By John Estridge
The Shoup historical marker will stay and remain unchanged at the Conwell Cemetery in Laurel.
With statues falling across the country faster than April rain, there was talk from Indianapolis of rewording or even removing the Shoup Historical Marker.
According to an article on WIBC.com, in June, Indianapolis Democratic Mayor Joe Hogsett, a Rushville native, ordered the removal of a monument to the Confederate prisoners of war from Garfield Park. This led some to question the Shoup Historical Marker in Laurel. Major Gen. Francis Shoup, while born in Laurel, was a Confederate general during the Civil War.
“Last month, IHB (Indiana Historical Bureau) received two media inquiries regarding this marker in light of the removal of the Confederate monument in Garfield Park,” Dr. Michelle M. Marino, deputy director of the Indiana Historical Bureau, Division of the Indiana State Library, said.
When local officials were made aware of this situation, more than one questioned the state’s authority to reword or remove the marker. That is because the price of the marker was paid with private donations, and it is now sitting on private property off the state right of way along Indiana 121. It was erected in the cemetery in 2006 to much fanfare. Later, a vehicle damaged the marker and it was repaired and replaced slightly farther from the highway.
Marino disagreed with the assertion the state no longer had control of the historical marker.
“The Indiana Historical Bureau (IHB) is a division of the Indiana State Library, and has overseen the state’s marker program since the 1940s,” Marino said by email in answer to emailed questions. “All Indiana State Historical Markers including state format markers installed after 1945 and markers installed by the Indiana Civil War Centennial Commission, are the property of the State under Indiana Code.”
According to Marino, the Shoup marker was put under review a decade ago as part of a routine review program. It is “in order to provide additional information and source material about statements on the marker that are misleading and lacked much needed context,” Marino said in the email.
However, in the WIBC.com article, it stated: “A previous review in 2011 concluded the wording was accurate, but did not address the question of context.”
According to the WIBC.com article, an Indiana Historical Bureau staff report calls the fact the marker talks about Gen. Shoup advocated the use of black soldiers in the Confederate Army misleading.
“The report notes Shoup’s suggestion wasn’t rooted in any notion of equal rights, but his theory that slaves were already conditioned to be obedient, or could be made so through harsh discipline and their own ‘simple-mindedness.’
“And the report argues the word ‘recruitment’ itself is misleading, since slaves had no power to enlist but would be forced into a different form of servitude,” the article continued.
The report was also upset the marker did not state the shoupades were constructed by slaves.
According to Historynet.com, blacks on both sides were used to build fortifications.
However, the state has decided not to rewrite the Shoup marker or remove it.
“IHP recently updated our marker review in order to provide further contextual information, clarify textual inaccuracies, and address glaring omissions,” Marino said in her email. “We contacted the local applicant for this marker to notify them about the recent inquiries and to engage in conversation about marker issues, but discussions regarding changing the Francis Shoup marker are not occurring and modifications to the marker are not anticipated at this time.”
Shoup’s history
Brigadier General Francis Shoup was born in Laurel in 1834. An 1855 West Point graduate, Shoup served in the federal army from 1855-1860. Shoup left the army to become a lawyer in Indianapolis. However, after the outbreak of the Civil War, Shoup went to Florida and joined the Confederate Army.
Shoup served in Florida as a federal officer during the Third Seminole War.
Shoup served as chief of artillery for Lt. Gen. William Hardee during the Battle of Shiloh in 1862. After that, he headed a division in Arkansas, before he was brought to Vicksburg, Mississippi. After a long and bloody siege, Vicksburg eventually fell to Gen. U.S. Grant in 1863.
After Vicksburg, Shoup went to Atlanta where he defended against Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s march to the sea. It was during the march to the sea, that Shoup invented fortifications named for him, Shoupades.
While Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston was facing Sherman at Kennesaw Mountain, Shoup went farther behind the Confederate line and built a series of 36 fortifications along the Chattahoochee River called the Johnston River Line. These were starfort bastions, which each one holding 80 rifle-armed troops. They were arranged to funnel the troops toward redans with each holding two 12-inch smooth bore Napoleon guns or five-inch ordinance rifles. With the attacking troops funneled into this killing zone, the field would be swept of the attackers.
After Gen. Sherman first saw the line, he wrote “they were the best line of field entrenchments I have ever seen.” This necessitated Sherman to back off and find a way to flank the shoupades.
Shoup was just one of a number of Confederate generals who advocated using slaves and freed blacks in the Confederate Army. Confederate President Jefferson Davis remained staunchly against that proposal until March 13, 1865, when the Confederate Congress passed a law allowing blacks to be used in the Confederate Army.
After the war, Shoup was a professor at the University of Mississippi and then the University of the South. He was a published author, and he was an Episcopal rector, which means an Episcopal priest for a parish.
He died in 1896 and is buried at Sewanee University Cemetery in Tennessee.
