Legislators are considering a proposal to remove a statue of Captain John Mason (on the right) from the state Capitol in Hartford. A prominent leader in 17th-century Connecticut, Mason commanded English and native forces in a massacre of Pequots during the Pequot War. C. Wigren
A statue of Captain John Mason will remain on the State Capitol, at least for now. On December 14, the State Capitol Preservation and Restoration Commission voted against a recommendation to remove the statue from the north front of the Building. The Commission’s Standards say, “There shall be no changes to the exterior Structure, surfaces, or finishes without approval of the Commission on Preservation and Restoration of the State Capitol or its designated subcommittee.” As a leading military commander during the Pequot War of 1637, Mason is held responsible for mass killings of Native Americans, which prompted the proposal to take down his statue.
This action comes at a time when communities across the country are re-evaluating monuments, memorials, and public art depicting historical figures or events which proponents consider inconsistent with present-day beliefs and values. The trend has been most visible in the South, concerning monuments commemorating the Confederacy or proponents of slavery. However, Connecticut monuments have also come under scrutiny. Of course, many people disagree with this trend, causing controversy in communities across the country.
The preservation movement has largely devoted its energies to the surviving places where history happened and has considered erecting monuments or memorials as of secondary importance. This is why eligibility criteria for the National Register of Historic Places exclude most properties that are primarily commemorative in nature.
On the other hand, monuments and memorials are often prominent elements of our built environment. In addition to honoring events and people from the past, they can be significant as works of art and focal points in public spaces. Furthermore, monuments can provide insights into how the people who erected them understood history or what values they wished to instill in their children or their fellow citizens.
Monuments to Christopher Columbus are an example. Many were erected around 1892, the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ first voyage to the Americas. At the time, the monuments were seen as a recognition of Columbus’ courage and leadership and as a celebration of the spread of European civilization to other parts of the world, considered as a sign of progress.
John Mason played many roles in 17th-century Connecticut. He was a founder of the towns of Windsor, Old Saybrook, and Norwich; commander of the Saybrook fort at the mouth of the Connecticut River; Commissioner of the United Colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven; and Deputy Governor of the Connecticut Colony. In that last office, he helped create the Connecticut Charter of 1662, which gave the colony a unique degree of autonomy from English government and continued to serve as Connecticut’s constitution until 1818.
During the Pequot War, Mason was a captain of the colonial forces. A horrific moment in the war was the attack on a Pequot installation in what is now Mystic (variously characterized as a village or a fort) by colonists along with Mohegan and Narragansett allies. Encountering fierce opposition, the colonial forces set the village/fort aflame. As it burned, English, Mohegans, and Narragansetts formed a circle and killed more than four hundred fleeing Pequot—not only warriors, but women, children, and elderly noncombatants as well.
The Mystic battle was a defining blow in the war, which is considered as forever changing the relations of native and settler peoples in what is now the United States. Natives remember it as genocide.
When a statue of John Mason was moved from Mystic to Windsor, it was given a new plaque which the explain the move. Wikipedia
The Mashantucket Pequot tribe supported the proposal, issuing a statement that said, “John Mason’s historical significance to the Pequot Massacre is a defining moment in American history and an early example of the hostile and shameful treatment of tribes nationwide that has marred the history of the United States…Mason’s statue is a constant reminder of that bloody morning on May 26, 1637—384 years ago, when Pequot men, women, children, and the elderly were attacked and murdered while they slept; an attack meant to annihilate our people.”
However, members of the State Capitol Preservation and Restoration Commission questioned the move. At a hearing in November, State Historian Walter Woodward, a member of the commission, pointed out that the history of the event was more complicated than a one-sided massacre, that the very survival of the young Connecticut colony was at stake.
“It was an ugly, complicated, conflicted past,” Woodward said. “There was enough atrocity on both sides to make your head spin…In our desire to correct for centuries of injustice to indigenous people we have adopted an interpretation of much of the past events that downplays one side of the stories and mollifies another side of the story.”
Woodward suggested retaining the Mason statue on the Capitol and adding statues of the Mohegan and Pequot sachems Uncas and Sassacus to empty niches on the building. He also recommended enhanced educational programming, including material for group tours to discuss the 1637 battle, maintaining that doing so at the Capitol would generate greater public engagement than a statue “in a poorly attended museum.”
Woodward’s position garnered six votes in the commission, while three members voted to remove the statue and three voted to take no action. The next move is up to legislative leaders.
It is often said that those seeking to remove monuments are “erasing history.” However, there is a difference between reporting history on one hand and celebrating history on the other. It’s parallel to the distinction between reporting and opinion in journalism. Reporting involves collecting facts, analyzing them, and disseminating the information to increase understanding. Opinion involves value judgements, which must be based on facts but are more prone to change.
So, removing monuments is not “erasing history” in the sense of removing the people or events they represent from the historical record. The reporting is still going on, but the subjects are no longer to be presented as worthy of celebration and emulation.
What to do, then, with monuments that convey troublesome messages? The solutions proposed typically fall into a few categories.
Remove it and dispose of it. This radical approach is rarely taken, but it does occur. In Charlottesville, Virginia, the statue of Robert E. Lee that was taken down in 2017, prompting violent demonstrations, will be melted down by the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center to create a new work of public art.
In one example, the Revolutionary traitor Benedict Arnold is recognized, after a fashion, with a monument at Saratoga, New York, where he suffered a leg wound while commanding American forces at the Battle of Saratoga. The monument depicts Arnold’s wounded leg but never mentions his name. But, at what point are any positive contributions so outweighed by negatives that any public celebration or acknowledgement becomes impossible?
A monument at Saratoga, New York, recognizes contributions by Benedict Arnold without mentioning his name. National Park Service.
Since a lot of people don’t stop to read lengthy texts, adding written material to monuments may have only limited ability to communicate new interpretations. A better tactic in some cases might be a more expressive artistic intervention. One could, for instance, leave a Confederate memorial in place but surround it with statues of joyous, freed African Americans celebrating their victory. Similarly, the Mason statue might be left on the Capitol, but turned face-in or covered with a pall—some visible modification that would raise questions.
Move it to another place where the context changes the message. This was the approach used in moving the statue of John Mason from Mystic, where he was honored as an Indian fighter, to Windsor, where he was a town founder. The appropriateness of this tactic depends on how well the monument conveys a different message, or whether the subject is considered to have any redeeming value at all.
Move it to a place where it can be treated as an historical artifact rather than a memorial. This is the most common approach being taken in 2021, as seen with treatment of the Mason statue in Windsor and the proposal for the statue at the Capitol. However, as Walter Woodward pointed out, taking a monument out of the public eye can reduce the likelihood that people without a direct interest in history will see it. In that case, the story isn’t heard at all.
A corollary action is to replace the removed memorial with another that recognizes some other aspect of history. For instance, a statue of Christopher Columbus in New Haven’s Wooster Square was taken down in 2020. Work is underway to replace it with a new memorial commemorating Italian immigrants to the city, to reaffirm the underlying message of the Columbus monument.
Leave it in place but dilute its impact by erecting a wider diversity of monuments. The vast majority of monuments around the state cover a narrow range of subjects: for people, early settlers, military leaders, and statesmen (nearly always men); for events, early settlement or battles. A cursory reading of history will suggest a rich variety of people, movements, and events that might be commemorated to tell ourselves and the world what we value. The State Capitol still has a number of empty niches created for statuary; the most recent addition was a statue of Governor Ella Grasso, in 1987.
In the end, the monuments question becomes a part of the broader question continually facing the preservation movement: What is our history, what does it mean for our lives today, and how do we want to recognize and perpetuate its memory in the present? It’s a question that requires some degree of agreement about community values. In a time of deep social divisions, coming to a community consensus is not going to be easy. It requires, more than anything else, a commitment to listening carefully and respectfully to the views of others, and a willingness to reexamine our own values.