than obliterate the parts of it that we currently don't like?
Isn't enforced ignorance more in line with what those fascist clowns in Charlottesville want rather than what the rest of us want?
Nope.
By Lipstickey
Tue, 08/15/2017 - 10:18pm
"Isn't enforced ignorance more in line with what those fascist clowns in Charlottesville want rather than what the rest of us want?"
No, it SO isn't.
Solution to that problem
By statler
Tue, 08/15/2017 - 10:20pm
Take a picture and put it in the museum. The history is preserved but the pride of place is removed.
Keep them til everybody wants to get rid of them
By EM Painter
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 12:02am
Stupid to make this part of a general campaign of hate against Trump and his voters. It stirs up support for statues and monuments nobody cared about before.
Take them down when everybody agrees and it's not part of this paranoid hostility towards people who don't agree with you.
If you want them taken down that's what you do. If you want to keep them for use as a weapon against people you hate, proceed as you were.
Impossible condition
By perruptor
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 6:23am
Why not say "Don't put it up until everybody wants it?" We're talking about a memorial to a "noble cause" the purpose of which was turning human beings into property. Thousands of Massachusetts men died fighting against that cause, and it is an insult to them to memorialize it as "noble." It wasn't, and it isn't "paranoid hostility" to recognize that. Pretending that wanting to take the thing down is "hate" of long-dead advocates of slavery is particularly stupid. I wonder why you think they need defending.
On a serious note
By anon²
Tue, 08/15/2017 - 10:23pm
Place it in a museum, with contextualized information on both the history of the fort, and the racist organization called the Daughters of the Confederacy.
Museums are for recording
By ZachAndTired
Tue, 08/15/2017 - 10:27pm
Museums are for recording history and learning. Memorials are for honoring people. I don't think anybody has an issue with displaying confederate artifacts in museums. Memorials are different though. They are honoring people who dishonored themselves.
History
By BostonDog
Tue, 08/15/2017 - 10:39pm
Why honor the dead in a memorial if not for the specific reason of remembering the history they were a part of? A memorial and a museum share the same purpose.
Why honor the dead in a memorial
By anon
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 9:26am
Good question.
Just put up a historic marker describing the use of the fort as a prison and be done with it.
Notice that Germany has no memorials to Nazis?
So, by your logic, we should also
By roadman
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 1:12pm
remove the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Boston Common. Oh wait, that one's ok because it honors the "good guys ".
How about allowing the Gettysburg battlefield, which has numerous monuments to the "bad guys" ,to be sold to developers and turned into condos?
Removing a memorial to dead soldiers just because modern day society doesn't agree with the principles their side was fighting for is nothing more than whitewashing history and dishonoring the dead. And all because it has the "evil" word Confederate on it.
We as a society can and should do better than this.
Nobody's going to forget them
By adamg
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 1:10pm
It's right behind the visitor center, which is really a small museum. But, yeah, they should NOT be honored here.
"I don't think anybody has an
By anon
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 3:31pm
"I don't think anybody has an issue with displaying confederate artifacts in museums."
Give it time, 20 years ago before the PC movement became the outright fascist brigade it is nowadays, there wasn't an issue with monuments like these, either.
> there wasn't an issue with
By anon
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 4:15pm
> there wasn't an issue with monuments like these, either.
There really was. Perhaps you were just oblivious to it.
Nope, nope, nope
By adamg
Tue, 08/15/2017 - 10:30pm
What Zach said.
The Georges Island visitor center does an excellent job explaining the history of the place (and then you get to go out and actually explore much of it). The memorial adds nothing to the history. It's simply an attempt to glorify men who were on the wrong side of history, who were not fighting for honor and justice, but for a barbaric slave state.
Pump the brakes
By Real Neal
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 9:15am
Honoring fallen soldiers is a practice I think we can all respect. I don't know the backstory behind the chapter and I certainly don't give two frosted flakes about the monument, but the way I see it those men were given a choice: fight for a "barbaric slave state" (their homeland) or risk their lives and the lives of their families as defectors. Let's not forget this war began because of the treatment of slaves, not because slavery had become taboo.
[T]he greatest efforts made
By cinnamngrl
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 3:48pm
[T]he greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of liberty, justice, humanity, equality, and all the calendar of the virtues of freedom, suffered violence and wrong when the effort for southern independence failed. This is, of course, intended as a species of political cant, whereby the crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of the rebellion might go down in history hand in hand with the defenders of the government, thus wiping out with their own hands their own stains; a species of self-forgiveness amazing in its effrontery, when it is considered that life and property—justly forfeited by the laws of the country, of war, and of nations, through the magnanimity of the government and people—was not exacted from them.
— George Henry Thomas, November 1868[14]
tlndr. can someone condense
By anon
Thu, 08/17/2017 - 8:59am
tlndr. can someone condense this into tweet form?
This monumennt isn't
By anon
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 9:28am
This monumennt isn't glorifying anybody; it is commemorating the dead. Read Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr. Keene NH Memorial Day Speech on remembering the Civil War dead. Holmes was wounded three times in the Civil War; later was on the Mass Supreme Court and was likely the gteatest justice to ever serve on the US Supreme Court.
The tablet is not just a recitation of names
By adamg
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 1:13pm
It features the Confederate seal. No, it's not like a statue of Lee or Jackson on a horse, but it honors a losing cause nonetheless. And it was not placed there by anybody who actually even knew the men, but by a group that had been trying for decades to make the South appear somehow noble.
Placed during the Civil Rights movement, too
By anon
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 1:49pm
This was a direct assertion of the values of the Confederacy at a time when blacks were rallying for their rights.
So it features the Confeferate seal
By roadman
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 3:35pm
Because the soldiers who died served in the Confeferate Army. Which is sort of important here.
To twist a memorial to the fallen into a tacit endorsement of the principles the Confederacy stood for is such a stretch that it boggles the mind.
So it was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy
By statler
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 3:40pm
who (again):
Why is this saving this so important to you?
Why is removing this MEMORIAL so
By roadman
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 4:06pm
important to you? And no, I don't support the ideals the Confederacy stood for. But I understand the importance of respecting the dead, and of not whitewashing history just because somebody decides it's inconvenient to acknowledge the truth.
The fact that the MEMORIAL includes the Confeferate seal, or was installed by the Daughters of the Confederacy, are NOT legitimate justifications to remove the marker, but are poor excuses to justify a PC agenda.
And if you still disagree with me, spend a day at Gettysburg Battlefield (I've been twice) and then try arguing that the Confederate memorials there should be removed because they promote the ideals of the Confederacy.
It's 2017 and the history is
By SMH
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 4:34pm
It's 2017 and the history is already recorded physically and digitally.
Even if it wasn't, it I isn't whitewashing history if the monument was a response by Dixiecrats to Brown vs the Board of Education and civil rights as a whole.
Motivation is EVERYTHING. This monument was racist propaganda.
It is important to me because
By statler
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 4:46pm
I can see that it is a piece of pro-confederacy propaganda that was put up in the height of the Civil Rights Era.
That's not "PC", it is just common sense.
And I think it's more important to deal with REAL issues
By roadman
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 6:17pm
that society is facing instead of going "OMG, a MEMORIAL to soliders who DIED at this fort (which totally justifies its existence at this location) and has been there for several decades, is suddenly pro-Confederate propaganda just because it was put up by a pro-Confederate group". But let's waste time and energy on this TRIVIAL matter than addressing - oh say - gun violence in Boston neighborhoods. Because it's easier and makes us all warm and gooey and "we feel good" by doing a pointless act instead. Sorry if I don't agree with you that that's how government should be spending its time and resources - boarding up a MEMORIAL to fallen soldiers just because they were "on the wrong side of the fight."
Removing this legitimate MEMORIAL (how many times do I have to emphasize this) is a needless symbolic gesture driven by the reactionary "anything Confederate has suddenly become pure evil and should be removed from the landscape and the pages of history" PC crowd - and nothing more.
And you still haven't explained to us how this Confederate memorial differs from those in Gettysburg or other Civil War battlefield sites - which also are memorials to the fallen soldiers who supported the Confederacy - and why this memorial must be removed at all costs, but it's somehow OK for those memorials to remain in place.
Then go already
By Kaz
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 6:57pm
Go work on a real issue.
That's an awful lot of words for something so trivial.
Who are you to say what's a "real" issue?
By lbb
Thu, 08/17/2017 - 10:55am
My mother used to have a line she'd use in restaurants, when someone was getting in her business about what she wanted to order: "You order for you and I'll order for me." Too bad your mother never said that to you. I suggest you run along and put your efforts behind whatever you think is a "real" issue, and if that's preserving the memory of a traitorous cause to enslave other human beings, then you do you.
Not even the biggest Confederate monument in NE
By anon
Thu, 08/17/2017 - 11:33am
This Boston island stone is nothing compared to New England's largest Confederate monument: The Colt Armory in Hartford, Connecticut. The gun production center supported and armed the Confederacy for years. Samuel Colt, the head of the armory, was a well known Copperhead who hated Lincoln and sympathized with the South. His massive armory was burned down by Northerners and Colt died during the war. However his wife, Elizabeth Colt, built a mirror-image of the armory after the war as a dedication to her husband and started to clean up Sam's image ala Daughters-of-the-Confederacy-style. Hartford, in its shear desperation to have something, anything; has been trying to turn the armory into a US national park ala Lowell, no matter how many times the feds recite the armory's history to them. Imagine if Walsh and Baker tried to make this Confederate island stone and the Confederate components within Fort Warren a US National Park? They would be thrown out of office. But in Connecticut, praising and polishing New England's largest Confederate icon is a thing, with no local backlash.
Finally!
By anon
Mon, 08/21/2017 - 2:04pm
Instead of this new Faneuil Hall name change BS, New England should focus on this Colt dilemma. Walpole, done; G Island; pending, Colt; still alive and kicking. You should see the US rep who keeps pushing this Confederate Coltsville junk: Congressman John Larson, a short JFK wannabe. Hartford is not only financially bankrupt, its culturally bankrupt
No no no
By smh in westie
Tue, 08/15/2017 - 11:20pm
Obliterate parts of our history??!? It was put there in 1963! In fact, the United Daughters of the Confederacy placed many similar monuments across the country WELL after the civil war to propogate the "lost cause," which is a set of beliefs that describes the Confederate cause as a heroic one against great odds despite its defeat.
You can argue (rather easily) that the monuments were put up in the first place to alter the impressions of history.
With that said, the only ignorance enforced was by you when posting without doing your homework.
Graphic Explaining Timing of Monuments
By SMH
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 1:14pm
"The dedication of Confederate monuments and the use of Confederate names and other iconography began shortly after the Civil War ended in 1865. But two distinct periods saw significant spikes. The first began around 1900 as Southern states were enacting Jim Crow laws to disenfranchise African Americans and re-segregate society after several decades of integration that followed Reconstruction. It lasted well into the 1920s, a period that also saw a strong revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The second period began in the mid-1950s and lasted until the late 1960s, the period encompassing the modern civil rights movement."
- SPLC
https://twitter.com/kevinmkruse/status/89725595095...
My "Heritage" is Tories who fled the US
By anon
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 9:25am
They were forced from their homes at the end of the War of Colonial Aggression.
Where are the monuments? Have tiki torch, will travel!
stop reading after this...
By formerlyTheSoBo...
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 9:31am
If you think this is like book burning....you should read a book.
I can't wait until Yawkey Way gets renamed. Racist, snowflake sox fans are going to be so butthurt....but no one in boston will care. the anger will come from new Hampshire and the south shore.
Go Cleveland! Go Houston! Go LA! anyone but the sox!
You were doing fine
By lbb
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 3:30pm
...until your knee jerked with the reflexive Red Sox hating bullshit. You don't give a damn about Yawkey's racism and you know it, you're just an againsty child.
You might not have to wait long
By Sock_Puppet
Thu, 08/17/2017 - 5:37pm
If it were up to Henry, he would rename the street “David Ortiz Way” or “Big Papi Way.”
Dis-Honor
By anon
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 11:00am
I'm from a town down South that has a statue of an infantryman that is a mirror image of the Civil War monument in Jamaica Plain and others like it in countless towns across rural Vermont, where Union casualty rates among Vermonters were high. These statues memorialize nameless boys, sons, brothers, husbands and fathers and went up around 1910, when veterans of the Civil War were dying off in large numbers, and with them our direct memory of the bloodiest war in U.S. history.
These memorials remind us that Americans are capable of killing one another by the hundreds of thousands when we are incapable of resolving disagreement by peaceful means in the political arena. At a time when neo-Nazis and anti-facists beat each other in the streets, this message is more relevant today than 100 years ago. For that reason, these memorials should not be carted off to museum storerooms but should remain on display in the public square, for all to see, lest we forget. (For the same reason, many Southern towns are now erecting public memorials to victims of horrific lynchings during Jim Crow. An honorable step. Very long overdue.)
By Gov. Baker's logic, if we don't agree with the side of the war the dead were on, they deserve to be dis-honored. One can make a case that the Vietnam War was unjust and morally wrong. Would the Governor have us remove memorials to the fallen in Vietnam? Strip POW flags from state properties?
Among some on the left in Europe, WWI is now viewed as an immoral war of imperialists. In the Highlands of Scotland, I have been through glens that are empty today because their villages lost an entire generation of their men in the "War to End All Wars." These boys fell in Flanders like toy soldiers in a bloody game between dueling royal grandsons of Queen Victoria. If you disagree with that cause, do you now strip these markers from memory? On each of these stone monuments is carved the Scots Gaelic word, CUIMHNICH -- "remember" -- lest we forget.
Tearing down statues like Jacobins and Bolsheviks will catalyze a counter-revolution from more violent reactionaries. History tells us that ultimately leads to civil war. Would that we had more sensible leaders to lead us peacefully through these senseless times.
Not just Gov. Baker's logic
By adamg
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 11:40am
Servicemen in Vietnam were not traitors. They were not fighting against the government of a country many of their leaders took a solemn oath to uphold.
In contrast, the people imprisoned on Georges Island were traitors (along with some Northerners held and even executed there).
Honoring these traitors, 100 years after the fact (in the center of the abolition movement no less) is a dishonor to the tens of thousands of men who died to preserve the union (to say nothing of the millions of people these treasonous rebels were fighting to keep enslaved).
All due respect, but one
By starstrewn
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 5:03pm
All due respect, but one could also argue that the American Revolutionaries were traitors to the British Crown.
In no way does my comment justify the horrific acts committed on both sides. War itself is evil. Slavery itself is evil. Any gross human rights abuses are evil.
Should we tear down Revolutionary War monuments because of our traitorous actions against the British? Should the United States of America itself be dissolved because of the abhorrent acts of land theft and murder that were committed against Native Americans?
Men and boys on both sides were killers. Relatives fought one another during the American Revolution. Brothers, cousins fought each other during the Civil War. I am not saying that fighting for slavery is right - in fact, it is subject to harsh moral condemnation. Lives were lost. Perhaps we should erect a memorial on this site to commemorate the countless lives that were brutally stolen from the institution of slavery. In fact, the contrast between the two monuments might in itself speak volumes.
I understand that these analogies are imperfect, and I am open to hearing other perspectives on this. But I think it is telling that Germany has not completely demolished all evidence of the Holocaust because they recognize the importance of recognizing the impact of their history.
Let us learn from our wrongs, not bow to our shame and try to erase the evidence of them.
We
By Sock_Puppet
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 5:12pm
There's that word again.
Get back to us when you finish your tour of memorials to American revolutionaries in England.
I know there's one statue of Washington in Trafalgar Square, put up in the 1920s after we helped the Brits out of a spot of bother. Good place to start your tour.
I think this is a fair point,
By starstrewn
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 5:58pm
I think this is a fair point, and I really appreciate your response. I was thinking about my comment after I posted it, and how applying it to Germany might also look. Should there be a monument commemorating Nazis who died? My instincts say definitely not. (And especially not in a location like a concentration camp.)
I'm not sure if I need to caveat that I am a Democrat. Perhaps the internet is not the best place to play devil's advocate, but I hope I can be clear that my intent is to gain a greater understanding of the issue - not to defend the atrocious actions of racists and murderers. I might not be explaining myself well enough, but for me personally, for whatever reason, it doesn't satisfy my understanding to just stop at "Tear it down, it represents an institution that was inherently violent." I already agree with that. I'm curious to know how deep these issues run, rather than end the conversation at the universal truth that human enslavement is evil. (For me, this is an academic pursuit as much as it is a moral one.)
Would you be willing to explain a bit more about what you meant when you said "We - There's that word again." I'm definitely interested to hear more of your perspective.
If you could point us to
By Sock_Puppet
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 12:14pm
The local monument to the fallen Viet Cong soldiers that'd be cool. Where is that, Quincy?
worcester
By cinnamngrl
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 3:53pm
Biotech Park Area, Worcester, MA 01605
massvvm.org
where does it say it memorializes Viet Cong soldiers?
By Ron Newman
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 4:00pm
I don't see that mentioned anywhere on the website.
I misunderstood your question
By cinnamngrl
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 5:31pm
I misunderstood your question.
Keep looking
By Sock_Puppet
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 4:52pm
That's a memorial to the folks from Massachusetts who died in the Vietnam War. No Viet Cong listed there.
Two types of fundamentalism colliding
By Refugee
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 1:41pm
I wonder how far this conflict between the right and left escalates. Both sides seem convinced they have the high ground.
False Equivalence
By anon
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 1:52pm
Right wing "omg! white GENOCIDE" cries, white supremacist drivel about heritage, blood and soil, Confederate "values" etc. will NEVER have any high ground.
The world has spoken on this repeatedly. There is no equivalence. Ever. At all.
Go practice your salute in the bathroom mirror, please.
Question
By statler
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 2:43pm
If the fundamentalist right is calling for a white ethnostate, what equivalent horror is the fundamentalist left calling for?
Universal health care.
By pmd
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 5:50pm
Universal health care.
Oh, the horror.
They aren't a mirror image.
By anon
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 1:41pm
They aren't a mirror image. They betrayed the union to preserve slavery and your Vietnam comparison makes no sense.
Parse that out a little more...
By Bob Leponge
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 2:10pm
Nazi soldiers and the Confederate Army were not "a side of a war I don't agree with," they were enemies of my nation, and, in the latter case, guilty of treason. I don't want memorials to either in my country.
Yes, one can make that case, but nevertheless the American GIs who died in Vietnam were fighting on our side; they were not our enemies as the Nazis and the Confederates were.
There's a very simple bright clear line here: Don't erect monuments to enemy dead on your own soil.
Are the people who voted for
By anon
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 3:22pm
Are the people who voted for Brexit considered guilty of treason against the EU? They probably see themselves as British/English patriots. That's how fans of the Confederacy see themselves.
I think the difference is that over time the USA has changed drastically from being a "federal REPUBLIC" to being a "FEDERAL republic". In the 1700's, states were more sovereign while the federal government had minimal power compared to today.
Of course not
By Bob Leponge
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 5:30pm
Of course not. Now you're just being silly. And the people in the southern states who voted to secede from the union were not being treasonous either. Almost by definition, nothing you can do at the ballot box falls under the definition of treason.
I understand that everyone, (and I mean everyone, even SS guards herding people into gas chambers or ISIS fighters beheading infidel children) thinks they are the good guys fighting for what is right and true and moral.
Why did Constantinople get the works?
By necturus
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 4:31pm
Oceania is at war with Eurasia, and Leningrad is back to St. Petersburg.
You can still find a monument to Benedict Arnold's left boot on the battlefield at Saratoga, though.
While you raise an interesting question,
By Bob Leponge
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 5:31pm
it's really nobody's business but the Turks.
you can. you just can't have
By Katharine
Sun, 06/14/2020 - 9:28pm
you can. you just can't have it on taxpayer-funded land.
Deer Island
By Nate
Tue, 08/15/2017 - 10:08pm
I guess the giant eggs weren't the first vessels of human waste on Deer Island.
Sigh
By BostonDog
Tue, 08/15/2017 - 10:31pm
Noting the soldier's deaths doesn't make one a White Supremacist. For all we know they died fighting a war they themselves didn't understand or particularly support. It's not as if today's troops aren't sent to fight unjust wars for purely political reasons.
Covering the memorial won't make racism or hate go away. Removing it won't excuse the horrors of slavery or America's dirty history. We'll repeat the past if we're unable to learn from it so I'd rather see the memorial left standing but supplemented with the historical context.
Everyone has learned from the
By Kinopio
Tue, 08/15/2017 - 10:54pm
Everyone has learned from the confederate war already except for some of Trumps worst supporters. Those people aren't interested in learning, history or equality.
So to be clear, you want us
By Steve Brady
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 6:30am
So to be clear, you want us to honor those men by assuming they were idiots with no agency?
Not Really
By BostonDog
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 7:17am
To remind current and future generations that normal Americans have given their lives for unjust reasons and our history is full of complex and regretful conflicts. Maybe if people better studied the events which led to the civil war we'll be able resolve future conflicts without the need for more memorials.
Those people weren't
By anon
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 8:30am
Those people weren't Americans. That was kind of the whole point of the war. They were Separatists and didn't consider themselves citizens of the USA.
I sort of get your point, but...
By Neal
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 9:49am
They were indeed Americans. The Confederacy was something that was completely self-proclaimed, but had absolutely no legal basis to exist, and therefore did not. It was not a legal entity. These were Americans. Americans who took up arms against their own country, but Americans nonetheless.
"Americans who took up arms against their own country"
By Bob Leponge
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 2:12pm
As did Timothy McVeigh.
Timothy McVeigh does not deserve a place of honor either.
That is why we have books and musuems.
By statler
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 8:40am
They do not need nor deserve a place of honor.
Would you be honored to have your name on that stone?
By BostonDog
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 9:12am
I don't see that particular monument as being honorific, just historical. (Unlike the confederate monuments being removed in the South.) And no, I don't think history should be limited to museums and textbooks.
Did you read the history of the stone?
By statler
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 9:30am
It was placed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy who:
So I am comfortable saying it was put there as a place of honor and thus should be removed.
Does it say any of that on the memorial itself?
By roadman
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 6:27pm
No, it is simply a memorial to the fallen who died at the fort. It's been there for decades, so let's LEAVE IT BE instead of going all paranoid because it's - OMG - Confederate! That is applying common sense to the situation.
Sadly, this is another example of how we as a society are increasingly focused on trivial issues - like removing a MEMORIAL to the fallen - that in the long tern will MAKE NO DIFFERENCE.
Been there for decades
By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 08/16/2017 - 7:47pm
So had the institution of slavery.
It also isn't "just a memorial". It is a piece of flagrant propaganda.
Perhaps you should look up what, exactly, was going on in the South in 1963 that led the Daughters of the Confederacy to wander around the country putting up these "monuments" to the "noble cause" of their forefathers.
Something like their need to remind certain people to "keep their place" in the same way that you flip out when teenagers are given any agency.
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