Campaigns to remove statues of Confederate soldiers from public spaces broadened and intensified in the second half of the 2010s. In the spring of 2019, it spread to Martha’s Vineyard.
The Soldiers’ Memorial in Oak Bluffs is a seven-foot statue of a Union Army soldier, erected in 1891 to honor local Union veterans. In 1925, a plaque was added declaring that “The Chasm Is Closed” and that the plaque had been placed by the people of Oak Bluffs “in honor of the Confederate soldiers.” In March of 2019, at the passionate urging of award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist, and historian Clennon L. King, who is a seasonal visitor with family ties to the Island dating back to the early 1900s, the Martha’s Vineyard chapter of the NAACP called on the Oak Bluffs Select Board to remove the plaques. Hearings, public meetings, and a ferocious online debate followed. On May 25, 2019 the Select Board voted to remove the plaques and transfer them to the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, which would present them in their historical context.
This exhibit is a glimpse into the process of creating that context. It is structured around questions — some long-since answered, some newly answered, and some for which there may not be definitive answers.
Who was Charles Strahan and why a statue?
What was Cottage City like in 1891?
How did adding a plaque change the story?
Who Was Charles Strahan and Why a Statue?
It all began with a highly public snub. Charles Strahan (1840-1931), born in Baltimore, joined the Confederate ranks in 1862. Though wounded, he returned to finish out the war and then moved to New Orleans and became a coffee merchant. Health problems caused him to retire in 1884 and he moved his family to Cottage City (now Oak Bluffs), a place he had been to before to visit his wife’s family. Strahan bought the Cottage City Star, a four-page weekly broadsheet and, shifting the paper’s focus Island-wide, renamed it the Martha’s Vineyard Herald.
In 1887, three years after Strahan moved to the Island, his Herald ran an announcement for a Memorial Day celebration. The reaction was immediate: former Union soldiers made it known that, if a “former rebel” was going to be involved, they wanted no part of the event. Strahan stayed away.
In the spring of 1891, and still feeling the sting of his rejection four years earlier, Strahan announced that he would give Cottage City a much deserved monument honoring the Grand Army of the Republic. Proceeds of every new Herald subscription sold that summer would go to fund it. The campaign fell $500 short of its $2,000 goal, but Strahan made up the difference out of his own pocket. His grand gesture worked: he was not only invited by the local chapter of the GAR to attend that year’s Memorial Day observances, he was the featured speaker.
What Was the GAR?
Strahan’s statue depicted a Union soldier, at ease, standing atop a plinth. The plaques that adorned the statue’s base explicitly referenced the GAR: the Grand Army of the Republic. Founded in 1866, the GAR was the premier Union Army veterans’ organization. As a group, the GAR helped to elect five Republican presidents and lobbied Congress to push through legislation guaranteeing veterans’ pensions. In 1891, when the statue was erected, the organization was at the height of its power and influence, with membership totaling nearly 500,000, including the newly formed Henry Clay Wade Post 201 in Cottage City.
From Strahan’s perspective, Union veterans — specifically those who publicly declared they wouldn’t attend a Memorial Day celebration if their ex-Confederate neighbor was going to be there — were most likely members of their local chapter of the GAR. Dedicating the statue to the Island’s chapter was Strahan’s way of speaking directly to them.
What Was Cottage City Like in 1891?
In 1891, Cottage City, still an outpost of Edgartown, was at the peak of its Victorian splendor — a wonderland of elaborate cottages and resort hotels. An immense roller skating rink beckoned visitors as they arrived off the ferry and the Flying Horses Carousel had settled into its new home at the foot of Circuit Avenue. Just across the street, in the center of it all, was Strahan’s new statue.
Racial attitudes on the Island in the late 19th and early 20th century were complicated. While today’s Oak Bluffs has long been noted as an enclave for Black vacationers, the beginnings of that story still played out in the long shadow of white supremacy. Records of the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting show that while African Americans leased tent and cottage lots as early as 1862, and some went on to purchase their homes in the years to follow, they were still subjected to discrimination. Bradley Memorial Church, founded in 1908, and Shearer Cottage, opened in 1912, existed in part because the town’s mainstream churches did not welcome African Americans and many hotels would not serve them.
The Purge of Wamsutta Avenue
In 2020, historian Andrew Patch uncovered new evidence of the extent to which systemic racism shaped the lives of African Americans in Cottage City during the 1890s. Buried for more than a century, the story played out only a few blocks from where the statue first stood.
Black and Indigenous individuals (including Chappaquiddick Wampanoag) had leased lots, and erected tents and cottages, on the grounds of the Campground as early as 1862. Patch’s research showed, however, that while the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association (MVCMA) officially welcomed all residents regardless of race, it leased lots to people of color only in specific areas of the Campground.
Beginning in 1892, the year after the statue was erected, the MVCMA set out to eliminate one such neighborhood along Wamsutta Avenue, near Sunset Lake. Falsely claiming that the cottages there were of “unsightly appearance,” and referring to them as “shanties,” the Association forced the families living in them to relocate to less visible, and less desirable, lots on the northern edge of the Campground. Between 1892 and 1914, all of the cottages on Wamsutta Avenue, more than a dozen, were removed and the entire road was erased from the map. For much of the rest of the 20th century, the MVCMA did not grant leases to people of color.
Only one home from Wamsutta Avenue survived. It was relocated just across the street and renumbered 9 Dukes County Avenue, where it remains today.
How Did Adding a Plaque Change the Story?
In 1891, a few months after the statue was unveiled, Strahan noted in a Herald editorial that the tablet on the fourth side of the statue’s pedestal was left intentionally blank. He declared his hope that someday, “when the passions of war are lost in forgetfulness,” the dwindling ranks of Union veterans might inscribe on it “a token of respect to their old foes in the field.”
34 years later, despite opposition from some in the highest ranks of the GAR, Strahan got his wish. In an effort spearheaded by Sydna Eldridge, an enthusiastic member of the GAR’s Women’s Relief Corps, a new plaque reading “The Chasm is Closed” and dedicated by the “patriotic citizens of Martha’s Vineyard in honor of the confederate soldiers” was installed on the statue during a ceremony where Strahan was once again a guest of honor.
The 1925 plaque reflected an intentional and false view of the Civil War from which slavery had been systematically erased. It was erected at a time when Oak Bluffs was becoming an established Black summer resort against an Island-wide backdrop of segregation and casual racism.
Restoration and Rededication
In 1930, the statue was moved from the foot of Circuit Avenue to where it stands today. Shortly after the move, the statue toppled to the ground, causing damage to the soldier’s head, hand, and torso. Almost 70 years later, members of the Island community formed a committee to restore the statue and repaint it the original color. The statue was sent off to Brooklyn where missing pieces were recast and repairs made. Upon its return, the statue was rededicated at a ceremony (with descendants of Strahan’s in attendance) on August 17th 2001, nearly 110 years to the day from its original unveiling.
What’s Wrong with Reconciliation?
Symbolic reconciliations between Union and Confederate veterans were commonplace in the early 20th century. The largest took place at Gettysburg in July 1913, on the 50th anniversary of the battle and saw old soldiers, some in blue and others in gray, shaking hands and declaring that the war was over at last. Like these very public ceremonies, the addition of “The Chasm is Closed” to the statue emphasized the combatants over the cause, erasing the politics of race and slavery from the public memory of war.
On one hand: Reconciliation efforts like these can be a step toward healing for some. At the statue’s rededication ceremony in 2001, Rev. John Streit, dean of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston stated, “...this monument is not about excusing or explaining the grotesque and inhuman system of slavery. This monument was conceived and built as an icon of healing — as a testament to our nation’s need to come together again in spite of all the killing, all the casualties, all the destruction that both sides endured.” Reconciliation can be especially significant for veterans, who (regardless of ideology) share an experience that civilians cannot fully comprehend.
On the other hand: The language of reconciliation used during the early 20th century erased enslavement as a cause for the fracturing of the Union and the war. It reduced the conflict to a “tragic quarrel between brothers,” trivialized the reasons behind it, and did not include enslaved people or their descendants in the healing process.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Few objects on the Island have sparked as much debate in recent years as that of the Civil War Statue. In 2019, the town of Oak Bluffs donated the removed plaques to the Martha’s Vineyard Museum. As part of that donation, the Museum agreed to present the history of the statue in a permanent display. This exhibit is not that. Instead, it is a glimpse into our journey to learn more, and to better understand how this story fits into the greater context of Oak Bluffs’ history so that it can be presented in the fullest way possible.
Figuring out what happened is the beginning of writing history. Even for recent, relatively well-documented events, however, that can be surprisingly difficult. History is messy and complicated, and people with different backgrounds and experiences may “read” the same set of historical events in very different ways.
Continuing Research
Museum Fellow Austin Davis spent the summer of 2021 researching Strahan and the history of the statue. His work helped inform this exhibition and place the statue and the recent debates in their historical context.
During the course of his research, Davis uncovered Strahan's connection to the Vineyard and discovered that the statue had been vandalized prior to its dedication.
A Topic of Debate
Following the NAACP's call for the Oak Bluffs Select Board to remove the plaques, the statue, plaques, and the history they encompass became topics of intense debate. Hearings and public meetings were held and a ferocious online debate followed. These quotes, from 2019, were taken from the online comments section of The Martha's Vineyard Times and The Vineyard Gazette.
Lend Your Voice
The Museum is working towards creating a permanent installation featuring the plaques and placing them, and the controversy surrounding them, in their historical context. Part of the process of creating this installation is getting feedback from the community. Visitors to the in-person version of this exhibition were asked to reflect on and respond to three questions:
- Can a statue or monument "expire"?
- Can histories be "erased" by removing public monuments erected to commemorate them?
- Can you imagine a similar plaque "in honor of" the Nazi SS or the Japanese troops who bombed Pearl Harbor?
Do you have any additional thoughts on the statue, plaques, or how they are displayed and interpreted?
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The Chasm is Not Closed was on display at the Martha's Vineyard Museum from January 12, 2022 through May 13, 2022 in the Adele H. Waggaman Community Gallery.