The mob is coming for Lt. Gen. Alexander P. Stewart.
The mob is coming for the bust of Stewart outside a little used, locked entrance of the Hamilton County Courthouse to exact its pound of flesh. It’s coming because the bust of the onetime Confederate soldier is convenient. It’s coming because the mob needs to say it Did Something.
Today, the Hamilton County Commission is expected to vote on a resolution to remove and relocate the bust of Stewart, pending the Tennessee Historical Commission’s seeking of a waiver to state law. Three years ago, the county commission voted 6-2 against removing the bust. The commission has a slightly different makeup now, but we hope reason will prevail again.
Indeed, the commission has the opportunity to embrace history – to tell the world that the bust on its grounds is there because the man it depicts was a peacemaker. How many towns in the South can say that? Ours can, and should.
Stewart’s story has been told in the history column in the Sunday Perspective section of this newspaper and on this editorial page. But who reads history when you just want to score a point? Not the mob, certainly. And who reads editorials, not when social media can give you all the opinion you need?