Heartbroken,
I have learned that my beloved Bentonville, Arkansas, has been attacked. The
Confederate monument that rests in the center of our town square has been
defaced. The carpetbaggers that have lately inundated Bentonville have chosen
to eradicate part of our history;
our history, not theirs. James
Henderson Berry served as a second lieutenant with the 16
th Arkansas
Infantry, losing his right leg during the Second Battle of Corinth in
Mississippi. Berry became a lawyer and was elected as an Arkansas
Representative and then as Governor of Arkansas, later serving as a U.S.
Senator. He passed in 1913 and is buried in Bentonville. The statue was erected
in 1908 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. 111 years later, the rifle
the figure leans on has been destroyed, much as the pillars our society leans
upon have been broadsided. We celebrated the centennial of its installation in
2008. What has changed in 11 years? Bentonville has been afflicted with those
sowing discord among us, ridiculing our supposedly benighted and backward
traditions.
These interlopers dare to decry ‘the shame of Bentonville’ and to
dictate to us how we must change
our town to fit
their craven
image of the ‘enlightened’ cities from whence they came. How dare they? How
dare we allow this?
The
monument’s inscription, beautiful in its solemnity, reads:
