Movements like Black Lives Matter have changed the way many in Alabama look at Southern history. While some Confederate monuments have been taken down, others have been moved to new locations where they are again on display.
The Confederate Rest Cemetery in Point Clear is a quiet place. Headstones, new and old, mark 19th century graves. Richard Sheely points out, however, that this was not always such as peaceful location. More than 350 soldiers were hastily buried here when the nearby Grand Hotel was used as a Civil War military hospital.
"If you notice those areas that are chained off," Sheely said, pointing to rectangular plots marked by chains.
"Those are mass graves and they were dying so rapidly that they were just bringing them out, digging a trench and laying the bodies in them and covering them up and they were laying them head to toe, head to toe, shoulder to shoulder," he said. "We have identified four of the mass graves."
If it sounds like Sheely knows Civil War history, he does. Sheely is with the Sons of the Confederate Veterans. The group maintains the cemetery. As we continue our tour, we find a 10-foot stone monument next to the graves. It shows the marks of another conflict. A Confederate battle flag carved on the face of the obelisk is chipped where someone struck the stone. Sheely points out a broken corner is patched near the words “In memory of our Confederate soldiers.”
"This monument over here was erected in West Palm Beach Florida in 1941 to honor 41 Confederate soldiers at a cemetery down there," Sheely said.
"Several years ago, and I’ll be gracious, the ultraliberal mayor after two attacks by Antifa on that statue, it’s got some battle damage, we repaired it over on that corner, but after two attacks, she ordered them to take the thing down," he said.
The monument was damaged at least twice. West Palm Beach Mayor Jeri Muriro ordered the marker removed from a city cemetery back in 2017. Sheely said the Baldwin Sons of Confederate Veterans chapter and other groups brought the statue to Point Clear.
"Now it was purchased in 1941 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy," Sheely said. "They raised the money to buy that statue with bake sales and sewing clinics...Well, when the mayor had it removed, they just hauled it out in the back of the work yard and they told the United Daughters if they could find a place somewhere out of the state of Florida, because that monument was not welcome in the Florida."
Moving the monument cost about $12,000. Sheely said it was worth the time and effort. Like their work to place headstones on the graves of unknown soldiers, every American veteran deserves recognition.
"I get people say, 'Why do you guys keep buying a headstone?' but in a way, the way I look at it, that headstone is a monument to that person. I don’t care, black, white, green or red, if he’s Confederate, if he’s a Union guy, if he’s a modern-day guy. We’re all citizens of this country. We’re all God’s creation and that headstone, no matter who gets opposed to it, is a monument to that person. It should not be defaced. It should not be removed and we can’t convince folks of that," Sheely said.
To historians along the G, questions about monuments and history in general, are more complicated.
"The question of are we tearing down history when we remove monuments and the answer to that is no. We’re not," said Tim Lombardo, assistant professor of history at the University of South Alabama. "The same thing I always tell my students whenever this discussion comes up is nobody learns history from a statue...What you learn from a statue is reverence and may reverence has a place, but its place is not history. When we learn history, we learn complexity. The very act of instilling reverence works against the attempt to appreciate the complexity. Is it worth revering what the Confederacy stood for? That’s the question we’re asking. It’s not about history. It’s about reverence and what do we revere now."
Lombardo said that in the last 50 years, historians have taken more views into consideration, looking at African-Americans, women, immigrants and others as well as those in charge.
"So, it’s not a matter of history changing," Lombardo said. "The same things happen in the past, but you look at evidence differently."
Even those who aren’t historians have changed their presentation. The Lost Cause, the effort to preserve the image of the Confederacy, is one example.
"And what’s so fascinating about the Lost Cause ideology is that was an effort to rewrite the history of the Civil War, to paint the South in a good light," Lombardo said. "But what is so often taken for granted is that itself has a history. The history of the Lost Cause ideology isn’t the same now as it was 100 years ago and that historical process. The historical process of trying to reimagine the Civil War and the causes of the Civil War is, in and of itself, kind of a fascinating historical trajectory. In the early 20th Century, the Lost Cause was far more explicitly racist...Post Civil-Rights Movement, you know, the idea that the Lost Cause was about homeland and that was always a part of it, but the idea that there were Black Confederates, which there were not. They were not. They were camp slaves, but they were not Black Confederates, but those things are all sort of part of trying to adapt the Lost Cause to a more modern audience," he said.
Lombardo said some people don’t like that more complex presentation of history.
"You’ll always find resistance from some people who want to maintain those more traditional, more triumphal narratives, but in my experience, I find more people are enthralled by history and are interested in history and want to know more about history when it’s not just a simplistic story," he said.
Events help Gulf coast history from the Civil War come alive. This re-enactment, complete with a ceremonial cannon salute is from the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Mobile Bay at Fort Morgan. About 20 miles up Mobile Bay from Point Clear is Historic Blakeley State Park. It’s Alabama’s largest Civil War battlefield and the site of what is sometimes called the last major battle of the Civil War.
"I have tried and what I’ve seen was attempted before my time was to do the best we could to truly be an objective storyteller of what really happened here," park director Mike Bunn said.
He said Blakeley and other parks work to present an accurate story of what happened, even if that’s meant making some changes.
"I think that in general, however, you would find there was a little bit less critical view of all things Confederate and things like that," Bunn said. "It was more or less that these were the good old Confederates and they didn’t say they loved slavery, but there was just acceptance of that...You might do a re-enactment and you might have more Confederates than Yankees because more people wanted to be on the southern side and that type of thing and that was all viewed as just the way you interpreted the history."
At Blakeley, that history also includes native tribes who lived at the site for centuries and colonial settlements in the 1700s.
"So, we tell that story. That’s a big focal point of the history that we interpret here, the fact that this was that large open field battle and this is one of the best-preserved battlefields and the largest battlefield in Alabama, so are some big focuses. But we also tell the story of the old town of Blakeley, early 1800s town of Blakeley, which was thriving at the time Alabama became a state. We tell that story. The fact that the county seat in Baldwin County was here for many years," Bunn said.
Civil War presentations have also expended. For example, at Blakeley, many of the troops who helped win the battle for the Union were African-American. The park includes their story in their presentations. Bunn said most visitors appreciate getting the full story – but not everyone.
"I will say that there is a very small minority that sometimes view Civil War battlefields in the South, I don’t think it’s a Blakeley issue, I think it’s Civil War battlefields in the South where they view it as this should be a place to remember specifically Confederate heritage and they feel like there should be greater emphasis on the Confederate side," Bunn said. "That’s just my perception of the feedback that we get...There’s always that very small contingent that wants the battlefield that wants the battlefield to be more of a Confederate or southern shrine than perhaps an objective place to interpret military history."
Bunn said that objectivity is the key goal of anyone teaching history.
"If there’s a change at all, it would be that we’re more aware that if we put up an interpretive panel or a marker that it certainly can’t be seen or interpreted as celebratory of either side. We’ve got to maintain that line of being objective keepers of the story, of the past," he said.
