Links to stories about removing the Confederate Statue from the Courthouse Grounds:
Samuel C. Means, a Waterford Mill
Owner,
leader of the Loudoun Rangers
WHITE WASH
In
the past week, I urged that we remove the Confederate Soldier Statue, bearing a
rifle in the direction of approaching visitors to the court in Leesburg,
because it is an offending symbol of disunion, lawlessness and slavery.
In
2009, a Deputy Clerk at the Court, Jennifer Grant, reportedly told the Post
that she “didn’t like [the statue],” but “there were certain things people
didn’t talk about.”
Johnny
Chambers, on his way to Court this past Tuesday, told WUSA*9 that, “It’s hard
to get justice when you got people that live in this area, that run this
country, that believe in this system,”
pointing at the Confederate Soldier statue.
Leesburg
court personnel told me, “We all read what you wrote. We here talk among ourselves and some of us
have resented that statue. … You should
know you have support in this building.”
The
most virulent opposition to removing the statue claims that the statue’s not
about slavery, it’s just history.
Mr.
G. of Loudoun County said, “I hear people say that all the time – the Civil War
wasn’t really about slavery … get real, of course it was.” (Not all persons prefer to be identified
publicly; thus the initials.)
Ms.
R said, “I would contend that the Civil War was fought over States Rights to
use slavery as their economic engine.”
Mr.
S. said these confederate soldiers were “fighting to prop up the plantation
owners who both pumped them up on propaganda and forced them through
conscription to fight ..”
Mr.
W. said, “there was only one difference between the Confederate Constitution
and the U.S. Constitution, and it was the ‘right’ to own other human beings.”
In
our Constitution, we expressly state “we the people” seek “to form a more
perfect union;” the Confederate Constitution doesn’t say that – as it was born
of disunion.
Our
Constitution says we seek to “provide for the common defense;” the Confederate
Constitution said no such thing; in fact, the Confederates were breaching their
obligation to “the common defense” by seceding.
Our
preamble provides for the “general welfare,” the Confederate Constitution does
not.
As
for why the South seceded, Article I, Section 9, Clause 4 of the
Confederate States Constitution prohibited any law that denied or
impaired “the right of property in negro slaves …”
Article
IV, Section 2 of the Confederate States Constitution granted its
citizens the right to travel anywhere “with their slaves.”
Article
IV, Section 3, Clause 3 authorized slaves in any new confederate territory they
acquired, and presumably that included the North if the Confederates could win
the war.
So,
it was about slavery.
Otherwise,
the true history of Loudoun County has been white-washed.
Loudoun
Delegate John Janney presided over an extraordinary legislative session in Richmond,
convened by the Governor, on April 4, 1861.
Janney argued for union, and the delegates voted for Union, by a margin
of almost two to one, 89-45.
Rabid
secession leaders, however, sought to overturn the result. Intimidated union delegates left
Richmond. The second vote, on April 17,
supported secession, 88-55.
Some
called for a vote of the public. 50,000
rebel troops came into Virginia to “help.”
Union voters fled to Maryland.
Other Union voters were barred from voting. Some who did vote union were thrown into the
Potomac. There were disturbances at the
polls at Lovettsville and Lincoln. There
were directions to the troops that they could use bayonets at the polling
places. West Virginia withdrew from
Virginia on June 13, 1861, denouncing secession, and standing with the
union. When the remnant that was
Virginia counted the ballots, secession “won.”
Union
supporters were then arrested or driven out of Virginia. Confederate cavalry took teams of horses and
wagons from farmers in the German and Quaker settlements. If they didn’t have either, they were pressed
into service as drivers.
Samuel
C. Means owned the mill at Waterford.
He refused to take up arms against the United States. The Confederates took all of his property,
and his horses, wagons, hogs, flour, meal, everything. Means retreated to Maryland but returned
leading the Loudoun Rangers drawn from the Quaker and German settlements in
Loudoun to fight for the Union.
We
have no statue to the Rangers who remained faithful to the Union, only a plaque
opposite the Mill in Waterford.
In
the last week, we’ve also heard from those mobilized to oppose removal of the
statue, many of the same folk who unsuccessfully fought to place confederate
flags in Leesburg. Among the hard worded
opposition, there is only one e-mail correspondent that may fairly qualify as a
threat -- and we’re forwarding that one to the authorities.
It
is right and just to remove this statue.
Speak out if you agree.
TAKE THAT STATUE DOWN
Take
that confederate soldier statue down that stands in front of the historic
Leesburg Court House!
It’s
a symbol of disunion and slavery. If
it’s to stand anywhere, let it be in a museum but not at the front of a court
of law on public grounds.
Our
forebears could have placed a less offensive symbol in front of the court house
in 1908. But they didn’t. They intended to make a statement – an
unacceptable statement – and it’s high time we rejected that offensive
statement.
Years
ago, in the 1980s, there were stocks and whipping posts in front of this same
court house.
I
made reference at a sentencing in the court house once, how it was
“unfortunate” that such dehumanizing and tortuous methods of punishment stood
directly in front of a court house when we were considering punishment in a
criminal case.
According
to the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1839, a slave “was placed in a sitting
position, with his hands made fast above his head, and feet in the stocks, so
that he could not move any part of the body.”
This took less effort than whipping.
So, it became preferred as a punishment because, well, it took less
physical effort.
No
doubt others thought that these instruments of torture should be removed – and
they were.
Now
we should finish the job – and remove the statue as well.
The
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished “slavery” and
“involuntary servitude” and granted Congress the power to enact “appropriate
legislation.” By the 1866 Civil Rights Act, black citizens enjoyed “the full
and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for security of person and
property as is enjoyed by white citizens.”
Under
the Amendment and the 1866 Act, what were called “badges of slavery” were
outlawed.
Plainly,
stocks and a whipping post were “badges of slavery.” This statue is as well.
Since
1908, this confederate soldier has stood directly in front of the old
courthouse, elevated on a pedestal, with his rifle pointed straight at you as
you approach the old courthouse.
A
Confederate soldier plainly represents what he fought for, for disunion, so
that any state could ignore the constitution and break its constitutional
compact with every other state, violate the law of the land, in order to
preserve and spread slavery into the territories, to continue the stigma, the
badges of slavery, in perpetuity.
President
Andrew Jackson reprimanded Vice President John C. Calhoun at a party in 1830,
saying, “Our Union must be preserved.”
Calhoun
feared that, if slavery were abolished, whites would be forced into that
working class, at low pay. Calhoun
asserted the right of states to nullify what they didn’t want.
In
1858, Abraham Lincoln said in Springfield, Illinois that, “a house divided
against itself cannot stand.” He said
those who favored slavery were of the view, “if any one man, choose to enslave
another, no third man shall be allowed to object.” Lincoln said one object of the Scott decision
was to deny citizenship to slaves so they had no rights or privileges.
All
who approach this statue may rightly recall the unequal treatment before the
law suffered by persons of color and how it persists to this day long after the
civil war.
Many
know about the kidnapping and murder in 1955 of the black youth, Emmett Till, 14,
how the trial concluded with acquittals, followed by the admissions of the
acquitted defendants, bragging to a magazine, how they had really done the
dirty deed.
Medgar
Evers, an NAACP field secretary, was killed in 1963 because he sought to
overturn segregation in the South. When
Byron De La Beckwith, of the White Citizens Counsel, was tried, two all-white
juries deadlocked. In 1994, 30 years
later, De La Beckwith was tried and convicted.
The
NAACP came into existence about the time our Confederate Soldier was installed;
the Klu Klux Klan returned re-vitalized about the same time.
Virginia
was infamously known for its massive resistance against segregation. In Loudoun, we had segregated schools, movie
theaters, the pool; in fact, when directed to open the pool to black and white
alike, the pool was filled with cement.
It’s
therefore no metaphorical coincidence that we have this imposing bronze
soldier, the symbol of the southern nullification movement that set out to
disunite our nation, confronting every citizen who approaches our courts of
law.
It
is long past the time when we can pretend that a confederate soldier statue is
not itself a badge of slavery.
It’s
long past the time when we should take it down.
