Badger InstituteBadger Institute
  • Home
  • Issues
    • Taxes
    • Education
    • Crime & Justice
    • Spending & Accountability
    • Economy & Infrastructure
    • Federalism
    • Licensing
    • Healthcare
    • Civil Society
  • Mandate for Madison
  • Research
  • Magazines
    • Diggings
    • Wisconsin Interest
  • Events
  • Media
    • Podcast
    • Fact Sheets
    • Viewpoints
    • Press Releases
    • Badger in the News
    • Video
    • Audio
    • Testimony
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • Board of Directors
    • Team
    • Visiting Fellows
    • America’s Future
    • Careers
  • Newsletter
  • Donate
  • Contact Us

Subscribe for Updates

Get the latest news and updates from Badger Institute.

What's New

Latest crime figures show a Milwaukee in trouble

March 23, 2023

Wisconsin lawmakers in the dark on broadband

March 16, 2023

The underfunded part of Wisconsin public schooling

March 16, 2023
Facebook Twitter YouTube LinkedIn Instagram
TRENDING:
  • Latest crime figures show a Milwaukee in trouble
  • Wisconsin lawmakers in the dark on broadband
  • The underfunded part of Wisconsin public schooling
  • If we don’t pay for roads, we don’t get mobility
  • Foreseeing the Future of Wisconsin’s Flat Tax
  • Wisconsin voters will be asked about welfare work requirements
  • A state without convictions
  • Why Wisconsin Needs a Flat Tax and Education Reform
  • Donate
  • Newsletter
  • Contact
Facebook Twitter YouTube LinkedIn Instagram
Badger InstituteBadger Institute
SUPPORT OUR MISSION
  • Issues
    • Taxes
    • Education
    • Crime & Justice
    • Spending & Accountability
    • Economy & Infrastructure
    • Federalism
    • Licensing
    • Healthcare
    • Civil Society
  • Mandate for Madison
  • Research
  • Magazines
    • Diggings
    • Wisconsin Interest
  • Events
  • Media
    • Podcast
    • Fact Sheets
    • Viewpoints
    • Press Releases
    • Badger in the News
    • Video
    • Audio
    • Testimony
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • Board of Directors
    • Team
    • Visiting Fellows
    • America’s Future
    • Careers
Facebook Twitter YouTube LinkedIn
DONATE
Badger InstituteBadger Institute
Home » Civil War hero canceled
Civil Society

Civil War hero canceled

By Julie GraceOctober 20, 2020
Share
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest

Madison protesters  sacrifice symbol of abolition, equality and freedom for Black Lives Matter dogma

“It’s a revolution!” someone shouted in the darkness at the Lake Monona shoreline.

On June 23, a crowd of protesters pulled a 1.5-ton bronze statue of Colonel Hans Christian Heg from its pedestal on the east side of the Capitol building, dragged it down Main and Butler streets and pushed it into the lake. The crowd erupted into cheers.

Protesters, ostensibly taking to the streets over the death of George Floyd at the hands of four Minneapolis police officers, were tearing down monuments all over the country. At first, it was Jefferson Davis and Gen. Robert E. Lee, the most prominent reminders of the Confederacy and savery.

But very soon, statues of presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were toppled because they owned slaves. Christopher Columbus came down because he was a colonialist. The abolitionist, Union war hero and architect of emancipation Ulysses S. Grant had to be removed because, well, because.

On the same night Heg was brought down in Madison, Forward, the statue standing at the Capitol as “an allegory” — not of oppression and bigotry, but “of devotion and progress,” according to Wisconsin State Historical Society records — also came down.

Town supervisor, prison reformer

Why Heg? He was an immigrant, a public servant, a prison reformer, an activist and a soldier who died fighting to end slavery. He had “a deep faith in American ideals, in democracy, equality, and human freedom,” author and historian Theodore C. Blegen noted for the Wisconsin Magazine of History in 1920.

As a boy, Hans Christian Heg and his family immigrated to Muskego from Norway in 1829. He developed a respect for American ideals and an interest in politics. As a young man, he was a supervisor in the Town of Norway, chairman of the board of supervisors and a member of the county board.

As a Racine County delegate to the 1859 Republican state convention, fellow delegates nominated him to be the next State Prison Commissioner and shortly after was elected to the statewide office.

Heg championed better living conditions at Waupun State Prison and supported good time credits for prisoners — five days off a sentence for every month of good behavior. He implemented job training and asked the state to more fairly compensate the woman in charge of the female inmates. “The wages paid are not, I think, a fair compensation for the duties required of her,” he wrote.

Near the end of his tenure as commissioner in 1861, he clearly and eloquently articulated to the governor his views on prison discipline. “Experience has confirmed my conviction that a mild and merciful application of the rules of discipline is sufficient in all cases to reduce the most hardened offenders to obedience.”

“Nothing will arouse the virtuous aspirations of a fallen man so powerfully as the conviction that it still lies in his power to regain the rights he has forfeited, and that he yet can be respected by society as a fellow man,” he later wrote.

Cut down at Chickamauga

Heg declined a second term to accept a commission as colonel of the Fifteenth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry in 1861. He was a tireless recruiter of his fellow Wisconsinites, many of them immigrants, to fight with him in his pursuit of equality and freedom.

“That which we learned to love as freemen in our old Fatherland — our freedom — our government — our independence — is threatened with destruction. Is it not our duty as brave and intelligent citizens to extend our hands in defense of the cause of our country and of our own homes?” he wrote in one newspaper.

Heg vehemently opposed slavery and often reminded fellow Norwegian immigrants that they left “one of the most beautiful lands in the world” to come to America “because it was a free country, whose principles struck a responsive chord in their hearts,” one of Heg’s biographers wrote.

He ultimately died fighting for this belief following the battle of Chickamauga in 1863. Shot in battle, Heg rallied his troops and led them on horseback for a quarter of a mile before being taken to the hospital.

One of his close friends, Knud Langeland, who visited him on his deathbed the following day, recalled Heg telling him he was willing to die for this just cause “and that he was but one of hundreds of thousands who had laid down their lives, gladly sacrificing them on the altar of their country.” He was just 34.

Someone who personally knew Heg once wrote that his beliefs were inspired by “freedom, equality and the spirit of brotherhood.” His successor, Col. John A. Martin, described Heg as “everywhere present, careless of danger.”

Of his death the Wisconsin State Journal wrote, “The State has sent no braver soldier, and no truer patriot to aid in tis mighty struggle for national unity, than Hans Christian Heg. The valorous blood of the old Vikings rain in his veins, united with the gentler virtues of a Christian and a gentleman.”

 

False representation of the city?

City workers recovered the statues of Forward and Heg early June 24. Forward was missing a finger. One of Heg’s bronze boots was torn away, and the head, which had been sheared off, has not been found.

The state intends to replace Heg’s head, repair the statue and return it to the place it has stood since 1925 as early as next spring.

Protesters defended tearing down the Heg and Forward statues, claiming they are a “false representation of what this city is.” The protesters who pulled down Heg claimed it was a “strategic political move” to force politicians in the state to take “the same stand with the Black Lives Matter movement.”

Apparently, devotion and progress, public service, faith in democracy, equality and freedom — not to mention heroism — are false representations of Wisconsin’s capital city. Replacing them with the socialism underpinning Black Lives Matter is a bizarre, rather than a strategic, political move.

A mindless and hypocritical act may help restore the reputation of Hans Christian Heg, whose statue people may have passed by for decades without knowing who he was. It certainly helped the public understand what the “revolution” is really all about.

Julie Grace is a policy analyst in the Badger Institute’s Center for Oppourtunity. Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited.

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Telegram Email
Julie Grace

Related Posts

For a New Civil Society

September 8, 2022

Religious liberty in education reduces, not produces, strife

June 30, 2022

Family and school deterioration is a troubling combination

April 7, 2022
Categories
Top Posts

Local pols filling old budget holes with massive COVID aid

December 8, 20221,452

This is not four years ago

November 10, 20221,287

A state without convictions

January 12, 2023645

Billions in federal spending in Wisconsin unaudited; results never measured

November 9, 2022491
Archives

Sign Up for Top Picks

Our weekly e-Newsletter with the latest items and updates

Connect with Badger Institute
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
About Us
About Us

The Badger Institute is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit institute established in 1987 working to engage and energize Wisconsinites and others in discussions and timely action on key public policy issues critical to the state’s future, growth and prosperity.

Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube LinkedIn

Sign Up for Top Picks

Our weekly e-Newsletter with the latest items and updates

What’s New

Latest crime figures show a Milwaukee in trouble

March 23, 2023

Wisconsin lawmakers in the dark on broadband

March 16, 2023

The underfunded part of Wisconsin public schooling

March 16, 2023

If we don’t pay for roads, we don’t get mobility

March 9, 2023
© 2023 Badger Institute | Privacy Policy | Disclaimer | Sitemap

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

This site uses functional cookies and external scripts to improve your experience.

Privacy settings

Privacy Settings

This site uses functional cookies and external scripts to improve your experience. Which cookies and scripts are used and how they impact your visit is specified on the left. You may change your settings at any time. Your choices will not impact your visit.

NOTE: These settings will only apply to the browser and device you are currently using.

CRM Software

Customer Relationship Management Software

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google uses the data collected to track and monitor the use of our Service. This data is shared with other Google services. Google may use the collected data to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network.

You can opt-out of having made your activity on the Service available to Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. The add-on prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js, and dc.js) from sharing information with Google Analytics about visits activity.

For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy & Terms web page: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en

Powered by Cookie Information