To the Southern Soldiers

Heartbroken, I have learned that my beloved Bentonville, Arkansas, has been attacked. The Confederate monument that rests in the center of our town square has been defaced. The carpetbaggers that have lately inundated Bentonville have chosen to eradicate part of our history; our history, not theirs. James Henderson Berry served as a second lieutenant with the 16^th Arkansas Infantry, losing his right leg during the Second Battle of Corinth in Mississippi. Berry became a lawyer and was elected as an Arkansas Representative and then as Governor of Arkansas, later serving as a U.S. Senator. He passed in 1913 and is buried in Bentonville. The statue was erected in 1908 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. 111 years later, the rifle the figure leans on has been destroyed, much as the pillars our society leans upon have been broadsided. We celebrated the centennial of its installation in 2008. What has changed in 11 years? Bentonville has been afflicted with those sowing discord among us, ridiculing our supposedly benighted and backward traditions.
These interlopers dare to decry ‘the shame of Bentonville’ and to dictate to us how we must change our town to fit their craven image of the ‘enlightened’ cities from whence they came. How dare they? How dare we allow this?

The monument’s inscription, beautiful in its solemnity, reads: