Clark, South Dakota Veterans Monument

This monumnet in Clark, South Dakota honors veterans from Clark County who fought for American expansion in wars from the War of the Rebellion (1861-1865) to present. Plaques on all sides of the monument give tribute to Clark County citizens who have fought in America's wars.

I found the plaque to the War of the Rebellion, pictured below, to be particularly revealing. This small county in what was then the Dakota Territory, sent a very large number of soldiers to the "War to prevent Southern Independence." This was a full quarter-century before South Dakota was granted statehood in 1889. It was also during the same time of the Indian Wars in which the United States systematically slaughtered the Plains Indians, breaking treaty after treaty, in order to steal their land and their gold.

Actually, these two wars were both parts of the United States' much larger, campaign of conquest, which also included the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, and others. President Ulysses S. Grant acknowledged as much when he said, "The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war."
Spurred by the zealous but misguided notion of Manifest Destiny, and through relentless decades of wars and atrocities, the United States evolved from a confederation of sovereign, independent states into a world-wide empire with an all powerful centralized government.