Tomorrow,
Thursday, will be a special day in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Starting last year the
city council there voted to annually make July 16th General “Mad”
Anthony Wayne Day. That might interest you since Wayne County, Illinois is also
named after the revolutionary war military leader.
If it
weren’t for Wayne, we might not be the United States. He successfully stormed a
British fort at Stony Point, New York….he later learned of the treachery of
Benedict Arnold moving promptly to save West Point. He helped join the
successful siege of Yorktown which led to the British surrender. In short, he
was a hero.
That’s why
there’s a statue of him out front of the Fort Wayne City Hall.
No harm has
come to that statue. I checked. According to a spokesperson at the city clerk’s
office in Fort Wayne, there’s not going
to be an observance tomorrow because of the pandemic.
Why would
anyone be worried about damage to the “Mad” Anthony Wayne statue? Wayne owned
slaves. He also was appointed by President George Washington to kill native
Americans which allowed him to negotiate the safe expansion of the country
west.
It is not
clean and pretty…but it is our history. A Fort Wayne council member said it
best when civic leaders were debating the celebration of the general.
He warned
against the ”folly of viewing historical events through the lens of modern
morality.”
I don’t
think I could have said it better
myself.
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