He stood on the campus green while the birds chirped in the trees, the same way they had that May morning when he left his books behind and marched away to war. The sunlight filtered down through the tree branches, warm Southern sun dappling the green grass with soft shadows. Through four long years, he’d marched through the snows and rains and parching summers….his boots gave out the first year, but still he marched on. Not much food. Sometimes at night he dreamed of his grandmother’s chicken and dumplings set on the table, steam rising from them. And woke to gnaw on a piece of hardtack which was the only food he had left. His ribs were sticking out like those of an old mule he’d once seen that had run off from home and hid in the swamp til near starvation brought him home.
He’d been there that day in 1913, a quiet shadow, when the statue was dedicated. His Polly had been there, too…a little birdlike woman still wearing her widow’s black after 50 years. She was thin, too, painfully thin, and her black dress was carefully mended. She’d gone without a coat in winter, and skipped meals so she could send in pennies and nickles to build the statue. After all the crowd left, she moved hesitantly up to the statue and reached out her thin, wrinkled hand to touch it…. the hand that still wore the ring he’d put on her finger the week before he left for war. Her hand trembled and tears spilled from her pale blue eyes, milky with cataracts now. Their reunion wouldn’t be for several more years yet.
Now, he’s come back to see the statue that’s been torn down….. He’s come in his ragged uniform, stained with the smoke of many battles. He’s come barefoot as he marched and fought. He’s come to see the place where this generation of North Carolinians has decided that he was evil and not worthy of a memorial…. where they tore the statue down with hate and violence and cursing and spitting. The silent ghost sheds a tear.
He looks across the campus green…..and hears the birds. And then he sees a young man, dressed as he is…. more solid than a ghost, but just as silent. He sees one lone man who has come to do him honor, dressed in a ragged uniform, barefoot…..
The silent ghost stands beside the silent man and looks at where the statue was, the statue that was built on love and sacrifice for men who died for love and sacrifice.
Do you see him? I do…..and I will NEVER forget.
(May God bless the late Casey Becknell who traveled to Chapel Hill dressed as a soldier to honor Silent Sam.)
[A year] ago, violent, hate-filled hoodlums tore down the “Silent Sam” memorial statue at UNC Chapel Hill while the campus police, Chapel Hill police and UNC administrators watched and condoned it. A young man named Casey Becknell, a Confederate re-enactor, and his friend James Campbell, traveled to Chapel Hill to see where the statue had been desecrated and made this picture. I wrote the above on seeing this picture of Mr. Becknell. Since that time, in defiance of State law, the UNC Administration has torn down the base the statue rested upon, and planted the area with grass to make it appear it never existed. But there are some of us who will never forget. They can tear down every monument all across the South, shred and burn every flag, even desecrate the very graves of the dead, they can lie and lie and lie….and hate and hate and hate…. but we will NEVER FORGET. And we will never cease to honor and remember our dead heroes.~ John Field Pankow
North Carolina Confederates
Cold Southern Steel 