And, the New War Continues-- Part 5: Get Your Facts Right, Mayor

Said the mayor,  "We will honor our history, we will respect the dead.  We make sure our legacy is to tell the truth and to remove evidence of racist historical revisionism.

"We will use the story of these monuments to tell the truth about a century of Jim Crow, economic oppression and those like the UDC and the Ku Klux Klan who spread their lies far beyond the boundaries of the rebellious states.  It's time for education.  It's time for people to learn the history of the nation."

Looks like it's time for the mayor to learn something about the nation's history and not just jump on the bandwagon after Charleston and Charlottesville.  Comparing the UDC to the Klan or an ultra-racist group is like calling the  DAR racist.

The men who are buried there in Madison were fighting to protect their homes and families from invaders.  These men being enlisted, probably very few if any even owned a slave.

Maybe the mayor should stop reading what the racist group Southern Poverty Law Center writes about in regards to the Confederacy.

It is  so surprising that the Confederacy was held in high regard all these years until recently.  And now, let's talk about revisionism as the mayor said.  Who's doing the revising?

Now, There Is One Really Racist Group.  --Old Secesh

And the New War Continues-- Part 4: Already Removed the Memorial Plaque

In 1981, the memorial plaque at the Confederate Rest section was placed at the Forest Hill Cemetery.  It describes the people buried there as "valiant Confederate soldiers" and "unsung heroes."  The privately funded plaque rested on a granite structure, said the soldiers were buried in a Union state after surrendering in a battle and dying at Camp Randall as prisoners of war.

Mayor Soglin had  the plaque  removed in August and he claims he had the right to do it. He said he received about 100 phone calls after doing that.  Most were opposed to what he did and came from out of the area (probably from those mean old UDC ladies).

He has contacted the Wisconsin State Historical Society about a place to store or display the plaque.

--Old Secesh

And the New War Continues-- Part 3: A History and a Hateful Mayor

Starting in April 1862, more than 1,000 captured Confederate soldiers were moved to Camp Randall, a Union training camp located where Camp Randall Stadium, home of the University of Wisconsin Badgers is located today.  Over the following days, 139 of the Confederates died.

According to the good mayor, in 1931 the UDC, "a racist and bigoted organization" installed the monument with names of them, honoring "treasonous rebels' as part of a national strategy of propaganda and determination to rewrite history providing a favorable interpretation of the Civil War."

"The larger monument at Madison's Forest Hill Cemetery is not a Civil War monument," he said.  "It was installed over 60 years after the end of the war.  It is a slab of propaganda paid for by a racist organization on public property when our city was inattentive to both the new form of slavery propagated by the donors with the Black Codes and to the meaning of that despicable fixture honoring slavery, sedition and oppression."

According to the good mayor, all those UDC  (United Daughters of the Confederacy) ladies must be card-carrying members of the KKK.

I sure would like to know where Mr. Soglin gets these ideas.  Sounds more of a person jumping on the bandwagon with all this Confederate hatred stuff.

Is Soglin Related to That New Orleans Mayor?  --Old Secesh

And, the New War Continues-- Part 2: Madison Preparing to Desecrate Confederate Graves

Mayor Soglin has three propositions for the 1931 memorial in the cemetery:

1.  Remove it.

2.  Eradication a section that refers to the United Daughters of the Confederacy organization that installed it.

3.  Leaving it, but placing next to it "a new honest monument" that tells the story of how the Daughters have spread lies about slavery throughout the United States and "continues to do so to this day.

He says the third item would be his preferred solution. I would say that none of these are advisable.  Leave it as it is.  Soglin wants the City Council of Madison to make the final decision but will introduce a resolution.

I think an appropriate plaque would be a plaque explaining how so many Confederates came to die while in Union hands over a short period of time in their fair city.  Also, there should be acknowledgement of the atrocities Wisconsin and Union soldiers inflicted on Southern civilians, women and children during the war.

Kind of strange that that memorial was okay from 1931 to 2017,

But Now It Is Not.  --Old Secesh

And, the New War Continues-- Part 1: Madison, Wis. About to Embarrass Self

That new war is one being waged to completely wipe out everything having to do with the Confederacy and damage a people's heritage.

Though I have not been writing much about it, the current attempt to erase all aspects of the Confederacy from history continues.  I don't get as involved because it makes me so angry.

But, I see that in Madison, Wisconsin, a group will be making a decision of a Confederate monument in a city cemetery soon.  This story goes back to last summer.

From the August 22, 2017, Madison State Journal  "Mayor Paul Soglin calls Confederate memorials historical 'lies'" by Paul Mosiman.

He says the memorial placed at the Confederate Rest section of Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison a
"historical lie" placed there by a racist organization around 1931 to promote a new form of racism, rather than a monument of the Civil War.  What he refers to as a racist organization is the United Daughters of the Confederacy.  It is made up of female descendants of Confederates.  (Kind of like calling the DAR racist.)

Last week, he ordered the removal of a plaque placed by the memorial in 1981.

The memorial is there to mark the 139 Confederate prisoners who died at Camp Randall (present day Camp Randall Stadium) in Madison.

You Have to Wonder Where Mayor Soglin Is Getting His Information?  --Old Secesh

Forest Hill Cemetery-- Part 3: Alice Waterman

Every Memorial Day, U.S.flags are placed on Union graves.  The flags of their state are placed on the graves of the Confederates.

One of those Confederate graves is not of a soldier as I mentioned in the last post.  It is the grave of Alice Waterman.  By her request, after her death in 1897, she was buried at Confederate Rest with the men she had never known in life, but whom she always referred to as "My Boys."

--Old Secesh

Forest Hill Cemetery-- Part 2: Alice Waterman Arrives

In 1868, Alice Waterman, a widow from Louisiana, moved to Madison.  Despite having lived most of her life in the North and not knowing any of the interred Confederates, she took pity on them and removed the weeds, improved the landscaping and maintained the lot at her own expense.

She placed new headboards on the graves.

Mrs. Waterman referred to the dead as "My Boys."

She had her body buried with "her boys" at her request upon her death

Today, the City of Madison takes care of Confederate Rest and Mrs. Waterman.

--Old Secesh

Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison, Wisconsin: Confederate Dead-- Part 1

The Confederate prisoners who died at Camp Randall in Madison, Wisconsin, were taken to Forest Hill Cemetery and buried side-by-side in a trenches in a section of the cemetery set aside for that purpose.  The graves were marked with wooden headboards and the area became known as Confederate Rest.

It is considered to be the northernmost Confederate cemetery.

Over time, weeds and tall grass overtook the section.  The headboards began to deteriorate.

And then, she came to take care of "My Boys."

--Old Secesh

Follow Up on Confederates at Camp Randall-- Part 1: Arrived in Bad Shape

From August 14, 2009, Yahoo! Voices "The Northernmost Confederate Cemetery in the United States: Madison, Wisconsin" by Mark Hudziak.

When the captured men of the 1st Alabama started arriving from Island No. 10, curious Madison townspeople turned out at the train station to see the "enemy soldiers."  They arrived April 20th and April 24th.  The first arrivals were in relatively good shape, but not so the second group.  The first group marched to their prison at Camp Randall, but many of the second group had to be carried there on stretchers.

Island No. 10 may have been a very strategic place, but it was unhealthy to defend because of disease and water.  Its defenders often had to stand in knee-deep water in the coll days of March and April..  There was also inadequate food and very little medicine.

They arrived suffering from pneumonia, mumps and chronic diarrhea.

--Old Secesh

Civil War Sites in Wisconsin-- Part 2

Also in Madison is the northernmost Civil War cemetery at Forest Hill.  In 1862, Confederates from the 1st Alabama were captured at Island No. 10, near Cairo, Illinois, and sent as prisoners to Camp Randall.  About 120 died there and were buried in a plot that became known as Confederate Rest at Madison's Forest Hill Cemetery.  They are just a short distance from the Union burial ground at that place.

In April 1862, over 1000 members of the regiment arrived at Camp Randall and over the next two months, 140 died.  One was shot by a guard, but the others died of disease.

There is also a Forest Hill Soldiers' Lot at the cemetery where 240 Union dead are buried, most of whom died in the city hospitals during the war.  there are also veterans of the Spanish-American War and World War I buried there..  The federal government acquired this plot of land in 1886.

--Old Secesh