To the Heroes of the Confederate State of North Carolina (1861-65) | Eastern North Carolina Now

    On the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill stood the noble statue of "Silent Sam," the Confederate soldier who stood vigilant watch over the campus. It stood on McCorkle place, the University's upper quad, facing Franklin Street.

    "Sam" represented those young students who had left the campus when Lincoln's war came, and who willingly went off to do their duty for their beloved state. More than 1000 students enlisted and fought, representing at least 40% of the total number of students at the university, a record surpassed by only one other institution (North or South) - the University of Virginia. Like her home state in general, Chapel Hill gave more than her share to the defense of the South.

    Sam is "silent" because he carries no ammunition and therefore cannot fire his gun.

    The monument was given to the campus by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1909 and it was finally erected on campus in 1913. A bronze plaque in bas-relief on the front of the memorial's base depicted a woman, representing the state of North Carolina, convincing a young student to fight for the Southern cause. The student is shown dropping his books, representing students leaving their studies. A small bronze inscription plaque on the left side of the base read: "Erected under the auspices of the North Carolina division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy aided by the alumni of the university." And another bronze inscription plaque on the right read:

    "To the Sons of the University who entered the War of 1861-65 in answer to the call of their country and whose lives taught the lesson of their great commander that Duty is the sublimest word in the English language."

    We can call him "Silent Sam" because of another reason. He speaks no particular message. He conveys no message other than to acknowledge that young men fought for North Carolina and the Confederacy. That is, the monument to the students who left Chapel Hill to fight is a memorial, just like the gravestone or headstone marking the grave of one who has passed is a memorial. It conveys no particular message other than to memorialize the person's life and to note some particular aspect of that life. It is a historical marker. My father's gravestone marks the date he was born and the day he passed and acknowledges that he served in the US Navy. Silent Sam, as a statue, merely recognizes the fact that approximately 1000 young men from Chapel Hill left their studies to serve their home-state in a war that was forced upon her. It is a marker, nothing more.... It says nothing about the students, as individuals, who gave up their youth and who, in great part, gave up their lives; we know nothing about their politics, whether they agreed with North Carolina's decision to secede, or their position regarding the war. We simply know, thanks to the gentle reminder that Silent Sam provides, that Chapel Hill gave heavily to defend her state. Again, 40% of its student body left to defend her principles. That's quite noteworthy; that's quite a sacrifice.

    Nowadays, most students know very little, if any, of history or the significance of the monument that graces - graced - its campus. After all, Silent Sam is over a hundred years old. And that's a fatal defect in our state's public school history curriculum and in the liberal teachings at our universities. In most cases, the only history that people of North Carolina will ever learn is what they are taught by often under-educated teachers in middle school or in high school. That's it. Many students at Chapel Hill view Silent Sam merely as a really cool statue and as just another place to sit on a warm spring afternoon.

    But now there are groups (a very insignificant minority, but loud, obnoxious, violent ones) who all of a sudden construe Silent Sam as a monument representing regional pride and therefore a symbol of ongoing racial oppression. They impute speech to where no speech is spoken. They impute a message where none is expressed. Again, Silent Sam is merely a historical marker. For more than one hundred years, students and other individuals have been able to walk by the statute without feeling oppressed or triggered, but now, all of a sudden, in 2018, an era reaping the fruits of desegregation and full civil rights to African-Americans (to be fair, they are actually given heightened protection of their rights; instead of "Equal Protection," they are given "Special Protection"), groups wish to rehash the past and dwell on an era long gone. It is an era that you would think most people would love to finally put behind them.

    And so, on Monday, August 20, Silent Sam was attacked, vandalized, desecrated, maliciously destroyed, and toppled to the ground. The bronze statue of the young soldier came crashing down, being pulled down from his post by a howling mob of masked and unmasked protesters, after his pedestal was covered in red paint. There were approximately 250 protesters at the scene, joining UNC-Chapel Hill professor Dwayne Dixon, the de facto leader of the protest and assault on Silent Sam. Dixon is the current cultural anthropology professor at Chapel Hill. Video footage from CNN affiliate WRAL-TV shows protesters putting up poles and banners around the statue during daylight, and then when nightfall came, the statue was tumbled and students were seen cheering. Protesters could also be seen kicking Silent Sam's head and putting dirt all over the statue. Campus police took orders (from who?) to stand down and allowed protesters to topple the statue without resistance.

    So far, three people have been arrested for the literal act of tearing down Silent Sam. Jonathan Fitzgerald Fuller, Lauren Aucoin, and Raul Arce Jimenez have been charged with misdemeanor rioting and misdemeanor defacing a public monument. Seven more activists were arrested several days later, on that following Saturday, when a follow-up protest turned violent, with left-wingers unsuccessfully charging a campus building, assaulting people, and trying to light fire to a Confederate flag. Professor Dixon has not been fired by the university, but he is being investigated and his network of criminal collaborators apparently is unraveling.

    According to Big League Politics, the leaders of the protest that resulted in the toppling of Silent Sam are members of Antifa. These same individuals helped organize the fatal Antifa "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. A woman needlessly lost her life at that rally when a protester ran his car into a crowd of people. Big League Politics reported that it obtained information on the suspects which it turned over to Chapel Hill police officers. The evidence, they say, exposes a close-knit sect of left-wing agitators mostly based in Durham, who have links to several high-profile activists, including Chelsea Manning (the trans-woman, born as Bradley Edward Manning and served in the US army where he/she leaked sensitive military information in violation of the Espionage Act, for which he/she was court-martialed and imprisoned for). This network of left-wing agitators operates in part out of the Elevate MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) gym, located in Durham, where they apparently practice combat techniques.

    The attack on and then the toppling of Silent Sam sparked outrage from the university's leaders, from alumni, and from our state legislature, and perhaps most passionately of all from the great many people who love North Carolina, appreciate her history and decision to oppose Lincoln, and who are deeply and horribly offended by the destruction and desecration of her monuments. UNC system president Margaret Spellings and UNC Board of Governors chairman Harry Smith issued a joint statement, which read:

    "Campus leadership is in collaboration with campus police, who are pulling together a timeline of the events, reviewing video evidence, and conducting interviews that will inform a full criminal investigation. The safety and security of our students, faculty, and staff are paramount. And the actions last evening were unacceptable, dangerous, and incomprehensible. We are a nation of laws-and mob rule and the intentional destruction of public property will not be tolerated."

    Speaker of the NC House, Tim Moore, issued a more powerful statement:

    "There is no place for the destruction of property on our college campuses or in any North Carolina community; the perpetrators should be arrested and prosecuted by public safety officials to make clear that mob rule and acts of violence will not be tolerated in our state."

    Let's look at the lunacy that surrounds this malicious desecration of Silent Sam.

    As I mentioned above, the statue of Silent Sam is a marker, a historic marker, essentially no different from a grave marker, or from the World War II Memorial in Washington DC, which is dedicated to those Americans who served in the armed forces and who served the war effort as civilians. It recognizes the sacrifice made by Chapel Hill, which should be acknowledged and should be remembered. Sports achievements and sports figures and coaches are memorialized so why shouldn't the students who made the ultimate sacrifice be memorialized?

    Ignoring the neutrality of the monument, the protesters on August 20, fixated instead on a comment spoken at the dedication ceremony of Silent Sam on June 2, 1913, by alumnus and highly-successful industrialist Julian Carr. Those words were highly-controversial and extraordinarily racially insensitive.

    Carr began his speech with profound appreciation for the students who left the university for the war effort:

    There are no words that I have been able to find in the vocabulary of the English language that fittingly express my feelings in this presence of this occasion. But you know and I know, that though I might speak with the tongue of men and of angels, neither song nor story could fittingly honor this glorious event. The whole Southland is sanctified by the precious blood of the student Confederate soldier. Their sublime courage has thrown upon the sky of Dixie a picture so bright and beautiful that neither defeat, nor disaster, nor oppression, nor smoke, nor fire, nor devastation, nor desolation, dire and calamitous, and I might with truth add, the world, the flesh nor the Devil has been able to mar or blemish it. The tragedy of history fails to record anywhere upon its sublime pages anything comparable to it. All the time will be the millennium of their glory.

    The canopy of the South is studded with stars which shall grow brighter and brighter as the ages in their endless procession succeed each other.

    No nobler young men ever lived; no braver soldiers ever answered the bugle call nor marched under a battle flag.

    They fought, not for conquest, not for coercion, but from a high and holy sense of duty. They were like the Knights of the Holy Grail, they served for the reward of serving, they suffered for the reward of suffering, they endured for the reward of enduring, they fought for the reward of duty done. They served, they suffered, they endured, they fought, [and died - crossed out] for their childhood homes, their firesides, the honor of their ancestors, their loved ones, their own native land.

    This noble gift of the United Daughters of the Confederacy touches deeply and tenderly the heart of every man who has the privilege of claiming the University of North Carolina as his Alma Mater. It is in harmony with the eternal fitness of things that the Old North State's daughters of to-day should commemorate the heroism of the men and youths whom the mothers and sisters, the wives and sweethearts of half a century ago sent forth to battle for the South. As Niobe wept over her sons slain by Apollo, so the tears of our women were shed over the consummate sacrifice of their loved ones. And as the gods transformed Niobe into a marble statue, and set this upon a high mountain, as our native goddesses erect this monument of bronze to honor the valor of all those whom fought and died for the Sacred Cause, as well as for the living sons of this grand old University.


    Next, Carr gave praise to the women of the South, the noble wives and mothers:

    "The war between the states was fought, really, by the women who stayed at home. Had they uttered a cry, had they complained, the morale of Lee's army would have been dissipated in a day.....

    God bless the noble women of my dear Southland, who are to-day as thoroughly convinced of the justice of that cause. They are the guardians of the sacred honor the departed; they will protect the memory of the hero's spirit no less than preserve from desecration from the sand of his body. Nothing in all the marvelous record can equal the fortitude, the constancy, the devotion of the women of the South......"


    Being an alumnus of Chapel Hill, and one of those young men who enlisted and fought for the Confederacy, he reminded the audience of the enormous sacrifice born by his university:

    Of the students and alumni of the University of North Carolina, about 1800 entered the Confederate army, of whom 842 belonged to the generation of 1850-1862. The University had in the service 1 lieutenant-general, 4 major-generals, 13 brigadier-generals, 71 colonels, 30 lieutenant-colonels, 65 majors, 46 adjutants, 71 surgeons, 254 captains, 161 lieutenants, 38 non-commissioned officers and about 1000 privates.

    I regard it as eminently appropriate to refer briefly at his point to the magnificent showing made by our state in the military service of the Confederacy. North Carolina furnished 84 regiments, 16 battalions and 13 unattached companies, besides the companies and individuals serving in commands from other states, and 9 regiments of Home Guards. Losses on the battlefield and by disease indicate that her contribution to the Confederate army was somewhat more than 1 to 5, while here military population stood in the proportion of 1 to 9. The entire Confederate loss on the battlefield was 74,524, of which North Carolina's share was 19,673, or more than one-fourth; 59, 297 died of disease, and of these, 20,602 were North Carolinians.

    And I dare to affirm this day, that if every State of the South had done what North Carolina did without a murmur, always faithful to its duty whatever the groans of the victims, there never would have been an Appomattox; Grant would have followed Meade and Pope; Burnside, Hooker, McDowell and McClellan, and the political geography of America would have been re-written.


    And finally, he concluded by lamenting over the difference the soldiers made:

    It is not for us to question the decrees of Providence. Let us be grateful that our struggle, keeping alive the grand principle of local self-government and State sovereignty has thus far held the American people from that consolidated despotism whose name, whether Republic or Empire, is of but little importance as compared with its rule.............

    Why were the stars, in their unapproachable glory, set in the skies above us, if there is no hope? Why was the rainbow ever painted before our eyes, if there is no promise?

    There must be, there IS a land that is fairer than day, where the rainbow never fades, where stars never go down, where these longings of immortality shall leap like angels from the temple of our hearts, and bring us rest; where the good and true, who fall before us like Autumn leaves, shall forever stay in our presence. There, there, fellow comrades, is the Confederate soldier's paradise, the Confederate soldier's heaven of eternal rest.

    That for which they battled in memory of this monument is reared, as well as for the survivors of that bloody drama, was not achieved. But the cause for which they fought is not lost, never can be, never will be lost while it is enshrined in the hearts of the people of the South, especially the hearts of the dear, loyal, patriotic women, who, like so many Vestal Virgins (God's name be praised), keep the fires lighted upon the Altars. Nay, as long as men anywhere pay tribute to the self-sacrificing spirit of a peoples' ideal.

    Ah! never shall the land forget.


    Unfortunately, in his long speech, Julian Carr included this most offensive comment:

    "I trust I may be pardoned for one allusion, howbeit it is rather personal. One hundred yards from where we stand, less than ninety days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern Lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings where was stationed a garrison of 100 Federal soldiers. I performed the pleasing duty in the immediate presence of the entire garrison, and for thirty nights afterwards slept with a double-barrel shot gun under my head."

    The protesters and the criminals who destroyed Silent Sam worked themselves into a frenzy over these few lines taken from a speech that was otherwise a wonderful and stirring testament and tribute to the young Tarheels who fought, to the university itself, and to the South in general. This racist comment was given after Carr had gone into great deal acknowledging the sacrifice that Southern women made during the war. One can excuse him for defending the honor of a Southern lady, no doubt who had lost several family members in the fighting, but certainly not in the manner he chose and certainly not in the memory he chose to remember.

    Nevertheless, one can criticize the comments and even criticize the speaker, who was merely one out of several that afternoon at the ceremony. But the monument is neutral and makes no such statement.
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( September 7th, 2018 @ 5:58 pm )
 
In Washington, NC at Oakdale Cemetery, there stands a humble reminder, a monument to those that perished for what they believed was a noble and just cause.

I will rise to defend that monument should it come under attack.



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