A Modest Proposal for Silent Sam

November 15 is coming fast upon us and, with it, the reveal from Chapel Hill of fate of the monument to treason known as “Silent Sam.” You remember, the one toppled by protesters back in August?

Expect, perhaps, half of those with an interest to be happy in whatever solution comes as Chancellor Folt tries to balance various interest groups, including those within the board of trustees who appear to be quite open Confederate apologists.  She is doubtless hearing from everyone at this point, so what difference could it possibly make for me to offer my humble suggestion:

Drop it into the Atlantic Ocean.

Hear me out. I know it won’t please everyone. Revanchist neo-Confederates in the League of the South, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the United Daughters of the Confederacy will no doubt scream bloody murder. Or rebellion. Or whatever it is they scream. Ignore them, they mean no good.

Drop it into the Atlantic Ocean.

Hell, drop all of them into the Atlantic Ocean. Start with the monuments on UNION square: the Soldiers and Sailors Monument? Sink the statuary and demolish the pedestal. The monument to Confederate women? Sink it. The Henry Lawson Monument? Sure, it was designed by Gutzon Borglum, who also did Mount Rushmore, but he was also the original sculptor hired for Stone Mountain, and a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Sink it. Throw in the monument to the “Heroic Defender of Fort Wagner” who defended the blood and soil of the South against the African-American troops of the 54^th Massachusetts.

While we’re at it, how about the monument to Governor Aycock? Sure, he wasn’t in the Civil War, but he was a prime instigator of the Wilmington Insurrection in 1898. For my money, you could dump the monument to Presidents Jackson, Polk, and Johnson. After all, they didn’t identify as being from North Carolina. Plus, garbage people.

I know, I know. Some of them belong in a museum. I’ve said as much before, but I changed my mind after witnessing too much distortion of the history over the last year. An exhibit with photographs, explaining how these monuments told a lie about the nobility the Confederacy, its treasonous founders, and the heroism of its cause, and how they were intended to remind everyone of the racial boundaries and that they would be enforced, will suffice.

Maybe we could replace all of this detritus of the Lost Cause with some monuments suitable to the state we want to be, beginning maybe with one to the thousand or so Tar Heels who died in the Union uniform during the Late Unpleasantness.

“But, my heritage!”

Yeah, screw that, too. My family has been in North Carolina since before it was North Carolina. I’m sure if I bothered to look I would find a few of my own family tree wore the gray. Or the butternut. It’s my heritage, too, only I’m not so proud of that part of it.

As to where they should be dropped, I have a suggestion for that, too.  Did you really think I wouldn’t?

Off the coast of North Carolina there are numerous wrecks. Among these are a small number of World War II wrecks, from the days when the Germans patrolled the area and it was known as “Torpedo Alley.” Three of these wrecks are U-Boats that are in shallow enough waters that they can be reached by recreational divers: the U-85, U-352 and U-701.

Drop the monuments near them. Combined, they can be a monument to the wages of oppressing minorities and the folly of fascism, American and German. What could be more fitting? After all, in developing their racial laws, the Nazis were keen students of American history. They found in the racial laws of the South, and in our racist national immigration policy, some good lessons for building their own racist regime. Their main critique was that the “one-drop rule” was too harsh for use in Germany.

Did you catch that? The Nazis thought an American racial rule was too much.

And the monuments to the Confederacy were part of policing the boundaries, enforcing that rule that the greatest criminals of the 20th century found too stringent.

So, throw put them together. The U-boat wrecks are poignant, and the monuments in the deep will be, too. Like the U-boats, they will become encrusted with marine life, reefs providing a home for our soft corals, for marine invertebrates, a feeding ground for fish.

Over time, their original nature would be obscured by the life burgeoning on them and they would, finally, be good for something, and truly beautiful.