SCV SUPPORTS CHATTANOOGA CEMETERY

Chattanooga Confederate Cemetery relies on philanthropy 

Herb DeLoach, of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, mows the grass Wednesday at the Chattanooga Confederate Cemetery, located in between the campuses of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and the Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences.

Photo by John Rawlston.

WHO IS BURIED THERE?

Five of the most notable:
Samuel Frazier: The man for whom Frazier Avenue is named was born in Rhea County and became a first lieutenant in the 19th Tennessee infantry. He fought at Shiloh and Vicksburg before he was wounded at Chickamauga and taken as a prisoner of war to Chattanooga. Following his recovery, he was sent north to a prison camp for the remainder of the war. He settled in Rhea County after the war and practiced law before abandoning the profession in 1882 and moving to Chattanooga where he started "Hill City" just north of downtown. He donated $10,000 for the construction of the Walnut Street Bridge, which was built in 1890. Frazier died in 1921.
Martin Fry: Enlisted in the Tennessee infantry at age 16 and saw action in many of the war's major battles in the western theater. While returning to his middle Tennessee home after the war in 1865, he was arrested in Pulaski, Tenn., on charges that he killed a man and burned a bridge. Fry was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson, a Tennessean, and returned to live in the rural countryside of Alton Park. He died in 1926.
Ben Goulding: A notable Chattanooga philanthropist who began a weather bureau in the city among numerous other civic actions following his participation in the war. Goulding died in 1934.
Shadrick Searcy: An African-American who received a Confederate pension and opted to be buried in the Chattanooga Confederate Cemetery after the two brothers he served with died in action during the war. Following their death, Searcy remained in the Confederate service. He moved to Chattanooga in 1903 to work for the railroad and died in 1935.
Edward Wentworth: A sergeant in the Union's 19th Michigan Infantry, Wentworth was captured at Thompson's Station in Williamson County by Confederates and transported to Chattanooga where he died.

• 
  Site of Chattanooga Confederate Cemetery.

  Illustration by                                   

The American Civil War has been over for nearly 150 years, but the struggle to preserve the history of those who fought continues. And Herb DeLoach is doing everything he can to win the battle at the Chattanooga Confederate Cemetery on Fifth Street.

Things look better at the historic resting place of hundreds of Confederate veterans than they did 20 years ago, but without federal funding, corporate backing or much city help, the cemetery relies on a local camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans for maintenance and upkeep.

At the moment, that means DeLoach, the great-grandson of Alabama infantryman Robert DeLoach, hops on his 46-year-old lawnmower every so often and spends the day keeping the cemetery from becoming overgrown like it did in the early 1990s. "It takes between six and eight hours to do the whole job," said DeLoach, a 74-year-old retired aircraft maintenance supervisor. "But I don't mind. These guys, it's almost like they know you're here. That sounds strange, I know, but it's a labor of love for us and our camp."

Though the cemetery is the city's property, responsibility for the plot is claimed by N.B. Forrest Camp 3 in accordance with a national emphasis by the Sons of Confederate Veterans on Confederate burial places.

All of the needed tune-ups at the Chattanooga Confederate Cemetery would require $100,000, the local chapter says. But with the primary revenue for the cemetery coming from DVD sales and other fundraisers at area Civil War shows, the 88-member chapter is taking things one project at a time.
Last month the City Council approved a resolution accepting $5,790 from the camp for repairs at the cemetery's pavilion. "It [the cemetery] means a great deal to a number of our local citizens," City Council Chairman Yusuf Hakeem said. "We've partnered with so many other entities and organizations. We didn't see it as an issue as far as partnering with that group for this. The fact that it doesn't cost the city anything, it makes it that much more attractive."

DeLoach, the adjutant of the chapter, has seen how the old city cemetery next to the Confederate portion was poorly maintained in the past. He wants a different fate for the plot that holds both soldiers who died during the war and some who chose to be buried there long after it.

 Nationally, things are no different. Gene Hogan, chief of heritage operations for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said camps work with municipally owned cemeteries across the South to ensure that Confederate cemeteries are not overlooked. "I would say just the overall maintenance, adornment, protection and preservation of a Confederate burial site, there's really just no higher priority we have than that," he said. "That is so critical to who we are and what we're called to do as an organization."

Many of the plaques, monuments and other bits of commemoration around the cemetery, like the wrought-iron battle flag gate along Fifth Street, are more than 100 years old. Confederate veterans purchased the northern part of the cemetery in 1867 from George Gardenhire and acquired the rest of it for one dollar in 1901 from the Gardenhire family under the provision that it would also be used as a Confederate cemetery.

When the last associate member of the local Confederate Veterans camp died in the 1950s, it left the city as the sole trustee of the cemetery. In 1994 Chattanooga Mayor Gene Roberts authorized cooperation with the Sons of Confederate Veterans to help restore the cemetery that had become overgrown and a rededication ensued in 1995. "We've tried to maintain it and take better care of it since then," DeLoach said. "But it is a real fight."

The future of the cemetery will soon lie in the hands of a younger generation, a generation that DeLoach worries about. Since the victors get to tell how the war was won, he worries that future Confederate descendants may grow up without a true understanding of the motives that drove their ancestors to fight for independence.

But for now, he is happy to continue devoting time to maintaining the cemetery. "We're bound to do this," he said. "As long as I can function and get on that 46-year-old tractor [I'll do it]. As long as I can get on that thing and crank it up."

Contact staff writer David Cobb @dcobb@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6731.

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2014/apr/20/confederate-cemetery-relies-on-philanthropy/
 

Malcontent "Committee" Attack Robert E. Lee at W and L University

Students at Washington & Lee call for end to Confederate symbols

Published April 18, 2014

           

FILE: Jan. 9, 2008: A Confederate flag waves over the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol in Columbia.Reuters

 

RICHMOND, Va. –  A group of law students at Washington and Lee University is demanding the school banish the Confederate flag from its Lexington campus and repudiate one of its namesakes, Gen. Robert E. Lee.

 

The students also want the private liberal arts college to end the practice of allowing "neo-Confederates" to march on campus with battle flags during Lee-Jackson day, a Virginia state holiday that falls on the Friday before Martin Luther King Day.

 

The students, known collectively as The Committee, vowed civil disobedience if their demands are not met by Sept. 1. In a letter this month to the university's Board of Trustees, The Committee said it decided to act out of "alienation and discomfort" with the trappings of the Confederacy on campus.
They include the array of eight Confederate battle flags in the Lee Chapel, where the entire Lee family is buried. Lee's beloved horse, Traveller, is buried outside the chapel.

In a letter released Wednesday to the W&L community, President Kenneth P. Ruscio wrote that university officials "take these students' concerns seriously" and that they would be addressed. He asked provost Daniel Wubah to meet with the students. Through a spokesman, he declined a request Thursday for an interview with The Associated Press.

Dominik Taylor, a third-year law student, said the students decided to speak out after tolerating for years symbols and events they find offensive. "A lot of students of color have felt sort of ostracized during their time here," said Taylor, 24, of Yorktown. "It was just a thing where you would talk to your friend after class." Taylor said the "last straw" occurred during Lee-Jackson Day in January when a guest speaker, Democratic political consultant Donna Brazile, was introduced in the Lee Chapel amid the battle flags and it generated racist hate mail.

Washington and Lee, which is located in the Shenandoah Valley about three hours west of Richmond, was founded in 1749 as Augusta Academy, but adopted George Washington's name in 1796. Lee, who led Confederate forces during the Civil War before surrendering at Appomattox in 1865, served as the university's president after the Civil War and Lee became part of the university's name after he died.

Lee is a primary target of the activist students, who argue that his "racist and dishonorable conduct" should be acknowledged.

The Committee claims seven law school students. Taylor said its members include white students and its message is gaining wider acceptance, including support from faculty. "I think there's been a mix of responses," said Taylor, who is African-American. "A lot of the white students said, 'Hey, this is coming out of left field.' Taylor said he and fellow minority students were aware of the traditions on campus before they attended, but valued a law degree from Washington and Lee."Hey, it's only three years," he said. "It can't be that bad."

He added, however, "When things such as Lee-Jackson Day happen, you're just sort of feeling left alone and isolated and alienated."

The Washington and Lee complaints are familiar ones in the South, where the former Confederate states have struggled with symbols of the past that some find racist. In the city of Lexington, home to Washington and Lee, the adoption of an ordinance in September 2011 outlawing Confederate battle flags on city light poles attracted loud protests from defenders of the Confederacy.

One of those was Brandon Dorsey, who is a commander with the Lexington brigade of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. He participated in the Lee-Jackson march on the W&L campus. He blamed the protests on campus on a small group of activists.

"I think the whole think is a bunch of tripe," Dorsey said. "I think the university will have a lot of angry alumni on their campus if they agree to those demands."

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/04/18/students-at-washington-lee-call-for-end-to-confederate-symbols/?intcmp=latestnews

Cretin Cregin Fans Anti-South Hate in New York

Principal: L.I. High School Students Suspended Indefinitely For Displaying Confederate Flag

April 15, 2014 5:14 PM

 

 

SOUTH HUNTINGTON, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) – Two Long Island high school students have been suspended for allegedly bringing a Confederate flag to school. Brother Gary Cregan, principal of St. Anthony’s High School in South Huntington, said the two seniors walked in with a Confederate flag draped around their shoulders during an after-hours sporting event at the school.

As CBS 2′s Kathryn Brown reported, there is outrage and disgust on Long Island.

 

“The African-American students who immediately saw it really exercised heroic restraint and fortunately a teacher immediately confiscated the flag and took the students out of the gym,” Cregan said.

The students were initially suspended for 10 days, but Cregan decided Tuesday they won’t be allowed back, Brown reported.

Cregan wrote a letter to parents saying the use of any symbols “designed to revive past injustices or to inflame discrimination or racial intolerance, is completely unacceptable and profoundly offensive,” Newsday reported.

Cregan said he sees the flag as a symbol of hate. “I find it just very hard to even imagine why any student in 2014 would even consider or think that a Confederate flag would be anything other than a symbol of hate,” Cregan said.

“It’s absolutely absurd, I don’t understand why you would bring up things from the past that are hateful,” student Jessica Flynn said. “It represents slavery to us. It represents racism and prejudice to us,” parent JuJu Quinnonez added. “Believe me, I am all for freedom of speech but to have someone come in to school with that flag draped around their shoulder – I’m not really sure what the intent was.”

In response to those who said the students were exercising their right to free speech, Cregan said there are limits. “I certainly think this particular symbol of hate falls in the category of something that should be excised from our culture,” Cregan said.

The students haven’t explained why they did it. St. Anthony’s is a private Catholic school and isn’t bound by the First Amendment right to free speech.

Still, the New York Civil Liberties Union said all people should be able to express their views freely, even the offensive ones. “Our motto is more speech, not censorship or punishment,” NYCLU director Donna Lieberman told Brown. “Helping children understand the impact of this patently offensive expressive activity.”

Tensions are so high among students at St. Anthony’s that the principal said he has security concerns once the suspension is over. He’s made the decision that the students involved aren’t coming back at all.

The teens involved did not respond to CBS 2′s calls for comment.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/04/15/l-i-high-school-students-suspended-for-displaying-confederate-flag/
 

Law Enforcement Offier Appreciation Week

Time to raise the white flag...

 

Did that get your attention?  No... I'm not calling for surrender, far from it.  The white flag is raised   in auto racing to signal the last lap of the race.  We have entered into the last year of the four-year Sesquicentennial observance of the War; now is the time to "make our move."

You've heard it said that "all politics is local"; in similar manner, "all Confederate Heritage is local."  We win (or lose) our battles community-by-community, state-by-state, all across the Southland.  For that reason, the relationships that our Camps develop in their communities are of great importance, among these are our relationships with local and state law enforcement.

You will recall that last year we began a program to allow local Camps to honor their sheriff and police departments and Divisions to honor their highway patrol (or whatever the statewide agency might be).  Based on the reports that came back to us, there was much goodwill and positive PR for the SCV as a result.  However, we need to do more this year.

Here's how it works -- the week of May 11-17 is Law Enforcement Officer Appreciation Week.  We need all Camps to participate in this -- if you meet in a municipal setting, honor your police department; if you meet in an unincorporated area, honor your sheriffs office.  You have a great deal of latitude with this; you can:

• Honor the agency in general  
• Honor the Sheriff / Chief
• Ask for the name of an officer to honor
• Use your own initiative and pick out an office based on his / her performance

Similarly, the place and time can vary:

• Utilize a camp meeting and invite the honoree
• Utilize a CMD service if you're in a state that recognizes May 10
• Call and ask permission to come to their offices
• Try to hit our target week, May 11 - May 18

IMPORTANT:  Please don't get sidetracked with details; as Nike says. "Just Do It." 

ALSO -- DIVISIONS: make sure that you participate by honoring your statewide law enforcement agencies; the above observations work for you, as well.

The certificate is available online.  Here is a link --

 

http://www.scv.org/pdf/lawcert.pdf

OK, got it?  We need to really hit a home run with this; let's make sure that every state, every county, every town and city across Dixie hears from us in this initiative.

 

Gene Hogan

Chief of Heritage Operations

Sons of Confederate Veterans

(866) 681 - 7314

Students Protest Attack on Heritage

Students protest Confederate flag ban at Waldron high school

 Apr 09, 2014

 

                        

Photos

Waldron High School flag protest

WALDRON , Ark. —A controversy in Waldron led to a parade of Confederate flags Tuesday evening to protest a ban implemented by officials at Waldron High School.
Students who displayed the Confederate flag flying on the back of their pickup trucks were asked by school officials to remove them while on school property.
The superintendent, Gary Wayman, said there have been complaints and some consider the display "offensive."  Wayman said the students were flying the Confederate flags from the back of poles attached to their trucks.

There were mixed feelings among students and others who gathered Tuesday to fly a parade of flags in protest.

WATCH:  Students fly Confederate flags in protest of school's policy  
Dakota Sims, an organizer of the parade in response to the ban, told 40/29 News "It's America, this is a free state. Like that flag represents freedom. Just like that American flag represents freedom. People died for both of them. Why not fly both of them?"
Another student said he supports his friends that are protesting, but felt that the flags could send the wrong message.
A Facebook page called "Scott County 746" was created with posts from supporters and others in the community. 

Read more: http://www.4029tv.com/news/students-protest-confederate-flag-ban-at-waldron-high-school/25396590#ixzz2ynucucqB

150th of Battle of Mansfield, LA Remembered

  

The Battle of Mansfield

    

 

MANSFIELD — The Battle of Mansfield was not a faraway war with nameless participants. It was fought here at home by ancestors not too far removed from current day. That connection makes the battle, considered the most significant engagement of the Red River Campaign, “so personal for all of us,” historian and author Gary Joiner said. “This is our battle; this is our campaign, whether you had ancestors on the Confederate side or the Union side.”

 

Joiner made his remarks Tuesday just an hour shy of the time the first musket fired 150 years ago. He and a small but interested group of men and women who gathered at the Mansfield State Historic Site to mark the sesquicentennial anniversary stood on the very ground where blood was shed during that hard-fought campaign on April 8, 1864.

Almost 30,000 soldiers would have been amassing for battle at the very moment state historic site superintendent Scott Dearman was welcoming the guests. “The lines were clashing, men were dying, men were suffering in the epicenter of that battle right now,” he said, asking them to transport their minds 150 years earlier to what “you would have been hearing and listening to.”
The fighting was “tough,” said Joiner. More than 1,000 Confederate soldiers died. Union records do not reflect how hard it was for them.

The personal impact comes from the realization the Confederate soldiers were fighting for their families, their homes and land. The Union, he said, was “fighting for the Union.”
Sometimes forgotten is how involved the townsfolk of Mansfield were. Once the Union gathered its surviving troops and retreated — the end result saving Shreveport from destruction — it was the men and women of Mansfield who created a hospital to treat the wounded and a morgue to tend to the dead.

Almost every home in the town also took in an injured soldier, regardless of the color of the uniform he was wearing. “They saved hundreds of lives because of their caregiving,” Dearman noted.
Heads were bowed as Dearman asked for a moment of silence to honor the civilians who endured the aftermath of the bloody war.

Also taking part in the ceremony were the Kate Beard Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, represented by Leona Lucius Connell, who placed a wreath at the Confederate memorial as Margaret Williams Jones sang “Dixie,” and the Friends of the Mansfield Battlefield, represented by Marilyn Joiner, who placed a wreath at the Union monument as the instrumental “Rally ‘Round the Flag” was played.

Each wreath-laying was marked with a musket salute by an honor guard of re-enactors wearing Confederate and Union uniforms. Special greetings were given by Daniel J. Frankignoul, of Brussels, Belgium, who read a letter from the grandson of Prince Camille J. de Polignac, a major general in the Confederate Army who led the troops at the Battle of Mansfield. Frankignoul, a former deputy mayor and current City Council president of the city of Woluwe-Saint-Lambert in East Brussels, has performed extensive research of the de Polignac family. He shared some of that information later in a program inside the Mansfield State Historic Site museum.

It’s important to continue annual observations of the Battle of Mansfield for “our children, their children and the other grownups to realize it was something that happened that involved the South, the whole South,” said Shreveporter LaJuana Goldsby, whose husband’s great-grandfather served in the 2nd Troop Cavalry and fought in the Battle of Mansfield. He joined the Confederacy in May 1863 and his wife died a month later in childbirth, leaving their slaves to care for the couple’s children as the war raged around the family home. Goldsby’s family hails from south DeSoto Parish near where the Battle of Pleasant Hill was fought the day after Mansfield.“This is a day to remember those who sacrificed everything for the Confederacy and the men in the Union who sacrificed, too. The sacrifices they made for us allows us to have the freedom we have today,” Goldsby said.

Hundreds of re-enactors gathered over the weekend in and around Pleasant Hill to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the entire campaign. The Battle of Mansfield Re-enactment is set April 26-27 and also is expected to draw hundreds of period-dressed soldiers who will relive the historic clash on the original battlefield just south of Mansfield.

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2014304080026&nclick_check=1
 

ALABAMA SCV PLACES NEW STATUE

‘Uncle Dick’ Payne honored with sculpture

by Jennifer Cohron Daily Mountain Eagle

 

A sculpture of Richard Elliott “Uncle Dick” Payne was recently placed at the Old Houston Jail in Winston County. Payne is credited with coining the phrase “the Free State of Winston” during the Civil War. Daily Mountain Eagle - Jennifer Cohron

slideshow

HOUSTON — A sculpture of Richard Elliott “Uncle Dick” Payne, who is credited with coining the phrase “the Free State of Winston,” was dedicated at the Old Houston Jail last weekend.

The project was spearheaded by the Winston County Grays, a local Sons of Confederate Veterans camp.

The sculpture of Payne joins another of John Anthony Winston, the 15th governor of Alabama, that was dedicated in 2008.

Steve Turner of the Winston County Grays said there are plans to place at least two more sculptures at the historic jail.

One will be Willis Farris, the first sheriff of Winston County (then named Hancock County).

The other will be Aunt Jenny Johnson, a midwife and medicine woman who lived in the Bankhead National Forest in the mid to late 19th century and is the subject of numerous local legends.

Each sculpture costs approximately $10,000. The sculptor is Branko Medenica, who also created the “Dual Destiny” monument located outside the Winston County Courthouse in Double Springs.

Turner said he and Sheriff Rick Harris first discussed the idea of erecting a monument to Winston shortly after efforts to restore the log jail began in 2006.

“I wasn’t being negative, but I just didn’t think the money would come as easily as it did. Once we started on Winston, we had $10,000 in six months,” Turner said.

Winston was a colonel in the 8th Alabama Infantry Regiment of the Confederate Army.

Payne was a private in Company D of the 27th Alabama Regiment in the Civil War.

Turner was instrumental in securing Confederate military markers at the graves of both men in recent years.

Turner now portrays Payne at an annual Living History Day held at the Houston Jail each October.

Payne was among the 2,500 people who met at Looney’s Tavern in 1861 to discuss secession.

Schoolteacher Christopher Sheats, who served as Winston County’s representative to the state secession convention in January 1861, argued that a county wishing to remain neutral in the war could secede from a state if the state could secede from the Union.

Payne then exclaimed sarcastically, “Oh, Oh, Winston secedes! The Free State of Winston!”

In addition to being a flagbearer in the Confederate Army, Payne was also a banker and made his own currency using brown paper.

 

http://www.mountaineagle.com/view/full_story/24882871/article--Uncle-Dick--Payne--honored-with-sculpture-?instance=main_article