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| North Carolina Monument, Gettysburg |
There have been a
couple of articles floating about the past couple of weeks about how monuments
really don’t teach history to people. If you are looking for an in-depth
description of the battle of Gettysburg, with the various movements and turns
over four days, the Pennsylvania monument nor the North Carolina monument are going to
do it for you. You will need to turn to Coddington’s The Gettysburg Campaign
or the books by Phanz or Wert on each day of the battle to get that painstakingly
detailed level of study that can truly help you understand that battle. But on
the other hand, I believe these monuments are far more important than any class
a teacher or professor can offer. What the monuments can do, better than a detailed
study, is capture the imagination of a young person.
Probably the first
historic site I ever visited was the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine. I
was probably seven or eight or nine years old. I have no recollection of any of
the talks by the park rangers, nor do I remember any display panels that I have
might have paused in order to read, but I do remember the place. I remember crawling on a cannon (probably
discouraged then, too), standing on the parapet and straining to look out into
the Matanzas River, trying to catch a glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean. It was the
place that captured my attention, and probably helped fuel my passion
for Southern history.
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| Otway Burns Monument, Burnsville |
Fast-forward thirty
or so years to Gettysburg, at the North Carolina monument that so magnificently
shows the struggle, the anguish on the faces of Tar Heel soldiers as they
strive to punch a hole in the Federal lines on Cemetery Ridge. I was once
standing, talking to some friends about those memorable minutes on July 3. Up
pulls a minivan. Door flies open, and out pours a little fellow, maybe five or
six. He was in awe over the size of the monument and had a zillion questions
which his parents really could not answer. (I wonder what it was like at the
Virginia monument right down the road?) I have seen this scenario repeated time
and time again – at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, in the rocket garden at
Kennedy Space Center, and at monuments great and small in little towns spread
out across the landscape.
Monuments are great
places to begin a conversation. Let’s go visit the statue to Capt. Otway Burns
in Burnsville, North Carolina. We can stand at its base and I can tell you
about the life of Burns, about how he was a privateer during the War of 1812
(anyone remember that one?), and about the struggle to get new counties formed
in the western part of North Carolina. Burns’s vote in the General Assembly to
establish this new county cost him the next election but got the town named for
him. Or, we can head to the campus of Appalachian State University and sit on a
log next to the statue of Daniel Boone. Right over there, across the road from
the monument, was the cabin of Benjamin Howard, a cabin that Boone used as he
was hunting in the area. You can see the ridge rising above the town, and Boone
would have been able to use that ridge as a guide. You follow that ridge (named
Rich Mountain) and you can get to the gap that will lead you into Tennessee,
and on toward Cumberland Gap, and Kentucky. Boone was a complex man, a
frontiersman, a politician, struggling to co-exist with the Natives, and was
probably a wee bit crazy.
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| Daniel Boone Monument, Boone |
We all know that
people in the United States don’t visit historic places as they once did. It is
too complicated. Too many forms to fill out for a field trip for those in elementary
school, and in university classes, those people who made us who we are today, with
their complicated lives that don’t seem to mesh with the morals (or lack thereof)
of people in the twenty-first century, are not in vogue. Why should we study
Gettysburg, or Burns, or Boone?
As monuments to
Founding Fathers and Civil War soldiers are ripped from the ground, we lose the
ability to have places to start those discussions. We lose the ability to pique
the interest of the young and old alike. Sure, we can bring it up in a classroom.
But given the level of historical illiteracy in this country right now, how is
that working out?
You may totally disagree with my assessment.
And that’s ok. Please feel free to move right along. But my opinion is based
upon my own personnel observations. The thousands of monuments that grace our
historical landscape still have a great deal to teach us, and those places can
be touchstones that lead to deeper understanding.
