Madison mayor orders removal of two Confederate memorials from cemetery

MILWAUKEE — Two Confederate memorials will be removed from a Madison cemetery, the Wisconsin city’s said Thursday.

Mayor Paul Soglin ordered the removal of a "Confederate's rest commemorative memorial" from city-owned Forest Hill Cemetery.

"There is a larger monument, which has not garnered as much attention, which will also be removed," Soglin said in a statement posted on his Facebook account. That marker was installed about 100 years ago and will require heavy machinery to remove, Soglin said in an interview.

The memorials honor 140 Confederate soldiers who died in 1862 while in captivity at nearby Camp Randall. They were buried in a mass grave at Forest Hill.

The display of Confederate flags at the cemetery and the memorials have stirred considerable debate in Madison, including a 2016 city attorney's opinion that said the city's policies on flag displays were outdated.

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"The removal of city-owned monuments to confederate soldiers in Forest Hill Cemetery has minimal or no disruption to the cemetery itself," Soglin said. "There is no disrespect to the dead with the removal of the plaque and stone."

Soglin said both monuments include inscriptions that "speak in glowing terms about the historic efforts of the Confederacy."

The older monument lists the names of the Confederate soldiers buried at Forest Hill.

"It will eventually be replaced with a plaque or some sort of monument with the names of the deceased," the mayor said. "There's not going to be any additional language included."

The debate over Confederate monuments and flags has escalated across the country after the violence last week in Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacists gathered to protest the city's plans to remove a Robert E. Lee statue. Earlier this week, monuments were removed overnight in Baltimore and many other cities are considering similar actions.

President Trump on Thursday continued to defend the Confederate monuments. 

"You can't change history, but you can learn from it," the president tweeted. "Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson — who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish!"

In his statement, Soglin called the Civil War an "act of insurrection and treason and a defense of the deplorable practice of slavery. The monuments in question were connected to that action and we do not need them on city property."

His statement concluded: "There should be no place in our country for bigotry, hatred, or violence against those who seek to unite our communities and our country."