Residents Call for the Removal of a Faithful Slave Statue in North Carolina, While a School Unveils a Confederate Monument in Ohio
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There is a good deal of talk about Civil War monuments this week—a reminder that this is still a hot topic in many communities across the country.
A group calling itself The Concerned Citizens of Tyrrell County in North Carolina has filed a lawsuit calling for the removal of a Confederate statue dedicated in 1902 and located on the courthouse grounds. At first glance it looks like your typical soldier statue, but among the numerous inscriptions on the statue is included a reference to the community’s “faithful slaves.
“IN / APPRECIATION / OF OUR / FAITHFUL SLAVES”
According to historian, Micki McElya:
The faithful-slave trope was the ultimate example of southern paternalism that described the master-slave relationship as essentially familial, existing outside of market forces. Advocates proclaimed slavery to be morally superior to free labor, arguing that it was more truly humane, based on a lifetime of mutual care and obligation as well as natural racial hierarchies. By this logic, some were born to be slaves while others were born with the responsibility to manage, guide, and care for them. This was often summed up in the phrase that certain slaves (and later free domestic workers) were ‘like one of the family.’ The word ‘like,’ of course, glosses over American slavery’s endemic sexual exploitation and family destruction, as well as the fact that many enslaved people were their owners’ family.
The lawsuit claims that the statue conveys the message that Black residents preferred slavery to freedom, which, of course, is exactly what such language was intended to reinforce.
According to the lawsuit, “The point of putting such a monument near the door of the Tyrrell County Courthouse was to remind Black people that the county’s institutions saw their rightful place as one of subservience and obedience, and to suggest to them that they could not and would not get justice in the courts.”
Like other states, North Carolina has passed legislation preventing the removal of monuments it deems to be ‘war monuments.’ The “faithful slaves” referenced on this particular monument is a reminder that Confederate statues, including the many mass-produced soldier statues, dedicated at the turn of the twentieth century were never intended simply to honor the Confederate rank and file.
Meanwhile, across the Ohio River a high school has dedicated a new monument honoring Morgan’s Raiders, led by Confederate general John Hunt Morgan raided Ohio in the summer of 1863. Folks, it doesn’t get much stranger than this.
In July 1863, Confederate General John H. Morgan led a force of 2,000 cavalrymen across southern Ohio. Morgan's force entered Ohio from Indiana on July 13. A chase ensued as Union cavalry pursued Morgan's men across twenty Ohio counties. Most of Morgan's troops were captured in Meigs County at the Battle of Buffington Island. Morgan, with several hundred cavalry, managed to escape. They raced northeast, fighting skirmishes along the way, and forded the Muskingum at a point near Rokeby Lock on July 23, 1863. As they went, the soldiers raided local farms for food and replacement horses. They were finally captured in Columbiana County on July 26. The raid marked the northern-most point ever reached by Confederate forces. Across southern Ohio, frightened residents burned bridges over fordable streams and buried silver and jewelry to hide them from the marauders.
That’s right. A school in Ohio chose a mascot that honors Confederates who terrorized the region including the county of McConnelsville in Morgan County, where the high school is located. This project was spearheaded by four students.
From a certain perspective the choice is understandable. As historian Christopher Phillips has noted, the Ohio River may have separated slave from free states, but family connections and culture were fluid throughout this region. Then there is the fact that the adoption of the mascot took place in the mid-1960s at the height of the Civil War centennial.
Still, that’s a pretty large monument to a Confederate cavalryman unveiled in a state that never joined the Confederacy. I can’t help but wonder what students learn about the Civil War in their history classes. Do I even want to know?
Civil War memory in the United States never fails to fascinate.
But they are history lessons. The tax dollar issue is technically factual but tax dollars are of great interest to the general public in other unrelated areas of political life - not in this area, not on a national scale. NYC's Upper West Side as a locality has chosen to again renovate their statue. If localities want to fight over these monuments and their meaning, they will fight. You cannot dictate what people may believe.
To argue about tax dollars is to make an unspoken assumption that you have "Justice" on your side and a right therefore to control or manage public opinion. That's not what historians are supposed to do
I always felt nostalgia when passing by this monument as a child, discerning that it was about something ancient, grievous and unknowable. A somber lonely unvisited monument about something dreadful.
https://www.westsiderag.com/2024/05/23/new-design-revealed-for-soldiers-and-sailors-monument-restoration-in-riverside-park-see-it
https://g.co/kgs/ywS1w8p
The war no longer seems like history for library and school books only. It now beckons one to THINK about the unbelievable reality that it was. Our own citizens killing one another with military victory the only solution.
Note that in 1902 the monument name made no reference to Union soldiers and sailors. It was just named Soldiers and Sailors Monument.
I personally feel all monuments should remain because they are history too. Plaques can explain their background. You cannot anesthetize the American mind through political correctness nor can you change peoples' ignorance and bigotry by force. You may kill the body but you can't change the spirits. Let people see the pathetic nature of mankind with their own eyes. Don't insulate the public. You cannot control what people will commemorate and you don't really have a right to. Argue and debate and teach, but don't try to control the truth. That is the way that NPR, CNN, The New York Times and even the NYRB have travelled and the public is understandably tuning them, and your apparent messaging, out at this time in our national life.