Wisconsin Historical Society
In my mind it’s a close call, but I think the Madison Common Council was wrong when it voted to remove a cenotaph at Confederate Rest in the city-owned Forest Hill Cemetery.
A cenotaph is a simple listing of the names of the dead soldiers there. And if that’s all it was, I’d be unquestionably in agreement with Ald. Paul Skidmore and the Madison Landmarks Commission, which are fighting to keep it.
But, as is often the case when we combine history, race and politics, it’s a lot more complicated than that. The cenotaph was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy; it says so right on the monument. That’s a problem, because the Daughters have, since the end of the Civil War, been instrumental in promoting a false narrative of a “lost cause” that was somehow noble. No, it wasn’t. This was an illegal rebellion that was, at its heart, about fighting to preserve the right to enslave one group of people based on its race.
Still, I think it would be better to leave the cenotaph in place for two reasons.
First, in a liberal town like ours, we should embrace one of the tenets of liberalism: More information is always better than less. Better to leave the cenotaph and add a kiosk to explain its context. In fact, with so much modern technology at our disposal we could be really creative here. Maybe a touchscreen could provide all kinds of information about the war, Reconstruction, the impact of the Civil War and of slavery in the decades since the war ended, and what we know about the soldiers — both Confederate and Union soldiers, who are buried not far away.
Why not use this teachable moment to create a teachable place?
The second reason to leave the cenotaph is that the northernmost Confederate cemetery is a deeply symbolic place. Leaving the monument would be in keeping with the spirit of reconciliation that Abraham Lincoln tried to inculcate at the end of the war. He ended his second inaugural address with this famous paragraph: “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 the 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.”
Had he lived, Lincoln would have likely pursued a reconstruction policy that was at once charitable to the defeated rebels while firm in its progress toward welcoming former slaves as full citizens of the republic. His assassination, only weeks after he spoke those words, may have done more to set back our nation and to bring us to this point than anything else.
During the council debate, Ald. Barbara Harrington-McKinney was quoted as saying, "When I think of the countless slaves that were killed, there was no monument, there was no marker, there was no headstone, and no signs saying who died here.”
Fair enough, but it seems that the answer should be to identify the slaves, not to forget the names of the soldiers. That’s why the just-opened National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which identifies 4,000 victims of lynching, is so powerful.
The idea that, because slaves and former slaves were forgotten, we should also erase the names of Confederate soldiers is sadly in keeping with the spirit of these times. We are living through a politics of retribution. Donald Trump is just the lava spewed out by white resentment. But much of the left seems focused on nursing and repaying its own set of grievances.
Leaving that cenotaph — with added context — and in some way respecting those dead Confederate soldiers in the very heart of this liberal northern town would say something powerfully magnanimous. It would say we’re still doing Lincoln’s work of unifying our country even while we pursue justice. It would say that we don’t have to pursue that justice by visiting the same kind of “erasure” on those soldiers as was visited upon slaves. It would say that knowing more is better than knowing less, and that knowledge is stronger than ignorance.
And yet, having said that, if it’s the council’s and the mayor’s decision to go the other way, I think we should. Because what I also object to is our current landmarks ordinance. Under Madison’s bizarre ordinance, the unelected Landmarks Commission has the power to overturn the legal action taken by the elected representatives of the people. The commission voted earlier to keep the cenotaph and add a new explanatory marker, and it looks like they’re spoiling for a showdown with the council.
While the commission may be right on the merits of the case, the process is wrong. No unelected board that is not a separate branch of government — a court — should be able to block the actions of an elected body (and, of course, in Wisconsin even judges are elected.) The Landmarks Commission could advise before the council votes, but they shouldn’t be in a position to consent afterwards. If the commission respected democracy, they would accept the council’s decision and not exercise the power they have to block it. And the ordinance should eventually be amended to take that power away altogether.
The council can take another vote to override the commission, and they probably will, if it becomes necessary. But there’s no reason that an unelected body with a narrow mandate should have powers similar to those of a mayor to exercise what amounts to a veto that must be overridden by an elected body.
A better way forward would be for the council itself to change its mind. In this era of resentment and retribution, what we need is a whole lot more Lincoln in our debates.
