Proud Alabamian
Private
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2015
- Location
- Montgomery, Alabama
As a boy who was born and raised in Montgomery, Alabama and learned to love the history of the War Between The States, I have spent many hours in historic Oakwood Cemetery, where many of our city's most famous citizens, like Hank Williams, Sr., are buried. Among the graves there is Col. William C. Oates, who famously led the 15th Alabama on repeated attacks against Joshua Chamberlin's 20th Maine at Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg.
I'll be visiting Gettysburg for the first time next month and was eagerly hoping to visit a monument dedicated to Oates and his troops. I'm surprised to find that there is no monument to those brave Alabamians. After looking in my copy of "Gettysburg Requiem," a biography of Oates penned in 2006 by Glenn LaFantasie, I was even more surprised to find that Chamberlin used backchannels to object to a monument being placed while, at the same time, duplicitly corresponding with Oates that he welcomed a statue being erected.
Because there is no statue for Col. Oates, later Brigadier General Oates during the Spanish-American War, and his 15th Alabama, I'll not be visiting the Chamberlin statue atop Little Round Top during my visit to Gettysburg. If both sides of the battle can't be told and honored, I'll not be a party to praising only one.
The excerpt from "Gettysburg Requiem" explaining how the monument to the 15th Alabama was blocked from being built is below:
Little Round Top’s Missing Monument
Glenn W. LaFantasie
The disputes over a fitting and proper memorial at Ground Zero in New York City to honor the victims of the 9/11 attacks—not to mention controversies during the past decade about displaying the Enola Gay, the depiction of Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the Mall in Washington, D.C., and the National Park Service’s plans to build a new visitor center at Gettysburg National Military Park—reveal how Americans can often disagree vehemently over their public monuments to the past. This is nothing new. At Gettysburg, which displays the most monuments of any Civil War battlefield, the location and design of memorials have been contentious ever since the first ones were erected in the 1880s. But the nearly 2 million visitors who tour Gettysburg National Military Park every year are largely unaware of monuments that were proposed but never built. One such unraised monument on Little Round Top—to the 15th Alabama regiment—left its proponent, former Confederate Colonel William C. Oates, angry and bitter over how the park’s commissioners made their decisions about monuments. But it also left him profoundly sad. Oates had his personal, as well as his public, reasons for wanting a monument on Little Round Top. In the end, his unsuccessful effort meant that he and his men experienced defeat for a second time on that hill’s slopes—and both times the famous commander of the 20th Maine infantry, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, played a crucial role in making sure Oates and his Alabamians gained no foothold on that hill.
Edited by moderator JerseyBart
I'll be visiting Gettysburg for the first time next month and was eagerly hoping to visit a monument dedicated to Oates and his troops. I'm surprised to find that there is no monument to those brave Alabamians. After looking in my copy of "Gettysburg Requiem," a biography of Oates penned in 2006 by Glenn LaFantasie, I was even more surprised to find that Chamberlin used backchannels to object to a monument being placed while, at the same time, duplicitly corresponding with Oates that he welcomed a statue being erected.
Because there is no statue for Col. Oates, later Brigadier General Oates during the Spanish-American War, and his 15th Alabama, I'll not be visiting the Chamberlin statue atop Little Round Top during my visit to Gettysburg. If both sides of the battle can't be told and honored, I'll not be a party to praising only one.
The excerpt from "Gettysburg Requiem" explaining how the monument to the 15th Alabama was blocked from being built is below:
Little Round Top’s Missing Monument
Glenn W. LaFantasie
The disputes over a fitting and proper memorial at Ground Zero in New York City to honor the victims of the 9/11 attacks—not to mention controversies during the past decade about displaying the Enola Gay, the depiction of Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the Mall in Washington, D.C., and the National Park Service’s plans to build a new visitor center at Gettysburg National Military Park—reveal how Americans can often disagree vehemently over their public monuments to the past. This is nothing new. At Gettysburg, which displays the most monuments of any Civil War battlefield, the location and design of memorials have been contentious ever since the first ones were erected in the 1880s. But the nearly 2 million visitors who tour Gettysburg National Military Park every year are largely unaware of monuments that were proposed but never built. One such unraised monument on Little Round Top—to the 15th Alabama regiment—left its proponent, former Confederate Colonel William C. Oates, angry and bitter over how the park’s commissioners made their decisions about monuments. But it also left him profoundly sad. Oates had his personal, as well as his public, reasons for wanting a monument on Little Round Top. In the end, his unsuccessful effort meant that he and his men experienced defeat for a second time on that hill’s slopes—and both times the famous commander of the 20th Maine infantry, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, played a crucial role in making sure Oates and his Alabamians gained no foothold on that hill.
Edited by moderator JerseyBart
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