Mayor Invites Civil War II - And Response (19)

 

I am so frustrated that I just don't know how to civilly address this issue.  The progressive leftist Democrat mayor can't let some other mayor out "outrage" him that he has to look for ways to prove he to can do something about the latest craze to remove all vestiges of the Confederacy from our city. 

 

So to prove what a magnanimous person he is wants to take it out on dead soldiers (and their families) by distancing himself from their graves.

 

Man that takes guts.  Why doesn't he just send in the public works department at night like the Mayor of Baltimore and plow the place under?

 

The Confederate dead are U.S. Veterans by act of Congress (look it up).

 

Don't tell him, but there are German POW's (Nazis) buried in the Chattanooga National Cemetery.  Why - because we pay respect to the dead.

 

This is all going to end very badly.

 

Chris Cole

 

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There are World War II German soldiers buried in our National Cemetery and in other cemeteries across the country. They fought for Nazi Germany, but their graves are treated with the same respect as our own fallen soldiers and sailors. Tennessee was divided on the secession issue, and many Tennesseans served in the Union army. I had ancestors on both sides, as was the case in many Tennessee families. I had one slave-owning ancestor whose six sons served the Union army, while his six sons-in-law served in the Confederate army. Two of my great-grandfathers were in opposing units at the battle of Fort Sanders in Knoxville. Each did what he felt was his duty; I respect that and hold no animosity toward any of them. Neither should others.

 

I have no relative buried in the Chattanooga Confederate Cemetery, but I appreciate the city’s having maintained it over the years. Since the city maintains the adjacent Citizens Cemetery, continuing to maintain this small plot would not take much more work. Showing respect for the dead is always good.

 

Carl Mark Barker

The Civil War happened.  Honorable men and women on both sides died.  We need to learn from these mistakes and never make black or white lives any different.

 

Mayor Andy is determined to shoot his foot off before he can run for higher office.  

Mike Layne

 

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Well, here we go again.  “Not my mayor” Andy Berke has become an archaeologist and has started digging up bones.  Who cares if the city was named as a trustee of the Confederate Cemetery many years ago?  Many responses to this “outrage” have already been posted.  I expect that many more will be forthcoming. Let me note, not all Democrats agree with “not my mayor” Andy Berke.  There are a few of us left that have the common sense that God gave to a goose.  Regardless of political parties, racism exists.  It’s not pretty.  I do not support it.  However, it’s not going away.  

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Mayor, you will not miss this fleeting opportunity to grab the national spotlight will you? I hope you get serious coverage and can join the ranks of the other liberal Mayors in this nation who are abandoning practical stewardship for whatever media attention they can gather.

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Most of us do not hate our neighbors. Most of us are not obsessed with our differences. Most of us don't spend our time looking for something to be outraged about. So logically most of us are going to wonder why the Mayor of our beautiful city issued a statement about a cemetery.

Why wasn't he issuing a statement about how he is making sure our kids in poor neighborhoods get a good education and don't get shot on the way home from school? Why is he grandstanding now, knowing this could lead to hateful outsiders coming to our city to cause trouble?

It is clear that the Mayor has great political aspirations. His statement was a check list of talking points, right down to that obligatory jab at President Trump. If Chattanooga turned into a Charlottesville situation, I suppose he might get his face on the national news. But maybe he has over played his race baiting hand. Maybe he is going to find out that, while the citizens in Chattanooga may disagree about many things, they do not want to be blatantly used as pawns for political gain.

I appreciate the people that researched and shed light on inconsistencies regarding the city's relationship with the cemetery.  I find it comforting to see the good individuals here speaking out and not putting politics before our city and its people. It's a shame that the man we elected to look out for Chattanooga isn't decent enough to do the same.

Sherece Manchester

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I am a pro-equality, pro-LGBTQ, pro-First Amendment citizen. I believe racial division is the most sad, unproductive wound this nation has carried forth into this generation.

Today, my wish is to confront Mayor Andy Berke's seemingly patronizing gesture toward a piece of land the city admittedly does not own – the Confederate Cemetery on East Third Street. I believe this stunt on behalf of Mayor Berke is a glaring personal aggrandizement, exemplifying the very characteristics of why the aforementioned divisions fester and cannot heal.

Mayor Berke has taken action against our real foe, Sarah Ruth Frazier. Sarah was born 10 years after the Civil War ended and died in 1956. She is buried in the Confederate Cemetery. I'm glad Mayor Berke is saving us from Sarah and her many peers, because she obviously deserves to be vilified for neither living during nor participating in the Civil War. On the cusp of a truly bitter, deadly and heart-breaking event in Charlottesville, Mayor Berke seems to believe inviting attention to some Confederate soldiers and their families' genealogy is our answer to combating hate in the context of entrenched separatism. As for the soldiers themselves, many miss the fact the vast majority of them were not from slave-owning households.

Our federal government was assembled from among various colonies whose citizens were fiercely patriotic – to those colonies. As the federal government took shape with its original, limited powers, American citizens around the time the Constitution ratified passed their state level loyalties to their children.

 "Our action today makes it clear that the City of Chattanooga condemns white supremacy in every way, shape and form. While we honor our dead, we do not honor the principle for which they fought. Our city should be invested in our future, not a discredited past. Confederates fought against America to preserve slavery. That is the truth, and we should no longer subsidize any myths to the contrary." ~ Andrew Lawrence Berke.

That is a strong paragraph, if it were something Berke truly wished to apply “in every way, shape or form.” In a moment I will offer Governor-In-Waiting Berke the opportunity to walk that talk, but first a bit of history on how deeply slave-era dignitaries permeated our national nomenclature: New York City and State were named after the Duke of York, lead shareholder of Company of Royal Adventurers Trading in Africa (Royal African Company). This company facilitated the slave trade and supplied the colonies with African native citizens in trade for goods. Is there a large gathering to remove York's name, considering he is far more involved in the machinery of slavery than even Robert E. Lee? Europe was a primary economic driver of the slave trade which kept goods from the Confederacy flowing across the Atlantic. It is very likely New York will not be changing names soon.

I am unimpressed Mayor Berke is choosing this cause, the blood of local families' history, to state his case against a fringe blight on society. So today, let us offer Mayor Berke an opportunity to take a real stand using his exact words. Perhaps the party most responsible for perpetuating and funding the Civil War, with a human cost estimate varying between 650,000 and 850,000 lives, is the banker who sided with the South and literally bet on its success at a great profit to him, his family and his enterprise. Much more than any Confederate soldier or the small collection of them in a nondescript Chattanooga cemetery, this man has perhaps the largest gallon count of Union and Confederate blood directly on his hands. The heartbreak of southern slavery was a substantial economic proposition which required logistics across multiple continents to coordinate. This man was wholly in support of European trade with African partners to provide supply of imprisoned servitude to the Confederacy. This labor guaranteed inexpensive southern cotton for European mills. The man's name was Frederic Emile, Baron d' Erlanger. Yes, “that” Erlanger.

The only way the South, with unrecognized Confederate currency, could trade with Europe was with loans using future bales of cotton as collateral. These loans became the “Erlanger Cotton Bonds.” Erlanger loaned the South money which essentially pawned cotton production, then sold his bonds against that cotton at a substantial profit. The Confederacy needed European raw supplies and finished goods to support the Civil War effort, and without those goods the South would have lost much earlier. By perpetuating the war and rolling in cotton gross margins, Erlanger cost tens of thousands of additional lives. Without Erlanger, European merchants would have had no mechanism to encourage violating U.S. Federal blockades of southern ports to get the cotton, and millions in war funding for the Confederate cause would not have existed. That was the deal. Erlanger sold promissory notes good for a certain value of cotton, and the European mill merchants had to go get it by circumnavigating or breaking the blockades.

While Andy Berke lodges his argument against the few quiet dead, the name of the real culprit who pulled the Civil War's largest fiscal strings is emblazoned on the largest local institution which keeps us alive. Erlanger money bought the ships and kept the supply lines from Europe afloat. If Mayor Berke truly intends to fend off subsidizing the “discredited past”, then he is one of only two municipal mayors in America capable of erasing the ten-of-ten power wizard behind the Confederate curtain. The other, in Kentucky, likely has other things to do. If we're talking real impact, it's not a few Confederate soldiers and their family members on a small plot of land the city doesn't own. It most certainly is the most recognizable name the city and county do own.

Would he actually direct City Attorney Wade Hinton to call the Hospital Authority into session to send the Baroness into permanent retirement? Of course not. And he shouldn't. Nor should he score sad, cheap political points by drawing attention and potential vandalism to a sleepy cemetery whose long term tenants still deserve peace. I believe in preserving history for its lessons, not selectively re-writing it to make pretentious overtures compliments of dead veterans. People are dying on American streets in horrendous clashes of ideology, and this is the best statement we can make? Distancing ourselves from William Jolly, an infant who lived for three months in 1882?

Andy Berke's walking opportunism show went off the rails this time, the same rails the Erlangers came to inspect when they donated seed money to build our hospital in the 1880's. I love Erlanger Hospital, its work, its people and its history. I would tie myself to a tree on Third Street if someone wanted to change its name. Yet, the $5,000 donated by the Baron pales against the $8,500,000 he raised to establish the bloodiest bond issue ever conceived by mankind. But down on East Third lies the truth about Mayor Berke's actual convictions, as I'm betting he would never challenge a famous name for political gain when convenient corpses don't talk back. I watched my two youngest children born at Erlanger Hospital. I have said for years Children's Hospital at Erlanger needs to be the primary recipient of local giving, as it provides the vast majority of pediatric care.

The challenge is on the table, Mayor Berke. If you want to extinguish our link with the Confederacy, your own words demand you censure the man who earned the most from it. We are a product of our past. We cannot deny it. My heart today determines the lessons I vest in my children. Your ghoulish opportunism is unimpressive, Mayor Berke, and it is not helping our raw societal wounds heal.

"If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future."

Lookout Valley