Letter: Consider words from Union officer

Published 12:00 am Thursday, July 11, 2019

In regards to the removal of the statue “Fame,” maybe we should consider the words of Union officer in the Civil War Lt. Colonel Augustus Choate Hamlin of Maine.

He wrote in the book “Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson by Mary Anna Jackson” as a tribute to General Stonewall Jackson in 1895, “As the mists of prejudice clear away and the true ideas of a national sentiment prevail, the wish to accord to the Southern soldier the full measure of his merits in the Civil War grows stronger with the Northern mind, and there is, moreover, a genuine desire to claim as national treasure the fame of some of the soldiers who fought for secession. It is natural that such a generous feeling should arise and prosper, and it may come to pass in the not far distant future that an intelligent and enlightened nation will erect common monuments to some of the leaders of our great Civil War”

Another interesting note, Mary Anna Jackson, widow of General Jackson was present at the unveiling of the statue “Fame.”

— Maryann Gorman

Rockwell