Jack Taylor – 2/13/2011 Message
Subject: Something intereting you may want to learn…
Hi Mr. Edgerton,
Hope all is well your way. I’m trying to get folks alerted about something happening and you might find this interesting. I’m sorry to intrude and I hope this message is not an inconvenience.
I am an avid collector of coins both new and old but mostly old silver… I have done so since I was a kid like a lot of folks. To my dismay I discovered a quarter design that is coming up in August 2011 for Vicksburg Park and I think you might be interested too.
Okay, You may not know yet but this year, 2011, the US Mint by order of George W. Bush in 2008 will produce State Park quarters titled, “America’s Beautiful National Parks Coin Act of 2008”.
For the first time ever, a coin will depect a Civil War battlefied monument on two seperate quarters. The first will be the Pennsylvania “Gettysburg” quarter and on the back will be the monument to the 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry. However, for the Mississippi quarter it will have the gun ship, USS Cairo. The Cairo was sunk by Southern ingenuity (the first electrically controlled bomb) and still, the Cairo as a Union weapon of war gets the glory on the new Mississippi quarter.
If this is okay with you, then don’t read the few remaing words. Delete this E-mail and be happy you have quarters to spend.
Should we not have a Confederate Monument on the Mississippi Quarter just like Pennsylania has a Union monument on theirs? Was it not former Confederate General Stephen Dill Lee who started the Vicksburg National Park? (read about him if you don’t know this) Did not S.D. Lee help fight for women’s voting rights and lead Mississippi State College to become the largest school of it’s kind?
I would ask that all those who care about something like this to peittion the U.S. Mint to please let Mississippi (The South in general) be represented for her part in the American Civil War. Why should Pennsylania get to show her pride and Mississippi be forced to show a Union (Yankee) gun boat?
Write a letter to your local Congressman or Senator (or whomever) and let them know how you feel.
This is the first thing I’ve ever wanted petitioned in my life. I guess I just got tired of seeing all these battlefields in the south with nothing but Union Soldiers graves represented. Personally, I’m tired of being portrayed as an idiot just because I’m from Dixie. Never mind this is where NASA is located and I do recall a nuclear bomb being created in Tennessee to help end WWII. And while we make about 1/3 of the US in population we make about 60% of the US military…. we have the best schools and best people – never mind the food! Just maybe for once we can have a piece of our heritage preserved on a coin – just this one time.
Jack Taylor
Columbia, Tennesse
