Civil War Memorial to be dedicated Oct. 20
By YVETTE C. HAMMETT
It took more than a year and a courtroom battle, but the Civil War Memorial will finally be dedicated Saturday at Veteran’s Memorial Park.
The dedication takes place at 10 a.m., Saturday, Oct. 20, at the park located at 3602 U.S. 301, Tampa, which is just north of the Tampa Bypass Canal. It is open to the public. The Riverview VFW, Post 8108 Auxiliary, will serve up both Union Stew and Confederate Stew following the ceremony. The Petite Madeline bakery in Brandon will serve dessert.
“This particular memorial deserves a lot,” said Bob Silmser, a veteran, himself, who headed the committee for the monument, which is made up of two marble slabs with spheres on top of each representing each side of the national battle. A swath of blue marble, representing the Hillsborough River, runs between the two monoliths.
Hillsborough County contributed to the project, as it has for the other memorials at the park, but most of the funds were raised privately, Silmser said.
The road to get here was a bumpy one, he said. The Sons of the Confederate Veterans originally joined the committee, but insisted it be strictly a Confederate memorial. When others disagreed because they wanted it to represent all those from Hillsborough County who died in the conflict and those who came here for battles and died, the Sons of Confederate Veterans sued.
Silmser said his committee found no hard evidence that anyone from this area fought for the Union, but it is still represented.
After about a year, the county prevailed in court and fundraising got under way.
The design took a lot of time and thought to represent both the conflict and this area, Silmser said. The memorial also includes the anchor from the ship the Scottish Chief, which burned and sank in the Hillsborough River.
The Civil War of 1861-1865 resolved two fundamental questions left unresolved by the American Revolution, which is whether the United States would become a dissolvable confederation of sovereign states or one nation with a sovereign national government, according to www.battlefields.org. It would also answer whether this nation, which has a declaration that all men were created equal, would continue to be a slaveholding country.
The Union victory preserved the U.S. as one nation and ended slavery.
In all, 625,000 lives were lost – almost as many American soldiers as died in all the other U.S.-involved wars combined. It was the largest and most destructive conflict in the Western world between 1815 and the onset of World War I in 1914.
While some argue it was a war on the issue of state’s rights, it involved the uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the federal government to prohibit slavery in territories that had not yet become states.
It may be surprising to some to learn that Florida was involved at all in this war. It does have history in Tampa and elsewhere in the state.
The war began in earnest in 1862 with huge battles like Shiloh in Tennessee, Gaines’ Mill, Second Manassas and Fredericksburg in Virginia.
On June 30, 1862, a battle known to some as Yankee Outrage at Tampa, began when a Union gunboat came into Tampa Bay, turned broadside on the town and opened fire on her ports. It dispatched a launch carrying 20 men and a lieutenant under a flag of truce demanding the surrender of Tampa.
When the Confederates refused, the gunboat opened fire. The head officer warned the Confederates that shelling would commence at 6 p.m., giving them time to evacuate civilians from the city, www.americancivilwar.com states.
After firing on the town for several days, the gunboat withdrew on July 1.
The 1st Florida Volunteer Infantry fought in every major conflict in which the Confederate Army of Tennessee was engaged.
Two Union ships bombarded Fort Brooke on Oct. 16, 1863, as a diversion, “while a landing party under Acting Master T.R. Harris disembarked at Ballast Point and marched 14 miles to the Hillsborough River to capture several steamers,” according to www.americancivilwar.com.
Harris and his men surprised and burned the blockade-running steamer Scottish Chief and the sloop Kate Dale.
Confederate soliders destroyed the steamer A.B. Noyes to stop its capture.
By spring 1865, all the principal Confederate armies surrendered. Then, when Union cavalry captured Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Georgia on May 10, 1865, the war ended.
The Civil War memorial joins 14 others in the Tampa park, including memorials to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam, World War I, World War II, Spanish American, Fallen Heroes and one for Committed Forces.
Guests coming for the memorial on Saturday can also visit the Rear Admiral LeRoy Collins Jr. Museum and the Veterans Resource Center, along with visiting the other memorials.
Visit the website for a schedule of events at www.veteransparkhc.com.