When it comes to Arkansas historical figures, James Henderson Berry can rightly be considered deserving of a statue.
He was the 14th governor of the state. He served several terms in the Arkansas House of Representatives, where he was for a while the speaker. He became a circuit judge in Bentonville and was chairman of the Democratic State Convention in 1876. After one term as governor, he was appointed by the Legislature to the U.S. Senate representing Arkansas, which needed someone after Augustus H. Garland resigned to become Grover Cleveland's attorney general.
What’s the point?
Every community with Confederate statues must decide what the monuments mean and whether that matches their modern values. When they do not, the statues should be moved to settings that can educate about American history, not celebrate
Berry spent the next 22 years in the U.S. Senate. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture says this about his time as governor:
Berry's social agenda was to seek equal justice for all citizens, whatever their race or color. His methods were indirect and paternalistic. He felt that progress for the African Americans of the state would come, eventually, through education and economic progress, not through political activism. His efforts were limited to ensuring that legal process and not mob rule dealt with lawbreakers, black or white. For example, in the summer of 1883, he sent in the militia to Howard County to stop a white mob from lynching a group of African Americans who had lynched a white rapist.
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Berry, indeed, is memorialized with a statue, or at least a plaque, in the middle of the town square in Bentonville. Folks looking for a statue representing a statesmen, a political leader of the late 1800s, an accomplished citizen of the city of Bentonville, won't find it. What they will find is a statue of a Confederate soldier, erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and unveiled in celebratory fashion in the month of August 1908.
The four sides of the statue laud the warriors of Southern secession.
"To The Southern Soldiers. Erected by A.J. Bates and the James H. Berry Chapter United Daughters of the Confederacy Aug. 8, 1908."
"Their Names are Borne on Honor's Shield. Their Record is with God."
"They Fought for Home and Fatherland."
"1861-1865."
On all four sides of the base, the word "Confederate" is inscribed.
It is a separate plaque that pays tribute to Berry, a recognition several accounts say was added later, perhaps after Berry's death in 1914. Taken in its entirety, one can only view the structure as a tribute, as the original base says, "to the Southern soldiers." If it were originally designed to honor Berry's service in the state house, the governor's office or the Senate of the United States, why would he be portrayed dressed as a Confederate?
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The events in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend have sparked a nationwide debate over what all these monuments to the Confederacy should mean to the people of the United States in 2017. Those events led demonstrators last Sunday to encircle Bentonville's monument, which as recently as the late 1990s, civic leaders in Bentonville decided to retain as a centerpiece of a square renovation.
Hundreds of Confederate monuments can be found in more than two dozen states. Some are on battlefields that stand preserved as part of our national fabric, the places we can go to learn from the past. Those monuments should stand now and forever.
But what about those like Bentonville's soldier, ones that occupy public spaces in our daily, modern lives. They were not erected to serve as history lessons, but as tributes and celebrations of the old South. Whether they fit our modern ideals might be answered with one question: If someone stood today before, say, the Bentonville City Council and proposed construction of a monument to the Confederacy on the downtown square, how would council members respond? Unless we seriously misjudge those civic leaders, we suspect the answer would be an emphatic "no."
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In the 152 years since Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse, the South has never successfully found a unifying theme to dislodge its lingering identification with the Confederacy. Oh, that it could. For some, the fight against the Union is the best "Southern heritage" they can hold on to. The only thing that comes remotely close -- and it's not close at all -- is college football.
An attack on these statues, in that context, is an attack on who they are. And not everyone who feels that way is waving Nazi flags and preaching white power. People want to be proud Southerners. They will acknowledge slavery was wrong, but they long to defend the men who, in their view, stood up to a federal government that overstepped its bounds in an age when some wanted states to be the strongest level of government in their lives.
The problem for them, and for modern defenders of the South, is states' rights were focused almost entirely on one issue: the perpetuation of slavery.
That South was wrong. Horribly so. Remove all the post-war justifications and admiration of individual achievement and one is left with one stark fact: The Confederacy stood for the continued enslavement of human beings.
If we can see through our passion for preserving Southern identity in 2017, surely we can understand monuments to the Confederacy do not stand for what the South represents today. A Southern identity that relies on the Confederacy is unworthy of all we can and should be in the 21st century.
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We must also recognize the shortcomings of Americans in dealing with matters of race. The reason statues have caused such turmoil is a failure to fully reconcile racial attitudes in this country. Just look at how the reactions to the O.J. Simpson verdict, or the riots in Ferguson, Mo., are starkly different depending on the color of one's skin. As civilized as we long to be -- most of us, anyway -- we allow the past to mire us in outdated attitudes. Moving or preserving statues will not change our hearts.
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So what about these statues? Let's look at what is not at stake. Removing them from public places will not revise American history. Shutting down Gettysburg or Antietam national parks or removing markers from those battlegrounds could be described that way, but most of these statues are not designed to teach history. Their maintenance more likely evokes the spirit for which they were erected -- celebration of the defense of what is today indefensible.
These statues, as in Bentonville, are in prominent places of our communities. They celebrate those who fought against the United States of America, who in the most critical decision of their lives chose to oppose their nation rather than give up a right to own other people as property. That is our nation's greatest shame, and Confederates fought to destroy the government established by the U.S. Constitution we so revere today. The Constitution, by the way, that enshrines the free speech protections many people on both sides have made use of in recent days.
Communities like Bentonville must decide for themselves what is right. It's not anyone else's decision. But it's foolish to believe others won't have opinions, whether they're in town for a job interview or to consider opening a business or just visiting to see the art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Wherever statues or monuments involving the Confederacy stand, we owe it to future generations to put them into a full historical context, to ensure they cannot be viewed as a modern-day reflection of our values.
Our Civil War, unfortunately, rages on.
Commentary on 08/20/2017