One day before a state group meets to consider the fate of Confederate monuments on the State Capitol grounds, the top leader in the N.C. Senate has called on Gov. Roy Cooper to drop his request to have those monuments moved.
Sen. Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, publicized a letter he sent today to Cooper. It asks the governor to withdraw his request to move three monuments from the Capitol grounds to a Civil War battle site in Johnston County.
“I do not think an impulsive decision to pull down every Confederate monument in North Carolina is wise, that attempting to rewrite history is a fool’s errand, and those trying to rewrite history unfortunately are likely taking a first step toward repeating it,” Berger wrote to Cooper.
“I am curious why you want to move a monument to regular North Carolinians who died during the Civil War (most of whom did not own slaves), a monument of a grandmother and child erected to honor the hardships and sacrifices of North Carolina women during the Civil War, and a monument to an unlucky 19-year-old carpenter’s apprentice from Tarboro who was the first North Carolinian killed in the Civil War,” Berger continued.
He then contrasted those three monuments, which Cooper has proposed moving to the Bentonville Battlefield, with other monuments that would remain on the Capitol grounds. Those include monuments to former Democratic governors Charles Aycock (“an avowed white supremacist”) and Zebulon Vance (“a Confederate colonel from a family that owned slaves”) and former President Andrew Jackson (“who forcibly removed North Carolina Native Americans from their tribal lands”).
“This selective outrage is one of the reasons your push to keep monuments in the headlines seems to be more political theater than a principled stand,” Berger added. “It smacks of insincerity.”
Berger sent his letter as the N.C. Historical Commission prepares to meet Friday to address Cooper’s plan to move the monuments. The Senate leader quotes a 2015 state law to question the commission’s ability to act. The commission “does not even have the authority to grant your request, and it would likely lose in court if and when North Carolinians sued over the removal of the monuments,” Berger contends.
The Cooper administration formally petitioned the Historical Commission on Sept. 8 to move the three monuments. They are known officially as the 1895 Confederate Monument, The Henry Lawson Wyatt Monument, and the North Carolina Women of the Confederacy Monument. All three would move about 45 minutes away from Raleigh.
“Relocating these monuments to a historic Civil War site will help us preserve them and provide context for their history,” said Machelle Sanders, secretary of Cooper’s N.C. Department of Administration, in a statement that accompanied the petition.