User:VT440genoa/sandbox

Netherzone, ArloBarnes--I've made major revisions, with new material and citations, for the sections on environs, structure, plith, obelisk, and installation based on my earlier suggestions, above. The proposed new text is:

Environs

The Soldiers Monument sits in the center of the rectangular Santa Fe plaza. Its site is at the crux of eight walkways that radiate to the four corners and four sides and connect to a parameter walkway. The present siting is based on the 1860s, neoclassical town square re-design of the early, bare plaza grounds. The plaza has native shade trees, grass, flower beds and replica Victorian iron benches. Stone banco seating border a flower bed at the monument. In accord with the 1967 John Gaw Meem plaza renovation plan, replica Victorian iron fencing surrounds the monument base. On the south side of the monument, a concrete stand with interpretive brass plaque prepared in 1973 by the State Cultural Properties Review Committee explains the context for monument wording: Monument texts reflect the character of the times in which they are written and the temper of those who wrote them. This monument was dedicated in 1868 near the close of a period of intense strife which pitted northerner against southerner, Indian against white, Indian against Indian. Thus, we see on this monument, as in other records, the use of such terms as ‘savage’ and ‘rebel’. Attitudes change and prejudices hopefully dissolve. The brass plaque was removed in 2020.

Structure

The monument structure is comprised of a stone foundation, locally produced brick and lime core for the base (plinth), local stone cut for the inscribed panels, imported Italian marble trim with marble columns and marble wreathes (Victorian funerary motifs), and marble obelisk. The cenotaph, with its Egyptian architectural associations, is 33-feet tall. The corner stone on the southeast corner at grade is 7,019.5’ above sea level. A time capsule was added October 24, 1867 at the corner stone laying ceremony. It contained coins of the period, local newspapers, legislative journals, and other commemorative items. Builders were McGee & Brother (John and Michael McGee), architects, master stone cutter Tomas Baca, and local craftsmen. The Italian marble was purchased from the Edgar Warne & Company marble works, St. Louis. The cut stone panels were inscribed by local craftsmen from revised wording dictated by an act of the 1868 legislature. On August 8, 1974, the word "savage" was chiseled off panel 4. In 2020, panel 4 was broken out and the obelisk was toppled.

Plinth

Inscriptions In an act of January 29, 1868, the territorial legislature dictated the wording for the four panels to be inscribed and placed on the monument. Wording from the act follows: ON THE FRONT SLAB: ERECTED BY THE PEOPLE OF NEW MEXICO THROUGH THEIR LEGISLATURES OF 1866 - 7 - 8. MAY THE UNION BE PERPETUAL. ON THE SECOND SLAB: TO THE HEROES OF THE FEDERAL ARMY WHO FELL AT THE BATTLE OF VALVERDE, FOUGHT WITH THE REBELS FEBRUARY 21, 1862 ON THE THIRD SLAB: TO THE HEROES OF THE FEDERAL ARMY WHO FELL AT THE BATTLES OF CANON DEL APACHE AND PIGEON'S RANCH (LA GLORIETA) FOUGHT WITH THE REBELS MARCH 28, 1862 AND TO THOSE WHO FELL AT THE BATTLE FOUGHT WITH THE REBELS AT PERALTA APRIL 15, 1862. ON THE FOURTH SLAB: TO THE HEROES WHO HAVE FALLEN IN THE VARIOUS BATTLES WITH THE SAVAGE INDIANS IN THE TERRITORY OF NEW MEXICO Panel 1 faces east, panel 2 faces south, panel 3 faces west, and panel 4 faces north. The panels were finished by local stone cutters in March 1868 as dictated, but with minor errors in the inscriptions. The word “April” on panel 3 was corrected but the word “February” on panel 2 was left misspelled without the first “r.”  Legislation in the 1909 council proposed repairing the misspelled “Febuary” and, because of complaints at the time, the replacing of the word “Rebel” with “Confederate,” but the measure failed to pass. On August 8, 1974, the word “savage” was chiseled out of panel 4. In June 2020, the panel was further damaged. In October 2020, the panel 4 was broken out from the plinth. Note: “The Battles of Cañon del Apache and Pigeon’s Ranch” mentioned in panel 3 refers to phases of the Civil War Battle of Glorieta Pass, “La Glorieta,” March 26–28, 1862.

Obelisk

The obelisk was of standard design from Edgar Warne & Company marble works, St. Louis, the contractor for the monument material. In the spring of 1868, the five marble components of the obelisk – four tapered shaft segments and a pyramidal capstone – were placed atop the plinth’s tiered stone cap. Construction was completed in June 1868. In 2020, city workers removed the capstone while examining the monument’s structural stability for relocation plans. Over one hundred and fifty-two years after completion, on October 12, 2020, the top three components of the shaft were toppled.

Installation

Like other similarly-named monuments (see Soldier’s Monument), it was erected in the aftermath of the American Civil War.[5]  In 1866, after complaints that Union graves were being robbed in New Mexico’s Civil War battlefields, the 1866-1867, predominately Hispanic territorial legislature passed an act providing funds to care for the Union soldiers’ graves and to erect a monument or monuments as a memorial in honor of lost Union soldiers (a majority of whom had been natives of New Mexico ). A monuments committee, established by the legislature, was chaired by Judge John P. Slough, former Union commander at the Battle of Glorieta Pass. The committee selected the site for Santa Fe’s Soldiers Monument, hired architects and workmen, and contracted with a marble works for a cenotaph of modest design. At the October 24, 1867 cornerstone laying, Slough inserted a time capsule into the cornerstone. Discord and partisan politics of the time interfered with the construction; Slough was killed in Santa Fe by a political rival, December 1867. A new committee undertook the revising of the intent of the under-construction monument. The next legislature, 1867-1868, passed an act January 29, 1868 that stated: “Whereas no provision has been made for honoring the brave victims who have perished in the various wars with the savage Indians surrounding us, and this Legislative Assembly desires that a slab perpetuating the memory of those be included.” The fourth panel text was revised. In March workers cut slabs from a local stone quarry and inscribed the text dictated in the 1868 act. The work may have been rushed – causing errors in the inscriptions – to be ready for May 30, 1868, the first nation-wide Memorial Day, when a solemn ceremony dedicated the nearly completed Soldiers Monument (it was completed with the placing of the capstone a few days later in June 1868).

History and Symbol, 1868-1970 -- (still working on this new section)

Comments welcome VT440genoa (talk) 20:28, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

new drft material History and Symbol, 1868-1973

During the late nineteenth century, the Soldiers Monument was used for annual Memorial Day events, a place for Union veterans to, at first, gather, decorate, and hear brief presentations to honor and mourn the Union dead. The monument might be decorated for other holidays or at news of the death of nationally known Union veterans. With the establishment of the Santa Fe National Cemetery, and the 1870s movement of soldiers’ remains from their battlefield graves to the national cemetery, Memorial Day ceremonies changed. They included decorating the Soldiers Monument, processions from the plaza to the national cemetery, and, joined by the community, the placing of decorations and flowers at graves. Reading of the Gettysburg Address and speeches might follow. By the early 1900s, only a handful of Union soldiers survived to march past the Soldiers Monument; the last followed the procession on Memorial Day, 1933. From the 1880s, use of the word “Rebel” in the inscriptions of the Soldiers Monument was considered an insult to the South. In 1908-1909, the New Mexico governor offered to fund the change in panel wording while the legislative Council passed a resolution supporting inscribing “Confederate” in place of “Rebel.” In opposition, a former governor and veterans gained support for leaving the monument “sacred and unmutilated.”  They saw the monument not only as a memorial but a symbol of an historic era, a relic to be preserved in memory of the territory’s loyalty to the Union. The monument was left unchanged and, as the city began an era of tourism promotion, the monument served as a historic relic with the Rebel word noted (see post card image). In the 1930s, another effort by Texans to have the monument removed because of the word Rebel failed to gain support, the editor of the local paper stating: “you can’t change history even if you don’t like it, and that the soldiers’ monument is a grand old quaint relic which should stay right where it is until it disintegrates at the hands of the elements.”

During the 1910s-1960s, as the city encouraged tri-culture heritage tourism, efforts grew to remove the monument and replace it with either a gazebo or with a statue of a Spanish colonizer, Don Diego De Vargas. Local Hispanic groups offered to remove the obelisk and on the base place the statue, considered a more fitting representation of the plaza’s history. Pulitzer Prize winning author Oliver Le Farge defended the Soldiers Monument with an often-reprinted essay praising the monument’s value as preserved historic relic over any new statue. He wrote: “the monument is authentic, it is unpretentious, it is a true record of a passage in New Mexico History…For heaven’s sake, [if] you who want to keep a little of the real Santa Fe, resist every move to remove those stones as you would resist having the bones of your ancestors ground into fertilizer for the capitol gardens.” During the 1950s, La Farge and other preservationists supported a city architectural preservation ordinance for the downtown’s historic core and the nomination of the plaza (including the Soldiers Monument) as a National Historic Landmark, one of the first. The De Vargas statue proposal was tabled as another movement, to replace the Soldiers Monument with a festive gazebo, evolved from early suggestions to be a major component of the John Gaw Meem 1967 renovation plan of the plaza. Preservationists again opposed the removal attempt and Meem revised his design ; he wrote, the monument is “like an ugly child, you love it like it is.” (A gazebo would eventually be added to the north side of the plaza; and a De Vargas statue was placed in Cathedral Park).

During the 1960s, too, the panel 4, with the words “Savage Indians,” became the focus of criticism. In his 1960 column, La Farge had noted the wording, while a Santa Fe Indian School teacher wrote that the inscription of “Savage Indians” was bad enough added to what the children had to see on TV and movie Westerns. An elder of the Teseque pueblo added his first realization he was a second-class citizen was when he read the words “Savage Indian” on the panel as a child. He added, the word should be changed: “why should future generations of American Indian children continue to have this insulting reminder that the conquerors considered them little more than blood-lusting beasts, not notable martyrs fighting for their homes?” By the end of the decade Native voices were increasingly complaining about such symbols of conquest as the monument and, in 1973, the American Indian Movement leadership wrote the governor of New Mexico to change the wording of panel 4 or remove the Soldiers Monument. The governor asked the city, which first passed a motion to remove it, then faced local opposition by old families and preservationists. Because of an earlier Federal grant the state had also agreed to preserve the monument for a set period. The city reversed its decision. The governor helped with state commissions proposing a plaque be added explaining the words “Rebel” and “Savage Indians” and their context. Native organizations were advised, with agreement at the official state level but concern by those who thought the plaque was not enough. The GI Forum in Taos sent a message to the governor that stated the panel 4 wording was disturbing and should be obliterated: “no explanation in favor of the phrase can be sufficiently convincing.” After meeting with Pueblo elders, the state revised the text again. By the end of 1973, the growing controversy superficially appeared resolved.

Controversy SFNM June 17, 2020 By 2020, an indigenous activist from Red Nation said to a reporter that the "racist monument against indigenous peoples has to go."