ARKANSAS: School Boots Confederate Flag from Vehicles
WALDRON, Ark. — Administrators with a small-town school in Arkansas say students
are starting trouble by flying Confederate flags from their trucks, and they need to take them down or face suspension.
Waldron High School students protest the banning of the Confederate Flag on vehicles.
The students of Waldron High School say they’re proud of their heritage, and aren’t flying the flags to be offensive, The Blaze reported. But top dogs at the school say the flags can be seen as offensive and discriminatory and that they can’t be flown on campus grounds any longer.
“We tried to fight it, until they were going to suspend us for three to 10 days or give us zeros,” said one student flag-flyer, to the local KFSM. “We were kind of shocked. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
Students tried to rally near the school — with a mass waving of Confederate flags — and even had local residents turn out for the event, The Blaze reported. But to no avail. School superintendent Gary Wayman told students that the flags were prohibited from the parking lot and that those who didn’t abide the policy would be punished.
“What they are trying to do is take all our rights away,” said one student. “We are just showing that [we] are proud to be where we live.”
And another said, to the local press: “Everyone around here rallied up and stuff. I mean, people support us. It just shows we’re good ol’ country boys down here.”
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NORTH CAROLINA: Civil War Trails Guide Available
RALEIGH, N.C. — The N.C. Division of Tourism is offering a new statewide Civil War Trails guide that will direct travelers across the state during the final year of the 150th anniversary observance.
“The release of the new map is well-timed to draw attention to the most under-told story of the war,” said Wit Tuttell, executive director of the Division of Tourism, Film & Sports Development. “Fort Fisher, Bentonville, the surrender of troops in Durham — North Carolina is where the war effectively ended. The new entries also remind us that within the framework of military action, complex struggles played out in the lives of the people who endured this defining American war.”
The original Civil War Trails map, released in 2005, covered the most significant military action in North Carolina, including the critical events of 1865. The Second Battle of Fort Fisher sealed the port of Wilmington and choked the only remaining supply line to Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The Battle of Bentonville two months later marked the last time the Confederacy was able to mount a tactical offensive. And in the aftermath of Bentonville, Gen. William T. Sherman and Gen. Joseph E. Johnston negotiated the war’s largest surrender at Bennett Place, a farmhouse in Durham.
The latest version of the trail highlights 239 sites in 78 counties. Additions include the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation to the formerly enslaved congregants who built St. Philips Moravian Church in Old Salem; and an encampment of more than 10,000 Union soldiers in Louisburg as they made their way to Washington, D.C., after the surrender. The soldiers stored so much corn at Louisburg Male Academy that the floor collapsed.
“The town is full of Yankee Soldiers riding and walking up and down every street, and coming into our yards and kitchens,” wrote a Louisburg woman whose diary is quoted on the marker.
Trail markers span the state from Hatteras Island, site of the war’s first amphibious battle, to Robbinsville, a divided mountain community that saw one of the last surrenders east of the Mississippi. Stories unfold at battlefields, field hospitals, cemeteries and the Salisbury Confederate Prison with stops at museums and other sites to advance understanding of the state’s role in the war.
North Carolina Civil War Trails brochures are available at all nine state Welcome Centers as well as Department of Transportation visitor centers. They can be ordered by phone (800-VISIT NC) or online (www.visitnc.com/travelpubs), or downloaded from www.civilwartrails.com.
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ARKANSAS: Ceremonies Held to Commemorate Marker
MOUNTAIN HOME, Ark. — It was a day when Baxter County turned back the clock to 1862, commemorating a Civil War skirmish during a campaign for the saltpeter mines and powder works on the White River.
Members of Wiggins Battery march to the Confederate Memorial Service at Mountain Home Cemetery. / Thomas Garrett/The Baxter Bulletin
Long before the city would be named Mountain Home, Talburt’s Barrens was the site of a showdown between Union and Southern forces — the fight actually occurring just west of downtown off AR Highway 178 — and that Oct. 17, 1862 battle was honored Saturday.
Approved by the Arkansas Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission, a Civil War marker is now displayed on the Baxter County Courthouse lawn, the official dedication attended by dozens of citizens.
Saturday’s activities began in the morning at Mountain Home Cemetery with a Confederate Memorial Day ceremony.
The Baxter County Historical and Genealogical Society, Wiggins Battery and members of Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy took part in the ceremony, which included Civil War reenactors and a cannon salute to all veterans in the cemetery.
The marker dedication was held at 1:30 p.m. A nice crowd witnessed the event, with the marker now permanently erected across from the downtown plaza.
The Twin Lakes Area was the scene of several minor Civil War engagements, most related to Union efforts to seize or destroy Confederate saltpeter mines in the area. Saltpeter was used in the making of gunpowder.
Talbot’s Ferry — near the present-day site of Gaston’s White River Resort — played a key role since both sides needed it to cross the White River.
The 150th anniversary of the Civil War is being observed across the nation in 2014.
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