Two monuments that were removed from Confederate Rest in the city-owned Forest Hill Cemetery are at the center of a lawsuit filed against former Mayor Paul Soglin. The civil complaint accuses Soglin — and all 20 alders on the city council in 2018 as well as the city — of distorting history, committing fraud, and violating city ordinances, state law, the Wisconsin Constitution, and the U.S. Constitution. It alleges city officials desecrated a historic gravesite and commited hate crimes by “discriminating against the dead buried at Confederate Rest because of their ancestry.” Soglin declined to comment on the lawsuit but says he and the alders will be represented by the city attorney.
There’s 162 years worth of history here but let’s go over the highlights.
More than 100 soldiers who fought for the Confederacy died while being held as prisoners at Camp Randall during the Civil War. They were buried in at Forest Hill. In 1906, a large stone marker — called a cenotaph — that lists the names of the rebel soldiers buried was placed at the site. It was donated by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. A second, smaller marker installed in 1981 explains the history of the gravesite and describes the soldiers as “valiant” and “unsung heroes.” Made of stone and bronze it also depicts two Confederate flags. On Aug. 16, 2017, then-Mayor Soglin ordered the smaller monument be immediately removed, claiming it should have never been allowed to be installed. Soglin also wanted the larger monument taken down but he didn’t order it removed by mayoral decree. After several months of debate in 2018, the city council approved dismantling the cenotaph which required overturning a decision by the city’s Landmarks Commission. All but the base of the heavy stone monument was taken down in January 2019.
The effort to remove the markers at Forest Hill was part of a nationwide movement to remove monuments, symbols and statues that honor the Confederacy and its leaders. At the time, Soglin said the Confederate Rest monuments were “evidence of racist historical revisionism.” He called the cenotaph which bears the names of Confederate soldiers in the mass grave a “slab of propaganda” paid for by a racist organization.
In late December 2021, Madison attorney Todd Hunter filed a 90-page lawsuit seeking to have the monuments returned to Confederate Rest and $25,000 in financial damages that would go into a preservation fund to protect the gravesite. Hunter is the plaintiff and the lawyer in the case. His complaint alleges that it was Soglin and other city officials who are rewriting history. Hunter declined to be interviewed for this story.
City attorney Michael Haas says his office has no comment on the lawsuit and still hasn’t been officially served. No court date has been scheduled for a Dane County judge to hear the case.
Hunter’s complaint includes a detailed history of Confederate Rest and some choice words directed at Soglin. He scorns the city attorney’s office for defending “the reckless actions and rhetoric of a mayor desperate to salvage a failing gubernatorial campaign.”
“Allowing Madison’s action to stand uncorrected — to then establish a precedent — can only lead to greater danger where hate will supersede civility, civil rights become civil wrongs, and the Attorney’s Oath is reduced to a bureaucratic formality one pledges casually to gain access to Wisconsin’s courts of justice,” states Hunter’s complaint.
This isn’t the first run-in between Hunter and Soglin. In 1995, Soglin was elected to his sixth term as mayor by beating Hunter with 72 percent of the vote
