From a young age, I knew that my home town, Baltimore, Maryland, was sometimes referred to as “the Monumental City,” and it had to do with the fairly large number of monuments. Above, you see Baltimore’s Washington Monument, which is over 200 years old, significantly older that the one in Washington, DC, though of course not as tall.
There’s also the Shot Tower, built in 1828 to produce drop shot. Molten lead was dropped from the top of the tower into a vat of water at its base. Just like raindrops, the molten lead would form spherical balls in freefall, and then would retain that shape once it solidified in the water.
There’s also the Battle Monument, dedicated to those who died in the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812. It was during this battle that Francis Scott Key, watching from a British ship in the harbor as Fort McHenry was being bombarded, was inspired to write “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The monument’s construction began in 1815, the year after the war ended.
There was a claim that Baltimore was given the moniker “The Monumental City” by none other than John Quincy Adams, though it appears that a newspaper editor came up with it a few years before Adams bestowed his compliment in 1827. In any case, I think in the meantime, Washington, DC, has made up for lost time and certainly has more statues and monuments than does Baltimore, though Baltimore’s are older.
I could continue listing the various monuments in Baltimore, but the reason I’m writing this diary is that I saw an item in the news regarding a plan to remove some monuments from public display. I was shocked to discover that Baltimore has four monuments meant to honor the Confederacy, and the current Mayor, Catherine Pugh, is studying a proposal to follow the lead of New Orleans and remove at least some of them. Please follow me below the fold for more...
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I suppose it’s a function of my naiveté that it never even occurred to me that there would be monuments honoring the Confederacy in Baltimore. After all, Maryland never seceded. But of course, if you know your history, you’ll know that Maryland, whose northern border is the Mason-Dixon Line, was a slave state and sympathetic to the “southern cause.” It probably would have seceded if Lincoln had not prevented the Maryland State legislature from doing so. Had Maryland seceded, the nation’s capital would have been isolated in enemy territory, and Lincoln was not going to let that happen. For his troubles, Lincoln got a mention in the Maryland state song, “Maryland, My Maryland” (sung to the tune of “O, Tannenbaum”) calling him a “tyrant.”
So it really should not have come as a complete surprise that there are statues dedicated to the memory of the Confederacy.
They are: Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument located on Mount Royal Avenue near Mosher Street; Confederate Women’s of Maryland, located at Bishop Square Park; Roger B. Taney Monument, located on Mt. Vernon Place in North Park; and Lee & Jackson Monument, located in Wyman Park Dell.
The only one of these that I might have actually seen, had I noticed it, was the Roger B. Taney Monument; I have been to Mount Vernon Place many times, but I don’t remember ever having been to the parts of town where the other monuments are. The connection of the other three monuments to the Confederacy is pretty obvious, but you probably don’t know who Roger B. Taney was. I didn’t either, so I looked him up: Taney was a native Marylander who did not fight for the Confederacy, nor did he ever abandoned the Union, but he was the author of one of the principal causes of the war. As the 5th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he wrote the Dred Scott decision. I suppose one could rationalize that a Marylander should be proud that one of our own made it to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court regardless, but he wrote the single worst Supreme Court decision in American history! The decision buttressed the racist ideology that justified slavery, and gave encouragement to southerners that their way of life was perfectly just and consistent with a free society. And it was one more signpost along a path toward an unavoidable war. This guy does not deserve a statue in any public park, in Baltimore or anywhere else.
Baltimore’s previous mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, had put together a commission to put these monuments under review. The commission recommended action on only two of the monuments: Taney’s statue, and the Lee & Jackson monument. In the end, all Rawlings-Blake did was to erect plaques in front these monuments calling them propaganda. Following the removal of four Confederate monuments in New Orleans, Baltimore’s current mayor, Catherine Pugh, wants go the full distance.
Money is a concern here. Like many cities, Baltimore is poor and is strapped for resources. The removal may cost more than the city can spare at this time. On the other hand, politically, it seems to me, if you can do it in New Orleans, in blood-red Louisiana, it ought to be much easier to do it in deep blue Maryland. While there are racists everywhere, fewer of them would have the courage to openly object to the removal of these monuments to racist ideology in this environment. We’re better off not honoring people who don’t deserve honor, and relieving the majority of the population of these constant racist gorgons watching over them, reminders of pain and terror. Good riddance, I say.
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