We are sometimes asked, in the name of patriotism, to forget the merits of this fearful struggle, and to remember, with equal admiration, those who struck at the nation’s life, and those who struck to save it—those who fought for slavery, and those who fought for liberty and justice. ~ Frederick Douglass, at Arlington National Cemetery, 1871
These words by Frederick Douglass – addressing which of our predecessors merit celebration on public property and which do not – seem especially apt today, as the Council debates removal of the Talbot Boys monument standing across the courtyard from that of the famed abolitionist from Talbot County. Because the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland shares Douglass’s view that it is those who fight for the aspirational American ideals of liberty, equality, and justice, not those who fight to maintain white supremacy, who should be held up for public acclaim, we strongly urge the Council to remove the Talbot Boys monument – both statue and base – from the County courthouse lawn.
As you know, the ACLU is not new to this debate. When the local NAACP asked the County to remove the Talbot Boys monument in 2015, following the tragic killing of nine Black parishioners by a white supremacist at a Charleston, South Carolina church, the ACLU worked in support of the effort. Although we succeeded then in forcing the Council to reconsider its initial, closed-door decision to retain the statue, and to hold a second vote in public, we nevertheless failed in our goal of removal. Faced then with the Council’s decision to retain a monument symbolizing racial oppression to so many, the ACLU lamented in remarks outside the courthouse that Talbot County was “standing on the wrong side of history.”
Much has changed for all of us since that June day in 2016. And now the time has finally come for the County to take a different stand: It is time, at long last, for the Talbot Boys to go.
The Statue is a Monument to White Supremacy
The Talbot Boys monument, whose base was installed in 1914 and statue erected in 1916, celebrates the soldiers from Talbot County who betrayed their country and fought against the United States during the Civil War. The monument depicts a Rebel soldier with a Confederate battle flag draped across his back, and bears the caption, “To the Talbot Boys, 1861-1865, C.S.A.” The names of 84 “Talbot Boys” who died fighting against the United States are listed on the sides of the base. The statue was modeled after Longfellow’s ‘Excelsior,’ a poem about a youth with a banner climbing through a mountain town striving ‘onward and upward,’ though he suffers a serious setback. Its unsubtle symbolism is that the Confederate cause embodied in the young man would continue to rise despite the South’s loss of the Civil War.
The statue’s prominent placement at the courthouse is insufferable. Courthouses are the visual embodiments of the rule of law and values of the community, reflecting “the beliefs, priorities, and aspirations of a people,” as former Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell wrote in foreword to a book on Virginia’s courthouses. This is why Confederate sympathizers specifically chose to erect monuments there. They wanted to send a message to Black people that the law was not meant to protect them. Indeed, this message is inescapable with respect to the Talbot Boys monument, which not only stands on the grounds of the courthouse, but on the site that once served as an auction block for enslaved people.
As eloquently captured by Sherrilyn Ifill, in her 2007 book about the legacy of lynching in America, “On the Courthouse Lawn:”
“For blacks in Talbot County, the fact that Confederate soldiers who had fought against their country on behalf of the seceded Confederacy of states are honored on the courthouse lawn seemed insult enough—an insult magnified by the fact that Maryland had never even been part of the Confederacy. Walter Black of the NAACP remarked, “Think about today if we had someone who fought against the U.S. government. They might be called terrorists now. But here we had the Talbot Boys. … ‘They certainly didn’t fight for my freedom.’”
Likewise, the statue’s evocative nature is part of what makes it so intolerable. The statue glorifies the allegorical boy depicted and through him the Confederates who fought against their country, and to keep slavery, instilling in the viewer a wish to be like him. Richard Potter, President of the Talbot NAACP, recalls as a boy himself gazing upon the statue thinking “how did this little boy get on this statue?” He says of the youth depicted, “we almost wanted to emulate him” and he is not alone in the sentiment. Yet bearing arms against your brethren for the right to enslave people and uphold one of the most brutally racist institutions in human history cannot be something we wish our neighbors to aspire to, let alone our children.
Ultimately, as Jane Dailey, Professor of American History from the University of Chicago, says, there is no way to separate the symbols of the Confederacy from the values of white supremacy, because white supremacy is the explicit ideological underpinning of the Confederacy. Vice President Alexander Stephens said plainly of the Confederacy in his 1861 “Cornerstone” speech:
[I]ts foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
This is the shameful message of the Talbot Boys.
The Statue Distorts, Rather than Preserves, History
Those who seek to protect the Talbot Boys monument claim that to take it down would erase history, failing to see that the statue’s very purpose was to distort history. Decades after the Civil War ended, in the early 1900s, over 400 Confederate monuments were erected around the country, many by the Daughters of the Confederacy. This group of southern women undertook a well-documented effort to re-write the history of the Civil War through their “Lost Cause” mythology. “What the South lost on the battlefield, it sought to recover in the collective memory of the next generation,” federal judge Carlton Reeves aptly explained in his ruling in Moore v. Bryant, a lawyer Carlos Moore’s challenge to Mississippi’s retention of the Stars and Bars emblem within its state flag.
The Talbot Boys statue was erected in the same moment when statues were springing up all across the nation, as part of this coordinated effort to paint the Confederate cause as heroic and just. It was a time when Jim Crow laws were in firmly in place, “respectable” members of society participated in lynchings on the Eastern Shore, and Ku Klux Klan activity had begun to resurge. Just as textbooks were re-written to downplay the brutality of slavery and its centrality to the South’s secession from the United States, these monuments were used to obscure the causes of the war beneath a blanket of nostalgia. Joseph B. Seth, an Easton lawyer and booster of the Talbot Boys statue, wrote in the monthly publication ‘Confederate Veteran’ that “Talbot County, Md. had just pride in her contribution to the Confederate cause.” Seth’s memoir condemns abolitionists who stirred up the Marylanders enslaved by his family, making them “dissatisfied with their masters, or opposed to work on general principles.” He fondly recounts what he portrays as the golden time before that, when “the bulk of the slaves were devoted to their masters and their families, taking great interest in everything concerning them.” Reading from Seth’s memoir, it is impossible to escape the white supremacist meaning the statue held for those who erected it.
Adornments on our public buildings shape “our thoughts about ourselves and our institutions” Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has written, warning that the story of a building “will directly affect our efforts to work productively together.” While the past of Talbot County lives on in its residents, this statue – harking back to a time when the community celebrated white supremacy – stands as road block to its future.
Our Current Moment
In the wake of George Floyd’s horrific killing by police, a resurgent Black Lives Matter movement is leading the charge, renewing the commitment and urgency felt by many Americans to act boldly for racial equity and reform. We now have the opportunity to reshape our public memory and begin to move away from white supremacy in ways once thought out of reach. Across the United States, and the world even (with Atlantic slave trade statues falling in the U.K. and statues of King Leopold toppled in Belgium), people and governments with conscience are acting to remove symbols of hate and oppression. Earlier this month, even the Mississippi legislature finally relented in changing the state flag to rid it of the Stars and Bars. And in Virginia alone at least 32 symbols of the Confederacy have come down in response to the George Floyd Protests, most recently, the ‘Silent Sentinel’ that stood outside the Loudoun County Courthouse.
The same is happening here, leaving the Talbot Boys as the last Confederate monument standing on state land in Maryland. In June, a plaque with a Confederate flag was voted to be removed from the State house. Likewise, in Wicomico County, a sign honoring a Confederate General was taken down by county officials stating “monuments such as this are offensive to many in the county.” The Republican County Executive said he hoped that the act of taking down the sign would be a step on the path of healing. At last, the day of reckoning has come for these monuments to white supremacy. So too, it should be, for the Talbot Boys.
“As the heart changes, the mind must follow,” President Pack is quoted saying recently, addressing reexamination of his own views about the monument. We agree, and hope now the Council as a whole will follow too.
We urge the Talbot County Council to seize this moment, vote with conscience, and take down the Talbot Boys.
Deborah A. Jeon is the legal director and Vikrant S. Chandel is a law clerk with the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland
paul callahan says
Dear American Civil Liberties Union,
Please provide your opinion concerning the greatest crushing of civil liberties ever conducted by a US President against people of a free State. April of 1861 the President authorized his top commander to bombard Maryland’s cities, threating to kill innocent men, women and children if Maryland resisted – what is the ACLU’s opinion of that order? The 2nd Amendment was next with the arrest of key militia commanders and confiscation of its guns and munitions. After that a direct assault on our democracy with the arrest of members of the Maryland Legislature, our US Congressman, the Baltimore city council, mayor and police chief. Personal freedom was then curtailed with the declaration of martial law and occupation by Federal forces. Habeas Corpus was then suspended allowing Federal forces to imprison anyone they desired without trial. Federal forces came in the dead of night to whisk away and imprison political dissenters – what is your opinion of all of this? What are your views of the President ignoring a ruling from a Supreme Court Justice ruling his actions unconstitutional? What about the rights of the estimated 14,000 Marylanders arrested under the suspension of Habeas Corpus and imprisoned without trial? What is your view about Judge Carmichael being pistol whipped and drug from the Easton courthouse for his attempts to uphold the Constitutional rights of Talbot citizens? What do you think about the trampling of the 1st amendment, censoring the Maryland press and arresting editors who had opinions other than that of the current administration? Didn’t you just write a full dissertation to the Talbot Council about violation of the 1st Amendment? We of Talbot County anxiously await your wise wisdom on the above violations of the liberties and rights of citizens of a free State, or do you “pick and choose” what violations you will speak out about based upon which supports your agenda the best?
Those who support this monument do so because of the “History” – not the history that you write, but Maryland’s history – which you choose to ignore. Maryland’s history during the US Civil war is unique from that of any other State, either Union or confederate. Talbot county played a unique and important facet of that history. This is a history that needs to be remembered and from which we need to learn – lest it happen again.
Many of us who understand this history find it ridiculous that men from Talbot county would risk their lives so South Carolina’s slaves system could be protected, particularly when Mr. Lincoln himself stated his only war aim at that time was union, not abolition, and that both the US and Maryland constitutions were protecting slavery. We also reject the ridiculous notion that they fought to protect their social status in society – particularly when Talbot county boasts having the largest percentage of free people of color in the entire nation at that time.
These men rose, not for slavery or for their social status, but because their homeland was being unlawfully occupied and oppressed, because their Constitutional liberties taken and because their militia commander told them that war was being waged against her government and the citizens of Maryland were in danger. These men did not have a crystal ball to tell them how the future of their democracy would turn out – they just knew that their democracy and Constitutional liberties had been unlawfully taken from them.
I ask that the ACLU join many of us who want the confederate symbols of hate permanently removed from this monument and to have this monument re-dedicated, not to the confederacy or anything for which it may have stood, but to the men who rose against the greatest oppression of civil liberties ever seen in the history of the United States of America. This story is not about the confederacy, it never was, it is about Maryland and Talbot county.
Since you quoted Mr. Douglass let me leave you with another quote from this great American hero “Truth is proper and beautiful at all times and in all places”
Richard Merrill says
It is not true. ” The names of 84 “Talbot Boys” who died fighting against the United States are listed on the sides of the base. Many of these 84 returned to MD and Talbot after the war. They were active and often prominent citizens of the county in the years after the war. Nineteen of them are buried in Spring Hill Cemetery. Look at the last names and you will see a lot of familiar county last names.
Lynn Mielke says
The Talbot Boys statute is not a monument to white supremacy. As laudable as your op ed is to recount some of that actual history of the Talbot Boys statue, you end with still tying the statue to white supremacy. For the reasons so eloquently stated by Mr. Callahan, the statue does not celebrate soldiers who betrayed their country but rather who fought against the suppression of their liberty; Talbot County ante bellum history is unique. Your reading of Longfellow’s poem Excelsior and your application of the poem to the statute is off. The young boy died pursuing a feckless dream. Longfellow’s poem has been interpreted to be a discussion of the idea that there is such a thing as aiming too high, and warns his readers not to lose sight of the world around them. You have no basis for lumping the Talbot Boys statute to the monument movement of the early 20th century. The creation of the Talbot Boys statute was related to the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg and the Battle on Culp’s Hill where Talbot County cousin fought Talbot County cousin, to the ignominious defeat of those CSA Talbot Boys who fought in the battle. The funds to erect the statute were raised locally. Too, there is no support for your contention that in erecting the statue “they wanted to send a message to Black people that the law was not meant to protect them”. The Talbot Boys statute is uniquely local and not part of that movement. Though I respect Ms. Ifill, I wonder whether she was aware of the real history of the Talbot Boys statue and its commemoration of Talbot Countians; a history which separates it from those monuments of confederate generals erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy or others.
Nationally, the period of reconstruction, from 1865-1877, was turbulent. The era of reconstruction was followed by an era of Redemption which carried forward the integration of the races which began during reconstruction and which continued to grow in the period 1877 to 1896, albeit in fits and starts, but growth none the less with some progress towards acceptance being made.
A local example of that progress is noted by David Foster in his well-researched piece published in the Star Democrat on March 2, 2004: “Viewpoints” commentary “Monuments and Memory?”. He writes of Frederick Douglass’ visit to Talbot County during that era and Douglass being greeted with a bouquet by the granddaughter of one of the “Talbot Boys” named on the monument: CSA Admiral Franklin Buchannan. She was also a granddaughter of the Lloyds, owners of the plantation where Douglass was enslaved. Frederick Douglass was quoted as saying:
I never accepted a gift with a sweeter sentiment of gratitude than from the hand of this lovely child. It told me many things and among them that a new dispensation of justice, kindness and human brotherhood was dawning not only in the North but in the South; that the war and slavery that caused it were things of the past and that the rising generations are turning their eyes from the sunset of that decaying institution to the grand possibilities of a glorious future”
Regrettably 20+ years later the Jim Crow era began. The Jim Crow era, which ended the era of Redemption was the result of the Supreme Court decision ruling in Plessy v Ferguson. The Jim Crow era and white supremacy neither had its commencement with the South nor the Talbot Boys.
In 1896, Plessy v Ferguson, which enunciated the doctrine of separate but equal, was reached by a 7-1 vote. 6 of the 7 justices approving it were northerners 9. The one dissenting vote was by a justice from Kentucky. The “Jim Crow” era began after Plessy and the progress made between 1865 to the Plessy decision waned, significantly.
For readers’ edification, I humbly suggest you read C. Vann Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Martin Luther King called it “the historical Bible of the Civil Rights movement”. Mr. Woodward notes: “[a]t the dawn of the new century [the 20th] the wave of Southern racism came in as a swell upon a mounting tide of national sentiment and was very much a part of that sentiment. Had the tide been running the other way, the Southern wave would have broken feebly instead of becoming a wave of the future.” at 74. Daniel Boorstin, another prize winning American historian writes, in The Americans The Democratic Experience: ”the most rigid and humiliating forms of Jim Crow segregation did not come from the South until the end of the nineteenth century, and then they were actually imported from the North” at 293. White supremacy existed in the North and South when the Talbot Boys statue was erected. The Talbot Boys statute was not a monument to it.
My point is that you cannot take a broad brush of post bellum history and then paint the Talbot Boys with it. The presence of both the Talbot Boys and Frederick Douglass statues on our courthouse square (county, not state, property by the way) epitomizes, for the 21st century, the forgiveness articulated so eloquently by Frederick Douglass in the 19th.
I am an advocate for contextual history (as is our Lt. Governor by the way) and the Talbot Boys statue and Frederick Douglass’ together encapsulate the war that gave us “a new birth of freedom”. I also honor the goals articulated by Paul Callahan and Councilman Divilio. To these ends I support the county polling proposed by Councilwoman Price and also have suggested that a commission or committee be appointed (as Yale had done to consider renaming John Calhoun College) by our County Council to address the disposition of the Talbot Boys statue.
Clive Ewing says
The dedication of the Talbot Boys Monument was concurrent with a flurry of BOTH Union and Confederate monuments nationwide, to mark the 50th semi-centennial anniversary of the Civil War. By mentioning only the Confederate monuments in the letter, it is the ACLU distorting history. Visit this site for a full accounting. https://www.aier.org/article/what-the-data-say-about-civil-war-monuments/
Regarding Confederate symbology, the Anti Defamation League clearly states “one should not automatically assume that display of the [Confederate] flag is racist or white supremacist in nature. The symbol should only be judged in context.” In the context of the Talbot Boy, the flag is part of the monument and NOT flying over government grounds which was the case in MS and SC. https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/confederate-flag