A peace-full home for Silent Sam?

            Like many UNC alumni, I’ve been talking with friends a lot recently about the disposition of “Silent Sam.”   Since neither I nor my friends have any real influence on the ultimate decision, our conversations have been, at best, aspirational.  After listening to many suggestions — some thoughtful, some emotional —  I’ve come to the conclusion that Bennett Place near Durham, an obscure and overlooked state historic site, would provide the statue of the Confederate soldier with his most appropriate home.

            Here’s why.

            First, I am convinced that returning the monument to McCorkle Place on the Chapel Hill campus, where it stood for 105 years, will engender protests and rallies  disruptive to the University’s academic mission, costly and difficult to control, and imbued with the inherent threat of violence.

            On the other hand, destroying the statue, or locking it away in a secret location, would constitute a denial or revision of North Carolina’s history, which in my view should be remembered honestly, “warts and all.”

            Some folks have suggested that the statue be placed in the North Carolina Museum of History or the  Civil War museum planned for Fayetteville.  I wouldn’t be offended by either outcome, provided that the monument would be thoroughly explained and contextualized.  I’m not enamored by the suggestion of the Bentonville battlefield, because it’s a place of war and conflict, whereas Bennett Place memorializes peace and reconciliation.

            At the end of the day,  I think the most appropriate location for Silent Sam is at the little homestead where Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered more than 89,000 troops under his command to Union general William Tecumseh Sherman on April 26, 1865, thereby effectively bringing the Civil War to its end.  This austere out-of-the way site, which preserves the modest farmhouse where Johnston and Sherman negotiated, is suffused with the sprits of peace and national unity, both of which would be welcome additions to the polarizing Silent Sam saga.  The exhibits and video available in the site’s museum explain what happened there evenhandedly, without polemics or proselytizing.

            Most of us learned in high school that the Civil War ended on April 9, 1965 when Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House.  It didn’t.  The Confederacy’s leaders did not acknowledge defeat and rebel soldiers, including around 40,000 bivouacked near Greensboro, remained in the field throughout the South.  Sherman and other Union leaders feared that instead of surrendering, the rebel armies would simply disband, melt into the countryside, and continue fighting as guerrillas.  These fears were shared by Johnston, who told Confederate president Jefferson Davis that in light of Lee’s capitulation his troops regarded the war as at an end and were “melting away like snow before the sun.”  Both generals’ worries were heightened by President Lincoln’s assassination on April 14.

            After three meetings and a couple of false starts, including President Andrew Johnson’s rejection of the original surrender terms offered by Sherman, the two generals reached an agreement on April 26 almost identical to the one signed by Lee and Grant two weeks earlier.  Over time the two foes became such good friends that Johnston served as a pallbearer at Sherman’s funeral.

            The spirit of mutual respect and forgiveness reflected in the two generals’ lifelong friendship also is reflected in the lone monument that adorns this peaceful place — two stone columns supporting a granite pillar labeled “Unity.”  It was erected in 1923 to celebrate the reunification of the country after the Civil War.  In that spirit,  I’d like to see it flanked by “Silent Sam” on one side and a companion statue of a Union soldier on the other.  Goodness knows, these days we need all the Unity we can find.