Image: Library of CongressI wish the Tennessee Historical Commission would take a booth at some public event — TomatoFest, the Southern Festival of Books, the TACA Craft Fair, a particularly nice morning on Saturday downtown, whatever — so that history buffs such as myself could come by and high-five them for their efforts to shut down this ridiculous and vile plan to move the bodies of James K. Polk and his wife.
JR Lind over at Patch has the story:
Patrick McIntyre, THC Executive Director, said moving the bodies would "create a false sense of history" at the home in Columbia in violation of the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, the guiding principles that drive historic preservation nationwide.
Lind highlights two big obstacles to the Polk exhumation:
1. Under the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act, the group that controls the monument or memorial has to request a waiver to move it. Obviously, the Polk Memorial Association doesn’t control the Polk monument.
2. The land where the Polk Memorial Association wants to move the Polks is owned by the Tennessee Historical Commission, and the Tennessee Historical Commission isn’t going to let them put the Polks there.
I, myself, have never tried to rob a grave of its contents, let alone to do so publicly and with the support of so many state legislators, but this seems like the kind of thing that the Polk Memorial Association should have looked into in the first place. I mean, these are very basic questions you ask — "Can we legally request some dead bodies be sent here and do we have a place to put those bodies if we can legally request them?” — before you get the state legislature to spend a bunch of time on it.
But also, come on, state legislature! Fine, the Polk people aren’t going to look into whether this is legal, because they’ve been weirdly shady from the start — what with the trying to claim this is what Polk asked for in his will, as if no one was going to read the will. But you’re literally the people who make the laws. Shouldn’t you have someone check to make sure what you’re doing is legal before you do it?
I know I say this at least once a year when the legislature is in session, but it’s because at least once a year I’m utterly befuddled by it: Why don’t they run things by lawyers to see if they’re legal before they act on them?
I’m glad the state Historical Commission stepped in here and pointed out the legal problems with this. Hell, I might even like to live in a state governed by a historical commission. But these issues should have been caught at Legislative Plaza in the first place.
