by
John Stevenson
There
was a monument in front of the Old Durham County Courthouse. It consisted of a granite base upon which
stood an anonymous Confederate soldier. Erected
in 1924, the whole works was about 15 feet high. The base was inscribed: “In
memory of the boys who wore the gray.”
Two days
after the violence in Charlottesville, a group of vandals destroyed that
monument. One person climbed the
pedestal and looped a rope around the soldier.
The group then pulled the soldier to the ground where it crumpled. The police were present but, apparently
wanting to avoid a confrontation, did not intervene. They did, however, film the event and have
since made several arrests.
Regardless
where you stand on the issue of whether there should be monuments to
Confederate leaders or not, this vandalism is wrong on two counts. First, it is illegal to vandalize or destroy
the property of another---in this case the city. Several jurisdictions are deciding or have
decided to remove Confederate statues---others won’t. It is up to the monument owner---not a mob of
self-appointed vigilantes---to decide the disposition of that monument. If the mob felt aggrieved by the presence of
this memorial, their appropriate remedy would have been to petition the city.
Second,
and setting aside the criminality issue, the vandals’ choice of target was inexcusable. Here’s why.
The
monument depicted no Confederate leader, no known slaveholder. It was an anonymous soldier without rank or
identification. As described on the UNC-maintained website documenting southern
history, it was a “common soldier.” Officers
in those days typically got their commissions by graduating from a military
academy, or through their wealth or political connections. The common soldier---Johnny Reb---had no such
power and would be an unlikely slaveholder.
He fought for his State.
What
was Johnny Reb’s condition? Compared to
his Union opponent, he was under-equipped and under-fed, and his weapons were
less effective. The Union had the
industrial strength to outfit an army which the South did not.
For
example, he may or may not have even had shoes.
If he had shoes, there probably wasn’t a right and left---his shoes were
interchangeable. If he had none, he
might eventually acquire a pair when scavenging from the dead on the
battlefield.
The
same applied to weapons. Johnny Reb may
well have arrived on the battlefield with his personal shotgun or hunting
rifle. Confederate-issued rifles were
less effective than Union rifles. But
again, scavenging from the dead was common. As an example of the Union’s technological
advantage, the Gattling Gun, forerunner to the true machine gun, was used by
Union forces but not available to the Confederates.
Common
soldiers on both sides had it tough---perhaps even tougher than today's college kids retreating to their safe spaces. But Johnny Reb had it tougher than the Yankee. His tour of duty featured extreme privation
in a fight against long odds.
Video
of the mob pulling Johnny Reb off his granite base is a study in
contrasts. Johnny Reb represented
toughness, courage, determination, fighting to the end against forbidding odds
for a lost cause.
He
was pulled down by Lilliputians. Once
the statue of Johnny Reb was crumpled on the ground, the vandals bravely took
turns kicking, spitting upon, and “giving the finger” to the common soldier. A sorry spectacle.
But
there’s an unfortunate precedent for disagreeing with Government policy and
taking it out on the common soldier: the vandals’ ideological grandparents spat
upon American troops returning from Viet Nam.
In
case you misunderstood, this is not an endorsement of the Confederacy. It is an affirmation of “the boys who wore
the gray,” the common solder whose monument in Durham was trashed by his
inferiors.
“It does not take a brave dog to bark at
the bones of a dead lion.”
(attributed to Winston Churchill)
