Posted on 01/25/2002 8:41:32 AM PST by Publius
In 1939-40, markers were placed at each end of old Highway 99 naming the road Jefferson Davis Highway in honor of the president of the Confederacy.
The markers outraged Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, who learned of them recently. One monument, it turns out, was removed four years ago, but he's still demanding that the road be renamed and says he'll remove the other, even if at the risk of arrest.
Jefferson Davis was the only president of the Confederate States of America.
"In this state, we cannot have a monument to a guy who led the insurgency to perpetuate slavery and killed half a million Americans," told The Herald of Everett.
Washington 99, formerly US 99, was the major north-south route through Western Washington from Oregon to Canada until Interstate 5 was built in the 1960s.
I-5 supplanted the older road in many places, including near the Canadian border. Dunshee noticed the northern marker for the Davis highway about 10 feet from I-5 in Blaine as he returned from a kayaking trip in Canada last summer.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy established Jefferson Davis highways starting in 1913. With the blessing of state officials, they erected stone markers from Washington DC, across the country.
Dunshee said his research showed that in 1939, Democratic state Sen. Howard Roup sponsored the bill that gave the name to US 99. The southern marker was dedicated that June and the northern marker the next year.
Dunshee introduced a bill Wednesday to rename the road the William P. Stewart Memorial Highway in honor of a Civil War soldier from one of the first black families to settle in Snohomish.
Rep. Ruth Fisher, D-Tacoma, chairwoman of the House Transportation Committee, said the bill would get a hearing.
"The reaction is, 'You're kidding. That shouldn't be here,'" Fisher said.
The southern marker was removed without notice from a park in Vancouver four or five years ago, Vancouver City Council members Jim Moeller and Pat Jollota revealed Thursday.
The marker is now stored at a shed in a cemetery. Moeller and Dunshee said the two markers belong in a museum with an interpretive display.
If the bill passes, Dunshee said, the state Parks Department would remove the northern monument. If it fails, he says, he's willing to drive to Blaine and rip it out himself, even if he winds up going to jail.
"Slavery was the greatest injustice of our history," he said. "It's not something we should glorify."
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Any surprise that it would be another DEMOCRAT expousing the tenets of Gramscianism?
Whatever your opinion of the Civil War (War of Northern Agression), it is an unbelievable stretch to equate Davis with Mussolini, let alone Hitler. Jefferson Davis was an honorable man, well respected by friends and enemies alike.
Not likely with that mind-set.
No.
William Jefferson Clinton, you mean. I agree.
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