After the church shooting in South Carolina, the old granite Confederate Memorial Fountain that had sat for a century in Hill Park became a flash point. The monument described by its inscription as “a longing tribute to our Confederate soldiers’’ was really, one man said at a public meeting, honoring “traitors and rebels … not ‘fallen comrades.’ ’’ Some
people wanted to remove it, some to rename it, some to leave it alone. It was a debate like many that erupted almost two years ago — except it happened 2,000 miles west of Gettysburg and 200 miles south of the Canadian border, in Helena, Mont., a state that was not even a state during the Civil War. Helena’s memorial fountain is one of at least 700 and possibly more than 1,000 Confederate monuments in 31 states — in public parks, courthouse squares and state capitols. READ MORE
