I request the Coweta County Board of Commissioners remove the Confederate soldier statue on the southern entrance to the historic county courthouse in downtown Newnan at 200 Court Square. Shall it be deemed appropriate by the board to continue the public display of the monument, I request that it be relocated to either the Confederate section of Oak Hill Cemetery or Brown’s Mill Battlefield in Newnan, Georgia with an accompanying plaque that describes the history of the monument along with its relevance to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.

In 1885, 20 years after the end of the Civil War, the Ladies Memorial Association (LMA) erected a Confederate monument of a soldier on picket duty in downtown Newnan. This statue now resides outside the south entrance of the historic courthouse, on land owned by Coweta County. The joint ambitions of LMA were the desire to commemorate the sacrifice of Southern soldiers and propagate the Lost Cause of the Confederacy through memorialization.

The Lost Cause mythology claims the cause of the confederacy was just, heroic, and most importantly, had nothing to do with slavery. Proponents will argue that people who were enslaved were treated well and deny that slavery was a central cause of the war. Instead, they argue that the war was a defense of "States' Rights" – protecting their agrarian economy from "Northern Aggression." We can see this in the words inscribed on the southern face of the statues base:

"Our Confederate dead,

whom power could not corrupt,

whom death could not terrify,

whom defeat could not dishonor.”

From this it can be inferred that the Southern cause was a noble and righteous one, perfectly in line with the ideology of LMA and the Lost Cause narrative. They wanted to make sure whites knew the "true" narrative of the Civil War, and therefore continue to support the white supremist ideology of the confederacy. If it was not already apparent, we can further link the statue to the ideals of white supremacy and confederate superiority if we read the inscription on the back of the base, which reads:   

“It is not in mortals

to command success.

But they did more, deserved it.”

The South not only deserved to win the war, to fail to continue the racist ideals of the Confederacy was for the dead to have died in vain. I can only imagine how these words fall on the ears of the descendants of the people the “Confederate dead” fought to keep enslaved. As an American it troubles me that we would honor with a statue at the entrance to our courthouse the men who wanted to keep my fellow Americans enslaved. Men that believe in slavery so much that they committed treason against the Union and fired the first shots of the Civil War to preserve the bondage of my fellow man. Thankfully my ancestors lost the war, and they “deserved it.”