More Than Half Of North Carolina's Counties Have Confederate Monuments

[struggle4progress]

... North Carolina has more monuments commemorating the Civil War than any other event, according to "Commemorating Landscapes of North Carolina," a project conducted by UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries. More than half of North Carolina's counties have at least one memorial to Confederate soldiers. An interactive timeline shows most Confederate monuments in the state were erected between 1890 and 1930 ... "A monument is where my leanings as a historian kick in, and I would hate to see monuments destroyed. They are historical artifacts that can tell us things and we can use them to think about the past and our relationship to it" ... Lori Martin, professor of sociology at Louisiana State University, said Confederate flags and monuments glorify a racist legacy of white superiority and black inferiority ...

http://wunc.org/post/more-half-north-carolinas-counties-have-confederate-monuments-0

[still_one]

1. The issue was the confederate flag hanging from public buildings. Will monuments be removed? I

don't see Germany or Japan removing memorials to their war dead from WWII. Should that be required? Should the Vietnam memorial monument be removed. The actions of the U.S. involvement in Viet Nam had very troubling elements.

However, I would venture to say that most people would not want memorials from past wars, no matter who were the allies and who weren't, would want those memorials removed.

Are monuments memorials? That I think is the distinguishing question

[ladyVet]

2. There's one in my county.

It's a tribute to the soldiers who fought bravely in a war for a cause they believed in, rightly or wrongly. My mother's family was split, with some fighting for the North and some for the South (about 50/50). The funny thing? They weren't slave owners.

As long as a monument honors the soldiers, and has no racist writings or isn't held up as a racist banner, then they should stay. That flag, however, has to go and never come back. I don't think we fly it here, I don't ever remember seeing it, but I don't get out much so I may have missed it. Plenty of private citizens with it, and if they want to show themselves for the haters they are, then I won't argue with them.

[unc70]

3. One third of NC men died in Civil War

NC was the last state to join the Confederacy -- very reluctantly. By the end of the war, one third of the free men of NC (white, black, and Indian/Native American) would be dead, another third wounded, many losing arms or legs. Casualties far greater than any other state.

[struggle4progress]

4. Dunno. Figures I've seen are in the range 30K-35K for NC Confederate deaths,

perhaps roughly comparable to Virginia. The 1860 population of NC was about 993K with about 331K enslaved; I think that gives a free population about 662K and a free male population around 331K, so the confederate dead may total about 10% of the free men.