Debate rises over Davidson officials’ wish to remove marker about Confederate officer
A lively online debate has ignited over the town of Davidson’s call to remove a state historic marker noting the nearby grave of Confederate Lt. Gen. D.H. Hill.
The town board of commissioners voted 4-1 on Aug. 25 to ask the state to remove the marker from its perch along North Main Street near the entrance to the Davidson College cemetery. No action to remove the marker has been taken.
The marker lists Hill’s rank in the Confederate States of America and his roles as superintendent of the N.C. Military Institute in Charlotte, as a Davidson College professor and as editor of “The Land We Love.”
Hill was from York County, S.C.
Dan Morrill of the preservationist group Preserve Mecklenburg sparked the online debate with a Facebook post on Sunday expressing how “disheartened” he was by the commissioners’ vote.
The vote came the same month Davidson College apologized for supporting slavery during its first 30 years in the 19th century — and for what the college called “its embrace of the racist laws and policies” in subsequent decades.
The apology followed a two-year examination of the college’s ties to slavery and racist policies by a campus commission headed by Davidson grad Anthony Foxx, the former Charlotte mayor and U.S. Secretary of Transportation.
Against ‘White Supremacy’
“I fully support the removal of markers that either implicitly or explicitly advance the doctrines of White Supremacy,” Morrill told his 3,261 Facebook followers. “I fully support the removal of the Confederate Battle Flag from public property.
“But the D. H. Hill Marker, which does accurately note that he was a Confederate general, was erected by the State for educational purposes and has no editorial intent,” Morrill posted.
Morrill said he hoped the state will instead discuss with Davidson residents how the marker could be reworded.
“It might highlight Hill’s illustrious career of a Professor of Mathematics at Davidson College in the 1850s,” Morrill posted.
Should Confederate marker be removed?
Morrill asked his 3,261 Facebook followers, “What do you think?”
More than 200 people weighed in, most agreeing the marker should stay put.
“Stop destroying history,” Lee Abernathy wrote of the board’s request to remove the marker.
“Sanitized history teaches nothing,” Sadler Barnhardt said.
“Will we ignore Civil War battlefields if they were Confederate victories?” Richard Osborne asked.
Some agreed with the town board’s decision.
“They aren’t history,” Pam Kelley posted of Confederate monuments and markers. “They’re what a certain group of people in a specific time and place chose to glorify.”
After the war, she said, “Hill was among the Southerners who pushed the Lost Cause narrative .... That’s what ‘The Land We Love,’ mentioned on the marker but not explained, is about.”
M. Turner Webb posted, “How can you honor someone who was trying to destroy the Republic you and I live in today. Are you not an American?”
Ed Williams, former editorial page editor of The Charlotte Observer, said he sees a difference, however, “between pointing out a site of historical interest and honoring the person or cause.”
“If someone asked me where D.H. Hill’s grave is, I certainly would tell them,” Williams posted in reply to Morrill’s post. “That’s what the sign does.”
Signs are ‘reminders of our history’
Williams said he also supports keeping the state historic markers in Charlotte that note “where Jefferson Davis was standing when he learned of Lincoln’s assassination, where the Confederate cabinet last met, where (N.C. Gov.) Zebulon Vance lived, where the Confederate navy yard was, and where Lord Cornwallis camped.”
“I’m glad they’re all there, reminding us that we are part of our nation’s history,” Williams posted.
He said he’d like to see even more markers, including where Julius Chambers’ Charlotte law firm was bombed after the Black civil rights lawyer sued to integrate the Shrine Bowl high school all-star game.