Confederate monuments reopen old racial wounds
With at least 700 across U.S., markers become lightning rods for disputes
After a church shooting in South Carolina, the old granite Confederate Memorial Fountain that had sat for a century in Hill Park became a flash point.
The monument, described by its inscription as “a longing tribute to our Confederate soldiers,” really honored “traitors and re- bels … not ‘fallen comrades,’ ” a man said at a public meeting. Some people wanted to remove it, some to rename it, some to leave it alone.
It was a debate like many that erupted almost two years ago — except it happened 2,000 miles west of Gettysburg and 200 miles south of the Canadian border, in Helena, Mont., a state that was not even a state during the Civil War.
Helena’s memorial fountain is one of at least 700 and possibly more than 1,000 Confederate monuments in 31 states — in public parks, courthouse squares and state capitols.
Many, including Helena’s, were created by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which advanced the idea that the South left the Union and fought the Civil War over states’ rights, not slavery.
Many Confederate monuments from this era have attract-
There are at least 700 and possibly more than 1,000 Confederate monuments in 31 states — in public parks, courthouse squares and state capitols.
ed national attention since a white gunman with a passion for the Confederate battle flag killed nine black members of a Bible study group in Charleston.
New Orleans’ removal of four Confederate monuments from prominent locations spurred protests and threats against work crews. In Charlottesville, Va., a decision to move a Robert E. Lee statue from a park prompted a torchlight protest.
Helena’s fountain is comparatively obscure, but it illustrates a few things about Confederate monuments: uThey’re not only in the
Deep South. Although most of these monuments are in former Confederate states, they are also in border states that fought alongside the Union, such as Kentucky, Missouri, West Virginia and Maryland; in Union states, including Massachusetts, Iowa and Pennsylvania; and states that were mere territories in 1861, such as Montana, Arizona and Oklahoma.
Two-thirds of Kentuckians who fought in the Civil War did so for the Union, but the state is saturated with Confederate memorials. The Fairview birthplace of Confederate President Jefferson Davis is marked by a 35-story obelisk, one of the nation’s tallest. uThey’re still cropping up. In North Carolina, 35 monuments have been added since 2000, according to a University of North Carolina survey. One, dedicated in Mitchell County in 2011, commemorates 79 men “who died for their freedom and independence.” Not for slavery.
“Confederate monument” conjures images of imposing equestrian statues of Lee and Stonewall Jackson on Richmond’s Monument Avenue, or the huge bas-relief sculptures of Lee, Jackson and Davis at Stone Mountain, Ga.
Some monuments are more Confederate than others. They range from the strictly funereal to the aggressively polemical, such as one in front of the Anderson County, S.C., courthouse, which has the inscription “The world shall yet decide, in truth’s clear, far-off light, that the soldiers who wore the gray, and died with Lee, were in the right.”
Confederate monuments fall roughly into three categories:
The majority have remained unchanged and largely unremarked upon.
A few have been “contextualized” by additional plaques or signs. For example, the Confederate soldier statue in The Circle at the University of Mississippi had two different explanatory signs last year; critics objected that the first did not mention of slavery.
Even fewer have been moved. A statue of Davis that enjoyed an honored spot on the University of Texas-Austin campus for 82 years is in a museum. Louisville exiled its seven-story Confederate memorial late last year to a Civil War re-enactment site in Brandenburg, Ky.
Though flags can be lowered, songs censored, mascots switched and schools renamed, monuments are the most tangible and least mutable memorial symbols.
Several factors favor the status quo.
One is financial: It took $400,000 to move the Louisville memorial. A second is legal: Several states have moved to prevent or impede the movement of war memorials. A third is philosophical: Some people are ambivalent about tampering with a historical artifact, no matter how unpalatable its message.
The issue makes strange bedfellows. Gary Gallagher, a University of Virginia history professor, and Richard Spencer, a white supremacist, advocated leaving Charlottesville’s Lee statue in place. To Spencer, the statue is a symbol of white power. To Gallagher, it tells an important story about the time in which it was erected — although he told a city commission last year that he’d like to see other statuary in the park that tells other stories.
Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer, who voted against the statue’s move, likened Spencer’s torchlight march to a Ku Klux Klan rally, saying it was “either profoundly ignorant or designed to instill fear in our minority populations.”
In 1916, Helena was a northwestern city with a Southern heritage. Southerners followed the Missouri River north to Montana during and after the Civil War. They included Confederate deserters and veterans; released POWS; war refugees; and, after gold was discovered in 1864, prospectors. They settled in and helped shape Helena, whose very name was pronounced Southernstyle — HELL-in-ah, rather than heh-LEE-nah.
Georgia Young, a nurse who was born in Georgia, came to town in 1885 at age 28. She was a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The UDC grew out of groups formed immediately after the Civil War by war widows and other white women to give Confederate veterans, who were excluded from federal cemeteries, a decent burial.
Over time, it became invested in the white battle against the black vote. To that end, it promoted the “Lost Cause” notion of the war: that it was fought not because of the South’s insistence on slavery but over states’ rights.
Part of the UDC program was installation of Confederate memorials, many mail-ordered and mass-produced (in the North). One at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (of a soldier known as “Silent Sam”) was modeled on a Harvard student who posed in Boston for a Canadian sculptor.
Georgia Young raised about $2,000 for a fountain carved by a sculptor whose father was a Union soldier. Like most of its counterparts around the nation, the fountain aroused no opposition. For one thing, it was designed to enhance Hill Park in the spirit of “City Beautiful” urban planning. For another, it stood for national unity — especially important since the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914.
After the Charleston shooting, City Council members expressed concerns about how the city could be perceived because of the Confederate ountain.
A compromise was reached: a sign explaining how the monument came to be and what it signified. “Ten years from now, if a tourist asks, ‘Why is there a Confederate fountain in Montana?’ there’s an answer,” says Andres Haladay, a council member.