Union Monument to Be Placed at Bentonville

 BY DERRICK BROWN

 BENTONVILLE

 BATTLEFIELD

 STATE

 HISTORIC SITE

 Winter 2012

 Volume II, Issue I

 From the

 Trenches

 News from North Carolina’s Premier Civil War Battlefield Site

 Megan Maxwell, Editor

 It takes two sides to fight a battle. Although this statement sounds obvious, you would not be able to tell that there were two sides at Bentonville judging by the monuments on the battlefield. There are presently four monuments on the historic site’s property commemorating the approximately 20,000 Confederate soldiers that fought in the battle, but none have been placed in honor of the nearly 60,000 soldiers that fought on the Union side. Blue-clad soldiers suffered nearly 1,600 casualties at Bentonville and deserve, equally with their Confederate opponents, to have their sacrifices remembered. So it is with great pleasure that  Bentonville Battlefield State Historic Site is able to announce that after nearly 150 years the contributions of both sides will soon be set in stone. On  November 15, 2011 the North Carolina Historical Commission adopted the proposal by the North Carolina Department, Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War for a Union monument at Bentonville Battlefield to be installed by October 2013. The establishment of monuments at Bentonville began thirty years after the battle with the 1895 dedication of the Goldsboro Rifles’ Monument. Placed in honor of 360 Confederate soldiers allegedly buried in a mass grave near the marker, the 1895 monument is located just south of the Harper family cemetery, on land donated by the Harpers. The memorial is an obelisk with a ball on top. It stands as the tallest monument on the property, and will remain that way, as site rules prohibit the raising of taller monuments. Further Confederate monuments were installed on the battlefield by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1927 to the North Carolina Junior Reserves, the state of Texas to its soldiers at Bentonville in 1965, and the UDC once again in 1992 to the North Carolina soldiers that participated in the battle. Despite there being dozens of Confederate monuments constructed during this time on northern battlefields such as Gettysburg, little thought was put towards a Union monument at Bentonville.

The inscription reads: In Memory of Union Soldiers of the 14th, 15th, 17th, and 20th Corps Who Served During the Battle of Bentonville March 19-21, 1865 Representing the States of Alabama, Connecticut, Illinois Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Finally, in the early 1990s, a group of Confederate Civil War reenactors from North Carolina began the process with the Department of Cultural Resources to gain permission to erect a monument in honor of the hundreds of Union soldiers that paid the ultimate sacrifice at Bentonville for their beliefs. Unfortunately, many concerned citizens misconstrued the memorial as a “Sherman statue.” Although this characterization was untrue, it did not matter. Once the monument was associated with Sherman it had no chance of getting approved because of the hard feelings that numerous southerners had (and still have) towards the legacy of General William T. Sherman. The ultimate irony of the situation is that in 1894, when the Goldsboro Rifles were short of the funds needed for their monument, Union veteran T.E. Harvey, whose right hand was maimed by a Confederate artillery shell on the first day of the Battle of Bentonville, donated a substantial amount towards the construction of the Confederate monument. If anyone had the right to be bitter towards his enemy, it was Private Harvey. Instead, he put his animosity away to honor his former adversary, something that many were unwilling to do for the 1990s monument proposal. The new Sons of Union Veterans’ monument that was approved by the North Carolina Historical Commission will be dedicated to the memory of all the Union soldiers that fought at Bentonville. The memorial will be granite, and will feature the insignia of all four U.S. Army corps that were at the battle, as well as a list of each state, north and south (including Alabama), that contributed Federal troops in the battle. The monument will stand five feet tall, and will be placed in the existing monument area near the North Carolina and Texas monuments. Contributions towards the monument are being accepted by the Sons of Union Veterans. Those interested in contributing should contact Mr. Douglas Elwell at elwellds@embarqmail.com or at (910) 488-1383. Bentonville Battlefield State Historic Site looks forward to this welcomed addition.