Hamilton County, TN – The Hamilton County Commission recently received a petition started by UTC Professor Betsy Darken to remove the statue of General A.P. Stewart from the Courthouse.
In the 1,100-signature petition, Dr. Darken called General A.P. Stewart “divisive and exclusive”.
This Hamilton County movement is reminiscent of the nation-wide push to remove monuments.
Monuments of slave-owners and quoted white supremacists were initially prioritized in petitions across many states and cities.
General A.P. Stewart was known to be an emancipationist, anti-slavery, and anti-secession.
It has been a historical understanding that the Confederate States were admitted back into the Union, and that officers and soldiers were not to be viewed as traitors.
Many southern soldiers lived into the 1900’s and were an integral part of rebuilding their states after the Civil War.
General Stewart specifically was the commissioner of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park until 1908.
Commissioner Tim Boyd is prepared to bring all Courthouse monuments down rather than protect one of them.
“I think we should relocate all four of the plaques and monuments at the courthouse, and we should prevent there ever being any more monuments at the county courthouse,” Boyd said, “I just think we need to remove them the right way, and we need to make sure nothing else ever goes in their place.”
The new wave of social justice on college campuses is fueled by a demagoguery that has now entered the chambers of the Hamilton County Commission.
Commissioner Tim Boyd wants to eliminate for everyone “any chance of walking by anything that might offend them.”
According to Commissioner Boyd, he has been trying to remove all the Courthouse monuments for months. He has even been talking to nonprofits about covering the legal costs.
Since A.P. Stewart was known to be against slavery and secession, Commissioner Boyd warned that the defense of Tennessee from a Union invasion would also need to be condemned.
“If it’s about being against slavery, it’s got to be more about the Confederates who were defending Tennessee from the Union invading,” he said. “And we’ve got to have those kinds of details ironed out before we would submit anything to the state because if you lose, you lose.”
There is no appeals process, so the commission will have to condemn all conscripted and enlisted soldiers and generals of the Confederacy to move forward with monument relocation.
