Cape Civil War monument still has faint traces of graffiti

After workers used a high-powered solvent to remove graffiti on a Civil War monument on the grounds of the Common Pleas Courthouse, remnants of the vandalism still remain, and officials have decided to leave it that way.

Liley Monuments used a solvent from Minnesota on Friday to try to clean the monument, which was vandalized Oct. 11. Despite getting most of the graffiti off the monument, faint traces of paint still mar the rough stone. The paint had been sprayed heavily and seeped into the pores of the marble, said Jeff Abernathy, a sales representative from Liley who helped apply the solvent.

Cape Girardeau County public works director Don McQuay said sandblasting would rid the monument of the paint but could damage the 80-year-old monument's porous marble. The paint on the monument is still visible but mostly illegible.

"We've gone as far as we're going to go on the monument," McQuay said. "We'd hate to sandblast it because we're afraid we'd hurt the monument even more."

"Go south" was written on the front of the shrine that sits along Lorimier Street near the fountain. That apparently was a request that the marker be moved, not a pro-South message. "We are in the union," read the words on the back. "Obscene. Remove to [illegible] cemetary in the south."

No arrests have been made in connection to the vandalism, Cape Girardeau police spokesman Darin Hickey said.

The county spent roughly $900 in the cleanup effort, McQuay said.

Although McQuay said the county will be leaving the monument in its current form, Daughters of the Confederacy Central Division president Barbara Stevens said her organization would like to help restore the monument to how it was before being vandalized. The Daughters of the Confederacy is a women's heritage association dedicated to honoring the memory of those who served in the military and died in service to the Confederate army.

"We would like to restore it out of respect for the veterans it honors," Stevens said.

To do so, the organization will have to find an alternative to sandblasting, Stevens said, noting that she has not traveled to Cape Girardeau to see the monument and has no way of assessing the damage because there is no chapter of the organization in Southeast Missouri. The topic on what to do, if anything, will be discussed at the next division meeting, she said.

The 14 1/2-foot-tall monument was first erected in 1931 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to commemorate the one Confederate unit gathered from Cape Girardeau during the Civil War. The hand-carved monument, which weighs 12 1/2 tons, was moved from its original spot on Morgan Oak Street to the courthouse grounds in 1995 by the Civil War Roundtable.

"I hope the people who did this are brought to justice," Stevens said.

psullivan@semissourian.com

388-3635

Pertinent address:

44 N. Lorimier St., Cape Girardeau, MO