At a cost of more than $400,000 for the preparation and relocation of the dilapidated remains of the house, the city commission has joined these two U.S. Confederate States of America adherents and established a de facto Plantation Row smack in the heart of the city.
Mind you, the $400,000-plus bill doesn't include the "restoration" of the structure. Before they're done, it might climb up to $1 million taxpayer dollars to honor a man who profited from depriving human beings of their freedom and returning them to bondage. The same thing was accomplished for Stillman who deprived the rightful owners of their land. When they are done with the house, the pieces of the structure will become a mansion, as did the Stillman ranch house which arrived here reeking like an abandoned whorehouse.
Descendants of these men, Sandy Stillman and John Cowen - the latter currently Brownsville's mayor- played a personal role in the embellishment of their ancestors' shrines, with the convenient assistance of the public treasury. The city commission was only too pliant in leaning on the local taxpayers to glorify our slaver past.
Some historic ironies were not lost today. The two pro-confederate structures lie in the shadow of the Union federal courthouse, which defeated the confederacy. And Polk Street intersects with 7th Street where the buildings are located. The street is named after James Polk, the expansionist president who manufactured a war that resulted in the U.S. expanding from the Nueces to the Rio Grande, making it possible for rapacious men like Stillman and Neale to ply their wares and despoil the land and people.)
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