Supervisor Calvin B. Taylor, the board's other black member, said, To erect a monument in honor of a group of people who planned to kill and destroy is wrong, even if the cause is just. As someone in the audience pointed out, a Virginian named George Washington fought violently for a just cause. Historians call it the American Revolution. Personally, I've never felt that Southerners who fought in the War Between the States were fighting for a just cause. They believed, among other things, that individual states should decide for themselves whether it was legal to enslave people.
Slavery is absolutely wrong.
Gabriel Prosser knew in 1800 that Virginia slaves had no chance of gaining their freedom without a violent rebellion. They failed in their attempt, but their cause was just. Floyd Thomas says he will try again in January to persuade fellow board members that the obelisk should include mention of Gabriel's Rebellion. In the meantime, those in Caroline who oppose Thomas' idea might want to spend a little time thinking about what it would have been like to be considered nothing more than somebody else's property and forced to work in the fields on a plantation. Meanwhile, there are contemporary Virginians white and black who would not mind if the county government voted to take down the monument to Confederate soldiers.