LEESBURG, Va. – A statue of a Confederate soldier that has stood in front of the historic courthouse in Loudoun County since 1908 is now being called inappropriate and a local lawyer says it should be removed.
The statue was erected to honor the war dead at a time when many Civil war veterans were still alive.
The statue shows a Confederate soldier standing guard with his rifle ready.
An inscription, carved into the stone monument, says, “In memory of the Confederate Soldiers of Loudoun County, Va. Erected May 28, 1908.”
But Loudoun County, deeply divided over the war in 1861, may not have healed old wounds.
Attorney John Flannery, who often has cases in the courthouse, wants the statue moved elsewhere. He says it’s intimidating to some of his clients.
“It deters people. It chills them from believing they can get a fair shake in court,” he says.
Flannery says he’s actually had clients who are afraid they won’t get justice in a courthouse after seeing the statue.
Flannary’s letter to the editor can be read at loudountimes.com
Mr. Flannery, get over it. The statue is dedicated to the memory of those who served from the town. Just is. We can’t sanitize and scrub everything unpleasant from our history just because someone is uncomfortable. The statue is part of Leesburg. There are similar statues everywhere in the south.
Furthermore, people in those days didn’t have a global view of the world. Most of them were just trying to eek out an existence in the world they knew and understood. Most of them were fighting for Leesburg or Virginia. Most of them didn’t even come close to owning a slave.
Most of them didn’t have a choice–no more choice than than the young men of my generation had over going to Vietnam.
Next thing you know Flannery will be up here trying to tear down Stonewall Jackson because that statue offends someone driving along 29.
If one doesn’t want to be exposed to Civil War history, one should definitely not live in Virginia.
Further reading: Leesburg Magazine.
And so should the Southern states demand the Lincoln Memorial be converted to a Wal-Mart? Everybody just get over it already!
Just tell the guy that Leesburg is even handed. There’s a memorial for all the people from Leesburg that fought for the north too. Oh, wait. 🙂
People who get worked up over this stuff need to go to Europe. You’ve got things that are offensive to somebody everywhere. Anti-catholic or Anti-protestant stuff in churches everywhere. (One church in Rome had Martin Luther in hell on one of the carvings) There’s anti-catholic grafiti on the walls of one of the pope’s castles at the vatican that’s 400 years old. The Arc de trimuph in Paris celebrates France’s victory over just about every other country in Europe, but nobody wants it torn down.
And some point you have to just let the past be the past. I might see the point if this statue was honoring one of the leaders of the South that caused the war, but this is commemorating a bunch of poor farmers who got drafted and killed for a cause that wasn’t really there’s. (Between this and my other post you can probably tell I have some personal issues with the draft. Long story.)
If there are any monuments in Antietam Battlefield to the Confederates I sure missed them. However, I didn’t whine about it.
There are also very logistical reasons.
@Furby
I actually don’t see much difference in this statue and the statues at Bedford, Virginia, honoring the town’s dead. (not at the D-Day Memorial)
Most towns of any size in Virginia have Civil War memorials of various types. Stonewall Jackson is at the Albemarle County Courthouse in Charlottesville. It was not without controversy. Part of that controversy was whether Jackson should face north or south. It was dedicated in 1921.
http://www.charlottesville.org/Index.aspx?page=348
People who object to Civil War memorials really shouldn’t move to Virginia. To partially quote Joe Biden, the Cpartically ivil War really was a BFD to Virginia and its residents. To say it was the epicenter is a gross understatement.
“Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”
― George Orwell
There were about 32,000 men from Virginia that fought for the Union. Where are their statues?
I guess there was no patron or family to erect one. Perhaps there is one on enemy soil. 😈
If erected too far in the past, I feel certain the people of the town would have rejected it or torn it down.
BTW, was that Virginia after West Virginia left or before? If you are speaking of those in what is now West Virginia, they probably have their statue over there.
BSinVA,
I’m a history buff. Could you post a link about people from Virginia serving in the Union army? I’d like to read more about it. I’d always figured there were some, but would have never thought it was that high a number.
Isn’t it HIS job to make sure that the trial is fair…..that’s what the appellation process is for.
Hit submit too soon.
And if its the perception that a fair trial is not possible, but not the reality…then what’s the problem? If the reality is that a fair trial is not possible, then no amount of rearranging the outdoor scenery will help.
I agree, Cargo.
It also sounds like the whine of the guilty to me.
The man’s narrow view of history is a testament to the poor quality of modern education. He can have a law degree and still not have the foggiest notion of what the War meant to Virginia communities. These statues are entirely appropriate and should be maintained and honored. The War was a fiery trial. It affected virtually every family. The common soldier showed tremendous courage and fortitude. The Arc of History (as Dr. King observed) bends toward Justice. Slavery had to end. But people like those the statue honors were common folk who subjected themselves to incredible hardship for their communities and families, far more than for rich folks’ slaves. Historically, they were mistaken. But they were valiant people. This is no different than the multitude of statues on village greens throughout New England or other parts of the North.
There is a kind of Present Chauvinism that seeps inevitably into everything among people with no awareness of history. It’s a very cheap reaction.
By the way, although a Virginian all my adult life, my roots are in the North and all four of my great grandfathers fought for the Union. One of them was a general officer of some renown for his rather destructive approach to railroad bridges in the Southeast part of the Commonwealth. I don’t think any of them who survived until the late 19th and early 20th centuries had any problem when the Leesburg, Alexandria etc. etc. statues were erected. I’m sure all of them would think it disrespectful that it should be removed now.
Scout — As one transplanted Yank to another, permit me to say that your post on this subject was a most excellent one. In 1900, eight years before the statue in Leesburg was erected, the US Government approved the raising of a Confederate memorial on the sacred soil of Arlington Cemetery. The remains of Confederate dead from other cemeteries all around the Washington area were reburied in Arlington at the memorial, whose cornerstone was laid in 1912. In 1914, Woodrow Wilson dedicated the memorial in the presence of many Union and Confederate veterans. It was a national reconciliation of a kind seldom seen in history, especially given the relatively short time betweeen the end of the war and the dedication.
Would not all Southern state flags be offensive based on his logic? I mean how far does this crap have to go. I guess as long as there are socially focused lawyers.
And just three years later, in 1917, Southern boys and Northern boys were fighting side by side in the same uniforms and under the same flag on the terrible battlefields of France.
In the Spanish American War, General Fitz Lee received a commission in the US Army, as did several other aging, but patriotic former confederate officers. I remember seeing a grainy old photo of him leading a troop of cavalry in a parade in the late 1890s. I think Fitz, who was General Robert E Lee’s nephew, also served as Governor of Virginia after the war. As usual, Wolve, I rely on you to be my fact checker. I just rattle this stuff off but am just a bit too old, too lazy and too close to bedtime to go research it myself.
By the way, as an aside, my town was one of the Virginia towns that voted against secession in the 1861 plebescite. As they were occupied throughout the war (except for the occasional Mosby raid) by federal troops, it really didn’t make much difference how they felt about secession.
@Scout
Standing ovation!
Excellent post and not just because I agree. I love the expression, Present Chauvanism. Did you invent it?
The older I get, the more I respect the people of the past and how they just tried to make do in the world in which they lived. To judge most of them in terms of slavery is absurd and juvenile.
For the record, I am a half breed. Half southern and half northern. My father was a Jersey boy. My mother was about as southern as one gets. She was punished as a child for saying Abraham Lincoln. (by her grandfather who was a young teenager during the Civil War.)
@Wolverine
Yet in many people’s minds, the war isn’t over. It is a type of national schizophrenia.
I used to think that when the WWII generation died off, it would end the hostilities. I think I might have been wrong.
My reasoning was based on the fact that people my mother’s age actually knew civil war vets and they were who passed it on down the line. I think my logic on that one is faulty.
I have told everyone about my mother’s best friend, horribly crippled with arthritis, hobbling out to the grave side service rather than going to the memorial service later in the day at the retirment home where Mom has lived. Mother’s friend told me she wouldnt go to Branchlands because there were too many Yankees living there. This was in 2006.
There really was nothing to say. We had planned something at the retirement home justso the older people didn’t have to hobble out to Monticello Mountain where my parents are both buried.
Since John Flannery harkens back to reference the days of slavery I thought I’d ask a historical question. We’ve all been taught of how people were rounded up, chained, and brought here on sailing ships during the slave trade. What I have never known is how did a hand full of white Europeans with muskets manage to round up entire villages of people in a foreign and hostile environment in the first place? How was that made possible? Was there no resistance? History never goes back any further than the sailing of the ships. It sounds like an inside job to me, and so who should take the blame for it being so easily carried out in the first place? Does history document those facts?
I guess you didn’t go through the Virginia school system.
“white Europeans with muskets”
Guess those muskets made all the difference. Just a guess, because I don’t know whether the natives had muskets at that time, or only arrows and knives.
@punchak
Heh…what they had was entire tribes of rival Africans……
White slavers seldom left the West African coast, where they built “castles” for self-defense, and slave holding pens. Diseases in the interior could kill off the Europeans so fast that West Africa became known as “The White Man’s Graveyard.” The slaves were most often prisoners of inland inter-tribal warfare or were deliberately kidnapped by other Africans for sale to the Europeans. They were brought to the coast for exchange with the European slavers. The principal movement of Europeans, explorers, missionaries, conquerors, into the interior came after Europe had made the slave trade illegal.
The arrival of the Europeans actually changed the flow of slavery in West Africa. Before they came, the principal slave trade from the southern rain forests flowed north to the Islamic kingdoms of the Sahel and across the Sahara. This was also the route of the gold which filled the coffers of the Sahelian kings and emperors.
In East Africa, the slave trade lasted much longer, with the principal “market” being the Middle East. The slave trade was managed largely out of the island of Zanzibar or coastal settlements. The slavers were usually half-caste Arab-Africans who organized the expeditions into the African interior as far as the Congo. They brought back their captured slaves in long caravans of shackled captives driven onward by whips. David Livingston ran into this extreme cruelty during his adventures in Central Africa in the last half of the 19th century.
@ Wolve re 2220 comment on 16 May: thank you, sir. I think some of us who came here of our own accord fully clothed can appreciate things a bit more vividly than some who came in starkers without much thought. Of course, no single rule encompasses everyone. Mr. Flannery appears to have learned nothing from his emigre experience.
@Moon. “Present Chauvinism” is a bit awkward. I can do better. But I did manufacture it just for this site. As the Bard had someone say, “tis an ill-favored thing, but mine own.” (or something like that – I never remember these things exactly).
It totally captures the problem. H/T
Wolverine, thanks for the truth in the slave trade history. That’s what I meant by an inside job. So in reality we were sold the losers of those tribal conflicts. Now the ancestors of the losers are living a better life than the ancestors of the winners it would seem, but somehow that fact goes unnoticed. (life in the US being better than that in Africa on the whole)
I think you mean descendants.
We certainly have fewer deadly diseases. I am not so sure that slaves thought that America was a better place to be. Remember Kinte Kunte from Roots? He longed to be running through the plains again. I guess anything beat slavery.
I don’t think it really matters who enslaved them originally. I don’t think that gives this country a get out of jail free card on the issue.
Duh, descendants it is. The cruel reality is that it would seem that modern day ‘descendants’ of colonial slaves now have a better life than those ‘descendants’ still in Africa. I guess another question is since tribal warfare must have been rampant back then, was life as a slave in the colonies actually that worse than what they would have endured back in Africa? My guess is they would have been made slaves by the conquering tribes in Africa as well, or worse killed by them. I guess the bottom line is although when speaking of slavery it is always the whites that are held totally accountable even to this day, and yet the finger must also be pointed at their own ‘ancestors’ as well. A modern and expanding historical hypocrisy it would seem. Not a get out of jail free card, but just facts that are never exposed or discussed.
I couldn’t resist SA. That actually sounds like something I would do…say ancestor when I meant descendant.
Let me ask you…if the whites weren’t buying then what would have happened to the slave trade? I really can’t turn this into a ‘we really did them a favor’ kind of mentality.
I believe that freedom in the worst of circumstnaces trumps slavery in the best of places.
We didn’t do anyone a favor, we simply changed history. What that history would have been for those who were traded had there not been the slave trade is anyones guess. My only point is that all the cruel reality of the slave trade must be shared by those in addition to the white Europeans, and that is the ancestors of the country from which the slaves were taken to begin with. The facts bear this out, but no blame is ever attributed to them.
How about this for an equitable solution. Relocate the statue only if those so offended stop referring to themselves as hyphenated Americans in issues involving the courts. That would somewhat level the playing field I would think.
I dont care what people call themselves.
I don’t want the statue moved. Call it pure stubborness on my part.
Slavery is a reflection of the human condition, and the capacity of all men to be cruel to those over whom they have great power. This will always happen everywhere. Our Founders were well aware of this. They didn’t solve every problem (nor were they trying to), but, at least in the sphere of governance, they constructed a machine that had checks and balances that were intended to frustrate the evils that arise from the inherent nature of cruel humans.
I agree with Scout. Slavery has been an historically common element of all human experience. The West Africans who sold their brethen either to the Sahelian kings in the North or to the European slave traders should bear no greater onus than almost all the ancestors of any of us of European descent, whether those ancestors were in the slave trade or not. In the Sweden of my own Viking ancestry there was a large slave class made up of those who had been captured in raids abroad or those Swedes who sold themselves into slavery because of debt. In the early medieval Flanders of Mrs. W’s ancestry, there was a large slave class working the lands of their Salian Frank overlords. In both cases, it was the local stalwarts of the Roman Catholic Church who were instrumental in freeing the slave class and turning many of them into free laborers or small landowners…and converting them from paganism to Christianity in the process.
It appears to have happened almost everywhere to the point where almost every one of us has the ethnic sin somewhere in our ancestry of selling our brothers and sisters for profit or at least condoning it as the way things were back then.
PWC and Manassas certainly have Confederates “in the attic” – Stonewall Jackson High School,etc. Quiz question – which local school is named for a person who served in the Union Army?
Osbourn?
Actually Stonewall Jackson served in the union army and held a command in the Mexican American War.
Yes, many Confederates had served in the U.S. Army and Navy before the Civil War – not commonly called the “Union Army” prior to 1860. Round Elem. in the City is named for George Round, a Union officer who came to Manassas just after the war and became a major community leader. He helped establish the first public school in the area and played a key part in moving the PWC Courthouse to Manassas. Round thought it would help unite the area if the two major streets planned at the time be named Lee and Grant and the CH be placed at their junction.
Where was the court house before that?
Next question – Which local school is named for a person who was born a slave,
but founded a school in our area that not only served PWC, but the region?
Jennie Dean
Yes, it is Jennie Dean. Also, the Manassas Area Boys and Girls Club is nearby,on land that was part of the original school grounds. Always thought Ms. Dean would have liked that.
There are those who threaten to defund the Manassas Area Boys and Girls Club. Cheap-skates who only take care of their own.
They know who they are.
Know the PWC Courthouse was in Brentsville from 1822 until 1892 when it was moved to Manassas.