Chancellor: UNC ‘Experimenting’ with Quick Process on Silent Sam

3 Comments

1. 

   John Field Pankow on October 4, 2018 at 7:24 am

   This is the email I sent in to the address where the requests for opinion were asked: Dear Chancellor Folt,

   My family has been involved with the University of North Carolina since its founding. Perhaps if you’ve read of the history of the university the names Morehead, Lindsay and Hogg will ring bells. Indeed, my cousins the Moreheads have contributed a great deal to the university through the generations. My mother attended graduate school there in the 1950s, and a large number of our family and friends are alumni.

   I find it extremely disturbing not only that the Confederate memorial statue known as “Silent Sam” was vandalized and damaged, but that the public voices of many of the faculty and student body of the university seem to be so ignorant of the history of that statue and the men it represents. No less than fourteen of my cousins were students or alumni of UNC and went on to serve in the Confederate Army. While I did not attend UNC, I was graduated with a BA Degree in History from Washington & Lee University in Virginia, Class of 1987, and I find this modern revisionist version of history not only disturbing and hateful, but flat out wrong.

   It is possible, if you don’t know anything about what had been going on over the past 30 years (like the fact that the country had almost gone to war in 1828-32 over the “Tariff of Abominations”) to debate why the first seven Southern States seceded in the three months after the election of Abraham Lincoln. It is not possible, however, to honestly debate why North Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas and Tennessee seceded. In fact, North Carolina voted by a large margin against even holding a secession convention in February, 1861. They sent former NC Governor John Motley Morehead, a kinsman of mine and an 1815 graduate of UNC, to be part of a peace commission which included former US President John Tyler of Virginia and other elder statesmen, to go up to Washington to attempt to work out a compromise to avoid War. Mr. Lincoln kept them waiting around up there for weeks and finally refused to meet with them. Mr. Lincoln had been outfitting a fleet in NYC to sail to reinforce Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, knowing that this would provoke the firing on the fort. When this had the desired effect, Lincoln called out 75,000 troops to “put down the rebellion,” which the people of North Carolina and Virginia and the other Southern States rightly regarded as a violation of every principle upon which the country had been founded.

   Governor John Ellis (UNC Class of 1841) replied to Lincoln’s call for troops as follows:

   “Your dispatch is received; and, if genuine, which its extraordinary character leads me to doubt, I have to say in reply, that I regard the levy of troops made by the administration for the purpose of subjugating the states of the South as in violation of the Constitution, and a usurpation of power. I can be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of the country, and to this war upon the liberties of a free people. You can get no troops from North Carolina”

   Zebulon Vance (UNC Class of 1851), a young Congressman from Buncombe County, NC, who had been adamantly against secession had this to say:

   “For myself, I will say that I was canvassing for the Union with all my strength; I was addressing a large and excited crowd, large numbers of whom were armed, and literally had my arms extended upward in pleading for peace and the Union of our Fathers, when the telegraphic news was announced of the firing on Sumter and [the] President’s call for seventy-five thousand volunteers. When my hand came down from that impassioned gesticulation, it fell slowly and sadly by the side of a Secessionist.”

   Zeb Vance subsequently raised a company, enlisted in the Confederate Army and served as Colonel of the 26th NC Regiment, until he was elected governor, from the battlefield in 1862. He served out the rest of the war as Governor of North Carolina.

   These men were not fighting to preserve slavery, or to oppress black people. They were fighting to keep from being enslaved, politically and economically, by the North. (In 1860, the South had 9 million people, the North had 22 million, yet the South was paying over 3/4 of the revenues of the Federal Government, and almost all this money was being spent in the North. The Morrill Tariff, which was a central plank on the platform on which Lincoln had run, would increase the tariff to 47%, FAR worse than the “Tariff of Abomniations” which had almost brought the country to war in 1828-32…with a slave owner in the White House at the time.) They believed they were doing exactly what their fathers and grandfathers had done in 1776. And North Carolina took steps to send that very message to the world and to future generations. Mecklenburg County, NC had declared her independence from Great Britain on May 20, 1775, more than a year before the other, more famous, Declaration of Independence. North Carolina chose to hold the vote on secession on May 20, 1861, and placed those two dates on the NC State flag to show exactly what they were doing.

   I urge you to follow the laws mandated by the Legislature in 2015 and return and restore the “Silent Sam” statue to the place where it has stood for over a century. Instead of destroying the symbols of history, it would be much better for you to educate your faculty and students as to what those symbols really mean.

   Sincerely,

   John Field Pankow

   Reply
2. 

   Michael C. Lucas on October 4, 2018 at 7:28 am

   The University of North Carolina is leading national hypocrisy, it is a seed bed of higher ignorance teaching malice and bigotry. If it were not for Confederates that University would not even exist. It was founded by Confederates. A Confederate is not a malicious ideology if you do not agree with me fine, then educate yourself with a dictionary. try the O.E.D… Even the Patriots of 1776 identified themselves as Confederates and they were SLAVE OWNING WHITES MEN! They were also humans of their time and circumstances, in Africa there were SLAVE OWNING BLACK MEN and WOMEN at the same time of those White Men! But we do not hear the racial rhetoric and ignorance thats associated with Southern Confederate Americans. The current ignorance is absolutely an example of cause and effect, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The pursuit of socialists control dictating what society should conform to has created this unruly monster. It has enslaved generations of Americas with ignorance, intolerance, politically boxing minds with intolerance for free thinking. Confederates fought for individual liberties of States Rights, even though those rights were inclusive of the rights of Slavery themselves at that time, but one little known fact is that gradualism was working, and in fact there were over 260,000 free African Americans living in the South, in addition to Legally manumitted Slaves during the war by those White Southerners. Including by Gen. Robert E. Lee. Everything that is oversimplified is not always as it has been generalized to be. Silent Sam was not erected in malice of based on a myth, he was erected in memory of the students of the University of North Carolina who gave their lives to defend their belief in Constitutional Liberty, Self defense of their State, and the Confederacy which was formed when they were threatened by Invasion. That is not a myth that is what occurred, that is historical truth. Whether people agree with what they did was right or wrong that is the reason the Confederacy was formed, and that’s what they believed they fought for. That’s the truth of Confederate Symbolism which should be taught as, in the opinion of a majority of good people white and black who hold no malice except in the defense of truth. THAT ALL HUMANS ARE EQUALLY FALLIBLE! But by enlarge ALL DESIRE TO DO SOMETHING RIGHTEOUS! Including Confederates!

   Reply
3. 

   Joseph L. Courage on October 9, 2018 at 8:42 pm

   The two lengthy comments above both completely ignore the FACT that the statue, was funded and commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. This group promoted the idea that slaves were ‘happy’ and content in their position, white supremacy, and the valor of the KKK in defending their lost cause. If there is any question of their motives, one most only look up the speech given at the dedication of Silent Sam by Julian Carr, which celebrated the fact that he had recently horsewhipped a ‘negro wench’ in the street for daring to ‘insult’ a white woman. Of course they had relatives who fought for the Confederacy, and on the surface, they claimed that was the purpose of the statue. However, their own writings give away their true motives. The text of the UDC’s Confederate Catechism manual of 1904 , for example, said that slaves “were faithful and devoted and were always ready and willing to serve them.” Also in their UDC Confederate Catechism text, eerily similar to the state’s rights & taxes points raised by Mr. Landow above, was the following:

   ‘What causes led to the War Between the States, between 1861 and 1865?’
   ‘The disregard, on the part of the states of the North, for the rights of the Southern or slaveholding states.’

   ‘What were these rights?’ (Just to be clear what they were fighting for – in reality and in their OWN WORDS.)
   ‘The right to regulate their own affairs and to hold slaves as property.’

   ‘How were slaves treated?
   “With great kindness and care in nearly all cases, a cruel master being rare.”

   ‘What was the feeling of the slaves towards their master?’
   “They were faithful and devoted and were always ready and willing to serve them.”

   Here in North Carolina, they later even erected a monument to the KKK!

   “IN COMMEMORATION OF THE ‘KU KLUX KLAN’ DURING THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD FOLLOWING THE ‘WAR BETWEEN THE STATES’ THIS MARKER IS PLACED ON THEIR ASSEMBLY GROUND. THE ORIGINAL BANNER (AS ABOVE) WAS MADE IN CABARRUS COUNTY.

   “ERECTED BY THE DODSON-RAMSEUR CHAPTER OF THE UNITED DAUGHTERS OF THE CONFEDERACY. 1926”

   Likewise, quite ironic is the claim that removing statues will somehow erase history, when distorting, erasing and attempting to change history was a major pursuit of the UDC. For decades the UDC lobbied to remove any and all books from Southern classrooms which they deemed unacceptable due to their perceived Northern biases, and replaced them with books that glorified the Confederacy. No negative mention of any Confederate leader was tolerated. Southern defeats were always blamed on the superior supplies and resources of the North, and never the soldiers who fought or tactics. Yet while Mr. Landow and so many others, having been brainwashed by their upbringing, still believe the Civil War somehow wads not about slavery, many of the declarations of the reasons for the war – the official version voted and signed by Confederate states themselves – Stated the importance of slavery in the Southern cause. Mississippi’s declaration, for example, said the state’s position was “thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery.” On December 20, 1860, South Carolina declared that President-elect Abraham Lincoln’s “opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery” and Alabama declared shortly after that “it is the desire and purpose of the people of Alabama to meet the Slaveholding States of the South, who may approve such purpose.” Texas declared its decision to be “based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery.” Arkansas stated clearly “that the platform on the party known as the Black Republican Party contains unconstitutional dogmas, dangerous in their tendency and highly derogatory to the rights of slave states.” Virginia, provoked by Lincoln’s raising troops to suppress the already seceded states, declared “Lincoln’s opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.” So tell us again how the South did not fight for slavery?

   Certainly the North had many racists, slaveholders and no doubt benefited greatly from the wealth produced by the institution. However, the vast majority of abolitionists were in the North. When slaves escaped – they headed North and were sometimes hidden in the homes of sympathetic members of the Underground Railroad. It was the North who opposed expanding slavery into new states. It was the North that the Confederates called “anti-slavery” as a derogatory term. Those are the real facts.

   Silent Sam, for all the fawning worship by neo-Confederates, was even more ironically modeled by the sculptor after a young man from Boston. A Yankee!! On the campus of UNC, not far from his previous location, there already exists a memorial which honors all the soldiers from UNC who fought in every battle, including the Civil War. Put Silent Sam in a museum or in a Confederate cemetery where he belongs. His time, and the time of the UDC and KKK is over. God bless America.

   Sincerely,

   Mr. Nathanial Turner

   Reply

Comments on Chapelboro are moderated according to our Community Guidelines