By Ed Williams
We have collected almost 7,500 signatures to change or remove the Confederate carving on Stone Mountain. Today, The Confederate Carving on Stone Mountain has been re-branded with laser shows and animated with colored beams of lights. The Confederate carving is being glorified and celebrated as if the cause of the Civil War was not over.
Our goal is to make the Stone Mountain Confederate carving more inclusive and to change its designation.
Who should be included in the carving on Stone Mountain? Native Americans, African Americans, women, Lincoln, Sherman, Grant. The carving should be removed, if it cannot be made more representative of the Civil War history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl9Cw7G_oa0
The men in the Confederate carving on Stone Mountain were not from Georgia. The capitol of the Confederate States of America was not in Georgia. There were no battles in Georgia led by General Robert E. Lee, nor General Stonewall Jackson. There was no major Civil War battle at Stone Mountain. In addition, there were no soldiers buried at Stone Mountain Park. So why is Stone Mountain Park designated a Confederate Memorial?
We do not seek to destroy history, but to make it more inclusive and realistic. The defenders of the status quo, seek to re-brand the legacy of the Confederacy and the Civil War. The reality is that both the Union and Confederate monuments do not truly represent or do justice to our story. The Union won the war, the slaves were freed, and the Confederacy was re-admitted into the Union.
President Lincoln in his Gettysburg address reminded us that America was “…conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”. The Confederate States of America sought to spread slavery and had it placed in the Confederate Constitution. Every time we go to war, we change history.
Ed Williams, Ed.D, is chair of Concerned Citizens for Effective Government
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ccegov/
3 Comments
Change or Remove Stone Mountain Confederate Carving Petition
http://chng.it/vrycPYNvVS
In 1915, Samuel Venable the principal owner of Stone Mountain was a member of the Klan and hosted KKK events on his mountain for decades afterwards. Both Venable and the carving sculptor Gutzon Borglum were associated with the KKK. The KKK was a terrorist group who believed in white supremacy and race separation.
The Venable Brothers deeded the north face of the mountain to the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1916 to create the carving. The UDC established the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Association (SMCMA) for fundraising and on-site supervision of the project. The Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Association was packed with KKK members. In 1958, the State of Georgia purchased Stone Mountain. However, the Confederate Carving was not completed until 1972.
The story of Stone Mountain actually predates both the first white settlers and the Creek Indians before them. At least 12 Archaic Indian sites have been identified in the vicinity of Stone Mountain. Crystal Mountain was the name given it in 1567 when Spanish explorer Juan Pardo visited it, in search of the Moundbuilder civilization discovered by deSoto on an earlier trip. The Moundbuilders were gone, replaced by Creek Indians who called the peak Lone Mountain and used the easily spotted mountain as a meeting place. In the early 19th century, the area was known as Rock Mountain. Woodland Indians built a rock wall, encircling the top of the mountain. By the beginning of the 20th century the wall had disappeared.
At the beginning of the Civil War, 22 million people lived in the North and 9 million people (4 million of whom were slaves) lived in the South. About 2.75 million soldiers fought in the Civil War 2 million for the North and 750,000 for the South. Over ninety-five percent of African Americans lived in the South.
Approximately 620,000 soldiers died from combat, accident, starvation, and disease during the Civil War. By the end of the Civil War, roughly179,000 black men (10% of the Union Army) served as soldiers in the U.S. Army and another 19,000 served in the Navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war—30,000 of infection or disease. Even though a majority of African Americans lived in the South, the racism was so deep that African Americans were not allowed to join the Confederate army or have weapons. They served only in support roles. 28,693 Native Americans served in the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War. 250 documented cases of women serving as soldiers in the Civil War but it is suspected there were many more than that.
Some say let it be, why make trouble? just except things as they are.
“There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” — JFK
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O Say Can We See By The Dawn’s Early Light: What is Wrong with the Confederate Flag and the Carving? https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6rHTsNOsLE_TE5NMHJlb3VPS1U/view?usp=sharing
I THINK THEY SHOULD LEAVE STONE MOUNTAIN ALONE. YOU CAN TAKE DOWN EVERY MONUMENT IN AMERICA BUT IT WILL NOT CHANGE A SINGLE THING. THERE WERE SLAVES AND BLACK MEN OWNED SLAVES AS WELL. IT’S PAST NOT A PERSON TODAY OWNS A SLAVE SO MOVE FORWARD AND MAKE A GREAT LIFE FOR YOURSELF. BUT STOP BEING A WUSS!!! WHITE MEN WERE SLAVES, OR INDENTURED SERVANTS, SAME THING SO STOP PLAYING THE VICTIM CARD!!!
HERTAGE IS NOT HATE. ICONOCLASM IS WRONG.
Dixies should be RAISING the CSA banner and the Battle Flag, and not apologizing to anyone for their past.
First off, if you have ever seen the laser show, you’d see the animated depiction of the Confederate men on the carving breaking their sword and surrendering to the Union as Elvis Presley sings a stunning version of “I Wish I Was In Dixie”. At no point is this some sort of supremacist message, as the show itself acknowledges the loss of the CSA and projects an image of unity and the end of the Civil War.
Second, the CSA NEVER wanted to force slavery on states that chose to be Free States. They wanted the Free States to stop telling them how to live. Acts like the Fugitive Slave Act, evil as they were, were made to enforce reciprocity and equality between the laws of each state.
The Southland and her slavers had to constantly fight to be treated as equal members of the Union as the North and their slavers. Going back to the Abomination Tariffs of 1828 AD, the North (which also had many, many slaves) constantly exploited the Dixie slavers to enrich themselves and build their industry. Ironically, it was on the backs of the Dixies that the North built their dominance, and both the North and the South used the backs of the black man to get rich. The difference was that Northern whites weren’t exploited by anyone. The Southern whites were always seen as a land of inferior human beings and white thralls, and this stigma never left and continues to this day, except that it is politically correct because whites are expendable.
The problem is that you don’t hear about any other reason why the Dixies wanted to leave. Or, you do, and don’t want to entertain it.
You don’t hear about the Abomination Tariffs of 1828 AD. You don’t hear about the Union getting its revenue almost entirely from exportation of agricultural goods, or about the Union stealing that revenue for themselves and their industrial pursuits.
You don’t hear about the Corwin Amendment, which would have removed slavery from federal jurisdiction and institutionalized it on a state-by-state choice (it was presented to the states and the Old South STILL left).
You don’t hear about the Hampton Roads Conference, where the North offered a White Peace to the CSA, status quo antebellum: if they surrendered then and there, the North would ratify the Corwin Amendment and leave slavery as a state matter. They refused.
You don’t hear about the CSA being (with blacks being the obvious exception) multicultural and embracing of non-black minorities, in direct contrast to its cruel enslavement of blacks. You don’t hear about the compartmentalized, pigeonholed focus of racism on blacks, and almost exclusively on blacks, but not other races.
Since you claim to care about the Indians, you should know that the Cherokee Nation officially sided with the CSA, and most all of the Indians in the region did, too. The Cherokee Mounted Rifle braves were, if I am not mistaken, the last of the CSA troops to surrender.
Why? The CSA saw the Indians as kindred spirits who were also yoked by the North. They promised gratuitous concessions, citizenship, and sovereignty to all the Indian Nations and made treaties with them accordingly. If I am not mistaken, they even considered releasing Oklahoma as a sovereign country and homeland for all Indians. Unlike the Union, the Confederates NEVER broke a treaty with any Indian Nation with which they signed.
Lastly, in the desperate end of the Civil War, the CSA was even ready to give up their supposed sole reason for leaving the Union. In a desperate plea to invite foreign help from the United Kingdom and France, they were willing to sign a binding agreement to phase out slavery in twenty-five years. This would have been accomplished by raising funds to pay off each master the market value of their slave, and then either expel the slaves to Africa, the North, or the far-western Great Plains with a black home state. (This is actually the same proposal that James Madison proposed as a compromise to phasing out slavery.)
You know nothing, iconoclast. Nothing at all.