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« on: June 25, 2020, 06:17:00 AM »
So good, I re-post it here (written by Roy Exum):
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I love statues and monuments. All kinds of them. When we would take vacations as the littlest boys, Dad taught us that every statue, every monument, was a clue that there is a fabulous story to go with it. I don’t care if the monument is of a white man, a black man, any woman, a Communist, a Cuban, an Indian chief, or my childhood favorite, the great train engineer Casey Jones. His gloves are bronzed and once stood in the side yard of my late cousin’s house, who was known as the Virgin Ninetta, in Vaughn, Ms. That’s where my Dad grew up and his very words are as true today. “Statues are symbols of great men (and women.) Find out the story …”
People who deface or ruin statues are criminals and belong in jail with the other stupids. How do I know? On this very week, Tuesday night is more exact, American urban terrorists attacked the state capitol in Madison, Wi., and toppled the statue of Hans Christian Heg. They ripped it from its pedestal, sprayed the former base with “Black Is Beautiful” paint, and by then they were so overcome with their rush of freedom and its mix of wanton depravity that – get this -- they whacked Han’s head off (no telling where it is) and flung with great might and laughing vigor the rest of the well-stomped statue into Lake Monona. “By God, that’ll show ‘em! BLM!!”
All that remains today is just one pesky problem. Col. Heg was gut-shot and killed 152 years ago during a day of battlefield bedlam in far-away Chickamauga, Ga. Since then, that very statue has been the only clue to a very meaningful and quite wonderful slice of America’s history. I so hope a Wisconsin judge will have the opportunity to tell the protesters who morphed into rioters this story, just scant moments before those calloused ‘free’ will morph into the confined with the other stupids.
Hans Christian Heg immigrated to the United States from Norway with a big, fun crowd of noble opportunists in 1840. His family settled in Waukesha County, Wi., established a farm near Muskego, and embraced The American Dream. When word of the Gold Rush reached The Dairy State eight years later, young Hans declared, “Nuts with shoveling (manure)!” or, however such resolve is similarly expressed in the Norwegian tongue, and lit out to the sunny Land of Fruits and Nuts with his mom’s favorite pie pan.
Alas, two years later, both his Pop and his Mom died and Hans, with the now battered and very empty pie pan, came back to run the farm in 1851 and support his younger brothers and sisters. He soon had his family growing everything and milking a herd of high butterfat cows in no time. Yet in the two years he spent out West, his eyes saw many things, and, upon his return, he had a heavy heart for those oppressed. He was elected as Wisconsin’s state prisons commissioner, and almost immediately began vocational programs, which included an unheard-of concept that allowed a number of low-risk inmates to work outside the walls for albeit meager wages.
While I cannot find the root source, ol’ Hans absolutely hated slavery worse than curdled milk. That’s what got him into the prisons realm and revolutionized his heart’s dream that every man is equal, that even criminals should be given an opportunity for betterment -- and earlier parole -- and precious little money to send to their families. Again, albeit meager, it gave a man wearing jail stripes the two things every man yearns besides freedom – self-worth and self-respect.
Unfortunately, there was great turmoil astir in the United States at this time. The industrial North was becoming more divided from the agricultural South and a perfect storm of blithering idiots – go ahead and judge between one group of morons in blue to another group of morons in grey, however you like because I could care less -- but the undeniable First Rule of Stupid is that one fool can never fight against no one – don’t forget this -- it takes two or more completely crazy imbeciles to fight instead of talk. Many a historian believe had only the wise talked candidly, the war could have been prevented and over half-million Americans would have continued the American Dream. But, no …
The next time your ancestry atom gets you all juiced up whether your family start came over on the Mayflower or on the slave ship whose repentant captain would later pen the words to “Amazing Grace”– know fully that your family tree contains some idiots, imbeciles, morons, and has a healthy sprinkling of stupids. Every family tree has a bad apple or two. And you know what that is called after you pour it twice through the strainer? Life. So get over it, yet never forget it was dummies on two sides who didn’t just allow, but strongly encouraged us to kill one another just over 150 years ago.
Every Civil War monument, no matter where, points to a four-year horror that began April 12, 1861 and ended May 9, 1865. There were 2,196 battles fought, in which 620,000 men were very foolishly killed -- 360,000 in the Union Army and 260,000 in the Confederate Army. Some 67,000 Union soldiers were killed outright, 43,000 died of wounds, and 130,000 were disfigured for life, often with missing limbs; 94,000 Confederate soldiers died of wounds. No. 1 reason: blood loss.
Yet our focus is on one Union casualty, and it was his statue that was tumbled and torn Tuesday night, then flung amid raucous laughter into Lake Monona. Because he was so violently against slavery, it was the only reason Hans Heg accepted a commission as colonel as a Scandinavian regiment of the 15th Wisconsin Infantry in the fall of 1861. In March of 1862 they left Camp Randall and headed south.
Nine months later, his lone regiment lost over 100 men at Stones River. The colonel’s horse was shot out from under him and, afterwards, his commanding general cited the immigrant from Norway as “the bravest of the brave,” and – why? – was never mentioned; he was fighting so that all men might be free.
By February of 1863, Wisconsin’s 15th came into Chattanooga and spent, as we all know, “a summer in hell.” Then came Sept. 19, 1863 on a Chickamauga hay field when the fearless Col. Heg galloped his horse into a bloody melee. As he led the charge, a Minie ball – which was actually a bullet poured of soft lead that spread with uncommon fury upon impact – struck him, yet he continued to fight until massive blood loss made him fall back. He was rushed to a make-shift field hospital and sometime the next morning, he died a most-painful death in the grass at Chickamauga, Ga., all because he of virtue and decency was willing to give his very life so black men, women, and children, for years evermore would go free.
Black voices say nothing of this. Instead, we hear the whine of rabble-rouser Shaun King, self-described as a “Black Lives Matter activist” who calls for his one-million-plus Twitter followers to destroy any Christian church that contain Jesus Christ statues, cut-glass windows, and most especially any white crosses due to their depiction of the “white” holy family, which King argued are forms of “white supremacy” and “racist propaganda” that promote “oppression.”
Or, there is “Nauseating Nancy,” our Speaker of the House of whom there will never be a statue for the pigeons built, who is demanding that any and all statues of Civil War lineage, be removed from the Nation’s Capital. It’s got to be the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream … In Baltimore, a statue of our Nation’s Founder, George Washington, is horribly defaced because he once owned slaves and, great golly, what becomes of Mr. Jefferson’s Constitution? His slaves became some of legend.
The common-sense reasoning, “That was then, this is now” falls on ears deafened by the promise, “After we get a couple of monuments to strengthen the will of the crowd, Park Avenue will be 'prime-cut' for us treasure hunters … first thing you do is grab some garbage bags and fill ‘em up. Tell any police that you be helping with ‘clean up.”
Don’t you get it? The statues are just part of the set-up. That's where you taunt the police, whip those boys down hard, so when the looting starts you can give ‘em a wink of the eye ‘cause“stand down” orders will have come from City Hall. “We own Hizzoner!” What will we soon rename Washington, D.C.? “Loserville” has to be among the early favorites.
So it is, the only voice we should accept is that which is spoken in Latin: “Pater, ignosce illis, non enim sciunt quod faciunt" Those are the first words our Jesus said from the cross: ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,’ … yes, as the remains of Hans Christian Heg’s monument was pulled from Lake Monona in Madison, Wi., yesterday, each of us must subscribe to our values and beliefs of what is right and what is wrong.
The remaining wreck will now be discarded, along with the memory that until now has provided a clue why his likeness has graced the grounds of an immigrant’s beloved state capitol. May you now rest in peace, Colonel.
royexum@aol.com
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