PART ONE: DEFENDER OF HISTORY DAVID: The past is never dead. It’s not even past. I’m David Swartz. This is “Rebel on Main.” Episode 2: Defending History. DAVID: On a warm Monday morning . . . just a week after the protests in Jessamine County had begun . . . I got a phone call. A voice told me, “Somebody just posted an event on Facebook called “Guarding History.” “Apparently, a guy is guarding the Confederate statue, and he’s doing it now. You’d better get there.” So I hopped in my maroon minivan and raced over to the courthouse in the center of Nicholasville, the biggest town in Jessamine County, Kentucky. Sure enough, as I approached, I could see him—right there beside the statue. He had short-cropped hair. He wore jeans and a blue polo shirt. He stood with his legs astride, kind of like the stance of the statue. And most ominously, there was an enormous handgun jutting from a holster on his hip. He was literally guarding the statue. I parked. I gathered my recording equipment. I approached him slowly. Times were tense, and that gun was big. BRANDON: Good morning. I’m here today just to preserve what there is of history not only in Jessamine County but also Kentucky and the United States. I believe the statue in itself represents the history of the way men stood up for their country and the way that we fought for what we believed in. DAVID: So what do you think should happen to the statue? DAVID: As I asked this, a pickup truck drove by, its engine revving in support of this solitary counter-protest. BRANDON: I believe it should stay right where it’s at. It should stay right where it’s at because that’s where it was placed. And to move it around is to say that we’re ashamed of our past. DAVID: It all seemed like boilerplate language from a Confederate apologist. But then Brandon began to complicate my first assumptions about him. He acknowledged many shameful things in our nation’s history. BRANDON: Not only slavery, but when we came to this country, the only people that were allowed to vote were men. Why couldn’t the women vote? Why couldn’t Black men vote? How come the Indians couldn’t vote? They were here before we were! DAVID: He also expressed an openness to democratic process. BRANDON: Whatever they decide, I’ll be fine with because that’s the choice they made. DAVID: Who “they” was . . . was still unclear. It was probably some combination of the top county executive, Judge David West, the seven county magistrates, and the Kentucky Historical Commission that would decide the fate of the Confederate statue on the courthouse lawn. BRANDON: I’m not one of those people that’s you know, I don’t agree with this, so I’m gonna act like an idiot. That’s not the democratic way to do things. DAVID: Brandon also indicated flexibility. I explained the judge’s idea to repurpose the statue, to make it a monument that honors all men, whether Confederate or Union, who fought in the Civil War. BRANDON: If it stays where it’s at, I’m fine with it. To move this statue from this location says that the county government is ashamed of what it stands for. And what people are construing as it standing for is completely different from what it’s actually here for. It’s a monument to soldiers past, present, and future. It’s not a monument to anything else. DAVID: To prove his point, Brandon began reading the statue’s inscriptions. BRANDON: Honestly, there’s nothing on this statue that says anything about celebrating slavery. “The muffled drums’ sad roll has beat the soldiers’ last tattoo. No more of life’s parade shall meet the brave and daring few.” I don’t see where that says anything about slavery or imprisonment or minority or anything else. That’s a representation of what soldiers do even today. DAVID: Let’s more over to the next panel. . . . Read that one. BRANDON: “On fame’s eternal camping ground, their silent tents are spread and glory guard with solemn round the bivouac of the dead.” That says absolutely nothing to slavery. That speaks of soldiers who have fought and died in this country. DAVID: The next one . . . BRANDON: “Nor braver bled for brighter land. Nor brighter land had a cause so grand.” DAVID: That grand cause, Brandon told me again, was not slavery. It was about the ideal of the heroic, manly, American soldier defending freedom. My own historical judgment is that there’s a little right in what he says—but also a lot that is wrong. In future episodes we’ll explore some facts that tell a very different story. But this time on the podcast, we’ll take seriously Brandon’s contention about Confederate courage and sacrifice during the Civil War. We’ll dig into the convoluted history of this statue, which has got to be the most interesting of any Confederate statue around. And we’ll try to understand its appeal to folks like Brandon. Why does he care so much? Why would he show up on a Monday morning to defend it with a gun? The answers to all of these questions may surprise you. PART TWO: CONFEDERATE HERO DAVID: If anyone in Jessamine County embodied Brandon’s ideal of the soldier, it was the man who dedicated the statue in 1896. Bennett Young was his name. DAVID: [Lone Oak, 0:00] I’m walking around a leafy subdivision on the west side of Nicholasville. It’s called Lone Oak. There are lots of really nice low-slung brick homes here, along with a golf course, clubhouse, and pool. It’s a suburban dream. Just recently I learned that this neighborhood, just a mile from the courthouse, was also the childhood home of Bennett Young. Young is fascinating for a lot of reasons. He was a wicked smart lawyer who battled eastern corporations in federal court. He made and lost several fortunes during his lifetime. He even helped write the second Kentucky Constitution. What I’m most interested in, though, is his relationship to the Civil War. As a teenager—just eighteen years old—he fought in it. As a young veteran on the losing side, he was exiled from his home because of it. In middle age he donated a bunch of money to build Jessamine County’s rebel statue and then gave its dedication address. As an old man, he became one of the most important Confederate memorialists in the United States. It’s hard to imagine as I stand here, but this used to be an antebellum plantation. When Young grew up here in the 1840s, hemp fields stretched for acres. And before a tornado destroyed it in the 1970s, there was a two-story mansion with massive brick walls and tall white columns. It was located just beyond this red brick home in front of me. DAVID: Bennett Young’s childhood on this plantation appears idyllic. He splashed in nearby Jessamine Creek with his six brothers and sisters. He participated in family prayers each morning. Who knows if it’s true, but it was said that he learned to ride a horse before he could walk. Bennett also had an ornery side to him. He liked to steal slave travel passes from his father. He would give them to enslaved people in exchange for pies, cakes, and stick candy. Bennett was only seventeen when the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter and the Civil War began. When his classmates raised the American flag on top of their school, the hazel-eyed, chestnut-haired teenager objected. Even though both of his grandfathers had fought a revolutionary war to birth the nation that flag represented, Bennett was infuriated. When he climbed a ladder to lower the flag, a classmate pulled it out from under him, and Bennett hit the ground. But he didn’t give up. He won the ensuing brawl, climbed the ladder again, and removed the American flag. He replaced it with the Confederate Stars and Bars. So it was no surprise when Bennett enlisted in the Confederate Army. To take the story forward, I asked someone with deep interest in Bennett Young to help. We met on a chilly October morning at Maple Grove Cemetery. Outside of the statue, this is the most Confederate place in Jessamine County. Twenty rebel graves surrounded us. SAM FLORA: My name is Sam Flora. . . . I guess you would describe me as an amateur historian with an interest in the Civil War and especially the Confederate side. DAVID: Sam is the camp commander of the local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Quotes from Sam defending southern heritage have peppered area newspaper articles for years. Especially as Confederate statues in Lexington and the state capitol of Frankfort have come under attack. Here’s part of our conversation. DAVID: So Bennett Young did a lot of things in his life. But what he’s most known for is what he did as a young man. And that is the raid at St. Albans. Could you tell us that story. SAM: October 19, 1864. A cool overcast day in the little town of St. Albans, Vermont, about 14 miles south of the Canadian border. A group of citizens were standing out in front of the main hotel on Main Street conversing when a young man rode up on a magnificent-looking black horse, dismounted, and walked over to them. And some of them may have recognized him because he had been in town for about a week and some of them thought he might be a divinity student because he had often been seen talking about the scriptures and discussing religious subjects. However, they were astonished when he swept aside his coat and pulled two navy Colt revolvers and said, “Gentlemen, I am a Confederate officer, and we have come to take your town.” DAVID: The audacity was stunning. Over the two previous weeks, twenty-one rebel soldiers—all handpicked by Bennett Young—had infiltrated St. Albans. Most arrived in pairs on the train. At least four were from Jessamine County, Kentucky. Almost all the rest were from surrounding counties, an area often called the Bluegrass. Off the train from Montreal, they borrowed guns from friendly townspeople in St. Albans for what they called their “sporting vacation.” But instead of hunting for deer and duck, Young and his confederates took stock of the town—its layout, buildings, and schedules. One told a hotel clerk while checking in that he was Jefferson Davis. Everyone in the lobby snorted and laughed at the joke. The raiders also seduced the town’s young women. Young himself charmed the daughter of the governor. During breaks in reading the Bible together, the new couple ate at local restaurants and strolled around the manicured grounds of the governor’s mansion. REENACTMENT: Good morning! Hello everybody! Thank you so much for coming out. Is everybody ready for a great performance? Woo—alright! DAVID: That’s not audio from 1864. Obviously! It’s from a reenactment on the 150th anniversary of the raid in 2014. ANNOUNCER: All around me people are dressed up in 1860s finery. There’s a smell of campfires in the air, and reenactors camp out here in the park. REENACTMENT: The city of St. Albans and the Raid Committee proudly present the play “The Raid.” Bennett Young and his gang of soldiers would initially meet to make their historical plan at the Tremont House at St. Albans in October 1864. ACTOR 1: We’ll just see you around. There’s a lot of plans going into this. ACTOR 2: How much resistance do you think we’ll get? ACTOR 1: If we don’t play it smart, we’re gonna get a lot of resistance. That’s why our strategy has to be good. DAVID: They prayed in his hotel room. Then launched their raid. Young marched outside the Tremont House, stood in the middle of the street, and declared: ACTOR 1: Yes, indeed, I am a proud officer of the Confederate services, and I will take this town if necessary. SAM: As he was saying that, three small bands of men under him were entering three different banks in St. Albans. At each one of them they took cash and securities amounting to declared to be $200,000. DAVID: The stolen money would be worth about seven million in today’s dollars. ACTOR 2: We’re takin’ the town and exactin’ vengeance for the plunder the Union soldiers have been doin’ in the Shenandoah. I’ll take deposits, and I’ll take that. DAVID: That was a bag of money. ACTOR 3: Oh no. [whimpering] That is private property earned by steel and heart. Please. ACTOR 4: Not a sound. Not a sound. [gunfire] Now open up that cash drawer. DAVID: The raiders, each carrying a pair of Navy .36 caliber pistols, collected the cash. Then they gleefully ordered bank employees to raise their right hands and quote “solemnly swear to uphold the Confederacy and its beloved president, Jefferson Davis.” ACTOR 2: Folks, it’s been a pleasure doing business with you. And I thank you for your contribution. Now hold up your hands, and don’t sound the alarm until two hours after we leave town. DAVID: Meanwhile, another team corralled the wide-eyed townspeople onto the main village green, threatening to “blow their brains out” if they did not cooperate. And yet another team of Confederates stole horses and tried to burn down the town by throwing bottles of sulphur and quicklime into buildings, basically a precursor to the Molotov Cocktail. SAM: Citizens, however, seeing what was going on, started taking potshots at them with shotguns and squirrel rifles. DAVID: One of them was Elinus Morrison, a thick-set railroad worker. Morrison confronted Bennett Young, who was on his horse. Young declared that he had a gun and ordered Morrison to halt. ACTOR 4: I don’t see it. DAVID: Morrison claimed he didn’t see the gun. ACTOR 4: I’ve got to do something to help these townsfolk. And as for you scum, I’ll have you know . . . [gunshot] They shot me through the body! DAVID: Bennett Young had just inflicted the northernmost casualty of the entire Civil War. NARRATOR: And then begins a posse to chase the raiders out of town as Elinus Morrison falls down dead. Now the chase begins: the posse against the raiders! The townsfolk of St. Albans fighting back. [gunfire] SAM: The raiders, on stolen horses, thundered out of town . . . DAVID: “Thundered” might be an overstatement. The raiders were on unfamiliar horses stolen from St. Albans—and they were weighed down by satchels of gold and bulging pockets of cash. In fact, the raiders left a fluttering trail of banknotes before they made it across the Canadian line. SAM: What they did not count on was the fact that these hard-headed New Englanders were not going to part with their money. And they violated neutrality laws by pursuing them into Canada—and then took several of them prisoner. DAVID: So you think they would have taken him back across the line to St. Albans and lynched him in the town even? SAM: Oh yes, yes. I think it was possible. Anybody that would pursue those men over into another country certainly meant business. DAVID: Indeed, the furious Vermonters nearly hanged Bennett Young then and there. But a British officer showed up. . . . Remember, Canada was still a British territory back then. . . . The officer took Young into custody, an act which probably saved his life. Technically, the Canadian government had arrested, not rescued, the raiders. But a sympathetic court judged the Confederates not guilty after the testimony of a Confederate war widow from Jessamine County. She had smuggled documents in her corset all the way from Richmond, Virginia. These documents proved that Young had raided St. Albans under orders from the Confederate States of America. This allowed the Canadian judge to rule that the raiders had engaged in sanctioned acts of war, not criminal behavior. In the meantime, the raiders enjoyed life in a swanky Montreal “jail.” SAM: They were treated more as guests, and the Canadian people seem to be very sympathetic towards the towards these young men. They, I guess, were expecting to see the thugs that the United States were declaring robbers and thugs and murderers. DAVID: But the Canadians didn’t see thugs. They saw Young and his comrades as well-bred gentlemen from the Kentucky Bluegrass. And they treated the Confederates that way. Young dined on fine china, sipped wine, enjoyed tobacco, and wrote cheeky letters to people back in St. Albans. One letter to the Tremont Hotel included money stolen from one of the banks to settle Young’s lodging bill. SAM: Well, the raid was tremendously successful, really. Tactically, it was a great success. DAVID: The raid—this wild raid of Confederates invading the North from the north—was also a strategic success. At least momentarily. As rumors spread of a large-scale invasion from Canada, the North dispatched thousands of soldiers to guard the border. But it was too late for the Confederacy. The rebellion was already crumbling. Just six months after the raid, Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union general Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. But Bennett Young wasn’t finished. This Confederate raider from Jessamine County, Kentucky, became one of the most important preservers of war memory in the commonwealth and in the nation. One of his big projects was our statue. Young would help the Confederacy live past its death. PART THREE: CONFEDERATE HISTORIAN DAVID: Bennett Young’s popularity in later years would have surprised folks right after the war. That’s because lots of people back then held him in low regard. There were a couple of reasons. First, half of Jessamine County’s soldiers were his sworn enemy. They had fought on the Union side. Kentucky, remember, never left the Union. Second, raiding a helpless town and targeting civilian banks didn’t seem like a good model of southern chivalry. Third, Young had some slippery connections with John Wilkes Booth. In fact, the future assassin of President Lincoln was living in Montreal when Young was there. I’ve never found proof that Booth and Young ever worked directly together. But both of them—and lots of other rowdy displaced Confederates—were associated with the so-called Northwest Conspiracy. From their Canadian base, they planned small invasions of northern states. They also tried to mobilize insurrections in northern prisons. They even experimented with bioterrorism, shipping trunks of clothing infected with yellow fever to northern hospitals. Unfortunately for the conspirators, they misunderstood how yellow fever actually spreads. Not from exposure to those infected, but instead through the bite of mosquitos. At any rate, Young and Booth and these conspirators ran in the same circles. The night before the St. Albans raid, Booth played billiards at a Montreal hotel with other conspirators and boasted about a plan to assassinate President Lincoln. The federal government was aware of Young’s connection to the Northwest Conspiracy. It knew about his raid on St. Albans. In fact, there was so much bitterness that after the war President Andrew Johnson rejected Young’s appeal for amnesty. Federal officials in Kentucky posted a large reward for “evil minded persons” like Young who had “crossed the border of the United States and committed capital offenses against the property and life of American citizens.” Young was forced to live in exile. And to many in Jessamine County, Bennett Young was more scoundrel than hero. SAM: There was a great deal of animosity, even down on the low personal family levels. It was literally in Kentucky a civil war because it divided brothers, fathers and sons, classmates, business partners. So it was very much a civil war. DAVID: A civil war that created divisions even among compatriots. Lots of Confederates viewed the St. Albans raiders as foolhardy, undisciplined robbers. As we sat in the cemetery talking, Sam told me a wild story about another raider: Louis Price. He faced strong criticism for his involvement in the raid. SAM: Well, Price, like Young, was unable to return to Kentucky until after the war. When he did return, he had not settled into anything. He was still living with his mother. DAVID: But Price did like to carouse with his friends. SAM: In playing cards one night here in in Nicholasville with several men, he seems to have won quite a bit of one gentleman's money. DAVID: That gentleman was a fellow rebel veteran. SAM: The gentleman made a remark. Maybe there was intoxication at the time, I don’t know. But made the remark that he could only expect such cheating from a robber, a man who was a robber. And of course, he was alleging to Price’s participation in the St Albans raid. Price, as men will, took offense at that, and I understand that he beat the man up very severely. DAVID: By the end of the fight, Price had him pinned to the ground. With a knife at his throat, the man took back his remarks and begged to be released. The two separated. But the story wasn’t over. SAM: The next day as Price was walking down the street with a couple of friends, this man stepped out of his store with a pistol and shot Price to death. He then jumped on a horse and left the town and was never heard of again. DAVID: Price was never heard from again either. He died on the street, leaving behind his widowed mother and a fiancé. He was to have been married in just weeks. At that point, Bennett Young wasn’t home. Still exiled, he sailed for Ireland, where he studied law at Queens College in Belfast. It was rumored that Young paid his tuition with St. Albans gold. SAM: I guess maybe that what he had passed through and all these legal proceedings had decided that he would become a lawyer. He maybe got the bug. DAVID: He sure did. Three years later Young graduated with first honors from Queens. Right around that time, President Johnson offered a general pardon for the offense of treason, even to the most notorious of Confederates like Young. So Young returned to his old Kentucky home. SAM: He opened a law practice in Louisville, and by the time he was 30 years old he had one of the largest, most successful law practices in Kentucky. It was said that people when they found out he was arguing an important case, they would come just to hear him just to hear his arguments. DAVID: For many years Young focused on his legal career. And kept a low Confederate profile. Probably because he was worried about still being prosecuted for the St. Albans raid. But in the 1890s, he turned his public speaking skills toward Civil War memory. SAM: Oh, yeah, he was very active in Confederate memorialization after the war. Of course, his crowning achievement was working with the United Daughters of the Confederacy to get the Jefferson Davis monument placed. DAVID: Davis was the president of the Confederacy. And the enormous monument in Davis’s hometown of Fairview, Kentucky, is still the tallest unreinforced concrete structure in the world. And Bennett Young raised much of the money to build it. SAM: He served as president of the United Confederate Veterans from 1912 to 1916 in the latter years of his life. He was the keynote speaker for the southern side at the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1913. So he was very, very well-known and a great orator. DAVID: Young really was a terrific speaker. Six feet tall in an era when men were short, he had a regal bearing and a striking white mustache. Behind a podium, he played scholar, storyteller, teacher, and poet. When he turned on the emotion, said one observer, women sobbed and men reached for their handkerchiefs. DAVID: Here on Main Street is where Jessamine County’s Confederate statue was conceived. It was in May of 1880, about fifteen years after the war and about fifteen years before it was ultimately erected. Imagine a group of fifteen old men seated around tables, drinking coffee and eating donuts. Now it’s a coffeeshop called Mercantile Coffee & Feed. Back then it was a drugstore where a group of Confederate veterans gathered. They included the pharmacist, a banker, a Methodist preacher, and a farmer—a “plain, practical” farmer, as the newspaper described him. Nearly all of this group had grown up with Bennett Young. Some had even fought with him. Their conversation centered on the good old days. They shared stories of the war—of their exploits and of the trials they had suffered. Like old men do, they grumbled about what their world had become. They especially begrudged, and I quote, “the generation coming after us” that did not appreciate “the triumphant valor and transcendent glory” of the “crumbling bodies lying yonder.” Yonder was Maple Grove Cemetery, the graveyard three blocks north of here on Main Street where about twenty of their former Confederate comrades were buried. DAVID: This group of proud and annoyed veterans decided to resurrect their comrades’ memory in the form of a statue. They organized themselves into the Jessamine Confederate Memorial Association, and they began to raise money. They were not wealthy men. So the going was slow. Each year the members contributed $1. And they persuaded their wives to host fundraisers: strawberry festivals, musicals, dinners, lectures. It took them fifteen years to come up with enough to pay the $1,500 bill. And that still should not have been enough. The original estimate to purchase and install a seven-foot-high bronze statue was $4,000. Too much for the small county, especially after the economic depression of 1893. But the county fathers were scrappy. SAM: They got it at a bargain. It was, I think, only about if I remember correctly, I’ve read it was about $1,500. Even in the 1890s, that was a bargain. So they got a bargain basement monument. DAVID: But there was a problem with this bargain basement monument. A reason it was so cheap. That’s because it was actually a Union statue. That’s right: Jessamine County’s Confederate statue was Union. . . . Here’s how it went down. A different Kentucky county—I haven’t figured out which one—had ordered a Union statue from a factory in Chicago. But when it came time for delivery, that county didn’t make good on their payment. So Jessamine County made an offer to take it off their hands at a big discount. The manufacturer, a non-partisan capitalist named Mitchell, was eager to deal, happy to make money on both sides of the sectional divide. He had already manufactured Union statues at Gettysburg and Chickamauga. And he was more than willing to reverse this Union statue to a Confederate identity. It was easy enough to recast the buckle to read “C.S.A.” for “Confederate States of America.” The hat, however, was another matter. Jessamine County’s new statue wore a kepi-style cap, not a Confederate-style slouch hat. That was a problem. Hats mattered—and they held deep meaning. It would be like trading a red MAGA hat for a Black Lives Matter cap. They were totally different, profoundly oppositional, and looked very different. The Confederate slouch hat had a full brim with a band of tassels around its base. The kepi had a kind of squashed look with a visor. Everyone could tell the difference. In early June of 1896, our cross-dressing statue was delivered to the courthouse lawn near the town water pump. He must have looked absolutely bizarre. This kepi hat-wearing soldier had transformed—but only partly—from Union to Confederate. At the dedication several weeks later, a member of the statue committee would confess that the process had, and I quote, “taxed the taste, the energy, and the wisdom of those in charge to their fullest extent.” When I first read that line, I laughed out loud. Their long-hoped-for Confederate statue was wearing the wrong hat. DAVID: June 15, 1896, a Monday, was the big day. At 11:24 a.m. a passenger train arrived from Louisville carrying Jessamine County’s very own Confederate hero Bennett Young and 135 other veterans. Their former comrades met them at the station. And it was a big rebel reunion. They marched in formation down Main Street toward the courthouse. I’m now standing where that march began, next to an old Pizza Hut with cars speeding by. And I’m trying to imagine the scene from 130 years ago: hundreds of old men in their sixties, dressed in tattered gray uniforms that didn’t fit anymore, unsteadily making their way down the dusty street. Then gathering confidence as they passed Maple Grove Cemetery, several churches, a bicycle repair shop, a steam laundry, and then by the drugstore where it all began. All these buildings were displaying the Confederate colors and signs that read, “Welcome, Rebels.” DAVID: By the time these vintage rebels reached the courthouse, the crowd had swelled to 4,000 people. That was double the city’s normal size. They clambered off trains. They rumbled into town on wagons. Some rode in on mules. From all over the countryside. A brass band played “Dixie.” And then . . . as if to confirm the righteousness of their grand cause, the clouds parted. The sun shone as two children pulled a cord. The white veil fell. And the rapturous crowd got its first glimpse. Veterans shrieked rebel yells, and cheers escalated to a deafening roar. Then Bennett Young rose to deliver the dedicatory address. DAVID: As we sat amidst the Confederate graves, I asked Sam to read Young’s opening lines. SAM: The dull gray shading of early morn hung over Charleston Harbor when the sound of artillery broke the stillness of the coming day and proclaim to the world that the greatest struggle mankind had ever witnessed had begun. DAVID: The speech proceeded to focus on struggle and sacrifice and loss. SAM: The unknown list carried with it a terror and anguish that even the most widespread bereavement could never impart. DAVID: Ok, we need to stop there. This kind of language doesn’t translate well to the twenty-first century. SAM: Today we read his speeches and we say, well, they’re kind of sentimental, they’re kind of flowery. DAVID: But back in the 1890s, this speech, which lasted well over an hour, was riveting. SAM: Yep, I think we need to remember that in that day and age, this type of ceremony would have been equivalent to a rock concert or a UK basketball game . . . DAVID: Here in Jessamine County, University of Kentucky basketball is a big deal. SAM: Especially when you had a man of Young’s character and reputation. And of course, he was a hometown boy on top of that. It was like Elvis Presley coming back to Memphis. This was a big deal for people. That’s why you had thousands of people show up for this type of thing to today, we would think would be very mundane. And Young was one of the great orators of his day, among in an era of Victorian era where men could speak and make allusions to the classics, quote Latin phrases in French and Greek and talk about history in great depth and our own history in great depth, without notes even, and throw their voices across thousands of people. DAVID: So Bennett Young was a gifted orator, but it’s important that his message resonated too. It’s hard to fathom today, but Jessamine County had lost nearly a generation of men to the Civil War. SAM: Far off in the stricken land whence they came, loving hearts mourn their loss. There are vacant chairs that will never be filled. There are firesides which will never be the same because these young warriors will never return. DAVID: And he was just getting started. Littering this super-long speech was earthy language . . . like blood, destruction, suffering, storms, ravages, afflictions. Not all men returned home with whole bodies, and to demonstrate his point in the middle of his speech, Bennett Young called forward R. T. Haley, who had lost his right leg to a cannon ball. One in thirteen soldiers returned home with missing limbs, so the crowd knew lots of Haleys. But Haley was also lucky. As the statue’s inscription—“Our Confederate Dead”—made clear, many in fact did not return at all. Some perished from disease. Some died from the thrusts of bayonets. Still others were struck down by bullets. Their fate was visible on the stage. An old gray jacket hung there, pierced twice by bullets. Young told the crowd that an average of 300 deaths occurred every twenty-four hours. And this for the 15-hundred days of the war. More than one-fifth of all military-aged white Kentucky men died. SAM: Can we say they died in vain? DAVID: Here Bennett Young began to wrestle with the result of the Civil War. SAM: Nay, nay, it cannot be so. There are many instances in the world’s history where the cause of the just had been defeated and where the wrong has prevailed. Why, indeed, did God not bless the Confederacy despite the pleas of hundreds of thousands of pious, consecrated people? We come to bless the soul that garners their dust and declare, by this monument, which we trust will remain forever, that the memories of the virtues of the courage, of the chivalry, of the bravery, of the sacrifices, of the sufferings of the renowned of our departed comrades shall be deathless as their deeds were illustrious. DAVID: So many of Jessamine County’s fathers and brothers and sons had died. But in a monument, they could live on. A week after the dedication, the newspaper said that the permanence of granite and bronze would quote “rescue their names from oblivion.” In this way, mourning could transform to meaning. 120 years later, that was certainly true for Sam. As we sat on camp chairs, he was visibly moved by the gleaming white gravestones surrounding us. SAM: I feel a part of our history. I feel a kinship with these young men who often didn’t understand exactly why they were doing what they were doing. DAVID: Part of it stems from Sam’s genealogy. He had Confederate ancestors from Virginia and North Carolina. He knew that—and felt that—from a young age. SAM: So I’ve read and studied Civil War history all my life. DAVID: But that’s not all. His devotion also rests in family still living. SAM: I have a son in the Marine Corps. And I know what it is to send a son into the service. At any time, he could be fighting on a foreign shore. And I think about the parents that sent these young men off—and sometimes the wives and the children. I’m always astounded by the humanity of this war and the great tragedy of this war. That’s what makes it, I think, so important. So interesting. DAVID: Sam then pointed at one of the gravestones. SAM: But John W. Martin from Alabama, who was just nineteen years old when he died. He had a family. He had a history. He had a story. And he deserves to be remembered. DAVID: Using Confederate history, Sam was invoking universal themes of courage and sacrifice and loss and identity. He was saying that everybody matters. And it wasn’t just Sam. It was Bennett Young more than a century ago. And it was Brandon, the modern-day defender of the statue, the guy with the gun. All of them were contemplating good and deep questions. What is the meaning of a lost war? What does war reveal about the human condition? How can God be both good and sovereign in the midst of terror and anguish? Their questions provoked a question of my own: Isn’t this what Sam and Brandon should be doing? Sure, they were using Confederate history to wrestle with history and the human condition. But they were doing it. They were wrestling with history and the human condition. Why take this source of meaning away from them? PART 4: HISTORY UNDER ATTACK DAVID: And then I became Brandon’s Facebook friend. And a lot of what I found there made me uneasy, even disturbed. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, Brandon called masks the mark of the beast. As he urged friends to post that “Police Lives Matter,” he denounced Black Lives Matter as communistic and satanic. He wrote that “Breonna Taylor’s mother won’t be satisfied until she gets a fat payoff.” It’s not just that Brandon had political opinions. It was also the way he voiced them. There were constant and strident references to a new civil war, and there were allusions to violence. Three days after the election, he posted a song entitled “If You Have a Right to Burn My Flag (Then I Have a Right to Kick Your Ass).” A week after the election, he noted that ammunition prices had dropped to under 50 cents a round. I felt betrayed. Sure, he wore a gun on his belt, but Brandon had seemed so friendly and reasonable in person. To try to make sense of this, I consulted political scientist Robert P. Jones. His research draws from four decades of polling data to show that white Christian Americans are no longer demographically or culturally in the majority. ROBERT JONES: As a numbers guy, I came to realize that we were really seeing the U.S. come to the end of an era, that is, what I’ve dubbed the “end of white Christian America.” DAVID: In fact, that’s the title of his book: The End of White Christian America. A terrifying title if you’re a white Christian American who wants his country to stay that way. Jones projected that by the year 2045, the United States would be a majority-minority nation. JONES: As a result, I think many white Christians in the country have felt, really, a sense of vertigo as these changes have hit them. And they’ve really sensed the loss of their place at the center of American culture, both in terms of demographics but also in terms of cultural power. DAVID: At the end of his book, Jones offers a eulogy. White Christian America, he writes, was a place where “few gave a second thought to saying, ‘Merry Christmas!’ to strangers on the street ... a world of shared rhythms that punctuated the week: Wednesday spaghetti suppers and prayer meetings, invocations from local pastors under the Friday night lights at high school football games, and Sunday blue laws that shuttered Main Street for the Sabbath.” It’s a culture that had a hold on much of the United States, but a particularly strong hold in the South. And it’s slipping—even here in white Christian Jessamine County, Kentucky. No wonder there’s a sense of vertigo, of disorientation, of anxiety. And it has been made much worse by economic conditions here in the foothills of Appalachia. Ours is an era of inflation and declining manufacturing and coal production. It’s harder to make a living. My reading of Jones’s book coincided with deep research I was doing into the time and place where the Confederate statue stands. In our local public library I spent hours and hours reading 130-year-old copies of the Jessamine Journal, the weekly newspaper here. Column after column, page after page, month after month, year after year in the late-1800s. Mark Twain dubbed this era—the post-Civil War era—“the Gilded Age,” a time of social problems and corruption masked by a veneer of rapid economic expansion. And I could see why, partly because those conditions seemed eerily familiar now. The troubled 1890s, the decade the statue was born, reminded me so much of what Jones was saying about the 2020s. Turn-of-the-century Jessamine County looked like it was recovering nicely from the Civil War. The newspaper was chock full of advertisements hawking fancy slippers, luxurious drapes, carriages, cigars, and diamonds. It looked like a Sears-Roebuck catalog. And downtown Nicholasville was looking good. It boasted a new courthouse, marble works, and carriage manufacturers, all housed in several impressive two-story blocks built with stone, metal, brick, and glass. But residents complained that these were just . . . facades. That they were deceiving. Where were the electric lights and decent sidewalks like up North? Where was the opera house? The courthouse, which took decades to pay off, was more aspirational than reflective of the county’s actual economic fortunes. Most citizens were still scratching a living off small farms by day. They gazed longingly at the Sears Wish Book by night. They spoke constantly—and desperately—of a never-quite-arrived economic “boom.” In truth, Jessamine County struggled to adapt to the new post-Civil War economy. The old way of doing business involved whiskey, stories, haggling, promises. That’s what Jessamine County was good at. The new way involved price lists created from afar. A weekly feature in the Jessamine Journal called “Land, Stock and Crop” described futures prices that mysteriously rose and fell. Local entrepreneurs felt like they had lost control. And nationwide, the proportion of self-employed middle-class men suffered a precipitous drop from 67 percent to 37 percent. The declining status of white men coincided with growing immigration. One article complained that an influx of immigrants “cut the prices of wages so that our honest workmen were reduced almost a third in their wages.” An uglier article—who knows if it’s true—described how Chinese laborers were being smuggled across American borders in coffins with concealed air holes. The author suggested that the U.S. government “bury them alive” when they arrived. White men also faced a new challenge from women. “Lady evangelists” and suffragettes wanting the vote were organizing in the Bluegrass. In 1894, an Equal Rights Association chapter opened in Jessamine County. In 1895, Susan B. Anthony, a prominent suffragette, came to speak at Asbury College’s chapel. Local men began to complain that young women were wearing masculine attire. And teenage boys were turning into “dandies” who simply “don’t know how to work.” One article complained that they quote “attempt to earn their living and look pretty at the same time.” Another, entitled “How to Cook a Husband,” imagined a dystopian city governed by women that prohibited spitting on pavements and hanged men for “being out with the boys the night before.” In another article that opposed women voting, a Confederate veteran advised holding on to the vanishing traditions. He wrote, “Stick to the old landmarks.” The landmark at the center of this story is Jessamine County’s statue of a Confederate soldier—a soldier with the wrong hat. It may have looked ridiculous back in 1896, but now it seems perfectly normal, even kind of regal. And on a hot June day in 2020, a fellow named Brandon was giving it homage. BRANDON: This is just me taking two hours out of the day. Just got off work a little bit ago. So I’ve worked all night. DAVID: That’s Brandon explaining why he looked so tired while defending the statue. He had worked through the night in his factory job to support his family. He felt like he was living in a new Gilded Age. It appeared to glitter with prosperity. But Brandon himself sure wasn’t benefiting. The system seemed rigged, as rigged now as it did to folks in the 1890s. BRANDON: I hope that all of this across the nation settles down soon. Because currently, we’re not headed in a good direction, regardless of who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s not been good for any of us. It’s caused a lot of stress for a lot of people. Still a lot of people unemployed right now. DAVID: Brandon, a single blue-collar dad, wants to be a good citizen and a good father. But he’s struggling and feels embattled. He talks about broken relationships, loss of income, credit destruction, and a decaying and unstable society. The statue we were standing by is quite a contrast. It’s solid. Its stone foundation . . . laid over a century ago . . . extends deep in the earth to rock. It offers stability in a world spinning out of control. The statue is not just solid. It’s also majestic and powerful. It rises eighteen feet into the air. “American manhood,” Bennett Young intoned at its dedication, “is greater and nobler for the lessons, the examples, and the teachings of that tremendous struggle.” I can see it. As I gaze up, this soldier models virility. He bears a long bayonet. His left leg is thrust forward. He stands astride a county described back in 1896 as quote “a buxom lassie in her first silk dress.” This statue of a volunteer soldier showed that at the dawn of the twentieth century, a regular citizen could be a real man. Men still stood tall, even as women sought the right to vote. The land still mattered in a world of machines. Here in the courthouse square—full of consumerism and vice with its soda fountains, fashions, and saloons—this statue taught moral character and autonomy. Jessamine’s county fathers were suggesting that they too could stand resolutely in this brave new world. No wonder Brandon felt compelled to defend the statue. Unlike that earlier era, he supports women voting. But he does observe a crisis of masculinity. Nowadays, too many men are sissified and don’t know how to camp and fish and hunt. This statue, which stands for small-town, old-time, traditional values, offers hope that maybe our nation can recover those values. BRANDON: All I can say is I still believe in this country. And I believe we’ve been through a lot and 200 plus years that we can fix this. DAVID: The historian in me saw Brandon as a textbook case of white Christian American anxiety. He was using history to cope with perceived social marginalization. The Confederate story was giving him identity in a rapidly shifting landscape. And that story was threatened across the nation by gay activists, Black Lives Matter, and woke historians who want to “erase history.” Crowds had once cheered this very statue. But now, large crowds of people were milling about dangerously close to the statue. They were chanting and marching and threatening. Brandon had brought his gun to defend it. If the historian in me was convinced of this analysis, the human in me was not so much. As it happened, I was writing this episode when a family friend got mad at me for posting an essay about the “Appeal to Heaven” flag. If you haven’t seen it, this is a growing symbol in right-wing America. The flag has a white background with a green pine tree on it. My essay argued that it’s almost a perfect representation of Christian nationalism, especially in its use of history to valorize violence. After reading the essay, my friend vented on Facebook, saying that academics like me are “invested in fearmongering.” David Swartz, she concluded, “discounts the very real sense of disenfranchisement of the American underclass, who, understandably, view white elites such as Dr. Swartz with enormous suspicion. I wouldn’t trust his take on this symbol, or any symbol of an oppressed or populist class.” I’ll be honest—it didn’t feel good. It made me a little angry to be explained away by my social location. I wanted to tell her that my analysis comes from good historical training. Don’t explain my ideas and my behavior solely through the cultural and economic forces that have acted upon me. But was I doing the same to Brandon? Would he experience my narration of him as leftist and condescending? I don’t know. He’s moved away from Jessamine County, and we haven’t connected for a while. We began the episode with Brandon and me talking beside the statue on the courthouse lawn in Nicholasville. We didn’t know it at the time, but there was a person watching us from inside the courthouse. That person was Judge David West, the head of the county’s executive branch. You’ll remember him from the first episode when he put up a sign saying that Jessamine County is addressing options so that the statue will reflect the county’s highest values.” But Brandon and I, it turns out, were making him nervous. Knowing what a powder keg these weeks were, Judge West was clearly concerned about this exchange between a pointy-headed history professor and a gun-toting defender of the statue. BRANDON: How’s it going, David? DAVID: Brandon here is talking to the Judge, not me. BRANDON: I didn’t think you were going to ignore me. [Laughter] JUDGE WEST: How are you? Good to see you. BRANDON: I thought you were coming out here to scold me. JUDGE WEST: [Laughter] No! DAVID: This is part of the democratic process, isn’t it. JUDGE WEST: This is something nobody pays attention to until a spotlight is put on it. BRANDON: I hope this is the biggest spotlight we get, because we don’t need that garbage down the road. DAVID: Brandon is talking about the big protests up in Lexington. JUDGE WEST: Well, what we want to avoid is any vandalism. Or any kind of problem. DAVID: I wanted to know about the process for what’s happening. So there’s a committee you’re forming, and then do they make a recommendation? JUDGE WEST: Just an advisory committee. We’re just going to bat around some ideas. DAVID: Have you formed the committee? Do you know who’s on it? JUDGE WEST: I’ve got a couple of members on it—about five people, yeah. . . . I don’t have the right color skin to have another perspective. But I get it. Just like a Confederate flag, just like a swastika. Is that the same to person with dark skin as the swastika is to a Jew? I can’t answer those questions. DAVID: OK, and then who makes the final call? JUDGE WEST: You know, I don’t know whether the Kentucky Historic Commission has something to do with this, or whether it’s a total county deal. As we march along, those are the questions we’re gonna find out. DAVID: Indeed, as the weeks marched along, the debate continued. A host of new characters appeared, characters with darker skin than Brandon and David West. They told different stories about Jessamine County’s past. And they have different feelings about the statue. OUTRO: Thanks for listening to “Rebel on Main.” Special thanks to story editor Stephen Smith, audio producer Barry Blair, the St. Albans Messenger for reenactment audio, Robert P. Jones and the Public Religion Research Institute for commentary, and the Louisville Institute for its generous support. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast—and leave a rating and a review so others can find us. For pictures of the statue, the St. Albans raiders, and other historical artifacts, head to rebelonmain.com. I’m David Swartz. I’ll see you next time.