In Nashville, where a core constituency still talks about “The War of Northern Aggression” and valorizes its warriors in that lost cause as saints and martyrs, a monument such as the new Confederate Flag Park starring Nathan Bedford Forrest is not just likely; it’s inevitable.

What are public monuments for anyway? Essentially, they’re designed to commemorate heroic individuals and deeds or events of historical significance. Combining sculpture and architecture, they’re also potent symbols laden with ideology, myth, and propaganda. And nothing is wrong with that. Think for a moment of the equestrian memorial of Andrew Jackson on the east side of the State Capitol, a copy of the one originally designed by Clark Mills for Washington, D.C. It celebrates Jackson’s presidency, his Tennessee heritage, and his role as a military hero, embodying those dynamics in the form of a classical bronze. Despite the fact that he owned slaves, was often crude and cantankerous, and was an unwitting adulterer, his more noteworthy accomplishments assume near-religious importance at the site, which faces the rising sun each day.

Having been touched and instructed by the war memorials at Shiloh, Gettysburg, Chattanooga, Chickamaugua, Stones River, and, yes, Nashville, I made a Monday-after-the-unveiling attempt to visit the new Confederate Flag Park. After much effort, I found the unmarked gravel access off Hogan Road only to discover that the park was blocked by a padlocked gate. A red-lettered sign on the gate stated bluntly: “No Trespassing/Intruders Investigated by FBI/Secret Service/National Security and ICC/Entrance By Permission Only.”

But that was a minor setback. A viewing from the Interstate-65 shoulder with a pair of binoculars revealed more than I wanted to see anyway. Until the sponsors of the statue lose their paranoia, all you’re likely to see as you speed to or from Brentwood is a klutzy attempt at an equestrian monument. The screaming, sword-and-pistol-waving rider on a wildly rearing horse, slathered in kitschy gold and silver paint, barely rises 30 feet above the scrubby landscape. Resembling a small Mardi Gras float drunkenly concocted by Red Grooms and Howard Finster, it shines with a special GloKote-like finish designed to frustrate Yankee vandals. To help other viewers feel some of that famous Southern hospitality, it’s partly surrounded by a barbed-wire-topped fence.

It’s too bad the folks involved here confused the symbolism of the sculpture with its visual quality—they’re clearly oblivious to the fact that it fails utterly as a monument or a work of art. The Flag Park itself—wedged between I-65 and the Trousdale railroad spur—is essentially a glorified billboard, a politico-religious screed intended to shout in the face of a commuting audience. Obviously, it was never intended to take a place among our city’s memorials. By using layers of fiberglass over foam, the artist made the Forrest statue affordable and quick, yet the amateurish execution inescapably ties it to the oversized Indians, chickens, and dinosaurs lining the road along Pigeon Forge.

Should this private park ever change hands, the addition of a putt-putt course would blend seamlessly with the current display. If the history-for-the-ages sponsors had truly been serious about building a monument, they would have raised enough funds to hire a competent sculptor to complete a clay model, and to hire a foundry to make a bronze cast. At the very least, they could have found a stone carver. Instead, there’s an overemphasis on size, that timeworn obsession of insecure males. Bad art is bad art, no matter how glorious the cause it represents. Nathan Bedford Forrest deserved much better than this.

Of general interest

I guess you do have to admire the 84-year-old local lawyer/artist, Jack Kershaw, for donating his time and for working so energetically to complete such a large sculpture. Surely no one could question the motives of a lawyer who rushed to the defense of James Earl Ray.

And what about the choice of Nathan Bedford Forrest? I have to leave it to revisionist historians of the Southern League and mainstream historians such as Shelby Foote to debate the general’s reputation. All seem to agree he was a brilliant soldier who ranked among the finest tacticians on either side. It’s generally conceded that he owned and traded slaves before the war and that he was chief among the post-war founders of the Ku Klux Klan.

Thus it’s utterly impossible to ignore the racism at the foundation of a monument like this. Calling Forrest a hero and erecting a wannabe-gilded statue to him doesn’t erase the blood and violence associated with his causes or deeds, no matter how unfair the associations or how great his military record. Andrew Jackson owned slaves too, but he was lucky enough to become president. Perhaps Forrest’s failure is that he was infamous rather than famous. It’s doubly unfortunate for him that the design here resurrects the image of the old Rebel codger in a gray uniform holding a gun and sneering, “Forget, Hell!”

This Flag Park and statue are truly successful in one sense: They clearly illustrate that there just aren’t that many memorable memorials. The best of them—such as the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.—cross political boundaries, primarily because they honor the ordinary human beings who died in battle. They also succeed because of their aesthetic merit. By comparison, 14 poles flying 28 flags, along with a Rebel-yelling horseman spoiling for a fight, offer nothing more than the romantic glorification of a bellicose, defiant spirit.

It’s completely disingenuous to claim that those flags and this notoriously diehard general are just proud symbols of independent Southern spirit. Imagine the outrage if a local North American Indian group tried to rehabilitate the swastika in its ancient guise as a good-luck sign. Then suppose what would happen if they erected a 30-foot swastika on a mound overlooking the new Charlotte Avenue Walgreen drugstore. The careless use of symbols in this park only fuels the contentiousness over a war that nearly destroyed our nation and continues to divide us culturally.

Memento mori

The sponsors are perfectly within their rights to erect this monument, since it’s all on private property. It’s completely hypocritical to deny them their right to expression, no matter how bad the art looks. If Andres Serrano could dunk his crucifix in pee to make a point about religion in America and still receive an NEA grant, then hard-core Confederates have the same right to offend. Besides, how can supporters of free expression make a case against this statue and park when it was created solely with private funding? This here’s America, right?

But our Confederate patriots goofed elsewhere. They should have stopped to compare this monument with the ongoing restoration of the Moretti obelisk, bronze charioteer, and Angel of Peace dedicated to the Battle of Nashville—a monument that commemorates the deaths on both sides beneath the word “unity.” Unlike the “Nathan,” it will soon be relocated in a new public park and open to all. Or they could have considered the simple obelisk already located in Mt. Olivet Cemetery dedicated to the Confederates buried there in a circle.

Then the obvious questions should have been asked by the Southern Leaguers: Is this new monument really needed? Don’t those stark obelisks already express respect for noble blood sacrifice and independent spirit?

Last year around Halloween I visited Mt. Olivet to watch the annual pageant presented by the local chapter of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans, assisted by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and various Civil War reenactors. Spectators were handed little nylon Rebel flags and were passively invited to contribute funds for the expense of the Forrest monument, of which a maquette was on display. The evening consisted of 10 separate dramatizations by actors representing deceased 19th-century persons while standing in front of their gravestones and monuments. As theater and history, it was deeply moving, entertaining, and not without a little humor. The actor playing John Bell got lots of yucks for his characterization of President Lincoln as the devil.

Among the many soldier and civilian reenactors among the graves was a middle-aged woman dressed in black from head to toe. Her fierce, mournful eyes were filled with the spirit of one of those long dead. She stood grimly with hands and face clenched, turning that look, like a weapon, upon her audience. She evoked my sympathy, but she seemed scary too, for this was not acting, really. She appeared possessed by both the imagined sorrow of Southern ancestors and her own private, bitter grievances of the present.

In much the same fashion, the so-called pride-builders of the park are nurturing grievances real and imagined. The park and statue are merely their public way of rubbing salt in everyone’s existing wounds while ripping new ones open. We should all do well to recall Reinhold Niebuhr’s words: “Evil is always the assertion of some self-interest without regard for the whole.”