Key West Preserves Its Confederate Memorials

From the August 25, 2015, WLRN Miami/South Florida "Key West Preserves Memorials to Confederate and Union armies" by Nancy Klingener.

This is refreshing news what with all the effort to remove and ban Confederate memorials elsewhere these days.  Finally a city doing the right thing.

The nation's southern-most city is restoring its memorials to both sides.  One is a white pavilion in Bayview Park erected by the UDC in 1924.  There is also a monument about 140 yards away dedicated to soldiers from two New York regiments stationed in Key West and who died of diseases like yellow fever.

Another part of Bayview Park has a memorial to blacks who joined the Union Army in Key West.

Thanks to fast thinking by a Union officer who had his men occupy the still unfinished Fort Zachary Taylor when Florida seceded,  Key West remained in Union hands throughout the war.

Confederate Secretary of the Navy, Stephen Mallory, whose name is on the famed Mallory Square, was a Key West native.

Downtown near the harbor, the Key West Navy Club put up an obelisk in 1866 dedicated to Union soldiers and sailors who died in Key West during the war.  The low, cast-iron fence surrounding it bears the name of its builder, J.V. Harris, a Confederate veteran.

--Old B-Runner