By Susanna Ray
Herald Writer
The South has risen to challenge a Snohomish lawmaker.
In hundreds of e-mails and phone calls, Southerners and history buffs across the country reacted to a proposal last week by state Rep. Hans Dunshee to remove a road marker at the Peace Arch border crossing honoring Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president.
"My resolve has only increased," Dunshee said Wednesday.
The controversy surrounds a monument in Blaine designating old Highway 99, which runs through Snohomish County, as part of the transcontinental Jefferson Davis Highway. The United Daughters of the Confederacy erected the marker in 1940 with the support of state and Canadian officials.
Dunshee wants to pass a bill to rename the highway after William Stewart, a black man who fought for the North in the Civil War before moving to Snohomish. He also wants to get rid of the marker honoring Davis, whom he called "a guy who led the insurgency to perpetuate slavery and killed half a million Americans."
That comment is what most infuriated Southerners who heard about or saw The Herald’s article about Dunshee’s proposal.
| Hero or villain? Dead for 113 years, Jefferson Davis still inspires Civil War-era feelings of reverence in the South and hatred in the North.
He was the first and only president of the Confederate United States. But he’s often wrongly held up as a symbol of a pro-slavery resistance that led to war.
A U.S. senator from Mississippi, Davis tried to keep the Union together. He joined the Confederacy only when his state seceded. He sent a peace commission to Washington, D.C., after his inauguration, but Abraham Lincoln refused it. Davis was born in Kentucky in 1808, just eight months before Lincoln and 100 miles away.
Davis was captured by federal troops in 1865 and jailed for two years. He was indicted for treason, but his case was dropped.
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"Amazing! Your Mr. Dunshee’s ignorance of history is certainly letting itself be known," wrote John Salley of Belton, S.C., before launching into a history lesson.
"While I’m a believer in the traditional Southern view of states’ rights, and believe that Mr. Dunshee has a right to move to change the name of the highway in his state," wrote Jeff Adams from Houston, "I don’t think he should be so angry, intolerant and bigoted about it."
Some talked of boycotting Washington state if the marker is taken down.
Others said that if state officials change the highway’s name, they should also change the state’s name, because George Washington was one of the biggest slave owners of his time.
And still others accused Dunshee of trying to revise history, George Orwell-style.
Dunshee’s reaction seems "outrageous" to Southerners because Davis is widely revered in the South, said Dave Gass, an art director for a magazine in Atlanta.
"Jefferson Davis’ birthday is a legal holiday in seven Southern states," Gass said. "That’s why I was so shocked to read this fellow (Dunshee) going on about how horrible he was, when Jefferson Davis was really a great man.
"Mr. Davis had a whole career before the war started and did things that benefited the entire country from coast to coast," Gass added. "He definitely deserves to be memorialized."
Suzanne Silek, president general of the 20,000-member United Daughters of the Confederacy, said there was good reason to erect the marker here. Davis built forts in Washington and helped get roads and railways built to reach them when he served as secretary of war under President Franklin Pierce, Silek said from the group’s headquarters in Richmond, Va., where Davis is buried.
"The members who were active then did the historical research and found out that Mr. Davis was instrumental in developing the roads and highways in Washington state," Silek said. "And that’s why they felt that Washington needed a highway named after Jefferson Davis."
The organization used to have six Washington chapters, although there’s only one left now, with 32 members.
United Daughters of the Confederacy, which originated the highway naming in 1913, placed the markers for the patchwork road, which started in Virginia at the Potomac River and goes all the way to California, then up the coast, Silek said. The Blaine marker is the last one.
The local United Daughters of the Confederacy chapter plans to fight to keep the memorial standing, Silek said. She also said she’ll ask Vancouver city officials to put back their marker in a city park marking the other end of the highway in Washington. It was quietly removed four years ago by a city council members who expressed concerns similar to Dunshee’s.
The Daughters of the Confederacy can expect help from the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, said Ken Richmond of Sequim, leader of the group’s state chapter. He said his group would support them in their quest to keep the markers up "because of the heritage issues involved."
A Western Washington University history professor said he isn’t opposed to taking down the memorial, as long as it’s not done solely over the slavery issue.
"If we take away memorials to people who owned slaves, we’d have to change the name of the state of Washington," said Alan Gallay, who teaches Southern history. Gallay used to teach history in Davis’ home state of Mississippi, and his third book about the South is due out next week.
Still, Davis "was considered someone who committed treason," Gallay said, which is reason enough for him to agree with getting rid of the marker. "I don’t consider him someone worth memorializing, by any means."
The proposal has stirred debate over the causes of the Civil War.
Dunshee is a history buff who can quote Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and insists that slavery was the real reason the war was fought. Others loudly disagree.
"To say that the war between the states was fought over slavery is like saying the American Revolution was fought over tea," Gass said.
The plan also highlights the deep North-South divide that still separates this country.
"It just seems that more often than not, Southerners are maligned for no particular reason," said William Wells of New Orleans, where Davis died in 1889.
Wells and others threatened — some in jest — to boycott Washington if Dunshee’s bill gets through the Legislature.
"If Dunshee and his cohorts attempt to remove the marker, another will go up in its place," wrote Steven Moshlak of Longmont, Colo. And if the Legislature changes the name of the highway, "it will be a dark day before I, or others, will ever visit Washington state."
You can call Herald Writer Susanna Ray at 360-586-3803 or send e-mail to
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