Controversial Statue: John B Castleman on Slavery, Lincoln, and the Union

"In Louisville today the remains of General John Breckinridge Castleman lie in state. General Castleman's story is not without significance in these troubled times. As a youth of nineteen he rushed into Confederate service at the outbreak of the war. He was opposed to the institution of slavery but he was a hot-headed advocate of the principle of state's rights and to him every state was a republic unto itself. He was the dashing kind of soldier who would naturally be drawn to the audacious trooper, Morgan." 

"At the entrance of Cherokee park which is the product of his generosity and constant care and watchfulness stands a modest little frame cottage in a spacious park-like yard where arching trees abound. That little house for nearly half a century has been General Castleman's home. In the large central window of this home, facing the thorofare, there has always hung an American flag.The flag was General Castleman's passion. In the days of his youth on his return from exile he, like General Gordon of Georgia, became a great reconstructionist. He went among the people of the south, telling them what the flag meant, how wrong their war was, how the lost cause was a wrong cause, how they should rejoice in their defeat tho never losing their love and enthusiasm for their hero dead who gave their valor for that which they thought to be right but which they now found, to their sorrow and to their gladness, was wrong. He was the sympathetic southerner who love the South so much that he could love North and South more."

When the Lincoln Memorial at Hodgenville was dedicated a few years ago General Castleman with President Taft was an honor guest of Kentucky. When all the services and exercises were over, and the 17,000 spectators on the grounds had dissipated, gone on their way and the Presidential train was standing on its siding with impatient engine three mile distant from the isolated shrine, General Castleman expressed the wish to return to the Memorial that he could see it in the silence of its setting, with the multitude away.

When, with a few friends present, he paid this second visit to that shrine that day he said, "“ I cannot describe my feelings. Here from a home of lower birth than that which I knew, the humblest hut of a cabin, came a man who lived to have the power to save my life. Had Lincoln lived, I always knew that I would have returned from exile not two years after but at the close of the war In giving me my life this man gave me the light to see the wrong cause I had championed, the right cause that he battled for. I have given my ...

"...life in a humble effort to carry on his work, to bring his divided people once more,” then pointing to the inscription on the pediment of the building, he read “ into union, peace and brotherhood among these United States.” A few years ago in front of his own home at the entrance of the park which was the result of his own generosity and handiwork, Louisville unveiled in his presence, Kentucky ’s great man on a horse, GENERAL CASTLEMAN.

General Castleman lived the repentance of a mistake against a just cause and a flag that was borne into battle for liberty and for a government that stood for both freedom and fellowship. No one ever worked more faithfully to correct a wrong against his country's flag. No one ever learned to love his country's flag more than did Kentucky s great horseman. He was one of the rebuilders of the South, and as a rebuilder he became one of the builders of the nation.

General Castleman is dead. His mortal remains lie in state in Louisville today. Kentucky honors in this hour the memory of one who was more than her son; he became a great, soldier son of America. This was his pride. The flag that always made brilliant the big window of his home he loved better than life itself. The spirit of General Castleman is one that cannot be laid at rest. In the words ; of Webster it will march on and on in the cause of “ union, one and inseparable now and forever-”THE WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL. SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1918.