Madison officials are being urged to remove a plaque honoring Confederate soldiers as “unsung heroes” at gravesites at the city’s Forest Hill Cemetery. Known as the Confederate Rest, the area is the burial site for over 100 rebel soldiers who perished as prisoners of war at Camp Randall. It’s the northernmost cemetery for Confederate soldiers in the country.
The call to remove the plaque comes after many Southern cities are taking down statues honoring Confederate leaders — and meeting resistance from white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups. In Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend, white supremacists clashed with counter-protesters over the effort to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee. One woman was killed there when a man drove his car into a crowd of people protesting a rally by Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalists.
Compared to the Robert E. Lee statue, the plaque in Forest Hill Cemetery is small and inconspicuous — few Madisonians even know it exists or where it is. But many who are aware of it are disgusted by it.
M Adams, co-executive director of Freedom Inc., calls the marker a “symbol of hate.”
“I think the city needs to take the plaque down. We need to take it as seriously as we would other symbols of hate,” Adams says. “It is absolutely honoring the people that fought over the lives of my ancestors, a war directly related to chattel enslavement. I don’t think the city should honor that.”
The plaque, erected in 1981, states that “valiant Confederate soldiers lie buried" at the site. It explains how within a few weeks of arriving in Madison, “140 graves were filled, the last resting places for these unsung heroes, far from their homes in Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana and Arkansas.” The marker also displays two crossed Confederate battle flags.
For nearly two decades, city policy allowed outside groups to fly the First National Flag of the Confederacy on a nearby flagpole, but only on Memorial Day and Veteran's Day. Small Confederate Battle flags on graves were allowed year-round. City staff were also banned from participating. Eric Knepp, Madison’s parks superintendent — who manages Forest Hill cemetery — declined a request for comment. So did Mayor Paul Soglin, but his office said that he would release a statement soon.
In May, Ald. Shiva Bidar-Sielaff, who represents the area, successfully fought for a total ban on Confederate flags at the city cemetery.
"I worked diligently for a year with Ald. [Marsha] Rummel, the city attorney and parks staff to create a policy that does not allow the Confederate flag to be flown anymore,” said Bidar-Sielaff in a statement posted to Facebook. “Alder Rummel and I are now working on the plaque with parks staff and city attorney — so stay tuned."
The Confederate soldiers buried at Forest Hill were part of the 1st Alabama Infantry Regiment. After weeks of fighting in 1862, the regiment surrendered in Cairo, Illinois. More than a thousand Confederate soldiers were brought to a stockade in Camp Randall, which was primarily a Union army training facility during the Civil War. But the camp was not equipped to be a prison and after three months, the soldiers were moved to Camp Douglas in Juneau County. But before they were relocated, 140 died of wounds and disease while imprisoned in Madison.
According to a memo issued by city attorney Michael May in 2016, the city used to own the Confederate National Flag and the Confederate Battle Flag, which it displayed on a city-owned pole in the Confederate Rest area for one week before and after Memorial Day. City staff also removed and stored “replicas of the Battle Flag” that were placed on graves by the Sons of Confederate Veterans during this two-week window each year.
But the practice was discontinued in 2000, according to May’s memo.
Isthmus was unable to locate a local member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. But Charles Allen Sullivant Jr., chair of the national organization’s media committee, says there’s nothing inappropriate about the marker.
“This whole country — some places at least — has turned into an open-air insane asylum. It’s just the thing of the moment and people will get mad about something else soon,” Sullivant Jr. says. “Reconsidering where you have a statue in front of a courthouse or something, is one thing. But a plaque in a cemetery, seriously?”
But Savion Castro, a Madison native who works at One Wisconsin Now and saw posts about the plaque on Facebook, says a public display calling Confederate soldiers “unsung heroes” is offensive.
“They aren’t heroes. These soldiers fought to preserve human bondage and slavery, the original sin of this country. We haven’t fully healed the wounds of slavery or Jim Crow,” Castro says. “And it’s telling that even in a state that fought for the Union, these soldiers are honored. They fought for an evil cause. If they had their way, [the Confederacy] would be its own country with slavery still enacted. I think there is a way to commemorate the dead without exulting the evil cause for which these soldiers died to maintain.”
Ald. Arvina Martin agrees. She wasn’t aware of the plaque until recently, but she’s supportive of her colleagues’ efforts to remove it.
“Perhaps, compared to what is happening nationally this isn’t the biggest deal in the grand scheme of things. But it’s still a deal and it bothers people for good reason. It’s on city property so if there’s something we can do about it, we should,” Martin says. “I think we can preserve the history of this site without memorializing it. The plaque is better off in a museum setting where the words can be put into context.”
Editor's note: the plaque has since been removed.
