9 July 2015

Confederate fountain follow-up

Helena’s city commission decided last night to add educational signage to the fountain at Hill Park that honors Confederate soldiers, reports the Helena Independent Record. The commission asked the Lewis & Clark County Heritage Tourism Council to recommend the text for the sign(s).

Don’t expect that council to draft language criticizing the fountain or its donor, the United Daughters of the Confederacy:

While [City Commissioner] Haladay asked the Heritage Tourism Council to keep an open mind as it creates language to accompany the fountain, the council’s chairman, Dick Alberts, disputed Haladay’s implication that the fountain was part of a larger propaganda campaign in the early 20th century to encourage public nostalgia for the Confederacy.

The fountain was presented to the city as a thank-you gift, Alberts said, adding that these were people who left the South in search of a new life.

“That was their historic intent,” he said in his comments to the commission.

Alberts’ comments get to the heart of the dispute. Is the fountain just a great big granite thank you note to Helena for being a wonderfully friendly city to the ladies of the UDC — or is it part of a larger UDC scheme to perfume the reputation of the army that fought to preserve slavery? If it’s the former, residents of Helena can swell with pride — but if it’s the latter, they may shrink with shame.

Civil War historian James Loewen, in Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong, strongly argues that Helena’s Confederate fountain was part of the UDC’s national campaign to suppress the memory of the awful institution for which Confederate soldiers fought by honoring the individual valor of those soldiers. An excerpt of Loewen’s book can be found at Montana Cowgirl.

City Commissioners Haladay and Haque-Hausrath might want to consider inviting Loewen to Helena to lecture on the Confederate fountain and how monuments are used to whitewash history.