On July 7, 2015, the city council of Memphis voted to exhume, dishonor and remove the bodies of confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife. General Forrest and his wife have rested in this present site since 1905. Forrest was a businessman in Memphis before the War Between the States and he retired there after the war.
On 6/29/15, I suggested tongue-in-cheek that if the anti-confederate hysteria continues, confederate soldiers might be dug up, placed before a firing squad, then reburied. I was offering what I thought was a bit of satire at the time. Little did I know that the current hysteria has proven my satire to be all too literal. Confederaphobia has now gripped the nation and all reason, indeed all sanity, seems to have vanished from our midst.
After the media reported the city's plans to exhume the two bodies, Memphis officials offered a pretense that the exhumation of bodies had nothing to do with an anti-confederate hysteria that is sweeping the country, stating that a medical center wanted to use the gravesite space for building. However, the Knoxville Daily Sun reported on July 9th:
"The proposal to remove the general's monument
and grave are in response to the June 17, 2015 shooting that claimed
the lives of nine parishioners at the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston,
S.C."
The mayor of Memphis is also quoted as saying, "What African American family wants to have a picnic [at the park] with Forrest looking down on them?" There is a large equestrian statue of Forrest near his grave and the mayor probably made reference to this statute--which the city also wishes to remove.
Under Tennessee law, the family of the deceased must give permission for the bodies to be removed. The Forrest family has stated that they have no desire to see the graves disturbed. Also, in 2013, the Tennessee legislature passed the Tennessee Heritage Act to prohibit the renaming, removal or re-dedication of any marker, statue or memorial of any person who served in any war, including the Civil War. Ironically, the state legislature passed that 2013 law to prevent Memphis from eradication of numerous parks and Civil War markers. Before the law took effect, however, Memphis hurriedly changed the name of the Forrest Park, which had been named after General Forrest.
There continues to be, sadly, an irrational attempt to sanitize the Southern states of any historical context or culture that certain groups of people disagree with. All one has to do to remove a memorial, flag, marker, statue, song, film or menu item is to say that they find it to be "offensive," and it is gone with the wind (pon intended). A truly sad day for American history. We seem to be undergoing the same type of phenomenon that Joseph Stalin committed in Russia prior to the second world war. Nobody knows where it will stop. America contains a sick hotbed culture where germs of this variety this can multiply and thrive.
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