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    Bastrop County Judge Paul Pape's Thoughts On The Confederate Monuments

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    The document discusses the Confederate monument located in the Bastrop County Courthouse yard. It was erected in 1910 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to promote the Lost Cause ideology. However, the document argues that it actually serves to glorify the Confederate cause of defending slavery and promotes racial prejudice. It concludes that the monument should be relocated to a more appropriate location, such as a cemetery or museum, in order to remove symbols that divide Americans and progress toward racial justice and unity.

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    Bastrop County Judge Paul Pape's Thoughts On The Confederate Monuments

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    Anonymous Pb39klJ
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    The document discusses the Confederate monument located in the Bastrop County Courthouse yard. It was erected in 1910 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to promote the Lost Cause ideology. However, the document argues that it actually serves to glorify the Confederate cause of defending slavery and promotes racial prejudice. It concludes that the monument should be relocated to a more appropriate location, such as a cemetery or museum, in order to remove symbols that divide Americans and progress toward racial justice and unity.

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    Bastrop County Judge Paul Pape's thoughts on the Confederate monuments outside the courthouse.

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    Bastrop County Judge Paul Pape's thoughts on the Confederate monuments

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    The document discusses the Confederate monument located in the Bastrop County Courthouse yard. It was erected in 1910 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to promote the Lost Cause ideology. However, the document argues that it actually serves to glorify the Confederate cause of defending slavery and promotes racial prejudice. It concludes that the monument should be relocated to a more appropriate location, such as a cemetery or museum, in order to remove symbols that divide Americans and progress toward racial justice and unity.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    3K views6 pages

    Bastrop County Judge Paul Pape's Thoughts On The Confederate Monuments

    Uploaded by

    Anonymous Pb39klJ
    The document discusses the Confederate monument located in the Bastrop County Courthouse yard. It was erected in 1910 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to promote the Lost Cause ideology. However, the document argues that it actually serves to glorify the Confederate cause of defending slavery and promotes racial prejudice. It concludes that the monument should be relocated to a more appropriate location, such as a cemetery or museum, in order to remove symbols that divide Americans and progress toward racial justice and unity.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 6

    My Thoughts On the Confederate Monuments

    From the minutes of the Bastrop County Commissioners Court meeting,


    the 9th day of May, 1910, “Ordered by the Court that for the purposes
    of further beautifying the Courthouse Yard that the sum of one
    hundred and fifty (150.00) dollars be and the same is hereby
    appropriated for the purpose of constructing the foundation for the
    Confederate Monument to be erected in said Courthouse Yard by the
    United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Clerk is hereby
    authorized to issue warrant on the General Fund for said sum when
    said foundation is completed and accepted by the Committee
    appointed by said United Daughters of the Confederacy on Monument
    Construction.” (Vol. G, page 261)

    Quoting from a June 11, 1910, article titled “Laying of Foundation Of


    The Confederate Monument At Bastrop”, in the Bastrop Advertiser,
    “On Friday, June 3, 1910 at 2 p.m., occurred an event which will forever
    be a memorial one in the annuals of old Bastrop. After two years of
    patient effort, the T. C. Cain Chapter of the Daughters of the
    Confederacy had the proud pleasure of assembling their friends from
    all the parts of our county and neighboring counties to witness the
    laying of the foundation for the beautiful monument which will soon be
    erected to tell to future generations the story and the glory of the men
    who wore the grey.

    The article goes on to say that Judge J. B. Price and Judge Paul D. Page
    each “made brief but eloquent talks, voicing their love of the South and
    her Institutions [meaning slavery] and their reverence for the heroic
    men who followed Lee.”

    The article ends, “Here was a scene to be forever remembered. Around


    this block of granite, symbolic as it was of the love and gratitude and
    remembrance of our Southern heroes, knelt the grizzled veterans of the
    war- the most terrible, the most unequal the world has ever known.
    Here stand the wives, the widows, the mothers, the sons and
    daughters, of the men who fought and died, knowing the sorrows, the
    humiliations of defeat, and yet, oh friends, no word of bitterness, no
    word of reproach, or of anger, toward the erstwhile foe. Where else,
    where else, but in our noble white-souled Southland could such a scene
    be witnessed. Remember it, oh little children, who stood in their
    presence and cherish your heritage of Southern blood and Southern
    chivalry.’

    Five years ago I said that we could not know what they were thinking
    when the Confederate obelisk was set here at the Courthouse in 1910.
    Having researched the records, I now believe that we can know. I
    believe we know that it was placed under the guise of a war memorial
    as subtle indoctrination for the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.

    We will not be rewriting history by moving these confederate


    monuments from the Courthouse Yard. Instead, we will be righting a
    wrong of history. The United Daughters of the Confederacy rewrote
    history in 1910. It is time we removed that false narrative from this
    public place.

    Looking back on the past 155 years in American, it is clear that


    enslaving a race of human beings was wrong in every sense of moral
    reason. The Civil War was fought over a state’s right to continue, and
    even expand, the reach of the “peculiar institution” - slavery. More
    than 620,000 lives were sacrificed in the 4 year conflict. The rebelling
    South lost the war, the slaves were freed, but that was not the end of
    the battle.

    Soon after the Federal government’s reconstruction of the Southern


    States, state and local governments in the South began passing laws
    that made black people’s lives as just about as miserable as they had
    been before the War. Jim Crow laws effected every aspect of their daily
    existence. Segregation took hold throughout the South. Even the U.S.
    Supreme Court ruled that separation of blacks and whites was legal and
    permissible in the United States.
    In the early part of the 20th century, two organizations wrote their own
    version of the history of the Southern States and the mighty conflict
    over slavery, which they called state’s rights. The Ku Klux Klan and the
    United Daughters of the Confederacy, one through violence and
    intimidation, the other through influence and mis-information, changed
    the defeat of the South in the Civil War into victory over those of the
    Negro race. To promote their view of the past, they lobbied local
    governments all over the South to set up these memorials. That’s how
    this Confederate monument was placed here at the Bastrop County
    Courthouse. Proof of the effectiveness of their efforts is seen in the
    fact that we are here today, 110 years later, talking about the meaning
    and appropriateness of this memorial.

    The images, symbols, and words of this monument clearly and overtly,
    but wrongly, attribute honor, nobility and rightness to the Confederate
    Cause. Featured on the monument are the initials CSA, “Confederate
    States of America” and two flags, one of the Confederate States of
    America, insurrectionists against the United States of America, the
    other the battle flag of the Confederate army. These symbols meant
    something when the monument was erected, and they still mean
    something today. This obelisk monument goes beyond honoring those
    who died in a terrible war. It glorifies the cause for which they fought –
    dividing the United State of America over the issue of the Southern
    States’ right to enslave black people. The memorial stone to Joseph
    Sayers touts his efforts to maintain and expand slavery.

    I do not believe these monuments beautify the Courthouse Yard. They


    represent a shameful past – a past when enslaving other humans was
    more important that national unity. And there is nothing right or noble
    about the way African Americas were treated after the Civil War. We
    know that now, we acknowledge that now.

    Now it is time, in fact it is past time, to take appropriate actions to


    correct, as best we can, the misgivings of the past - to remove these
    public representations of prejudice, segregation, and enslavement.
    Perhaps they can be relocated to the cemetery where most of the
    honored soldiers are buried, or to a museum, or a heritage park, if one
    were developed. But they should not remain here at the forefront of
    our Courthouse, the center of equality and justice in Bastrop County.

    At the public hearing last week, a friend reminded me of President


    Lincoln’s immortal words ending his second inaugural address,

    “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in
    the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish
    this work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for
    him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his
    orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and
    lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

    These words are as needed today as they were 155 years ago.
    Removing these Confederate monuments from this public place is not
    undoing history. It is simply a step in setting things right so that the
    future is brighter, better, and more peaceful for our county and nation.

    I believe the time has come to remove these monuments to a failed


    past and to a defeated regime that promoted injustice, inequality, and
    prejudice. Now is the time to recommit ourselves to eliminating these
    subtle symbols of prejudice. Now is the time for healing the racial strife
    that divides us as Americans. Now is the time to finish the work of
    freedom, so that together we may achieve and cherish unity, justice,
    and equality for all.

    Paul Pape
    Bastrop County Judge
    July 13, 2020

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