by Mary Wakefield Buxton –
URBANNA —July 22, 2021
With the 3-2 vote last week from the Middlesex County Board of Supervisors approving the removal of the monument at the courthouse of the Confederate dead, I find I am most disturbed and must again take up my pen and express an opinion.
This divisive and tragic contention over Civil War monuments has gone on long enough. Let’s come up with a solution that solves the problem rather than aggravates it and further polarizes us. Removing that monument will only anger and hurt many Middlesex County citizens. We should seek a solution to heal the festering wounds, not add more scar tissue.
I don’t have any connection to the Confederacy, but on my mother’s side of the family there was a Lt. George Grummond who fought in the Grand Army of the Republic. He later was killed by the Sioux in Fetterman’s Massacre.
So I come today not to praise Confederate soldiers, but to love their descendants that live here today… my friends, neighbors, husband, children and grandchildren. Especially the many descendants of slaves who live here now who once toiled to help build this great county we all enjoy today. I want all our citizens to feel good about the way our county decides to resolve this issue and not just a chosen few.
Frankly, I just don’t feel right about moving a monument at the courthouse that honors dead soldiers who defended this county. There is something about this that seems innately evil, certainly disrespectful, and even creepy. The dead are the dead. Monuments that honor them should be left alone. They are our history, our past, and we must never forget that mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers once grieved over their loss. Let them rest in peace.
Reality is there is no polite or nice way to move this monument and such an act would shock and hurt many of our citizens. Why would we set out to hurt anyone? Is that the role of government? Haven’t we had enough hurt? Is it revenge that we want to take out on these poor dead soldiers, who gave their lives to protect their loved ones? I surely hope we are not about to stoop so low.
Those who have read Middlesex history know of the long suffering of slaves who lived in this county. We also know of the terrible suffering during the war years at the hands of the Yankees. Just read Larry Chowning’s beautifully written book, “Soldiers at the Doorstep” and you will learn of such misery as homes and farms were burned to the ground, fences were destroyed, livestock taken and starvation set in.
In a poignant diary I read how Yankee soldiers killed a teen-age boy who was riding his horse one day on a farm at St. Stephens Church. They had shot him in the wrist and he bled to death. His mother found her son dead under a tree. Oh, that a Confederate soldier had been there to protect him.
Hate is poison. I remember once walking through the American cemetery of the dead that had landed on the beaches at Normandy in World War II to take back Europe from Nazi Germany. They were laid out in long neat rows, their gravestones white as bone under the brilliant French sun: Men who had hailed from Minnesota, New York, Alabama, Michigan, Georgia, Montana…all the states were represented. I just stood there and wept.
It was a gorgeous summer day and there were many French people strolling through the graveyard, one young mother was even pushing a baby buggy, as if the cemetery of all those fallen Americans was just a park in which to spend a leisurely day.
Then I walked through the German cemetery nearby with their contrasting black gravestones. I remember feeling rage over the fact that the Germans had killed so many millions of people and caused such misery to so many millions more.
And I wept again, but this time for the German dead for I clearly saw how tragic war is. And I wept for me, too, because I knew I could not live with rage and that I must recover from it or it would destroy me.
Man has been on earth now about 40,000 years … Isn’t it time we improve our behavior? Stop the aggravation that leads to rage, war and death?
So I propose the Confederate monument to the dead be left in peace and a non-partisan committee made up of those special peacemakers in our society with a love based attitude for their fellow man and a spirit for reconciliation (with no political agenda!): a descendant of a Middlesex slave, Yankee soldier and a Confederate soldier that will come together and plan a really special monument to all our ancestors. Perhaps a circle with a Yankee and Confederate soldier with their guns laid down, shaking hands with each other and each having an inclusive arm around, thank God, a freed slave.
What an eloquent statement for Middlesex County to make. Perhaps in such action we could inspire others to reach a mature, magnanimous and caring way to settle the Civil War monument issue. Our message to all: We will face the good, the bad and the ugly of our history but today we are friends and family and we will not engage in negative and spiteful behavior that hurts others.
The poet Robert Browning said it most eloquently in his poem “Love among the Ruins.” I paraphrase him now… Speak of gold and kings and things and all the rest. Love is best.
© 2021.
