Posted on 12/28/2008 5:48:58 AM PST by Colonel Kangaroo
RINGGOLD — In a dark warehouse, the 700-pound bronze statue of a Confederate general most people have never heard of lies on its back under plastic wrapping.
The likeness of Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne, set down next to an old phone booth, represents the seven-year dream of some quirky history buffs who believe the man deserves belated honors. And it is the hope of a small town that this obscure figure will bring visitors with fat wallets.
The statue almost was not finished because for years organizers couldn’t scratch up the money to pay the sculptor. When it’s put on display next year, this North Georgia community of 2,500 will see whether the $120,000 price tag was worth it.
With the Civil War’s 150th anniversary in 2011, communities across the South are planning gatherings and spiffing up battlefields in hopes of drawing tourist dollars. Between Chattanooga and Atlanta, towns where blue and gray fought are trying to build things for people to see besides reading roadside markers. Ringgold is banking on one of the few new statues to a Confederate being built anywhere and a festival next fall to unveil it. In this little town, the Army of Tennessee general won his greatest victory.
John Culpepper, 63, city manager in nearby Chickamauga and chairman of the state’s Civil War Commission, thinks it’s a good bet. He likens I-75 — roughly the route the battling armies took — to a trout stream. Civil War historic sites are the lures.
“You just throw it out there and reel them in,” he said. “See where General Cleburne saved the Army of Tennessee! Reel them in there. … This was all put in place here 145 years ago. Now promote, promote, promote, promote.”
Others wonder how a little town such as Ringgold will tell the complicated story of Cleburne, an Irish immigrant who was on the losing side of many of the major battles in which he fought. He was an ardent supporter of the South, yet called at one point for blacks to earn their freedom if they fought for the Confederacy. Other generals hated the idea. Historians think Cleburne’s plan cost him promotions.
“This is our hero,” said Randall Franks, a writer for the local Catoosa County News. “But it’s going to take a tremendous marketing effort to take this Confederate general and tell the general public who he is.”
Cleburne’s connections to Ringgold were brief — basically one bloody day. The general earned the nickname “Stonewall of the West” for his toughness in battle. Cleburne fought at Ringgold on Nov. 27, 1863. The Confederates were retreating south in disorder from Chattanooga. At Ringgold Gap, a cut between two mountains, Cleburne and about 4,100 men fought off 12,000 Yankees while the rest of the army — tens of thousands — escaped. Diarist and Confederate soldier Sam Watkins wrote, “Cleburne had the doggondest fight of the war.”
Cleburne fought in many other battles, including Kennesaw Mountain and the Battle of Atlanta. He was killed in the Battle of Franklin, Tenn., in November 1864 at age 36.
Several places in former Confederate states are named for him, including Cleburne County, Ala., on the Georgia line west of Atlanta. But for years, Cleburne himself was not well-known, even among Civil War buffs. That changed in the past decade or so. Biographies were written, and a comic book illustrator in Florida just published a graphic novel about him.
“Nowadays he is beginning to earn his due,” said prominent Civil War historian Craig Symonds, author of a Cleburne biography. “I think the erection of this statue is reflective of that.”
The statue was the brainchild of Mauriel Joslyn, a writer from Sparta who edited a book on Cleburne. She joined with a handful of other people to create the Patrick Cleburne Society. In 2001, the group announced it was going to raise money to build a statue at a little roadside park in Ringgold Gap.
The group sold T-shirts, books and busts of the general at festivals across the South and on the Internet. “I really thought this will be a piece of cake,” Joslyn said. It wasn’t.
“It’s hard to get someone to give to something they don’t know anything about,” she said. “This is a guy that nobody has ever really heard of.”
By 2006, the group was about $50,000 short. Sculptor Ron Tunison, whose Civil War statues are at historic sites across the country, warned the group that unless he was paid in full, the project would be scrapped. Then a local utility, the Ringgold Telephone Co., stepped in and paid the remaining debt. The statue was shipped to the company’s warehouse, where it sits today. The thankful town plans to raise the statue with fanfare in October.
“If you’ve got nothing for them to see, they ain’t going to come here,” Mayor Joe Barger said.
Putting up a Confederate statue could be a cause of controversy in an age when Confederate symbols are being challenged across the South by those who find them an offensive reminder of slavery. Earlier this year, the small African-American community in overwhelmingly white Ringgold objected to the Confederate battle flag being flown over the town depot. The flag was taken down. Confederate heritage groups are challenging the move.
Paul Croft, 68, who called for the flag’s removal, said blacks in the town do not object to acknowledging Cleburne.
“This is where he fought,” he said. “No one has a problem with the statue.”
Aside from Cleburne’s battle, Ringgold’s claims to fame are modest. Dolly Parton was married there.
The downtown has seen better times. Amid antique shops and craft stores are many “for rent” signs. Diane Gregory, 58, an antique store owner on Nashville Street, sighed and rolled her eyes when asked about how the town is promoting its Civil War heritage. She said the statue could help. “You have to have something for them to come and see,” she said.
The town’s location might help to draw tourists. It sits off I-75 between the Chickamauga battlefield and Resaca, where the state is set to open a $3 million interpretive battlefield center.
Antiques dealer Gregory said towns such as Ringgold need to play up Civil War connections, even if they are not well-known.
“It’s what we’ve got to work with,” she said.
I'll buy that. My issue with most Lincoln-haters is their somewhat irrational assumption that if Lincoln hadn't resisted secession that somehow limited government would have survived in its pre-1860 form.
This seems highly unlikely to me. IOW, I believe those who attempted secession killed the pre-1860 Republic dead. Lincoln and Grant (and a couple million others) succeeded in resuscitating it to a limited extent.
The 1865 to 1900 Republic was also quite remarkably limited compared to the general and almost continuous trend since 1900 of increasing government power. It seems to me irrational to assume that this general trend would never have happened without Lincoln's precedent of expanding government power temporarily to deal with an existential crisis.
You seem like someone with whom a civilized discussion can be had on this matter. So let me respectfully disagree.
The right to secession is a critical element in limiting the powers of the central government. And it is what ultimately underlies the sovereignty of the States. The ability to withdraw from the Union is in the final analysis the only peaceful way for a State or a group of States to deal with the inevitable trend towards usurpation by the central government. A careful reading of the Federalist Papers reveals even Hamilton and Madison to be amenable to this view.
What is forgotten is that permanent secession need not have been the final outcome of the profound disagreements of the 1860s. One can never know the path not taken. But it seems reasonable to me that had Lincoln not resorted to war that the the Southern States would have eventually rejoined the Union, but on the terms defined at the founding.
But forget the 1860s. Look at where we are today. Worse yet, look at where we are heading. Only the foolish or the deluded can fail to see that both national parties have completely abandoned Constitutionally limited government. I argue that this outcome was inevitable once the sovereignty of the States was destroyed.
Please note, I argue this not because the States are less susceptible to corruption. They are not. But the great genius of the founding was to harness the principle of divide and conquer to keep the wolves at bay. Lincoln's "preservation of the Union" destroyed the primary check and balance in the system which was not the separation of powers between the departments of the Federal Government as taught in the government schools but the sovereignty of the States. Once this was lost, the separation of powers between the various branches of the Federal Government was doomed to fail for the obvious reason that all three branches of the national government are basically on the same side. They all benefit from the concentration of power in Washington. And that puts them at odds with the interests of the people. It is as simple as that.
Dixie ping
Sounds more to me like what you’re proposing is a liberum veto by the states. Any single state could prevent any federal action, even one supported by all the other states, by threatening or carrying out secession unless it gots its way.
The Poles had this. They called it their “Golden Freedom.” And it was, for the nobles and gentry. It resulted in the complete destruction and partition of Poland, and its disappearance as a state for more than a century.
No polity can continue long if subdivisions are allowed to break away whenever they feel like it.
More critically, I think you missed my main point. The world has changed dramatically since 1787, even since 1861. I find it very difficult to imagine a world in which the pre-1860 government of the United States continues to function effectively in 2009. I can’t see such a government fighting and winning two world wars, three if you count the Cold War.
Such a vision is attractive, I think a government of the minimal nature of that in 1860 would be great. It just isn’t very realistic.
For instance, the Progressive movement in the late 1800s, early 1900s, with wings in both parties (Teddy and Woodrwo were both members), was very explicitly opposed to the limited government of the time and even to the US Constitution as such. Your thesis seems to be that if Lincoln had not fought to preserve the Union, then no such tendencies would ever have developed in this country.
This seems to me an example of the “after the fact” fallacy. “Lincoln (temporarily) increased government power. Today the government is too powerful. Therefore, had Lincoln not done as he did, the government today would not be out of control.”
You can assert that the resort to secession would be trivialized, but there is no evidence for this. Then again, we will never know.
"I can’t see such a government fighting and winning two world wars, three if you count the Cold War."
Had we not intervened in the First one (thanks Woodhead) there may very well not have been a Second or a third (cold) one for that matter. Seriously, what difference would it have made to the United States if the German monarchs had prevailed over the English monarchs in the early twentieth century? From my point of view, none. People forget that the Kaiser as corrupt as he was was not Hitler. And Hitler's rise to power can be traced directly to the post WWI armistice as well as the global economic disruptions brought about by our own stupid economic policies designed and executed in Washington.
"Your thesis seems to be that if Lincoln had not fought to preserve the Union, then no such tendencies would ever have developed in this country."
Wrong! My thesis is precisely the opposite. The tendency towards tyranny was always and will always be there. The Founders were well aware of this and that is why they constructed the government as they did. What Lincoln did was destroy the mechanisms put in place to resist the tendency towards tyranny.
"“Lincoln (temporarily) increased government power."
As I stated before he did much more than this. He destroyed the Sovereignty of the States. And this is what has allowed the power of the central government to grow unchecked. And that is why we are in the fix we are in.
Clearly a man with great vision. His prophecy correct in every detail.
Sad to say it, but you’re right.
True, sadly too true.
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