My position has changed on the issue of Confederate statues/memorials/monuments. Please read to the end before jumping me. :-)
History is history.
Some of my ancestors held people of color in bondage. My mother's father was born in 1860 and lived during a time when his father, William Baird, worked as an overseer on farms, in charge of enslaved men. Here he is; handsome fella, huh?
As an older man with lots of kids he did not get into the war till late, but once he was in he saw some vicious action and ended up being wounded in the shoulder as he climbed over a fence during the horrible Battle of the Wilderness in May of 1964.
That was the first meeting of Grant and Lee and Grant shocked the South by, instead of retreating to lick his wounds after that defeat as previous Union generals had tended to do, he turned his troops toward Richmond. Lincoln had found a general who would fight.
But William was out of it now. He was listed as AWOL, but in fact was in a Richmond hospital with injuries that would disable him for the rest of his life, necessitating his youngest son, Wilson, being left as the years passed to manage the farm. He postponed marriage till 1902. My mother (now 97), the youngest of his eleven children, was born when he was 63.
William was hardly my only ancestor in the fray. Nathan Wood was only 16 when he lied about his age and enlisted in the First Georgia Cavalry. I remember his daughter Minnie, my Great-Grandma Shaw.
Forrest existed and was revered enough by many in Rome to spur them to finance that fancy statue and place it in the middle of Broad Street. That statue and the one to the "Women of the Confeeracy" were moved from Broad Street to Myrtle Hill cemetery over sixty years ago. I am that rare liberal who thinks statues generally should not be taken down but instead signage should put them in context. It is just too similar to the Taliban blasting historic carvings off mountains to have historic monuments destroyed. Moving them to more appropriate places is probably a good idea for those on public streets or courthouse lawns.
I have been glad that Rome's three Confederate memorials are each situated in the cemetery that holds rows and rows of Confederate graves. A cemetery seemed to me an appropriate place to memorialize that dead rebellion that so significantly affected my family's history and, I contend, made my existence possible. That last is a hard truth to internalize.
History is history.
Some of my ancestors held people of color in bondage. My mother's father was born in 1860 and lived during a time when his father, William Baird, worked as an overseer on farms, in charge of enslaved men. Here he is; handsome fella, huh?
That was the first meeting of Grant and Lee and Grant shocked the South by, instead of retreating to lick his wounds after that defeat as previous Union generals had tended to do, he turned his troops toward Richmond. Lincoln had found a general who would fight.
But William was out of it now. He was listed as AWOL, but in fact was in a Richmond hospital with injuries that would disable him for the rest of his life, necessitating his youngest son, Wilson, being left as the years passed to manage the farm. He postponed marriage till 1902. My mother (now 97), the youngest of his eleven children, was born when he was 63.
William was hardly my only ancestor in the fray. Nathan Wood was only 16 when he lied about his age and enlisted in the First Georgia Cavalry. I remember his daughter Minnie, my Great-Grandma Shaw.
Forrest existed and was revered enough by many in Rome to spur them to finance that fancy statue and place it in the middle of Broad Street. That statue and the one to the "Women of the Confeeracy" were moved from Broad Street to Myrtle Hill cemetery over sixty years ago. I am that rare liberal who thinks statues generally should not be taken down but instead signage should put them in context. It is just too similar to the Taliban blasting historic carvings off mountains to have historic monuments destroyed. Moving them to more appropriate places is probably a good idea for those on public streets or courthouse lawns.
I have been glad that Rome's three Confederate memorials are each situated in the cemetery that holds rows and rows of Confederate graves. A cemetery seemed to me an appropriate place to memorialize that dead rebellion that so significantly affected my family's history and, I contend, made my existence possible. That last is a hard truth to internalize.
Tearing down statues seems a distraction from more important things to me. I would rather us spend our efforts fighting 21st Century racism and hate and leave Forrest and Lee and Desoto and Columbus and Washington and Jefferson to history.
Forrest was an important historical figure with a special relationship to Rome having stopped Streight's raid. [A year later Sherman captured Rome anyway and burned much of it.] Forrest was an amazing cavalry officer and one of the great generals of that war. He was also was in command of troops who committed wartime atrocities (read about the massacre at Fort Pillow) and after the war he was associated with the early Klan. All of that should be on the signage. If the statue were still on Broad Street I would approve of moving it to the cemetery, but it is in a cemetery now, near Confederate graves, to me an appropriate location for such historic outdoor relics of the 1800s. However, that location has become the focal point for area Veterans Day celebrations and so, I support moving the Forrest statue, the Women of the Confederacy statue, and the already vandalized Confederate memorial at the summit of Myrtle Hill. One suggestion is to move them to a special location at Jackson Hill (also a Civil War site). I have thought there might be a way to include them in the nearby Confederate section of the cemetery with the several hundred graves of CSA soldiers.
DeSoto and Columbus were also vicious racists and murderers. Should we tear down the many statues of these two men? Should we change the name of our local theater and the many places in America named for these two? Washington and Jefferson kept other human beings in lifelong bondage. That makes me nauseous since I have revered these men all my life. That information is important for historians to note and for public displays about those figures to relate along with the things they did that influenced history. But should we destroy the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial?
What we DO need are monuments to those who helped to change our society for the better. I'd like to see a more prominent display to honor those who "sat-in" on Broad Street to further human rights, to those who died locally in race crimes, etc. (Thank you to those who built the Freedom Garden outside the old Carnegie building.)
This was written too quickly and needs editing but I'm busy otherwise today and will let this stand for now.
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