Today there is a frenziedeffort to tear down memorials to the Confederate dead. If you think“frenzied” is too strong a word, take a look at video of the crowdsin Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who resembled (ironically) a lynchmob as they threw ropes around a metal soldier and dragged it to the ground,all the while kicking and shouting profanities at the fallen memorial, andtaking pictures with their trophy. It’s as fine an example of mob mentality asyou will find and does not paint those who committed the act of vandalism in aflattering light. Such lawless and vulgar behavior suggests that they do nothave the moral high ground they claim to occupy.
These Confederate monumentsneed to be removed from the landscape, it is said, because the majority wereinstalled at the “height of the Jim Crow era” and exist only tointimidate the South’s black population. It is said that they have nothing todo with history, despite many standing silently for over a century. Theirmeaning is to spread “Lost Cause” propaganda, and they are a reminderof racism, nothing more. This line of thinking is an example of the narcissismof our present age, where someone can look at a memorial to a fallen soldier orfamily member and think it’s not about the soldier but about them or their petcause, rather than what the memorial actually meant when installed. And manymodern journalists and activists are not above some selective dishonesty toreinforce these beliefs, as the cherry-picked Julian Carr quote from the SilentSam dedication illustrates. Out of the many speakers and the thousands of wordsspoken on that memorial’s dedication day, the few paragraphs by Carr that dealwith race are the only words the press quote repeatedly. The context, thethemes of duty and sacrifice, and the fact that none of the other speakerstouched on racial issues, means nothing to the activist, bent on cleansing thelandscape of these sinful artifacts. The reality is that mostConfederate monuments are gravestones, erected to give closure to grievingfamilies who did not even have the solace of a victorious cause to comfortthem. A son or father or brother went off to war and never came home, and themanner of his death or place where the body fell was often unknown. The sheernumber of memorials all across the South is a testament to just how many diedin that war and the lingering trauma of the loss; a tangible reminder of thevery real human cost of the South’s attempt to form an independent nation. Andfor the vast majority of monuments, there is a paper trail that willdemonstrate the truth, if one is willing to go and look for it.The Ladies Memorial Associationof Charleston was formed to care for Confederates buried in Magnolia Cemetery,and to erect “a suitable Monument to their memory.” To that end, theladies wrote to the various churches around Charleston and published notices inthe newspapers looking for information on the dead, which was compiled andprinted. This was an expensive undertaking, as was marking the graves of theConfederate dead. The remains of some men who had been killed during the battleof Gettysburg were removed from Pennsylvania and re-interred in Charleston.Having done all this to identify and honor individuals, it was felt that amonument to all who died should be placed in the cemetery.The Monument has been appropriately placed in the midst ofthe graves of those whose death it commemorates. It is plain andunostentatious, but neat and appropriate. As it is a memorial of a lost cause,it should not be a triumphal memorial. Placed in the City of the Dead. and nearthe entrance, the sight of it cannot fail to call back the memory of the sadhistory which it commemorates. A splendid monument in the city would be only anornament to be gazed on with listless and indifferent eyes; and, instead ofbeing a memorial of the dead, would be only the object of cold, art criticism.
Its proper place, therefore, is just where it is, in the midst of the silent slumberers, whose deeds, and whose failures, it is designed to keep alive in the memories of the people.1
Of interest here is how themoney to pay for this was raised. The State made a small donation, but themajority was privately raised from “subscriptions and donations”,interest on city stock, interest on deposits and loans, and from variousraffles and sales. This memorial was not, for the most part, a government-fundedproject, though some marble originally meant for constructing the State Housewas donated to the project. The marking of graves, the re-burial of the wardead and the commissioning and construction of the monument was paid for mainlywith private funds from many sources. An equestrian monument ofGeneral P. G. T. Beauregard stood in New Orleans until it was removed in May of2017. In his speech at the unveiling of this monument, dated November 11, 1915,Secretary of the Beauregard Monument Association A. B. Booth noted that thework had begun 22 years earlier when Beauregard himself had died. A committeewas formed, subscriptions solicited, and the fund raising begun. Many of thoseinvolved at the beginning did not even live to see the work completed and the statueunveiled. They started it, while others had to carry it to completion. Thestatue, wrote Booth:
…is not to stand as an advocate of war, but to honor duty and true patriotism and worth, such as has distinguished Gen . G. T. Beauregard, whose memory we honor. 2
The Confederate memorial inArlington National Cemetery was placed there in the spirit of reconciliationand national unity. President Taft himself welcomed the United Daughters of theConfederacy to Washington DC.
If the occasion which brings you here were the mourning at the bier of a lost cause, I know that the nice sense of propriety of a fine old social school would have prevented you from inviting me, as the President of the United States to be present. You are not here to mourn or support a cause. You are here to celebrate, and justly to celebrate, the heroism, the courage and the sacrifice to the uttermost of your fathers and your brothers and your mothers and your sisters, and of all your kin, in a cause which they believed in their hearts to be right, and for which they were willing to lay down their lives. 3
The Ladies’ MemorialAssociation of Raleigh was formed, like the one in Charleston, to care for thebodies of the local Confederate dead, and they too recovered some fallen from Gettysburgand from Arlington and brought them back to be buried in North Carolina. Mrs.Garland Jones, one of the Presidents of the Ladies’ Memorial Association,expressed the following wish in 1893, which also expresses their motivation tomemorialize:
It is the hope and prayer of the older members of the Ladies’ Memorial Association that the work be not allowed to die with the passing away of its founders, and the generation which knew the birth of the “Storm-beaten” nation. and which mourn its fall, and whose hearts cherish the fadeless glories of the Confederate flag ; but that the younger women, to whom these glories are only a tradition, will keep alive the memory of the men who died for our just cause, but who died not in vain, for they gave their lives for a great principle, and their blood sends a message down through all time. 4
Mrs. Jones wishes thetradition of remembering the fallen to be one that continued beyond hergeneration, to go beyond the lives of those who began it. And is that not thepurpose of any monument, to create a lasting physical representation of someoneor something that will last, and which will speak to future generations? That was the goal of thewomen of the South Carolina Monument Association, and in organizing to commissionand build a monument in South Carolina, they wrote down a constitution for theundertaking as well as speaking about it. The association’s goal was “thebuilding of a monument, in the City of Columbia, by the women of the State, tothe memory of the South Carolinians who fell in the service of the ConfederateStates.”
One duty still remained – they must now guard the precious dust of the martyred dead of their State, and erect a monument which should perpetuate the memory of the slain and convey to the latest generations the record of the undying fidelity of the people of South Carolina to truth, justice, and liberty. 5
“Guard the preciousdust of the martyred dead”… “keepalive the memory of the men who died for our just cause”…. “here tocelebrate, and justly to celebrate, the heroism, the courage and the sacrificeto the uttermost of your fathers and your brothers and your mothers and yoursisters, and of all your kin, in a cause which they believed in their hearts tobe right”… the sentiments are clear, and they are hardly racial innature. The goal is to honor and to keep alive the memory of the fallen dead,and to offer closure to families who were never able to bury their dead. The reader is encouraged toread the full sources and draw your own conclusions, but it is no surprise thatwe are not being told the full truth about why these monuments were placed allover the South. The motive for erecting them, as demonstrated in these fewexamples, was not hate for the black man, but love for lost family and fellowSoutherners. Given that there are hundreds of monuments, there are plenty more examplesthat could be shared, and they should be. Anyone interested in defending thepresence of these Confederate memorials should search for and share what thosewho are responsible for their existence actually had to say. As General RobertE. Lee would tell us, “Everyoneshould do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in the hopethat it may find a place in history and descend to posterity.” Truth is alwaysworth defending.
To Gaurd the Precious Dust of the Martyred Dead.
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