Is Compromise Possible?

 

Searching for the middle ground

The Confederate monument in downtown Pensacola has been an ongoing issue for several years now, really longer than that. I know many will disagree with me on this, but that monument can not stay there as is. It glorifies the Confederacy and the principle of white supremacy on which it was based. The city erected this monument just as Pensacola was enacting Jim Crow laws limiting the rights of African Americans. In fact, Edward Perry who is honored on this memorial is the governor who brought Jim Crow laws to Florida. This monument sent a clear message that although slavery had ended the white power structure remained. It was a means of intimidating the brown residents of Pensacola that they’d better know their place.

The argument that taking the monument down erases history is ridiculous. The monument was put up to erase the true history of the Confederacy. One example is the inscription on the south side of the monument which states Confederate soldiers, ‘joy was to suffer and die for a cause they believed to be just.” The reality is many of those soldiers were drafted and others went to the Union side at Fort Pickens. We now have the opportunity to correct this and replace it with a more historically accurate monument.

I propose that rather than remove the monument, we transform it from a Confederate monument to a Civil War monument. The primary alteration would be in the inscriptions on the four sides of the monument. On the south side replace the commemoration of Confederate soldiers with a commemoration of all Civil War soldiers. On the east side replace Jefferson Davis with an inscription memorializing the Battle of Pensacola in 1861. On the north side honor Abraham Lincoln for preserving the Union. Below that, inscribe the words “Our Union Dead.” This will match the words, “Our Confederate Dead” that are currently on the south side. Finally, on the west side commemorate the liberation of Pensacola in 1862. I also propose renaming Lee square to Union Square. This will recognize that ultimately the Civil War made the union stronger by eliminating the institution of slavery. If the name Union Square is too controversial we can revert it to the square’s original name of “Florida Square.”

I propose this option because even if we remove the monument, we just create a new series of problems. First, we will be replacing one set of aggrieved people with another. Those who see removing it as an affront to their heritage will hold on to this bitter little pill for years to come. Ninety percent of what local government does goes largely unnoticed by the vast majority of people. However, government action that affects someone personally can come to represent the entirety of their experience with local government. They’ll bring this up in town halls and city council meetings for years to come. This compromise gives them something to hang their hat on and diffuse some of that anger.

The second problem is what to do with the monument after you take it down. Putting it in Saint Michaels Cemetery has been proposed. However, this doesn’t solve the basic problem of the monument. The problem isn’t the location, it’s that it exists. Simply moving it doesn’t change the fact that Pensacola still has a Confederate Monument that needs to come down. It simply changes the location of the protests.

Finally, it presents the problem of what to replace the monument with. That issue is likely to bedevil this council for years to come. It’s likely to be as divisive as the current issue before the Council. Converting this into a Civil War Monument solves all those problems at once. Of course, there will still be issues to work out. The exact wording of the new plaques on the monument being first among them. A commission of local historians and community leaders will need to work this out. I can anticipate possible objections from both the Right and the Left to this proposal. However, I also think there’s an opportunity for us to come together, show we can still make compromises, and meet in the middle to move forward as a community.