Controversy as Franklin Officials Remove Markers Honoring Confederate Civil War Generals

 

Officials with the city of Franklin have received two complaints after they removed six historical markers on the Battle of Franklin Civil War battlefield site this past April.

Those markers recognize six Confederate generals who died during the battle in November 1864.

Officials said they did this because the markers might confuse tourists. Plus, they also said they don’t know who installed them.

Rutherford County resident Elizabeth Coker, who filed one of the two complaints, told The Tennessee Star Wednesday that the markers date back to the late 19th century.

“Those were some of the first markers that go back to the 30th anniversary of the battle when General (Benjamin) Cheatham returned to the battlefield,” Coker said.

“But the markers did not take the form they had later until after an Eagle Scout project in 1964.”

Yes, Every Kid

Coker said she can document what she says.

Doug Jones, representing the Tennessee Division Sons of Confederate Veterans, filed the other complaint.

Tennessee Historical Commission Executive Director E. Patrick McIntyre, Jr. said the complaints he received pertain to the removal of several wooden posts — not historical markers — erected 20 years ago

“The posts were removed by the City of Franklin at the request of the City’s Battlefield Preservation Commission,” McIntyre told The Star in an emailed statement.

McIntyre sent an email on August 3, 2018 to Franklin Preservation Planner Amanda Rose and said the posts were likely erected after 1970.

“Furthermore, you have searched city records and consulted with a large number of residents, and it seems no one is sure how the posts got there,” McIntyre told Rose.

“There is no evidence that has been located that these posts were ‘lawfully created.’ Therefore, they do not appear to fall under the provisions of the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act.”

According to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s website, the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act prohibits the removal, relocation, or renaming of a memorial that is located on public property.

City of Franklin spokeswoman Milissa Reierson passed along a message from City Administrator Eric Stuckey. Stuckey said city officials removed the signs “after extensive study” by the City’s Civil War Historical Commission.

“Their removal was part of a broader effort by the Commission to review a wide variety of signage that had been placed over time with a goal of providing the public with the best, most accurate, and informative markers/signage about Franklin’s Civil War history,” Stuckey wrote.

Stuckey went on to say “the signs are confusing to citizens and tourists, as they do not include any educational or contextual information” and “the sign placement does not correspond to where the generals fell in battle or where they are buried.”

Coker, meanwhile, said the matter is headed to an administrative law judge.

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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “McGavock Confederate Cemetery” by Boggartslayer2. CC BY-SA 3.0..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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23 Thoughts to “Controversy as Franklin Officials Remove Markers Honoring Confederate Civil War Generals”

  1. Gil Gillis

    Fools. The North had slaves up until the day Lincoln used freeing them as a political tool. The Civil War was about far more than freeing slaves. This is part of a satanic move to create division among people and erasing history. Once no one remembers our history, then the new anti-Christ movement can turn on us and make us all slaves.

  2. Barbara

    Go away, William. Until you learn something useful.

  3. Elizabeth Davis

    That must be a new Constitutional Amendment because it wasn’t enforced during Obama’s 8 years in office. I just love the way you people pick and choose your laws based on who needs it at the moment.

  4. […] The Tennessee Star reported, Franklin officials received two complaints after they removed the six historical markers this past […]

    1. Virgil

      Tyrants destroy any history they do not like; much easier than trying to learn from it.

  5. If the rate of new laws grows every year by 10% and only 1% of Americans become Libertarians, you could say that tyranny is winning.

    Looks like Americans need to up their game.

    Americans don’t care about freedom, but things are getting serious. Tyranny just increases constantly.

    Couldn’t Americans get out of their echo chambers and wake people up?

    Who would have thought in 1980 that the USA would soon have nanny state laws, regulations, security cameras, license plate readers, checkpoints, redlight cameras, speed cameras, FBI facial and voice recognition, curfews, gun bans, searches without warrants, mandatory minimums, DNA databases, CISPA, SOPA, IMBRA, private prison quotas, no knock raids, take down notices, no fly lists, terror watch lists, Constitution free zones, stop and frisk, 3 strikes laws, kill switches, National Security Letters, kill lists, FBAR, FATCA, Operation Chokepoint, civil forfeiture, CIA torture, NDAA indefinite detention, secret FISA courts, FEMA camps, laws requiring passports for domestic travel, IRS laws denying passports for tax debts, gun and ammo stockpiles, laws outlawing protesting, police militarization, NSA wiretapping, the end to the right to silence, free speech bans, private prisons, FOSTA, TSA groping, and Jade Helm?

    Maybe Americans might be a little safer in Chile when the USA starts WWIII with Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.

    https://ideapod.com/top-10-safest-countries-world-war-3-breaks/

  6. Traditional Thinker

    Not unlike the mass murdering of babies you Libs endorse? Oh I get see….

  7. Greg

    Those who died at Franklin, no matter which side they were fighting on, DESERVE to be remembered! Put their markers BACK, and tell those weenies who persist in promoting such anti-Confederate history damnfoolery to go pound sand!

  8. john

    So true. Too many northern leftwing nuts moved to TN after turning their home states into unliveable holes. Now they are doing the same in TN, rewriting history. BTW William your version of history is straight out of the leftwing propaganda. Your shallow ideological view of things Southern is disgusting. Perhaps you should return to the womb of socialism in USA like NY, CA, MA, … too many non-tennesseeans now corrupting what was once a free and good state.

  9. Austin Pate

    Well Franklin has been taken over by Northern transplants anyway!

  10. William

    Franklin officials are right to remove markers honoring Confederate Generals. The Confederacy was NOT about states’ rights. It was about forcing the extension of SLAVERY beyond its pre-1860 borders to spread out in all directions–especially to the Far West’s and the North’s free-soil states and territories. Extending slavery was not about promoting anybody’s freedom except for a small clique of slave holders who wanted freedom for themselves to trample on other people’s (especially slavery-eligible people’s) rights. Some of the Confederacy’s major players like Nathan Bedford Forrest would have been designated as war criminals had they fought their war during the 1940’s. Forrest, as you know, massacred several POW’s at Fort Pillow who had already surrendered AND laid down their arms! The Nurnberg Tribunal labeled that offense a war crime when Nazis massacred several U.S. POW’s at Malmady in 1944 or when the Japanese forced several U.S. POW’s to participate in the Pacific Death Marches.

    Quit portraying human traffickers and mass murderers as heroes and heroines! Franklin’s actions are long overdue, but better late than never!

    1. Cathy Hinners

      It’s called history, get over it.

    2. 83ragtop50

      What flavor was that Kool-Aide you drank?

    3. Derek

      He would have been required to wait in line for the gallows behind Grant, Lincoln, Sherman, and o host of Northern war criminals who violated life, limb and the constitution.

    4. Danny

      Who sold the south all those slaves? Where did they come from? Who brought them here? Who owned them and in what states? Read dum dum the north is not and never was innocent in the slave trade. Drop you holy stance and read. It was about money same as all wars.

    5. Daren

      Liberal indoctrination at its finest. You honestly think hundreds of thousands of poor farmers fought and died so a few could own slaves?

    6. Mike

      What a silly slew of comments. Nearly every single sentence is completely false and the remaing ones are just hate filled rants.
      The truthful plan for creating” free states” was to keep them free of blacks free or slave. Truth. Also their was a major inquiry by the US into Fort Pillow. Forrest was acquitted. The fort chose to fight not surrender and they lost. Their own gun boats right off shore wouldn’t even help them. Try not to get history from memes or wikipedia.

    7. George

      William, you are a nincompoop.
      Research the true history of the civil war. Not the lies promoted in liberal publications of today choose to advance.

    8. Lee Russom

      First of all, who says this or that country is “about” anything? Ever wonder what the Brits were saying about us 50. 100 years after the fact?
      Second, the only reason the yankee States individually abolished African slavery within their own borders, all without war mind you, was because they did NOT want Blacks living in their States. With one or two exceptions. AND the only reason they sought, collectively via the US Congress, to contain it to the several Southern States was for political power, the power to control the national purse – the US treasury.
      By doing this, they’d continue to spend money on themselves, in their respective States on so-called internal improvements in addition to criminally enriching themselves – the national legislators and the State plus the contractors.

      I believe had the South been left alone especially during the antebellum years by the abolitionists, whose anti-Southern hatefilled pamphlets were making their way to the slave populations to read (imagine that), in order to instigate a murderous, genocidal insurrection, then eventually slavery would have gradually, peacefully died out to the benefit of all concerned.
      I believe the same would have resulted had the US government simply let the South go in peace. NO WAR.

    9. Ed

      Your wrong on all counts. Your self righteous sanctimony overlaying the twenty first
      century on nineteenth conditions is beyond asinine. Put the markers back,history is
      history warts and all.

  11. Allan Tortorice

    Isn’t this a violation of the Tennessee Heritage Preservation Act signed into law in 2013?

  12. Rick

    Franklin is so carried away with their money and how important they are nothing they do would surprise me. Arrogance is not an admirable quality. Attempting to remove history is wrong. Williamson County maybe can wipe their history away with the $ 100.00 bills that are bulging from their pockets.

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