Posted on 06/06/2009 9:52:01 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
Frustration and disappointment that have arisen out of the town of Jonesborough’s decision to not allow bricks honoring Confederate soldiers to be placed in the Veterans
Memorial Park have spread beyond the town limits.
The Southern Legal Resource Center, a nonprofit organization based in Black Mountain, N.C., that advocates in matters involving Southern history, heritage and culture, has contacted Jonesborough officials cautioning them about excluding the Confederate soldiers and urging them to reconsider the town’s current policy.
The town decided nearly a decade ago, when the park was originally built, that the park would honor soldiers who served in the U.S. military from the Revolutionary War to present.
Members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in East Tennessee contacted the SLRC with their concerns Washington County’s Confederate soldiers would not be memorialized in Jonesborough.
In a letter to Mayor Kelly Wolfe, SLRC Executive Director Roger McCredie said that “considering that bricks honoring several Union soldiers are present in the memorial area, the town of Jonesborough’s exclusion of bricks honoring Confederate veterans from that area is blatantly discrimination and abridges the civil rights of their descendants.”
He goes on to urge the town to revise its position in the matter and to do the “legally and morally correct thing by admitting memorials to the Confederate dead to their rightful place in a municipal area set aside for honoring all of Jonesborough’s veterans.”
The letter references an excerpt from the Web site of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs showing that in 1906 the U.S. government began making headstones available for the graves of Confederate soldiers who died in Union captivity and also that in 1929 such headstones were furnished to Confederates who were buried in private cemeteries as well.
Attached to the letter was a copy of Public Law 85-425 as adopted in 1958, which defined the status of Confederate veterans and established for them federal pension rates exactly the same as those afforded to Union veterans.
Wolfe said town staff are working to ensure no laws are being violated.
“I’ve asked our town attorney, Mr. Jim Wheeler, for an opinion ... on our legal status with this issue,” Wolfe said. “The town of Jonesborough has no desire to unfairly discriminate against anyone, veteran or otherwise.”
Wheeler is looking into the situation and researching laws pertaining to the status of Confederate soldiers. Wolfe said he will present his opinion to the Board of Mayor and Aldermen at Monday evening’s meeting at Town Hall.
Because the memorial park is a town facility, the board could choose to revise the policy to allow Confederate soldiers to be included among those honored there.
“I’m sure the board will take steps if necessary to rectify this situation,” Wolfe said.
The Veterans Memorial Park has been in place outside the Visitors Center for about a decade. The park was rededicated at this year’s Memorial Day ceremony following nearly a year of renovation. Wolfe said the timing of the controversy surrounding the memorial is unfortunate as it follows the culmination of a great deal of hard work, time and dedication of those who contributed to the park’s renovations.
“I hope this whole debate doesn’t cause us to lose sight of just how wonderful the improvements to our recently completed veterans park are and how grateful we are to our Veterans Committee and especially to Mr. Marion Light for all their hard work.”
“It’s fitting that there is an effort here to procure memorial bricks for Confederate veterans because the people behind the southern secession in 1860-61 were certainly a few bricks shy of a load..”
Ya kinda like the folks on here that feel that States rights actually mean something../sarcasm
If you actually believe what you wrote and it’s not a /sarcasm post, I suggest you actually study the history and reasons for things instead of just having a stupid, uninformed knee jerk reaction to things...
For you information the last Civil was not fought about slavery.
Your statement may be accepted in some parts of the U.S., but it will not in others. My ancestors were all on the loosing side of that war, and were literally burned out of Alabama during Reconstruction. They played the GTT (Gone To Texas) option then.
They refused to be Slaves on the corrupt Government Plantation then, and I refuse NOW. I will die opposing the destruction of this nation.
To show disrespect to those who fought for the South is not acceptable behavior with me.
Well stated!
"The most powerful (motivation for secession), as it always has been, in revolutionary movements, was personal ambition. There was something peculiarly fascinating to bold, ambitious men in the thought of forming a great slaveholding confederacy, embracing fifteen states over which they would bear sway; with an aristocratic class to support their authority; with cotton, the greatest wealth-producing staple the world has ever known, as the basis of unparalleled prosperity, and with an obedient, servile race to perform all labor, and minister to the comfort and wants of this superior class as long as governments should last. Of course this motive was concealed..."
I rarely pass up a chance to make fun of the political Confederacy, it was a ridiculous and laugh-inducing failure. But the rebel soldiers themselves are a different matter. The secessionist idiots were not worthy of the sacrifice of the the typical Confederate soldier. I’m just following the lead of Robert E. Lee who knew secession was a bad idea.
“Attached to the letter was a copy of Public Law 85-425 as adopted in 1958, which defined the status of Confederate veterans and established for them federal pension rates exactly the same as those afforded to Union veterans.”
Can someone explain this? How could anyone be recieving a pension in 1958 from a war 100 years previous?
It would be applicable to widows. It wasn't unknown for a young woman to marry an old Civil War vet and outlive him by many years. I think the last Confederate widow died only a few years ago. My great great granny got a rebel pension many years after her husband died even though she wasn't that much younger than he.
Wouldn't it be a good idea not to use this metaphor in support of the Confederacy?
It's in poor taste and intellectually shaky when you consider that many of the rebels had no problem with had no problem with working slaves on their own plantations.
They may have had a case and a justification, but you won't find it by simply appropriating and inverting the best argument against them. Doing so simply implies that you don't have any real arguments for your position.
I will die opposing the destruction of this nation.
Spoken like a true Unionist.
My great whatever grandfather died in the Civil War. He wasn’t shy of a full load but had this wacky idea that the Federal Government didn’t own the states. He never owned a slave in his life, but died on the Confederate side. I’d like a brick placed for my ancestor. Regardless of your bias.
But the federal government was not trying to own the states when the secessions started. The secessionists just did not like the outcome of an election held according to the Constitution that their states had agreed to. Like Robert E, Lee and other good southern men, your war casualty ancestor was forced to make a bad choice by the unwise and unnecessary actions of the Dixie power grabbers.
ping
“But the federal government was not trying to own the states when the secessions started. The secessionists just did not like the outcome of an election held according to the Constitution that their states had agreed to. Like Robert E, Lee and other good southern men, your war casualty ancestor was forced to make a bad choice by the unwise and unnecessary actions of the Dixie power grabbers.”
And just what idiotic revisionist history book did you read this in??
The last Civil War was not fought about Slavery.
I am neither a Confederate nor a Unionist, I am a Patriotic American.
There were many at the time War of Northern Domination that were not for Secession. Sam Houston was a noted one.
Although I think the current 10th Amendment statements are the best way to move forward, for now, I want no part of Secession. I want the whole nation back from the Commie takeover. Period......
And Yes, my ancestors were literally burned out of Alabama. Fact.
According to Douglas Southall Freeman's classic 1934 biography, Lee's reaction to Virginia's secession was negative:
"I must say," he remarked sadly, "that I am one of those dull creatures that cannot see the good of secession."
Too bad there were not more Lees and less secessionists because Abraham Lincoln would have then peacefully served out his term to the benefit of most Americans, North and South.
Yep, and if wishes were horses than rides would be free.
The ACW was going to happen, because the perceived self interests of two sections of one country had reached a point where men in power, with the support of the population, had decided that a political solution short of seperation was impossible.
The South need to leave to survive as it was, and the US government could not allow that, and exist as a viable nation.
Lee regreted secession, and then fought like a lion in defense of his state. His distaste for for “secesh”, while genuine, did not trump his sense of duty to what he held most important. Had the whole of the South been filled with men of a like mind, the war would have come.
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