My Thoughts On the Confederate Monuments

From the minutes of the Bastrop County Commissioners Court meeting,

the 9th day of May, 1910, “Ordered by the Court that for the purposes
of further beautifying the Courthouse Yard that the sum of one
hundred and fifty (150.00) dollars be and the same is hereby
appropriated for the purpose of constructing the foundation for the
Confederate Monument to be erected in said Courthouse Yard by the
United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Clerk is hereby
authorized to issue warrant on the General Fund for said sum when
said foundation is completed and accepted by the Committee
appointed by said United Daughters of the Confederacy on Monument
Construction.” (Vol. G, page 261)

Quoting from a June 11, 1910, article titled “Laying of Foundation Of

The Confederate Monument At Bastrop”, in the Bastrop Advertiser,
“On Friday, June 3, 1910 at 2 p.m., occurred an event which will forever
be a memorial one in the annuals of old Bastrop. After two years of
patient effort, the T. C. Cain Chapter of the Daughters of the
Confederacy had the proud pleasure of assembling their friends from
all the parts of our county and neighboring counties to witness the
laying of the foundation for the beautiful monument which will soon be
erected to tell to future generations the story and the glory of the men
who wore the grey.

The article goes on to say that Judge J. B. Price and Judge Paul D. Page
each “made brief but eloquent talks, voicing their love of the South and
her Institutions [meaning slavery] and their reverence for the heroic
men who followed Lee.”

The article ends, “Here was a scene to be forever remembered. Around

this block of granite, symbolic as it was of the love and gratitude and
remembrance of our Southern heroes, knelt the grizzled veterans of the
war- the most terrible, the most unequal the world has ever known.
Here stand the wives, the widows, the mothers, the sons and
daughters, of the men who fought and died, knowing the sorrows, the
humiliations of defeat, and yet, oh friends, no word of bitterness, no
word of reproach, or of anger, toward the erstwhile foe. Where else,
where else, but in our noble white-souled Southland could such a scene
be witnessed. Remember it, oh little children, who stood in their
presence and cherish your heritage of Southern blood and Southern
chivalry.’

Five years ago I said that we could not know what they were thinking
when the Confederate obelisk was set here at the Courthouse in 1910.
Having researched the records, I now believe that we can know. I
believe we know that it was placed under the guise of a war memorial
as subtle indoctrination for the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.

We will not be rewriting history by moving these confederate

monuments from the Courthouse Yard. Instead, we will be righting a
wrong of history. The United Daughters of the Confederacy rewrote
history in 1910. It is time we removed that false narrative from this
public place.

Looking back on the past 155 years in American, it is clear that

enslaving a race of human beings was wrong in every sense of moral
reason. The Civil War was fought over a state’s right to continue, and
even expand, the reach of the “peculiar institution” - slavery. More
than 620,000 lives were sacrificed in the 4 year conflict. The rebelling
South lost the war, the slaves were freed, but that was not the end of
the battle.

Soon after the Federal government’s reconstruction of the Southern

States, state and local governments in the South began passing laws
that made black people’s lives as just about as miserable as they had
been before the War. Jim Crow laws effected every aspect of their daily
existence. Segregation took hold throughout the South. Even the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled that separation of blacks and whites was legal and
permissible in the United States.
In the early part of the 20th century, two organizations wrote their own
version of the history of the Southern States and the mighty conflict
over slavery, which they called state’s rights. The Ku Klux Klan and the
United Daughters of the Confederacy, one through violence and
intimidation, the other through influence and mis-information, changed
the defeat of the South in the Civil War into victory over those of the
Negro race. To promote their view of the past, they lobbied local
governments all over the South to set up these memorials. That’s how
this Confederate monument was placed here at the Bastrop County
Courthouse. Proof of the effectiveness of their efforts is seen in the
fact that we are here today, 110 years later, talking about the meaning
and appropriateness of this memorial.

The images, symbols, and words of this monument clearly and overtly,
but wrongly, attribute honor, nobility and rightness to the Confederate
Cause. Featured on the monument are the initials CSA, “Confederate
States of America” and two flags, one of the Confederate States of
America, insurrectionists against the United States of America, the
other the battle flag of the Confederate army. These symbols meant
something when the monument was erected, and they still mean
something today. This obelisk monument goes beyond honoring those
who died in a terrible war. It glorifies the cause for which they fought –
dividing the United State of America over the issue of the Southern
States’ right to enslave black people. The memorial stone to Joseph
Sayers touts his efforts to maintain and expand slavery.

I do not believe these monuments beautify the Courthouse Yard. They

represent a shameful past – a past when enslaving other humans was
more important that national unity. And there is nothing right or noble
about the way African Americas were treated after the Civil War. We
know that now, we acknowledge that now.

Now it is time, in fact it is past time, to take appropriate actions to

correct, as best we can, the misgivings of the past - to remove these
public representations of prejudice, segregation, and enslavement.
Perhaps they can be relocated to the cemetery where most of the
honored soldiers are buried, or to a museum, or a heritage park, if one
were developed. But they should not remain here at the forefront of
our Courthouse, the center of equality and justice in Bastrop County.

At the public hearing last week, a friend reminded me of President

Lincoln’s immortal words ending his second inaugural address,

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in
the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish
this work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for
him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his
 orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and
lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

These words are as needed today as they were 155 years ago.
Removing these Confederate monuments from this public place is not
undoing history. It is simply a step in setting things right so that the
future is brighter, better, and more peaceful for our county and nation.

I believe the time has come to remove these monuments to a failed

past and to a defeated regime that promoted injustice, inequality, and
prejudice. Now is the time to recommit ourselves to eliminating these
subtle symbols of prejudice. Now is the time for healing the racial strife
that divides us as Americans. Now is the time to finish the work of
freedom, so that together we may achieve and cherish unity, justice,
and equality for all.

Paul Pape
Bastrop County Judge
July 13, 2020