tals 15 volumes and 7,505 pages.
GEORGIA’S CONFEDERATE
James I. Robertson Jr. and team compiled the index, and Dale C.
MONUMENTS
Smith, in his review, found their work a most valuable contribu
In Honor of a Fallen Nation
tion. “The Medical and Surgical History has always been a gold
Gould B. Hagler, Jr.
mine of information; with the index, the utility of these volumes is now limited only by the imagination of the user.” Smith also indicated, rightfully so, the social issues, which the index opens for exploration. In cross-referencing topics such as ‘camp life,’ ‘prisons,’ ‘hospitals,’ ‘food and diet,’ and ‘weather,’ researchers can glean insight far beyond medical practices.
Those seeking printed copies can obtain them from Broadfoot Publishing, at http://www.broadfootpublishing.com, or check WorldCat http://www.worldcat.org/ for help in finding the collection in a local library. A few websites contain digitized versions of the Medical and Surgical History. This writer prefers the U.S. National Library of Medicine, at https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/ catalog/nlm:nlmuid-14121350Rmvset, where users can view pages online, conduct searches, or download PDF files.
A reviewer abroad perhaps best captured the value in this collection. “The greatest exactness in detail, careful statistics even in the smallest matters, and a scholarly statement embracing all sides of medical experience are here united, in order to preserve and transmit to contemporaries and posterity…the knowledge purchased at so vast an expense.”
Please keep suggestions for future ‘The Source’ columns coming; send them to the email address shown below. Continued good luck in researching the Civil War!
This unique work contains a complete photographic record of Georgia’s memorials to the Confederacy, a full transcription of the words engraved upon them, and carefully-researched information about the monuments and the organizations which built them. These works of art and their eloquent inscriptions express a nation’s profound grief, praise the soldiers’ bravery and patriotism, and pay homage to the cause for which they fought.
The removal of statues portraying Confederate leaders has sparked a great deal of controversy to say the least. Many people feel the Confederacy was defeated and should be buried. Others feel that folk who fought, bled, and died for their beliefs, and were then honored by memorials, should not be dishonored.
Many of the latter feel disenfranchised in the current politically correct environment. Since the topic relates to, in fact derives
Publishers Note: This press release is reprinted with permission from Mayor Landrieu’s office.
NEW ORLEANS, La.—City officials will continue the process to remove the last remaining monument that prominently celebrates the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy.” The statues being removed were erected decades after the Civil War to celebrate the “Cult of the Lost Cause,” a movement recognized across the South as celebrating and promoting white supremacy. Mayor Landrieu is expected to make remarks tomorrow afternoon.
There are four prominent monuments in question. The Battle of Liberty Place monument, which was removed nearly four weeks ago, was erected by the Crescent City White League to remember the deadly insurrection led by white supremacists against the City’s racially integrated police department and government. The Jefferson Davis statue on Jefferson Davis Parkway was removed last week. The P.G.T. Beauregard equestrian statue on Esplanade Avenue at the entrance to City Park was removed earlier this week. The statue coming down tomorrow is the Robert E. Lee statue at Lee Circle.
Citizens have a right to assemble and exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech and peaceful protest. We understand there are strong emotions surrounding this subject, and we ask that the public remain peaceful and respectful while demonstrating. Out of an abundance of caution, the City’s Office of Homeland Security and the NOPD have taken extraordinary security measures and dedicated the necessary public safety resources to maintain law and order while protecting workers and all people exercising their right to peacefully protest.
NOPD is well trained to use the highest standards to protect people and property while ensuring from, the Civil War, it is newsworthy and space will be given over to the debate.
The issue is now complicated by the June 19, 2017, Supreme Court ruling that allowed an Asian- American band to trademark their name, “The Slants.” Justice Samuel Alito provided a most succinct and clearly worded statement when he noted that the 71-year old trademark law banning disparaging terms infringes free speech rights guaranteed by the
the law is followed and is prepared to take necessary actions to ensure public safety. As a reminder, vandalism of any public property is strictly prohibited.
In December 2015, Mayor Landrieu signed an ordinance calling for the removal and relocation of the four prominent Confederate monuments displayed publicly in the City of New Orleans, citing that these statues did not reflect the diversity, values or full history of the City and should be removed. During a Special Meeting of the New Orleans City Council, members of the City Council voted 6-1 in support of Ordinance Calendar No. 31,082, which declared that the four Confederate monuments are nuisances pursuant to Section 146-611 of the Code of the City of New Orleans and should be removed from their prominent locations in New Orleans.
The removal of the statues follows a final decision on March 8, 2017 by the United States District Court of the Eastern District of Louisiana affirming the City’s legal right to remove the statue. Just last week, Civil District Court Judge Kern Reese denied a third request for preliminary injunction specifically confirming City’s right to move the Beauregard statue.
The City has been in the process of determining a more appropriate place to display the statues post-removal, such as a museum or other site, where they can be placed in their proper historical context from a dark period of American history. The statues are in the process of being crated and are being stored in City-owned warehouses or secure facilities.
Now, as offers to take individual monuments have come in from both public and private institutions, the City has decided that a competitive RFP process will facilitate the open and transparent selection of where they ultimately Constitution. “It offends a bedrock First Amendment principle: Speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend,” Alito said.
If carried into the public realm, this decision has immense ramifications for those who feel Confederate statues offend. The statues are free speech, just like posters, magazines, editorials, and other art forms. There is an additional part to this in that at least some Confederate statues are
go and how they can be presented as educational tools with historical context.
Only nonprofit and governmental entities will be eligible to enter into a cooperative endeavor agreement to host the statues. The RFP process will be used for the Battle of Liberty Place statue, the Jefferson Davis statue, and the Robert E. Lee statue.
Proposals will be able to be submitted for statues individually or as a group. All proposals must state how they will place the statues in context, both in terms of why they were first erected and why the City chose to remove them in 2015.
The statues will not be able to be displayed outdoors on public property in Orleans Parish.
The RFP is expected to be released in the coming weeks, with proposals due this summer. A public selection committee made up of City officials will make a recommendation for entities to receive and display the statues, with approval by the City Council.
Due to the complexity of the legal issues surrounding the property on which the PGT Beauregard monument was situated, the City and the City Park Improvement Association will continue to have goodfaith discussions regarding that property; the statue will be considered separately based on the result of those discussions.
The area that formerly housed the Jefferson Davis statue on Jefferson Davis Parkway will be replaced by an American flag. The area that formerly housed the Battle of Liberty Place monument will remain as is.
The City Park Improvement Association will also take a leading role in determining what replaces the Beauregard monument at the entrance to City Park, in partnership with the City and other civic groups. The remaining part of the base will be removed protected by Federal laws because they are on the National Register of Historic Places.
This crisis is not going to disappear until it has been worked out. When a minority can dictate to the majority, something is wrong and will, eventually be corrected, but that time has not yet come. America has demonstrated its strength by tolerating a wide variety of people from different backgrounds and with different beliefs. Once again, our country
As previously detailed, the City plans to leave the column that houses the Robert E. Lee statue intact. The City will also be undertaking public infrastructure improvements to include a water feature at the circle. The circle will be able to incorporate public art. The City has begun the process to design the public infrastructure improvements to be ready for the public art.
The goal is to complete the sites during the City’s tercentennial year in 2018.
The four Confederate monuments in New Orleans were erected between 1884 and 1915, after Reconstruction and during the era of Jim Crow laws. Three depict individuals deeply influential within the Confederacy, and the fourth honors an insurrection of mostly Confederate veterans who battled against the City’s racially integrated police and state militia.
The Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard monuments were erected to promote “The Lost Cause of the Confederacy.” Emerging at the end of the Civil War, “The Lost Cause” was known for espousing a number of principles, including that the war was fought over states’ rights and not slavery, that slavery was a benevolent institution that offered Christianity to African “savages,” and that the war was a just cause in the eyes of God.
The Battle of Liberty Place monument on Iberville Street, was erected in 1891 (originally on Canal Street) in honor of the Battle of Liberty Place, an 1874 insurrection of the Crescent City White League, a group of all white, mostly Confederate veterans, who battled against the City’s racially integrated police and state militia. The monument was meant to honor the members of the White League who died during the battle. In 1932, has come to grips with the unintended consequences of the diversity (call it hybrid vigor, perhaps) that has made us what we are. That calls for civil discourse and honest, rancor-free discussion to resolve the issue.
Whatever your viewpoint, we ask that you speak clearly and concisely, refrain from hostile invective and inflammatory speech (even if guaranteed), so that we can all work together in a common cause.
the City added a plaque to the monument, which stated that the statue commemorated the “overthrow of carpetbag government, ousting the usurpers…and the national election of November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state.” In 1989, construction on Canal Street forced the removal of the monument, but it was relocated to its past location on Iberville Street in 1993. At that time, the 1932 white supremacist plaque was covered with a new slab of granite honoring “those Americans on both sides of the conflict who died.”
The Jefferson Davis statue on Jefferson Davis Parkway was erected in 1911 in honor of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. It was commissioned by the Jefferson Davis Memorial Association.
The Robert E. Lee statue at Lee Circle was erected in 1884 in honor of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general who led the Army of Northern Virginia, at the site formerly known as “Tivoli Circle.” Despite the fact that Lee has no significant ties to New Orleans, this monument was commissioned by The Robert E. Lee Monumental Association of New Orleans.
The P.G.T. Beauregard equestrian statue on Esplanade Avenue at the entrance to City Park was erected in 1915 in honor of Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, a general of the Confederate army who led the attack on Fort Sumter, which marked the beginning of the Civil War. The Beauregard National Register of Historic Places nomination says that “the General Beauregard Equestrian Statue… is one of three major Louisiana monuments representing what is known by historians as the “Cult of the Lost Cause.” Statues of this type are tangible symbols of a state of mind which was powerful and pervasive throughout the South well into the twentieth century and some would say even today.”
“Truth: Remarks on the Removal of Confederate Monuments in New Orleans”
By Mayor Mitchell J. Landrieu
City of New Orleans Gallier Hall, Friday, May 19 Thank you for coming.
The soul of our beloved City is deeply rooted in a history that has evolved over thousands of years; rooted in a diverse people who have been here together every step of the way – for both good and for ill.
It is a history that holds in its heart the stories of Native Americans – the Choctaw1, Houma Nation2, the Chitimacha3.
Of Hernando de Soto4, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle5, the Acadians6, the Islenos7, the enslaved people from Senegambia8, Free People of Color9, the Haitians10, the Germans11, both the empires of France12 and Spain13. The Italians14, the Irish15, the Cubans16, the south and central Americans17, the Vietnamese18 and so many more.19,20
You see – New Orleans is truly a city of many nations/a melting pot/a bubbling cauldron of many cultures.
There is no other place quite like it in the world that so eloquently exemplifies the uniquely American motto: e pluribus unum – out of many we are one.
But there are also other truths about our city that we must confront.
New Orleans was America’s largest slave market: a port where hundreds of thousands of souls were brought, sold and shipped up the Mississippi River to lives of forced labor of misery of rape, of torture.21
America was the place where nearly 4,00022 of our fellow citizens were lynched, 54023 alone in Louisiana; where the courts enshrined ‘separate but equal’24; where Freedom riders coming to New Orleans were beaten to a bloody pulp.25
So when people say to me that the monuments in question are history, well what I just described is real history as well, and it is the searing truth.
And it immediately begs the questions; why there are no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks; nothing to remember this long chapter of our lives; the pain, the sacrifice, the shame… all of it happening on the soil of New Orleans.
So for those self-appointed defenders of history and the monuments, they are eerily silent on what amounts to this historical malfeasance, a lie by omission.
There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it.
For America and New Orleans, it has been a long, winding road, marked by great tragedy and great triumph. But we cannot be afraid of our truth.
As President George W. Bush said at the dedication ceremony for the National Museum of African American History & Culture, “A great nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.”26
So today I want to speak about why we chose to remove these four monuments to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, but also how and why this process can move us towards healing and understanding of each other.
So, let’s start with the facts.
The historic record27,28 is clear, the Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard statues were not erected just to honor these men, but as part of the movement which became known as The Cult of the Lost Cause.
This ‘cult’ had one goal – through monuments and through other means – to rewrite history to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity.
First erected over 166 years29 after the founding of our city and 19 years30 after the end of the Civil War, the monuments that we took down were meant to rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of a defeated Confederacy.
It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America, They fought against it. They may have been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots.
These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history.
These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.
After the Civil War, these statues were a part of that terrorism as much as a burning cross on someone’s lawn; they were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city.
Should you have further doubt about the true goals of the Confederacy, in the very weeks before the war broke out, the Vice President of the Confederacy/Alexander Stephens/made it clear that the Confederate cause was about maintaining slavery and white supremacy.
He said in his now famous ‘corner-stone speech’ that the Confederacy’s “cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery – subordination to the superior race – is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”31
Now, with these shocking words still ringing in your ears…
Last year, President Barack Obama echoed these sentiments about the need to contextualize and remember all our history.
He recalled a piece of stone, a slave auction block engraved with a marker commemorating a single moment in 1830 when Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay stood and spoke from it.
President Obama said, “Consider what this artifact tells us about history… on a stone where day after day for years, men and women… bound and bought and sold and bid like cattle on a stone worn down by the tragedy of over a thousand bare feet. For a long time the only thing we considered important, the singular thing we once chose to commemorate as history with a plaque were the unmemorable speeches of two powerful men.”32 A piece of stone – one stone. Both stories were history.
One story forgotten or maybe even purposefully ignored.
As clear as it is for me today… for a long time, even though I grew up in one of New Orleans’ most diverse neighborhoods, even with my family’s long proud history of fighting for civil rights… I must have passed by those monuments a million times without giving them a second thought.
So I am not judging anybody, I am not judging people. We all take our own journey on race. I just hope people listen like I did when my dear friend Wynton Marsalis helped me see the truth.
He asked me to think about all the people who have left New Orleans because of our exclusionary attitudes.
Another friend asked me to consider these four monuments from the perspective of an African American mother or father trying to explain to their fifth grade daughter who Robert E. Lee is and why he stands atop of our beautiful city.
Can you look into that young girl’s eyes and convince her that Robert E. Lee is there to encourage her? Do you think she will feel inspired and hopeful by that story?
Do these monuments help her see a future with limitless potential? Have you ever thought that if her potential is limited, yours and mine are too? We all know the answer to these very simple questions.
When you look into this child’s eyes is the moment when the searing truth comes into focus for us. This is the moment when we know what is right and what we must do.
We can’t walk away from this truth.
And I knew that taking down the monuments was going to be tough, but you elected me to do the right thing, not the easy thing and this is what that looks like. So relocating these Confederate monuments is not about taking something away from someone else. This is not about politics, this is not about blame or retaliation.
This is not a naïve quest to solve all our problems at once.
Otherwise, we will continue to pay a price with discord, with division and yes with violence.
History cannot be changed. It cannot be moved like a statue. What is done is done. The Civil War is over, and the Confederacy lost and we are better for it. Surely we are far enough removed from this dark time to acknowledge that the cause of the Confederacy was wrong.
And in the second decade of the 21st century, asking African Americans – or anyone else – to drive by property that they own; occupied by reverential statues of men who fought to destroy the country and deny that person’s humanity seems perverse and absurd.
Centuries old wounds are still raw because they never healed right in the first place.
Here is the essential truth//we are better together than we are apart.
Indivisibility33 is our essence.
Isn’t this the gift that the people of New Orleans have given to the world?
We radiate beauty and grace in our food, in our music, in our architecture, in our joy of life, in our celebration of death; in everything that we do.
We gave the world this funky thing called jazz/the most uniquely American art form that is developed across the ages from different cultures34.
Think about second lines, think about Mardi Gras, think about muffaletta, think about the Saints, gumbo, red beans and rice.
All we hold dear is created by throwing everything in the pot; creating, producing something better; everything a product of our historic diversity.
We are proof that out of many we are one – and better for it! Out of many we are one – and we really do love it!
And yet, we still seem to find so many excuses for not doing the right thing. Again, remember President Bush’s words, “A great nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.” 35
We forget, we deny how much we really depend on each other, how much we need each other.
We still find a way to say ‘wait’/ not so fast, but like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “wait has almost always meant never.”36
We can’t wait any longer. We need to change. And we need to change now. No more waiting. This is not just about statues, this is about our attitudes and behavior as well.
If we take these statues down and don’t change to become a more open and inclusive society this would have all been in vain.
While some have driven by these monuments every day and either revered their beauty or failed to see them at all, many of our neighbors and fellow Americans see them very clearly.
Many are painfully aware of the long shadows their presence casts; not only literally but figuratively.
And they clearly receive the message that the Confederacy and the cult of the lost cause intended to deliver.