Martin: Capitalizing on the Confederate dead

The Chattanooga Confederate Cemetery is located in between the campuses of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and the Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences.
The Chattanooga Confederate Cemetery is located in between the campuses of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and the Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences.

"Ugh, it's so stagnant in here."

My wife was right. "Yeah," I replied, looking up to see the Confederate flag hanging limply from a pole atop a modest hill.

After City Hall announced last Friday that it wants to abandon Chattanooga's Confederate Cemetery, we decided to take a field trip to the graveyard for our dog's Sunday evening walk.

Unsure if I'd ever set foot in it before, I wanted to see firsthand what Mayor Berke so anxiously wants to rid the city of. After shimmying down a stone wall from an adjoining UTC parking lot, the three of us meandered among the headstones.

The first thing I noticed was that there are no large statues in the cemetery. Aside from the graves, the entirety of the park is occupied only by a flagpole, a covered sitting area, some name plaques, and an obelisk (a Washington Monument in miniature).

photo David Martin

"David, these mosquitos are killing me!"

Oh yeah, there were mosquitos, too. Loads of them.

While Natalie took refuge in the sitting area, Junior and I continued our tour, zigzagging among the dead.

There is a hodgepodge of old Confederates buried there. Many made it through the Civil War, dying years later when the country they fought to leave was embroiled in something called a world war. Others, however, didn't live to learn of a place called Appomattox Court House.

Some died quite young, well shy of their 20th birthday.

Then it struck me. This wasn't some eye-catching, middle-of-townsquare tribute to the Lost Cause. There is no bronzed Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson on horseback, staring down modernity. There is no moonlight and magnolia sentiment to be felt.

Rather, the vibe one senses is more of a "here lies a 19-year-old kid, never married and possibly conscripted into service in 1862; maybe he had his arm blown off in North Georgia a year later and, missing his mother terribly, died of dysentery in some filthy excuse for a tent."

Rest in peace.

His greatest sin? Obviously it's that he died fighting for an army that was, as the popular phrase goes, on the wrong side of history.

Now the city of Chattanooga wants to wash its hands of that history. It makes sense considering the constant civic uproar against the cemetery.

We must quiet the discontent.

I'm joking, of course.

Before last Friday, if you knew the city was listed as a trustee of those grounds, you could've won the championship round of Chattanooga trivia.

So obscure is the relationship, Mayor Berke had to take pause in his public statement to explain the city's connection to the cemetery since few people, if any, knew a thing about it before the disavowal.

Which brings up this question: Was City Hall's move one of leadership, or one of opportunism?

While Berke may have wanted his announcement to demonstrate a commitment to moral resolve, making an issue out of something that is clearly a non-issue smacks of self-serving political opportunism - an obviously desperate attempt at scoring some favorable earned media.

And it would have been comical - a mayor so needy for friendly press that he manufactures a controversy so he can fix it - had he not been tempting fate. Since that non-issue-turned-issue is tied to matters that generate heated emotions (just flip on your television to see), his declaration was actually dangerous.

Thankfully, most Chattanoogans simply rolled their eyes at the hopeless grandstanding. We should wish that's the continued response.

Because no amount of loyalist "that was bold, mayor!" backslapping would be worth lighting a tinderbox of unrest in our own town.

Contact David Allen Martin at davidallenmartin423@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @DMart423.

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