Nearly 40 years ago, local notables Robert Allen Greene, Steve Greene and Elmer Palmer helped to recreate the Bourbonnais Regiment that fought the final battle of the American Revolution. A pair of them posed at the foot of the Appomattox memorial in Alexandria, Virginia. It portrays a Confederate soldier, looking south.
Here is their tale of that evening.
The inscription on the south face of the monument’s base reads: “Erected to the memory of Confederate dead of Alexandria, Va. By their Surviving Comrades, May 24th 1889.” On the north side: “They died in the consciousness of duty faithfully performed.”
Tuesday morning, the Confederate soldier was removed from his perch in the middle of Alexandria’s major thoroughfare, after standing guard there for 131 years.
Here is a story about that.
It’s a timely reminder that while history should never be forgotten, it shouldn’t always be lauded.
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Removing these memorials is a mistake…as we soon lose a feel and “appreciation” for the past…so within one generation society will be lost about the causes and ramifications of the civil war…one of the most significant periods of am history…we need to keep up on our interpretations of this eras not obliterate them.
Come on, Mark. That’s a pretty weak link, a group of East Greenwich Revolutionary War (ca. 1776) enactors have their picture taken standing in front of a statue representing soldiers in a war that took place a full 90 years later. One wonders if they even knew what the statue represented as the EG lads in that war were Yanks fighting as opposition forces.
Some future generations will be calling for the removal of the memorials on the Washington Mall because the people of that future time will find them offensive. A stretch? Apparently not as much as we previously thought. The winners write the history and then it gets rewritten again and again as time goes by. Feel good, America. Don’t think about how we got here… we’re here now!