75-foot North Carolina Confederate monument removed from Capitol grounds following Gov. Cooper's ord
Source: ABC Eyewitness News 11
RALEIGH (WTVD) -- The North Carolina Confederate Monument is being removed from Capitol grounds in Raleigh following Gov. Cooper's call for all Confederate monuments to be removed from the area.
Crews were on scene to remove the 75-foot monument early Sunday morning and are continuing to work throughout the day.
The soldier atop the monument was removed around 9 a.m. and crews began dismantling the obelisk around 1 p.m.
Two Confederate monuments, including the Daughters of the Confederacy Monument and the Henry Lawson Wyatt Monument, were removed from the Capitol grounds Saturday morning.
On Friday night, the monument was partially toppled. Demonstrators tore down two statues from the monument and dragged them through the streets of downtown Raleigh.
Read more: https://abc11.com/society/nc-confederate-monument-being-removed-from-capitol-grounds/6258514/
There are several videos of the process of removing this 75 foot monument in the news story.
And here is the additional story of what happened Friday night when a crowd dismantled portions of the monument.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/20/us/north-carolina-confederate-statues-removed/index.html
Governor Cooper started calling for the removal of these statues in 2017 after Charlottesville. He has been stymied and thwarted all along the way by Republicans in the state. I am very pleased to see him take this action.
My apartment is only a few blocks from the grounds of the State Capitol. On Wednesday I took a walk up to the grounds--wanting to document some of the art on plywood covering smashed windows in downtown Raleigh--and I took a few shots, also, of the 75 foot monument and the one dedicated to the women of the Confederacy. You can see them here: https://www.democraticunderground.com/103676393
rurallib
(62,448 posts)Sure seems like there are tons.
gladium et scutum
(808 posts)My opinion is that there are two types of Confederate Monuments.
The first of these are the statues of a Confederate Soldier that is inscribed To Our Confederate Dead. These are monuments to the thousands of husbands, fathers, sons, uncles, nephews and friends that went away to war and never came home. They lie close to the Chambersburg Pike in Pennsylvania, Shiloh Church in Tennessee, Chickamauga Creek in Georgia, or near a little Dunker Church in Maryland. Some have no resting place; their ashes strewn to the wind by fire in a Virginia Wilderness.
Monuments to the dead are as old as humanity. When they laid Paleolithic Neanderthal Thag in his grave, the stacked some rocks on to, so they would always remember where Thag was. People have done that since then. We should protect these monuments to the dead. Some think they may no longer belong in front of the Surry County Court House or in the middle of a street of downtown Portsmouth. There are cemeteries nearby with graves of Confederate soldiers. Why not move the statues there? I think it fitting the stone sentry guards over his comrades in arms for eternity.
The second type of monument is to the Confederacy. These I do not particularly care what happens to. The statue of Jefferson Davis in a public square in New Orleans was not put there because Davis was from New Orleans or Louisiana. It was not erected there because Davis was an outstand Secretary of War or a Mississippi Senator. It is there because he was the President of the Confederacy. Stone Mountain in Georgia is another example of a monument to the Confederacy. Davis, Lee and Jackson were not from Georgia, nor did they ever serve there in any significant capacity. This monument is to Davis, not as the Secretary of War, or as a Senator from Mississippi, Lee is not there to commemorate 30 years service in the United States Army, and Jackson is not there based on his accomplishments as a teacher at VMI. They are on Stone Mountain because they are the face of the Confederacy. That is why that monument was carved. Make no mistake. it is there to memorialize the concept of the Confederacy. If it goes, I will not mourn its loss.
Gore1FL
(21,151 posts)On battlefields, I take no issue of markers of regimental positions, cannons, etc. scattered about. That's the one time where the history argument makes sense.
United Daughters of the Confederacy statues, no matter where they are located, need to be either melted down or put in a museum that dedicated to how the UDOC tried and nearly succeeded in rewriting history.
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)I believe that there is a huge difference between an informational marker stating the position on a preserved battlefield and an actual monument. The statues to the Confederacy, its leaders and soldiers glorifying their part in an armed insurrection need to be removed and destroyed.
gladium et scutum
(808 posts)a third type for sure.
yellowdogintexas
(22,270 posts)is a very moving place. Nearly all the states have some sort of monument to the soldiers from that state somewhere on the grounds, most with the names of those soldiers included. Some of these monuments have been there for 100 years, and some are fairly new. These memorials really bring home the cost of that war to both sides. There are flat stones around the grounds which mark key events in the Battle of Vicksburg.
If you ever visit it, be sure to take time to walk around and follow the battle map. I was expecting to have quite different emotions than what I did feel.
I would not have a problem with the statue part (not the Daughters of the Confederacy part) relocated to an actual cemetery, especially if that is where that person is buried.
Or maybe we could have a Museum of the Traitors and dump them all in there.
Cha
(297,602 posts)TY for the pics, mnhtnbb