The Signage at Manassas That Is Slated for Removal by the National Park Service

I went to the Bull Run Battlefield at Manassas, Virginia last year and saw the new signage near the Stonewall Jackson Equestrian Statue on Henry House Hill. The plaque was erected in 2024 and it put the heroically muscled portrayal of Thomas Jackson in context. It was not insulting in any way. It depicted that competing narratives of the Civil War by Confederate sympathizers, Northerners, and African Americans were pushed forward. Here is what the marker said:

“In 1938 the Sons of Confederate Veterans conveyed land on Henry Hill to the United States government for the creation of Manassas National Battlefield Park. A stipulation of the transfer required the National Park Service to permit Virginia to erect a monument to Confederate General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, who had earned his famous nickname on Henry Hill at the First Battle of Manassas on July 21, 1861.

Designed by sculptor Joseph Pollia, the monument presented a heroic Jackson with exaggerated physical features, meant to inspire a nation wracked by economic depression and fearing the descent into another world war. At the unveiling in August 1940, the keynote speaker encouraged military leaders to emulate the “lessons of war as taught and practiced by Jackson.” The dedication ceremony perpetuated Lost Cause mythology, however, emphasizing Confederate valor and ignoring slavery as the central cause of the Civil War.

The monument of Stonewall Jackson, together with the adjacent memorials of the same era honoring other Confederate leaders, created a landscape of competing memory. Adherents of the Lost Cause laid claim to the historical narrative of Manassas Battlefield – site of two Southern victories – as the federal government prepared to accept ownership of Henry Hill. The Jackson statute epitomizes the complicated legacy of the park’s creation and the preservation of the battlefield as a place of contested memory.”

What the plaque says has been accepted by historians for nearly a half-century.

Below is a photograph of the signage taken by the unfiltered historian.

The administration says it is cracking down on Critical Race Theory, but of course this signage has nothing to do with Critical Race Theory or the Frankfurt School that has come so under attack in the last decade.

I was encouraged to learn that after there was such an outcry against the National Park Service leadership trying to take down the “Scourged Back” photo of a slave showing welts on his back that that move seems to have been stopped. So public resistance can actually create change. Call your Congressional Representative and your Senators today and tell them you oppose taking down references to slavery in the National Parks.

Photos taken by the unfiltered historian. Thanks for his kindness in letting us use them.

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