IN REMEMBRANCE: CONFEDERATE FUNERARY MONUMENTS IN ALABAMA AND RESISTANCE TO RECONCILIATION, 1884-1923 Except where reference is made to the work of others, the work described in this thesis is my own or was done in collaboration with my advisory committee. This thesis does not include proprietary or classified information. ________________________________ Michael Andrew Davis Certificate of Approval: _________________________ _________________________ Kenneth W. Noe Anthony G. Carey, Chair Draughon Professor Hollifield Associate Professor History History _________________________ _________________________ Charles A. Israel Joe F. Pittman Associate Professor Interim Dean History Graduate School IN REMEMBRANCE: CONFEDERATE FUNERARY MONUMENTS IN ALABAMA AND RESISTANCE TO RECONCILIATION, 1884-1923 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Auburn, Alabama May 10, 2008 iii IN REMEMBRANCE: CONFEDERATE FUNERARY MONUMENTS IN ALABAMA AND RESISTANCE TO RECONCILIATION, 1884-1923 Permission is granted to Auburn University to make copies of this dissertation at its discretion, upon requests of individuals or institutions at their expense. The author reserves all publication rights. _________________________ Signature of Author _________________________ Date of Graduation iv THESIS ABSTRACT IN REMEMBRANCE: CONFEDERATE FUNERARY MONUMENTS IN ALABAMA AND RESISTANCE TO RECONCILIATION, 1884-1923 Michael A. Davis Master of Arts, May 10, 2008 (B.A., Auburn University, 2005) 128 typed pages Directed by Anthony G. Carey This thesis will examine Alabama Confederate monuments in terms of their style and location. In so doing, it explores their connection to the greater memory of the Civil War in the South. Scholars writing on southern monuments have noted two phases of memorialization; the first entailed the building of funerary-style monuments (usually taking the form of an obelisk) in cemeteries, while the second marked the rise of the ?soldier? statue placed on prominent locations such as courthouse lawns or major intersections. Although scholars provide many different reasons for this rise in the construction of celebratory soldier statues, none have speculated as to why local communities continued to raise funerary-style monuments. This thesis directly addresses this issue, and argues that the continued construction of funerary monuments represented v a last vestige of resistance to reconciliation in communities that experienced exceptionally difficult trials during the war. While describing the process of memorialization in Alabama communities, this thesis will also address gender and racial aspects associated with Confederate remembrance. Finally, it will discuss the continuation of disunity throughout the twentieth century up to the present. vi Style manual used: Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Theses and Dissertations, Seventh Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Computer software used: Microsoft Word, 2003 vii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER I. A SLIGHT UNDERCURRENT OF RESISTANCE: CONFEDERATE MEMORIALIZATION IN AUBURN, ALABAMA .............................. 16 CHAPTER II. DIFFERENT GENDERS, DIFFERENT MEMORIES: CONFEDERATE MEMORIALIZATION IN ATHENS, ALABAMA ............................... 35 CHAPTER III. CELEBRATING A PAST THAT NEVER WAS: CONFEDERATE MEMORIALIZATION IN BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA..................... 58 CONCLUSION. NO SURRENDER: THE SECOND CONFEDERATE MONUMENT OF GAINESVILLE, ALABAMA ................................................................ 83 PHOTOGRAPHS .................................................................................................................. 96 APPENDIX. LIST OF MONUMENTS RESEARCHED IN THIS STUDY THAT FALL UNDER THE CATEGORY OF ?LATE-FUNERARY STYLE/ SOLEMN MONUMENTS? ....................................................................................................................114 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................116 1 INTRODUCTION On April 27, 1886, a train sped towards Montgomery, Alabama carrying a much- anticipated passenger. 1 Similar to a trip he undertook 25 years earlier, the traveler, Jefferson Davis, was to play a central role in an important ceremony at the Alabama State Capitol. During his earlier visit, he was sworn in as the President of a new southern nation; this time, he was to lay the cornerstone for a monument celebrating that same nation, long-since dead. After staying overnight at the Exchange Hotel, the seventy- seven year old guest of honor rode by carriage to the Capitol in a procession consisting of various veterans organizations, including a Montgomery unit known as the Independent Rifles. People cheered from curbs, windows, and even rooftops as the spectacle passed by. Arriving at Capitol Hill, Davis stepped out of his carriage and climbed the steps of the domed building behind Alabama Governor Edward Asbury O?Neal and former Confederate General John Brown Gordon. Assuming a position on the exact spot he stood to take the oath of office a quarter-of-a-century earlier, Davis looked out over a crowd larger than the one that received him on that February day in 1861 and began speaking. 2 1 ?Northern Courtesies,? Montgomery Advertiser, 28 April 1886, p. 5. 2 ?On the Same Spot,? Montgomery Advertiser, 29 April 1886, p. 1. 2 Although the elaborate monument started on that day in 1886 celebrated a revolt against the United States government, the feeling in the air was that of reconciliation. On the train ride towards Montgomery, George Marr, a native of Kenosha, Wisconsin presented Davis with a bouquet of flowers as ?evidence of the high opinion he had formed of his character and integrity, and of hearty good will and desire for genuine union and fraternity.? 3 Later, while speaking to the crowd, John Gordon addressed the common feelings of all veterans of the war, stating that if ?we build no monuments, write no histories, cherish no memories of the men and deeds which truthful history would make so immortal,? then ?the soldier or the citizen of the North or the South?would frown upon scenes like this in either section?who does not esteem the renown won by both armies in the late war, as the richest contribution and aliment for the patriotism of the whole people.? 4 Kind words even appeared about Abraham Lincoln, the leader of the federal army that defeated the South: the Montgomery Advertiser printed an article during the festivities entitled ?Lincoln?s Contempt for Conventionalities,? which declared that even though Lincoln lacked the dignity of formal appearance, ?he was ever genial, tender and social, never bewailing his hardships or exulting in his triumphs.? 5 This reconciliationist sentiment reached its pinnacle with the final line of the article, which proclaimed that his ?great ambition was to leave the world better than he found it.? 6 3 ?Northern Courtesies,? Montgomery Advertiser, 28 April 1886, p. 5. 4 ?On the Same Spot,? Montgomery Advertiser, 29 April 1886, p. 1. 5 ?Lincoln?s Contempt for Conventionalities,? Montgomery Advertiser, 28 April 1886, p. 5. 6 Ibid. 3 In a glaring sense of irony, however, an advertisement for local druggists located adjacent to the article celebrating the Great Emancipator contained a mascot that defined the racial order of the times?an African American male in tattered clothes, grinding medicinal remedies on a mortar. 7 Through this expression of reconciliation and racism, Montgomery residents demonstrated the layout of the reunited nation: white southerners could accept northern compliments and even state that both sections were right in the Civil War, so long as they were free to express and maintain their idea of racial hegemony in their region without northern interference. Two years prior to the festivities for the start of the statehouse monument that celebrated the Confederacy and inspired reconciliationist sentiment, many of the same Montgomery citizens that participated in the festivities gathered in Oakwood Cemetery to unveil a different kind of monument, a funerary shaft that honored soldiers from the Independent Rifles who died fighting the federal government. Although the 1886 celebrations presented both North and South as justified in principle for their respective roles in the war, the language at the unveiling of this monument by the surviving veterans for their comrades buried in the cemetery hinted at a different vision of the war, one in which white southerners viewed only their own section as righteous. 8 Governor O?Neal, who fought with this unit, expressed a tone in his address to the audience that the South was legally right in the conflict, saying to his former comrades that: 7 Montgomery Advertiser, 28 April 1886, p. 5. 8 ?The Independent Rifles,? Montgomery Advertiser, 22 July 1884, p. 4. 4 ?by your training and discipline?by your soldierly obedience to orders?by your subordination of the military to the civic power, and your firm and fearless maintenance of the majesty of the law?recorded honors shall gather around and thicken over this monument, whose honored name you bear. 9 This sentiment continued in a speech by Captain H. C. Tompkins, commander of the new company of Independent Rifles, who said that ?we?point to it [the monument] as a memorial of as true a band of heroes as ever sacrificed their lives upon a cauntry?s [sic] altar or carried arms in freedom?s cause.? 10 Tompkins went on to note the difference between the Independent Rifles marker and larger, more celebratory monuments such as the one later placed before the Alabama Capitol, saying that: Other monuments may be more dazzling and tower higher aloft, but were the deeds of those in whose memory this is erected. Stamped upon its pedestal and written on its shaft, none would or could contain stories of greater daring, or record actions of more unselfish patriotism. The valor of your [the veterans?] organization we can never hope to excel, the bright pages written by you in your country?s history we can never hope to add a new lustre [sic]. 11 While this oratory might appear innocent enough in terms of sectional reconciliation, a recurrent theme echoes through both O?Neal?s and Tompkins? speeches?the continual reference to the idea that the soldiers gave up their lives for their country. By constructing a monument for them, the builders did much more than honor the dead? they commemorated the Confederacy as a legally justified and truly independent entity, one which defended itself against an illegal northern invasion into its territory. The contrasting nature between the unveiling of the Capitol Hill and Oakwood Cemetery monuments illuminate an important development occurring in Confederate 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 5 memorialization: the shift in the nature of monuments from solemn remembrance to celebration of the Confederacy. As Gaines Foster finds in his book Ghosts of the Confederacy (1987), during the period of 1865 to 1885 white southerners chose to build 70 percent of their monuments in cemeteries, and almost 75 percent of all Confederate monuments were funereal in design, usually taking the form of an obelisk. This type of memorialization was an expression of the recent feelings of loss and bereavement experienced by the recently defeated South. In the period from 1886 to 1899, however, feelings of celebration replaced those of grief. The number of monuments in cemeteries decreased from 70 to 55 percent, and the funereal themed-monuments dropped in numbers from 70 to 40 percent. Furthermore, approximately 60 percent of the new monuments presented the image of a Confederate soldier. 12 Overall, these numbers indicate a change in the ways in which southerners remembered and presented their role in the Civil War. Many scholars have attempted to answer the question as to why white southerners began celebrating the Confederacy instead of mourning it. According to Foster, the rise of Confederate celebration (and thus, of celebratory monuments), was the result of southerners looking to the past to ease their tensions, worries, and fears as they transitioned from a rural, farming society to an industrialized, urban society. In addition, Foster notes the significant growth in the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) in 1893, during a period of Populist agitation, labor unrest, and economic depression. 13 To 12 Gaines M. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South 1865-1913 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 40-42, 128-129. 13 Ibid., 113-114. 6 psychologically deal with the problems of the present, as Foster argues, white southerners recalled the glorious days of the past. David Blight proposes a different argument to the rise of Confederate celebration in his work Race and Reunion (2001), attributing this change in remembrance to the emergence of an economically-motivated national reunion in which northerners accepted southern arguments that the Confederacy was only defeated by superior numbers, and that by fighting for concepts like ?liberty? and ?freedom,? the South was right for fighting in principle. Conversely, southerners acknowledged (at least on a national level) that northerners were also justified in fighting the war, and claimed that the South was again a loyal part of the Union. In summation, both sides touted the point of view that nobody was truly wrong for fighting in the war, and that both sections deserved praise. What whites from both North and South chose to forget in this remembrance of the war, however, was the true reason it was fought?as well as the greatest impact its outcome had upon American society?the end of slavery and the uplift of the African American male to citizen status. 14 In the new celebration that sprouted from this reconciliation, remembrance of the Confederacy ?evolved into a language of vindication and renewal, as well as an array of practices and public monuments through which they [white southerners] could solidify both their southern pride and the Americanness.? 15 Aside from Blight?s and Foster?s arguments, other works also attempt to address the change in Confederate memorialization from solemn to celebratory. John Winberry 14 David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), 2, 258-266. Amongst themselves, Southerners espoused an interpretation of the war that was much less reconciliationist. 15 Ibid., 266. 7 offers four possible explanations as to why southerners began building monuments in urban areas: the increasing death rate among veterans; the economic recovery of wealthy southerners after Reconstruction; the growth of the Lost Cause movement in which white southerners attempted to reinterpret the war as a romantic and righteous event for their section; and finally as a reaction to the growing black-white Populist alliance which tried to remind whites of their shared heritage and politically reunite them as a race. 16 Meanwhile, Stephen Davis argues that in the first years after the war, southerners feared repercussions by occupying forces for placing monuments in public locales, and usually decided instead to place them in secluded cemeteries. Only when Reconstruction ended and federal troops left were southerners free to place monuments wherever they chose. As those monuments became more elaborate, the feeling developed that they were a source of local pride, and builders placed them closer and closer to the center of town. 17 While these scholars propose significant explanations as to why celebratory monuments in urban areas increased over time, they fail to address an important trend in Confederate memorialization: why some communities chose to continue placing funerary and solemn-styled monuments in cemeteries during the later phase of Confederate celebration. Even though the number of cemetery monuments dropped after 1885, the sizeable amount of solemn monuments still erected in southern burial grounds cannot be ignored. 18 This trend is important in determining the views that white southerners held 16 John J. Winberry, "'Lest We Forget': The Confederate Monument and the Southern Townscape," Southeastern Geographer 23, no. 2 (November 1983): 115-118; Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 4. 17 Stephen Davis, "Empty Eyes, Marble Hand: The Confederate Monument and the South," Journal of Popular Culture 16, No. 3 (Winter 1982): 4. 18 Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 40-42, 128-129. 8 on reconciliation in that the subject of commemoration for these monuments, Confederate soldiers, died fighting the federal government. By remembering them, it would be impossible, at least on some level, not to blame northerners for their death, as well as for the hardships that followed the war. Just as importantly, almost every funerary-style monument examined in this study (aside from the Independent Rifles monument in Montgomery, which was still dedicated to the builders? dead comrades) was built by a city with a small population that also had experienced exceptional trauma during the war. It can be assumed that in these smaller towns, which were spared the crime and hardship of larger cities and provided a comparatively uneventful lifestyle for the populace, the shock of wartime trauma had a profound psychological effect on the locals that later manifested in the construction of these funerary monuments at the turn of the century. In other words, while white southerners could dedicate celebratory monuments to the Confederacy and proclaim at the same time that both sides were right in the war, the continuing construction of solemn monuments in some communities provided a window into the true feelings of former Confederates?feelings in which they blamed the North for starting the war, and that they only grudgingly accepted life in a reunited nation after Appomattox. This study builds upon the works of two scholars, the first of which is John R. Neff?s Honoring the Civil War Dead (2005). Neff lays the groundwork for the study of monuments and resistance to reconciliation, writing that ?the clearest evidence of a persistent divergence in American society?of a lack of reconciliation?is found in the commemoration of the war?s soldier dead,? who became ?the polestar of sometimes bitter 9 memory.? 19 This thesis aims to slightly expand upon the source of this ?bitter memory? as resulting not only from the commemoration the dead, but also from the recollection of wartime events that occurred in a community. The other work primarily contributing to this study is James M. Mayo?s War Memorials as Political Landscape (1988), which examines memorials from all of America?s wars to find the connection between structural design and politics. Mayo finds that to Americans, monuments ?express symbolically our political and emotional response to war and peace, victory and defeat, justice and destiny, or horror and revolt.? 20 In relating this notion to Confederate memorialization, the continued construction of solemn-style monuments in the celebratory period of Confederate remembrance provides an image that white southerners, at least in some ways, did not feel the war should be celebrated. Instead, the funerary shafts placed upon or near the mounds of Confederate dead indicated an urge to remind future generations about the incursion of northerners into the South and the death of the men it produced. Before embarking upon the main discussion of this thesis, some clarification is necessary as to the bounds of this study and the types of monuments it examines. It would be difficult to write a work encompassing all of the late-funerary style monuments in the South. Instead, this study focuses on monuments from four cities in the state of 19 John R. Neff, Honoring the Civil War Dead: Commemoration and the Problem of Reconciliation (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2005), 5-6. 20 James M. Mayo, War Memorials as Political Landscape: The American Experience and Beyond (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1988), xvi. 10 Alabama?Auburn, Athens, Birmingham, and Gainesville. 21 Focusing on these monuments provides several advantages, mainly through the manner in which the Civil War unfolded in the state. Unlike Tennessee, Mississippi, and Georgia, much of Alabama escaped larger battles. At the same time, several communities in Alabama experienced trauma caused by other byproducts of warfare, such as military hospitals, the surrender of a large Confederate force in their city (signaling that all was lost in the war, as well as stigmatizing them forever as ?the city in which ____ surrendered?), or by simply having to cope with a surplus of deceased local youth once the war ended. Furthermore, while several parts of the state went relatively untouched by Union forces, North Alabama endured federal occupation throughout the majority of the war. Within that area, the city of Athens experienced perhaps one of the most traumatizing events within the state during the conflict: the occupation and sack of the town by federal troops. While all of the scenarios described here differ from each other, all of these cities which experienced these various traumas share one key similarity: the local population constructed some sort of funerary or solemn monument dedicated to Confederate dead during a period characterized by Confederate celebration and national reconciliation. While the main focus of this study is cemetery monuments constructed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (the most prominent example being Auburn?s Confederate monument), some monuments examined fall into a ?borderline? category between funerary and urban monuments, in which a monument takes on a solemn tone but appears in a public area (which will be referred to hereafter as ?transitional 21 Although these four communities are the focus of this study, the author examined nine funerary-style monuments in communities that experienced wartime trauma. See Appendix for a list of monuments examined. 11 monuments?). Winberry provides an explanation for these structures, arguing that such structures represent an intermediary period in Confederate memorialization. As Reconstruction passed, builders began placing monuments closer and closer to the center of town and designing them in more celebratory tones. This movement ended in the first decade of the twentieth century, with the most common type of monument at that time being a soldier statue on a courthouse lawn. 22 While this trend certainly did occur in Alabama, transitional monuments still contained most of the solemn undertones that their cemetery counterparts possessed?almost every single monument is dedicated to a specific group of soldiers buried in the local cemetery, and all suggest a feeling of remorse or regret rather than celebration. Even the monument in Athens, a soldier statue on the courthouse lawn, was dedicated to soldiers in a cemetery and reflected a feeling of remorse through the soldier?s noticeably downtrodden stature. While some of these monuments in trauma-scarred cities followed Winberry?s trend of moving towards the city center, their retention of solemn elements, as well as their ideological connection to dead soldiers, indicates that the citizens still harbored a buried resistance to total reconciliation. This thesis also examines obelisk monuments in Birmingham, a city which was founded after the war. Birmingham at first appears to contradict the argument that only communities that experienced wartime trauma constructed funerary-style memorials in the period of Confederate celebration. Birmingham, however, represents a special area in Alabama, an area where businessmen and politicians of the New South created a Confederate identity where none existed before. In so doing, they attempted to soothe the 22 Winberry, ??Lest We Forget,?? 109-111. 12 tensions of the general populace as their surroundings transformed from rural countryside to an urban metropolis by emphasizing the idea?however untrue it was?that Birmingham was founded on a strong Confederate heritage. In this manner, the Birmingham monuments do not represent a resistance to reconciliation possessed by white southerners, but rather an example of Foster?s argument that the Lost Cause movement ?served to ease their adjustment to the New South and to provide social unity during the crucial period of transition.? 23 Finally, the youngest monument included in this study?the Gainesville marker commemorating the surrender of General Nathan B. Forrest in May 1865?indicates that resistance to reconciliation survived longer than most veterans of the Civil War. 24 Constructed in 1923, this monument served to solidify white unity during a time of intense violence against African Americans in the South, while reaffirming the undertone of resistance to reconciliation associated with earlier funerary monuments. 25 Aside from discussing a continued sectional disharmony in the South, this thesis will also explore two themes that are recurrent in the literature of Civil War remembrance: the participation of women in the Lost Cause, and the role and influence of African Americans in memorialization. As historians have noted, women were active players in the Lost Cause movement and instrumental in raising funds for monuments in their communities. There is some difference in opinion among scholars, however, in 23 Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 8. 24 See Figure 22. 25 The National Lists, ?The Lynching Century: African Americans Who Died in Racial Violence in the United States, Names of the Dead, Dates of Birth, Places of Death, 1865-1965,? The National Lists, http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Base/8507/NLists.htm [accessed 9 April 2008]. 13 whether females memorialized on their own accord or if they relented to the desires of male veterans. While older works view men as leaders of the Lost Cause movement, 26 newer scholarship, specifically Karen Cox?s Dixie?s Daughters (2003), points to women as ?longtime leaders in the movement to memorialize the Confederacy? and ?active participants in debates over what would constitute a ?new? South.? 27 Cox believes that it was not the departure of federal troops or a growth in wealth that triggered the movement of Confederate markers to public places, but rather the rise of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). 28 Yet Alabama monuments examined in this study indicate that, apart from one exception in the city of Auburn, 29 women were not longtime-leaders of Confederate tradition, but only began to assert more control over memorialization once veterans began to pass away. While it is possible that women in other areas of the South maintained a more powerful role in Confederate remembrance, the actions of Alabama females reinforce Foster?s argument that women only began to take control of the Lost Cause once it had become ?less central to society.? 30 As to the role ascribed African Americans in memorialization, late-funerary monuments in Alabama portray concrete examples of recent arguments proposed by historians such as David Blight, William Blair, and W. Fitzhugh Brundage that the Lost 26 As noted by Karen Cox, Wilson, Baptized in Blood, Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, and Rosenberg, Living Monuments, all portray men as leaders of the Confederate tradition. Karen L. Cox, Dixie's Daughters: the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003) 168. 27 Ibid., 1. 28 Ibid., 50. 29 Chapter 1 discusses how in Auburn, from 1866 to 1914 the Auburn LMA and UDC were leaders of Confederate memorialization. 30 Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 179. 14 Cause movement strove to erase the main cause and result of the war, the end of slavery, from the minds of both white northerners and southerners. 31 Just as importantly, memorialization provided whites with an opportunity to affirm their role as the head of society during times of increased racial violence, while concurrently confirming the second-class status of African-Americans. These messages manifested in the speeches at the unveiling ceremonies, which denied slavery as the cause of the war and praised slaves that remained loyal to their masters. Moreover, monument builders enlisted African Americans known in the community as ?faithful darkies,? or blacks who were known to pay proper respects to whites, to further validate the societal makeup of the South. 32 Funerary monuments were not alone in incorporating this type of language and imagery, as almost the entirety of the Lost Cause movement expressed this sentiment as well. 33 Nonetheless, the widespread use of these portrayals in Confederate remembrance does not mean that they were not a form of resistance to postbellum society; as described by Blight, southerners thought of slavery as a benevolent system ?crushed by Yankee armies and politicians,? leaving former slaves as ?broken symbols of lost glory and Yankee idiocy.? 34 Through these actions, the builders of the late-funerary monuments in Alabama joined other Lost Cause leaders in presenting a thinly-veiled criticism of the 31 Blight, Race and Reunion; William Blair, Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865-1914 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); W. Fitzhugh Brundage, The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005). 32 See Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 for examples of violence against African Americans and the use of ?faithful darkie? imagery at unveiling ceremonies. 33 For discussions of this phenomenon, see Blight, Race and Reunion, 344-345, and Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997) 155-158. 34 Blight, Race and Reunion, 259-260. 15 emancipation of African Americans by northern armies, portraying it as the destruction of a system that brought order to Southern society, an order which was greatly missed by both whites and blacks. While mostly unnoticed by southerners today, the Confederate monuments examined in this study represent a psychological division that existed between the sections after the Civil War, a division which persisted to the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and, in some respects, even up to present day-society. Studying these monuments, as well as the people who built them and the conditions that preceded their construction, can help us understand how southerners could possess a separate identity within the Union while still claiming to be patriotic Americans. 16 CHAPTER I A SLIGHT UNDERCURRENT OF RESISTANCE: CONFEDERATE MEMORIALIZATION IN AUBURN, ALABAMA Located approximately thirty miles west of the Georgia state line, present-day Auburn, Alabama is a city of constant commotion. The home of Auburn University, the city serves as one of the major educational centers of the state and Southeast. 1 During a normal weekday, the town center is congested with traffic as students and pedestrians attempt to navigate a city that is almost overloaded with people. Moving east from this area, one finds Pine Hill cemetery, Auburn?s oldest burial ground. 2 While visited frequently by the local populace, this area nonetheless provides a contrasting scene of silence and solitude from the traffic-clogged roadways located a few blocks away. Walking towards the back of Pine Hill, a monument separated from the rest of the graves comes into view. Surrounded by bamboo overgrowth and broken beer bottles, the inscription upon it says that unknown Confederate soldiers are buried in unmarked graves in the vicinity. 1 City of Auburn, Alabama, ?Welcome to the City of Auburn, Alabama,? City of Auburn, Alabama, http://www.auburnalabama.org/econdev/PDF/Community%20Profile.pdf [accessed 27 January 2008]. 2 Mary E. Reese, "A History of Auburn Alabama," paper , 1900 (approximate date), located in Special Collections, Ralph B. Draughon Library, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 3. 17 For the purpose of this study, Auburn's Confederate marker serves as the archetypical example of a funerary monument built in the celebratory phase of Confederate memorialization at the end of the nineteenth century and start of the twentieth. A funerary shaft erected in 1893, Auburn residents placed this monument in Pine Hill during a rise in the placement of soldier statues in urban areas and on courthouse lawns throughout the South. 3 The reason for this divergence from the majority of Confederate monuments at this time is that while many towns in Alabama escaped the harsh realities of war, the local college at Auburn had served as a military hospital, leaving the locals with vivid memories of the hardship and slaughter of war. 4 In addition to the internment of the wounded on campus, churches and private residences had been used as makeshift hospitals as well, literally bringing the war into the homes of the Auburn population. 5 Furthermore, when the raid of General Lovell Rousseau came through Auburn in 1864, hospital convalescents attempted to join together and protect the city. Because of these events, Auburn residents recalled the war not as a victorious loss where both sides were right and nobody was wrong, but rather as a conflict in which 3 ?Several Interesting Items of Local and General Interest.,? newspaper clipping in Mell Scrapbook #8, Mell Scrapbooks 1891-1906, Special Collections, Ralph B. Draughon Library, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 4; Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 128-129. 4 United States, Robert N. Scott, H. M. Lazelle, George B. Davis, Leslie J. Perry, Joseph W. Kirkley, Fred C. Ainesworth, John S. Moodey, and Calvin D. Cowles, The War of Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Part III-Reports, series I, vol. 38, (Washington: Govt. Print. Off, 1880), 973-974; paper read before Admiral Semmes Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy at the residence of Mrs. Gachet dated December 27, 1890, no author given, located in UDC Scrapbook 1898, United Daughters of the Confederacy Records, Special Collections, Ralph B. Draughon Library, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 87. 5 Minutes of April 27, 1896-December 1900, transcribed by Mary Pruett Norman, 7 May 1996, United Daughters of the Confederacy Records, Special Collections, Ralph B. Draughon Library, Auburn University, 21-22. 18 northerners encroached upon their territory and mercilessly killed southern soldiers in their own streets. The construction of a monument over the mass grave of 98 men 6 from the hospital thus served to remind Auburn residents for all time what the builders thought really transpired during the war, and what the results of that conflict produced. Twenty years later, this attitude of resistance to the final outcome of the Civil War remained unchanged. The local chapter of the UDC placed markers that commemorated Confederate leadership while celebrating wartime acts of defiance against the Lincoln administration. The path that memorialization took in Auburn is reflected in several literary works. Most importantly, it reinforces Neff's proposal that commemoration of the dead provided an outlet for people to express feelings of resistance to reconciliation. By dedicating a monument to soldiers that died in Auburn hospitals during the war, and literally placing it on top of the mass grave in which they are buried, the Pine Hill memorial stood as an impediment to whole-hearted reunification. During wartime, Auburn residents had become intimately associated with those soldiers and even welcomed some of them into their families as son-in-laws. 7 In this sense, the Pine Hill monument not only immortalized the memory that federal incursion led to the deaths of numerous southern men, but also that it killed soldiers that many in the town had come to accept as their own. 6 Charles W. Edwards, ?Confederate Soldiers Buried in Pine Hill Cemetery, Auburn, AL,? paper delivered before the Admiral Semmes Chapter, United Daughters of the Confederacy in Pine Hill Cemetery, April 26, 1967, located in Special Collections, Ralph B. Draughon Library, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 3. 7 Neff, Honoring the Civil War Dead, 2-7; Paper read before the UDC at the residence of Mrs. Gachet, located in UDC Scrapbook 1898, 87. 19 The leadership of women in Auburn memorialization also reflects a more active role on the part of their gender than described by some historians. While both Gaines Foster and W. Fitzhugh Brundage describe women as either deferring to the will of veterans or at least acknowledging male authority in principle, memorialization in Auburn presents a scenario in which women appeared to possess total control over Confederate remembrance, from the founding of the first female remembrance organization in Auburn, the Ladies? Memorial Association, to the laying of the final memorial plaque in 1914. 8 This image supports the argument of Karen Cox that women were the true masterminds behind the Lost Cause movement, a movement in which they actively sought to vindicate the South. In Auburn, local women attempted to achieve this sort of vindication using the main marker in Pine Hill, as well smaller monuments and markers commemorating notable wartime events that occurred in the city, to vilify northerners while portraying the South as legally and morally right. 9 Today, Auburn?s Confederate monument, a round pillar of marble approximately ten feet tall, 10 stands by itself in the rear of Pine Hill Cemetery. A decoration of ivy leaves border the top of the column, under which sit representations of symbols from the war, including a musket with bayonet attached, an anchor, a saber, and a cannon. Below 8 Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 174; Brundage, The Southern Past, 28-31; Ann Pearson, ?Confederate Memorial Day,? newspaper clipping in UDC Scrapbook 1977-78, United Daughters of the Confederacy Records, Special Collections, Ralph B. Draughon Library, Auburn University, Auburn, AL; Ralph W. Widener, Jr., Confederate Monuments: Enduring Symbols of the South and the War Between the States, (Washington, D.C.: Andromeda Associates, 1982), 21. For a more detailed discussion of Foster's and Brundage's writings on female submission to men in memorialization, see Chapter 2. 9 Cox, Dixie's Daughters, 1-3; Widener, Confederate Monuments, 2-4. 10 The measurement of ten feet is based on measurements the author personally took of the monument at Pine Hill Cemetery in Auburn, AL. 20 r this, an inscription reads, ?To the memory of the ninety eight Confederate soldiers who lie buried in this Cemetery.? At the bottom of the cylinder, placed right above the base of the monument, is an inscription that beckons the viewer to recall the sacrifice made by the dead the monument honors: a stanza from a poem by Theodore O?Hara entitled ?Bivouac of the Dead.? The stanza reads: ?Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead! Dear as the blood you gave, no impious footsteps here shall tread the herbage of your grave! Nor shall your glory be forgot while fame her record keeps, or honor points the hallowed spot where valor proudly sleeps.? 11 O'Hara did not write this poem for Confederate soldiers; a veteran of the Mexican War, he penned it in 1847 to commemorate comrades who died at the Battle of Buena Vista. It was, however, frequently thought to be written fo Confederates, and the monument's builders may have possessed this belief when they placed it on the shaft. 12 In looking back at Auburn?s Civil War contributions, several examples of trauma occurred that led the residents to construct the monument in Pine Hill three decades later. A town of approximately 1,000 prior to the war, Auburn possessed numerous secessionists. William Lowndes Yancey, the "Orator of Secession," received elated acclaim when he spoke during a debate on the subject at the chapel of the Auburn Masonic Female College. 13 Three years into the hostilities, however, local citizens experienced the strain of warfare resulting from the secession so applauded when Yancey 11 Ann Pearson, ?Confederate Memorial Day.? 12 Ibid. 13 Ann Pearson, "Let's Take a Look at Auburn's 150 Year History," newspaper article found in folder entitled "Ann Pearson 1986: 1, the Ann Pearson Papers, Special Collections, Ralph B. Draughon Library, Auburn University, Auburn, AL; Mollie Hollifield, Auburn: Loveliest Village of the Plain (Auburn: Bicentennial Committee, 1955, reprint, 1975) 12-14. 21 spoke. Similar to other communities in Alabama, this trauma spawned not from Union occupation or a major battle in the vicinity, but from other byproducts of wartime, most notably the presence of the hospital at the local college. While Auburn served as a recruiting station during the war, 14 its main contribution to the Confederate war effort was the Texas Hospital for convalescing soldiers. In September 1862, the Confederate Congress called for military hospitals to be known for specific states, so that wounded soldiers from those states could be sent to them when conditions allowed. 15 In response to this, the Texas legislature passed acts from January 1862 to December 1863 appropriating $200,000 for medical aid and relief for wounded Texas soldiers, to be spent at the Governor's discretion. 16 No record exists as to why Texas selected Auburn as the location for the hospital, but it possibly stemmed from the city's ability to provide access to the military front in Georgia while not actually standing in the path of Sherman's army. Furthermore, with the lack of a student body and the closing of the college, Auburn possessed spacious facilities and a local citizenry that would cooperate with the hospital and staff. 17 The surgeon in charge of the hospital was Louis A. Bryan, and the military post at Auburn 14 Mrs. Townes Randolph Lee, ?Historic Auburn,? clipping found in Scrapbook 1913-14, located in United Daughters of the Confederacy Records, Special Collections, Ralph B. Draughon Library, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 46. 15 Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Confederacy, (New York: Free Press, 1965), 103; Edwards, "Confederate Soldiers Buried in Pine Hill Cemetery," 1. It is important to note that this quotation is located on page 1 of the list following the paper, not on page 1 of the paper. 16 H. P. N. Gammel, The Laws of Texas, vol. V, 1822-1867, 675, quoted in Charles W. Edwards, ?Confederate Soldiers Buried in Pine Hill Cemetery,? 8. 17 Edwards, ?Confederate Soldiers Buried in Pine Hill Cemetery,? 8. 22 came under the command of Captain Thomas H. Francis on July 16, 1864. 18 While the three-story, stone building known as "Old Main" served as the main hospital, other locations such as the Presbyterian and Baptist Churches and the female schooling building became makeshift hospitals as well. The community also participated in the war effort, as families took sick and wounded soldiers into their homes. 19 Daily dealings with the injured and dead would have dispelled any visions possessed by Auburn citizens of war as an orderly and disciplined process, a phenomenon which was certainly not restricted to the Texas Hospital. Although well displaced from the Auburn wartime experience, an example of how disillusionment with the conflict could spring from exposure to the realities of war exists in the journal of Kate Cumming, a Confederate hospital matron during the war. 20 As she watched the celebrations for soldiers as they departed from her native town of Mobile in 1861, she expressed in her diary that all were ?full of patriotism and zeal in those days.? 21 As Cumming received a firsthand view of the carnage caused by battle, however, her view of war quickly changed. Upon arriving in Corinth, Mississippi after the battle of Shiloh, she wrote that, ?Nothing that I had ever heard or read had given me the faintest idea of the horrors witnessed here. I do not think that words are in our vocabulary expressive enough to 18 United States, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Part III-Reports, series I, vol. 38, 973-974. 19 Pearson, "Let's Take a Look at Auburn's 150 Year History"; Minutes of April 27, 1896-December 1900, 21-22. 20 Richard Harwell, ed., The Journal of Kate Cumming: A Confederate Nurse, 1862-1865 (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1975), vii. 21 Ibid., ix. 23 present to the mind the realities of that sad scene.? 22 As with Cumming?s experiences, the exposure of Auburn to the casualties caused by battle more than likely elicited a similar response from its residents, silencing the celebrations of the conflict that came with its start in 1861. The remembrance of the men of the Texas Hospital was also affected by the role they took as the town's defenders. Two days after Captain Francis took command of the post, Auburn experienced its only military skirmish during the war when Union raiders under Lovell Rousseau rode through the community on July 18, 1864, burning the Auburn depot and destroying property. Francis had no force available to fight the invaders, so making the best of what was available he rounded up convalescents from the hospital to form a guard. With any militia he could find, Francis led this group of 18 men to oppose the enemy, which numbered 2,500. Not surprisingly, the makeshift force was unsuccessful, and Union troops rode into Auburn at 2 p.m. and remained until the next morning. After this incident, Francis asked for muskets to create a provost guard out of men from the hospital in order to defend Auburn from future raids. 23 While this was a small skirmish in comparison to larger battles of the Civil War, the attack had a profound effect on the citizens of town. Not only did Union soldiers ride into Auburn and damage property, but a belief existed that during the attack, slaves had rebelled against their masters, broke into shops, and took anything they could. 24 The attack thus further instilled the realities of warfare upon the local populace, forcing them 22 Ibid., 5. 23 United States, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Part III-Reports, series I, vol. 38, 973-974. 24 Ibid. 24 to realize their need for a defense not only from the enemy, but from their own servants. The soldiers from the Texas Hospital became this defense, and represented to locals the only force standing between them and the onslaught of the enemy; Auburn's citizens remembered them for years to come as their protectors during the end of the Civil War. Three decades passed before the Auburn Ladies? Memorial Association dedicated Auburn's Confederate monument to soldiers that died in this hospital. 25 Founded in 1866, 26 the association was one of many established in the post war-South by women who lost someone in the war or served in soldiers' aid societies during the conflict. While a variety of names were chosen for these organizations at first, most eventually became known as a Ladies' Memorial Association (LMA). Even though these societies shared the same name, however, they were not united by a statewide or regional organization like the later UDC. Instead, they were independent groups with similar goals. While larger towns sometimes boasted more than a hundred members in the LMAs, most local groups usually possessed twenty to thirty members. The LMAs primary task was to arrange for proper burials of the Confederate dead after the war, which included caring for the deceased from nearby battles as well as the bodies of locals sent home. The women of these organizations preferred burying these men in community cemeteries rather than on battlefields, and many added Confederate sections onto existing cemeteries, took over responsibility for soldiers? burial plots begun during the war, or 25 See Figure 2. 26 Pearson, ?Confederate Memorial Day.? 25 started their own cemeteries. Once this task was completed, most LMAs turned their attention to providing a monument for the Confederate dead. 27 As was the case with Auburn, many of these organizations did not accomplish this final goal for over twenty years after the surrender at Appomattox. 28 Various reasons exist as to why these groups failed to construct a monument sooner after the war. In Auburn?s case, a lack of funds prevented the local LMA from erecting their Confederate marker until 1893. The overall monetary situation in the region in the 1870s was tight, as the South experienced a period of economic depression. 29 Purchasing a Confederate monument costing $500 30 would be secondary to more pressing needs at hand. This is not to say, however, that the idea of commemorating the fallen soldiers of the Texas hospital did not arise at this time. While no evidence exists that this lag between concept and construction actually occurred in Auburn, there is precedent for it in other areas, most notably Little Rock, Arkansas, where the populace only raised $285 dollars between the years of 1886 and 1897 for their Confederate monument. 31 Whether this occurred in Auburn or not, however, it is clear that raising the funds to construct a monument from such a small population was not economically feasible at this time. Further indications that the Auburn LMA had difficulties purchasing the monument are visible in the fact that the LMA still owed money on it after its 27 Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 38-40. 28 Ibid. 29 Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) 215. 30 Pearson, "History of Local Confederate Marker." 31 Stephen Davis, "Empty Eyes, Marble Hand,? 6. 26 construction and had difficulty in making the final payments. The only solution to their monetary dilemma was to ask the city of Auburn to pay the final balance of the monument, and in February 1894 the LMA presented a petition to the Auburn town council for this money. The city decided that ?under the present condition of [the] town treasury it would be unwise to grant [it].? 32 Later records reveal that the LMA petitioned the city yet again to make a contribution to help repay the debt on the monument, which it finally granted on December 24, 1894, when the town council agreed to appropriate $25 dollars out of the treasury. 33 It is unclear if this money was enough to finish paying off the monument, but the requests in themselves are important in that they show the struggle that the LMA underwent to finish paying for the monument, even after it was in place. The unveiling of the monument occurred on April 28, 1893, with James Henry Lane, a professor at the college and a former Confederate general, who was infamous as the commander whose subordinates shot Stonewall Jackson, participating as chairman of the ceremony. Other speakers included Professor O. D. Smith, commander of the Auburn camp of Confederate Veterans, and Cadet Adjutant J. F. Webb. The "Auburn Male Quartette" provided music. Following a poem reading by a Miss Bondurant, Lane?s daughter, Lottie, performed the unveiling. 34 Although no record exists aside from General Lane?s speech of what actually took place at the unveiling, descriptions of later 32 Auburn, Alabama, Record of the Town Clerk 1894-1900: Financial Record and Minutes, ledger, located in Auburn City Hall, Auburn, AL, 105. 33 Auburn, AL, Records of the Town Clerk, 126. 34 ?Several Interesting Items of Local and General Interest.,? Mell Scrapbook #8, 4. 27 Confederate Memorial Day ceremonies describe scenes that were probably similar to what took place during the 1893 program. In these later ceremonies, speeches were given in Langdon Hall, after which a procession formed and followed the band to the monument. People laid handmade wreaths at the monument?s base; according to town folklore, ?an unspoken contest [existed] to see which lady could produce the prettiest one.? 35 After this, a bugler played taps and the Auburn Cadets performed a rifle salute. Recalling past ceremonies in 1978, Auburn resident Glenn Stewart remembered how schools closed for half a day to allow the local youth to attend the ceremony, at which ?the children took flower chains and wreaths to the ceremony? and would rush ?after the rifle salute?to find empty shells, to use them as whistles.? 36 Even though little information exists about the unveiling of Auburn?s Confederate monument, several items can be gleaned that indicates an attitude of passive resistance to life in a reunited nation, mainly through displays of reverence for Confederate soldiers and the recollection of the pain caused by the Union army. The first way this occurred was through the participation of the Auburn Cadets in the ceremony, which inspired positive memories among the locals of the young men who went off to war in 1861. This phenomena is described by historian Rod Andrew, who notes the importance of cadets in memorial ceremonies in stating that through ?their youth and martial enthusiasm, the gray-clad student soldiers reminded many southerners of Confederate soldiers of 35 Pearson, ?Confederate Memorial Day.? 36 Ibid. 28 yesteryear,? causing the young boys to become ?symbols of the Lost Cause.? 37 The youth of cadets was not the only factor likening them to their rebel forbears, however. Their instructors encouraged them to exemplify values white southerners associated with Confederate soldiers, which included ?courage, honor, patriotism, and piety.? 38 In Auburn, the LMA placed so much importance on the presence of the Auburn Cadets at the ceremony that they changed the date of the unveiling from Confederate Memorial Day, April 26, to April 28 so that the young Cadets?who were in Montgomery on April 26 for memorial ceremonies there?could participate in the memorial program at Auburn. The LMA made this change?despite the fact that their monument?s engraving stated it was unveiled on April 26?to ensure that the Auburn Cadets would be present to spark the memory of the Confederate soldiers which the monument commemorated. 39 Other parts of the ceremony recalled images of the darker side of the war. Lane?s address reveals how non-reconciliationist sentiments crept into the ceremony. Although the former general himself never reconciled with his former enemies, one instance of his speech contains an excerpt portraying memories and feelings that other reconciled veterans surely felt and remembered. 40 Describing the difficulties women experienced during the war, Lane said: 37 Rod Andrew, Jr., Long Gray Lines: The Southern Military School Tradition, 1839-1915 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 61. 38 Ibid., 58, 62. 39 ?Several Interesting Items of Local and General Interest.,? Mell Scrapbook #8, 4; see Figure 2. 40 Kenneth W. Noe, ??Damned North Carolinians? and ?Brave Virginians?: The Lane-Mahone Controversy, Honor, and Civil War Memory,? Journal of Military History 72 [forthcoming]. 29 I can see them sobbing and wringing their hands whenever we were compelled to fall back and leave them in the enemy?s lines. Tears seem unmanly in a soldier, and yet I am not ashamed to say that many of us brushed them away on such sad occasions. There were [also] other heroines in the South who did not witness those harrowing scenes of war. They were in their faraway, lone home, with hearts breaking with anxiety for the safety of their loved ones who were battling at the front. 41 This statement expressed an image of helplessness, frustration and near emasculation that soldiers, especially former generals, usually chose not to describe in this celebratory period of memorialization. Instead, speakers generally employed language that pandered to sectional reconciliation by stating both sides were right through principle and nobody was wrong. 42 This does not mean the old soldiers forgot these terrible memories, however, and Lane?s reference to them hints that buried under the feel-good sectional reconciliation rhetoric prominent at the time, many Confederates still harbored memories of hardship caused by Yankee intrusion into the South. Finally, it is difficult to ignore the powerful fact that the Pine Hill monument stands on the mass grave of men who died fighting northerners. For Auburn residents, this idea was intensified by the close association of them many had with those soldiers during the war. As previously mentioned, unused college buildings, churches, and even personal homes served as medical wards for the wounded that arrived in Auburn, allowing locals to mingle with soldiers every day. Young women in particular took advantage of this opportunity and visited the soldiers frequently, many times with food they personally prepared. This predictably led to relationships between the local women 41 ?Patriotic Gen. Lane,? newspaper clipping in Mell Scrapbook #6, Mell Scrapbooks 1891-1906, Special Collections, Ralph B. Draughon Library, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 12-13. 42 See Chapter 3 for examples of this kind of language. 30 and the wounded soldiers, further binding the town with the men of the Texas hospital. A prime example of this fraternization was Tallulah Gachet, 43 a girl who became involved with a captain but chose to stay in Auburn rather than move off with him due to her youth. The captain later returned to claim her and took her away with him, only for both to return to Auburn years later where they became ?honored citizens as well as ornaments to society.? 44 Mrs. Gachet later went on to become a founding member of the Raphael Semmes Chapter of the UDC, which merged with and took over the memorial work of the LMA in 1898. 45 While Mrs. Gachet was one of the few documented locals that actually married one of the convalescents, she represents an age-group of women that developed relationships with the wounded of the Texas Hospital and later participated in the LMA or UDC. The females? memories of their socializing with those soldiers influenced their decision to build a monument in their dead comrades' honor, rather than placing a soldier statue in a public place. The unveiling of this monument would have been a personal event for this group of women, because the dead were not unknown soldiers, but men they knew, cared for, and possibly fell in love with. Furthermore, through memorializing those soldiers, the ladies ensured that future generations would know how they died without explicitly stating who their killers were. For Auburn residents, simply viewing the monument and knowing who it commemorated was enough to indicate that message, thus illustrating John Neff?s argument that for white 43 Mattie McAdory Huey, History of the Alabama Division: United Daughters of the Confederacy (Opelika, AL: Post Publishing Company, 1937), 202-203. 44 Paper read before the UDC at the residence of Mrs. Gachet, located in UDC Scrapbook 1898, 87. 45 Huey, History of the Alabama Division, 202-203; paper read before the UDC at the residence of Mrs. Gachet, located in UDC Scrapbook 1898, 87; minutes of April 27 1896-1900, 3. 31 southerners, ?to remember the dead was to remember their cause and the reasons for their death.? 46 While the monument in Pine Hill is the largest in Auburn, in 1914 the UDC placed smaller markers around the town that mention notable events during the Civil War. 47 The simple markers commemorated the Confederate leadership and military effort during the war and celebrating acts of defiance against the federal government, and in so doing are testaments to the continuance of underlying resistance that Auburn residents possessed towards reconciliation. The first is a small shaft located adjacent to the childhood home of Alabama Governor William James Samford which notes the mobilization of the 14th and 18th regiments of Alabama Confederates in 1861. With the undertone that those soldiers commemorated by this marker went on to fight federal troops, it is difficult to imagine that the UDC wanted to express the image of remembrance in which the sections possessed a shared memory of the war in which both sides were right. 48 Instead, they wanted to mark the first spot in Auburn in which men picked up arms to fight the encroaching Union army. Closer to the center of town, two markers, both dedicated on April 29, 1914, 49 invoke a positive image of Confederate leadership while recalling and celebrating a rebellious act towards the Lincoln administration. At the Auburn Depot near the center 46 Neff, Honoring the Civil War Dead, 6. 47 Huey, History of the Alabama Division, 207. 48 Ann Pearson, ?Texas Soldiers Buried Here Part of Auburn History,? located in Folder 1: Oct. 78-Sept. 79, the Ann Pearson Papers, Special Collections, Ralph B. Draughon Library, Auburn University, Auburn, AL. 49 ?Historic Auburn,? Confederate Veteran Magazine, May 1914, 216-217. 32 of town sits a boulder that commemorates a minor event in Auburn's Civil War experience, a brief visit by the then President-Elect of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. This visit took place on February 16, 1861 as Davis sped by rail towards Montgomery for his inauguration, and only lasted a few minutes. As the train pulled into the station, the Confederate leader stepped out onto the rear platform and the Auburn Guards snapped to attention to salute their new Commander-in-Chief. After a short speech by Davis, the train pulled off and the affair was over. 50 The decision by the UDC to commemorate this short visit 53 years later expresses the continuing loyalty these women held towards their former President and the nation he was elected to lead. More importantly, this act of commemoration is made more significant by the fact that the Auburn depot was one of the few areas of Auburn physically damaged during the war, burned by Rousseau's Raiders as they rode through the city in 1864. Even though the boulder does not mention the burning of the depot and instead only mentions Davis' review of the Auburn Guards, it would be difficult for Auburn residents not to recall all memories associated with that spot, including the destruction of the depot at the hands Union soldiers riding freely through Auburn. 51 The existence of an underlying resistance against reconciliation in the boulder celebrating Jefferson Davis becomes more visible through Auburn?s other boulder marker, one that commemorates an act of defiance against Davis' Union counterpart, Abraham Lincoln. Sitting literally in the center of a bank parking lot today, this boulder represents a symbolic, yet direct jab, at the authority of the federal government and its 50 Hollifield, Auburn: Loveliest Village of the Plain, 16-17. 51 Pearson, "Let's Take a Look at Auburn's 150 Year History." 33 leader: the first raising of the "Stars and Bars" flag in Auburn at the Auburn Female Masonic College. This event, which took place at eleven o' clock in the morning of March 4, 1861, was intended to coincide with the raising of the flag at the Capitol in Montgomery, which conversely coincided with Lincoln's inauguration. 52 While the 1861 raising of the flag stood to symbolically reject the authority of the federal government at the moment that Lincoln took over, the commemoration of this event served another symbolic purpose: to recall that moment of defiance to the federal government and preserve it in the memories of the younger generations. This again presents a scenario that is contrary to Blight's argument that by this point in time, white northerners and southerners?at least when remembering the war together?had a shared memory of war in which North and South were both principally correct. The reason that southerners in Auburn and Montgomery raised the flags at the moment of Lincoln's inauguration was that they believed he did not deserve the office of President, and by commemorating this flag-raising, Auburn residents validated this act of defiance against the 1861 Lincoln administration that they still interpreted as wrong in principle and fact. Thus, by the placement of different makers with various messages in a small time span, the UDC praised the Confederate president and military while stirring up memories of defiance against Lincoln. While the early twentieth century was a period in which both sections made great strides towards further reconciliation, in Auburn, an undercurrent of resistance still 52 Hollifield, Auburn: Loveliest Village of the Plain, 14-15; scan of March 16, 1861 issue of Harper's Weekly found at Sonofthesouth.net, ?Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln,? Sonofthesouth.net, http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1861/march/lincoln-buchanan-inauguration.htm [accessed 27 January 2008]. 34 existed within the psyche of the residents that prevented them from completely accepting life in a reunified nation. With such a small population during the war, almost every resident probably had some form of contact with the wounded or dead. The memory of these events inspired Auburn residents to memorialize the deceased with a funerary monument in 1893 instead of a celebratory soldier statue in the center of town. Twenty years later, these feelings still existed, as evinced by the placement of the three markers around the town commemorating notable events of the Civil War. Over two hundred miles away, at around the same time as the Auburn UDC placed the three town markers, another city remembered the Civil War by placing a stone soldier upon their courthouse lawn. Like Auburn, however, this community experienced its own set of trauma during the war, and the builders of their new monument designed their soldier to express the persistent feeling of resistance that trauma caused. 35 CHAPTER II DIFFERENT GENDERS, DIFFERENT MEMORIES: CONFEDERATE MEMORIALIZATION IN ATHENS, ALABAMA When visiting Athens, Alabama today, one perceives elements of old and new that exist simultaneously in numerous town centers of small southern communities. Located approximately thirty miles west of Huntsville and fifteen miles south of the Tennessee border, this city is the site of the infamous 1862 "Sack of Athens" by federal troops under the command of John B. Turchin. Today, the town center is alive with numerous novelty restaurants and local businesses. Although Athens is only a town of approximately 19,000, the local square brings much automobile and pedestrian traffic as residents conduct business around the central courthouse. 1 On the lawn of the courthouse, standing straight and proud, is a stone soldier of the Confederacy. With a look of determination on his face, he appears to stand guard and watch the square as it becomes more and more distant from the world from whence he came. Upon first glance, one would be hard-pressed to find differences between this monument and other soldier statues standing in town centers all over the South; in fact, a viewer would not need to look further than neighboring Huntsville to find a courthouse 1 City of Athens, Alabama, ?The City of Athens, Alabama,? City of Athens, Alabama, http://ci.athens.al.us/ [accessed 1 January 2008]. 36 monument that shares similarities in posture and dress of the statue. 2 There is more to this story, however, than the image of the war presented by the monument standing in Athens today. Prior to this monument, another soldier rested in the square that exhibited a very different message than the one gleaned from the present monument. This older statue, which presented a soldier standing in a more solemn posture, reflected the feelings of the women who remained in the community during the war. Athens residents later replaced it in response to veterans who felt the older monument suggested that they were badly beaten by the Yankees in the war. 3 While the original monument is visually different from the obelisk-style funerary monuments examined in this study, it shares an important similarity with its cemetery counterparts: like the monuments from those communities, the solemn nature of the original Athens monument drew its inspiration from traumatic events that occurred in Athens during the war. Furthermore, the gender difference is crucial. Women recalled the conflict in a more sentimental manner while men viewed it as a necessary fight worthy of celebration. Finally, memorialization in Athens also provided both men and women the chance to present their views concerning race relations, in which the "faithful slave" was honored as an important and treasured part of the Old South, which in itself was another form of resistance to postbellum society. Several historians explore different types of thinly-veiled resistance provided by women through their care for the dead and memorialization, illuminating how small 2 For comparison between the two monuments, see Widener, Confederate Monuments, 2, 11. 3 Alabama Division, United Daughters of the Confederacy, Alabama's Confederate Monuments and Markers (Wyandotte, OK: Gregath Publishing Company, 2000), 90-91. 37 communities viewed this method of expression as a socially acceptable way for women to display these sentiments. William Blair provides examples of how women provided resistance through memorialization in his work Cities of the Dead (2004). He describes the efforts women undertook to preserve the idea of Confederate sacrifice through memorialization in the years immediately following the war. During Reconstruction, federal regulations prevented men from expressing any outright sympathy for the Confederacy. Women, however, were able to find an outlet for their frustration and grief through commemoration of the dead. This task, which males allowed women to lead due to their socially-ascribed roles as caregivers, provided occasions for white southerners to congregate and memorialize the Confederacy without northern interference, even providing speakers a chance to comment on the politics of the day on some occasions. 4 Although federal troops withdrew from the South by the time Athens women began their memorialization efforts, the focus of their work on the soldiers buried in the cemetery indicates that they attempted to continue their female role of upholding Confederate sacrifice through commemorating the dead. Interestingly enough, the removal of federal authority in Athens served to limit the independence females exerted in memorialization rather than increase it. With government troops gone, male veterans were free to exert their influence over the efforts of the UDC, persuading them to place their monument on the courthouse lawn instead of in the cemetery, and later to allow for its replacement with a more celebratory statue. 5 4 Blair, Cities of the Dead, 77-106. 5 Alabama Division, Alabama's Confederate Monuments and Markers, 90-95. 38 Another book that discusses the early development of female memorialization, W. Fitzhugh Brundage?s The Southern Past (2005), is also important for understanding commemoration of the dead in Athens. Brundage describes the female role as caretakers of Confederate dead and overseers of southern memorial tradition as an extension of Victorian traditions of mourning, explaining why Soldier's Aid Societies emerged during the war and went on to become LMAs after it ended. In participating in these groups, women helped locate the dead, founded cemeteries in which to bury them, and also created rituals to remember the deceased. More importantly for the case of Athens, Brundage depicts the ways in which white women pronounced their position in society, one in which females depended on men for protection yet were still independent contributors to humanity through their actions. Furthermore, women associated their preservation of historical memory with the continuing supremacy of Anglo-Saxon society. By conjuring up images such as "the Black Mammy" and glorifying slavery as a paternalistic system at meetings and events, women assisted in preserving the subjugated positions of African Americans in the Social Order. Again, Athens contains real examples of the female trends described in the literature. The fact that women presented themselves as caretakers of the dead but still deferred to the judgment of men on the style of the courthouse monument shows that even though they considered their role in society important, they still acknowledged that males, as leaders of the community, had the final say in memorial matters. In addition, the invocation of "faithful slave" imagery at the unveiling of the first monument confirms the white female belief in Athens that the proper place for the African Americans was in a subordinate role. 6 6 Brundage, The Southern Past, 24-38. 39 Finally, Gaines Foster details the later relationship between white males and females in the remembrance of the Civil War, and like Blair, finds that even though women began to assert more control within the Confederate tradition after 1900, before 1913 they still gave way to males at times, especially when honoring the requests of veterans. Once veterans began to die off, the male counterpart to the UDC, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) did not possess the same drive to continue their fathers? work in celebrating the Confederacy (which Foster believes is indicated by low attendance and participation numbers among SCV members), allowing women to dominate the Confederate tradition. 7 This is important in that it details exactly what happened in Athens. Women took the initiative to raise the funds and build a monument, but when the veterans requested it be changed, they allowed the men to move their monument off of the square and replace it with their own. Once the veterans passed on, however, women began to rewrite the history of memorialization to portray themselves as the leading group in the creation of Confederate memory. When looking back upon the history of Athens, it is perhaps ironic that the community erected Confederate monuments at all, due to the fact that prior to the war conditional unionists made up the majority of the population. Upon receiving the news of Alabama's secession on January 11, 1861, Athens residents raised the American flag over the courthouse, and some went so far as to burn an effigy of secessionist orator William Lowndes Yancey. This attitude changed at least somewhat with the news of Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers, after which male residents 7 Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 174. 40 arried organized a company and marched off to war while younger male students created the Athens Cadets. Following the battle of Shiloh in April 1862, federal troops moved into north Alabama, occupying Athens. While Union troops occupied Athens, another group of federals began to march towards the city from the West under the command of John Basil Turchin. Born Ivan Vasilevitch Turchinoff in Russia, Turchin attended the St. Petersburg Artillery School and later fought in Hungary and the Crimean War. Immigrating to Chicago in 1856, Turchin volunteered upon the outbreak of war and became a colonel of the 19th Illinois Volunteers. When approaching Athens, his men came in contact with the 18th Ohio, previously garrisoned in Athens but driven from the city by a surprise Confederate attack; according to some sources, the residents, who originally accepted the federal presence in the city, jeered and spit at the federal soldiers as they fled the city. The federals retook Athens under on May 2, 1862. Not long after, soldiers began looting stores, stealing private possessions from houses, and insulting the local populace. 8 Sources vary on whether Turchin gave verbal permission to carry out this mayhem?some state that he reportedly said, ?I see nothing for two hours,? 9 others describe him as simply winking at his soldiers and looking the other way as they c 8 Robert Henry Walker, Jr., History of Limestone County (Athens, AL: Limestone County Commission, 1973), 94-108; George C. Bradley and Richard L. Dahlen, From Conciliation to Conquest: The Sack of Athens and the Court-Martial of Colonel John B. Turchin (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006), 109-117; Stephen Chicoine, John Basil Turchin and the Fight to Free the Slaves (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 2003), 65-71; Theodore J. Karaminski, ?Civilians, Soldiers, and the Sack of Athens, Alabama, Illinois Publications Online, http://www.lib.niu.edu/ipo/1997/iht429748.html [accessed 1 January 2008]. 9 Walker, History of Limestone County, 108; Karaminski, ?Civilians, Soldiers, and the Sack of Athens, Alabama.? 41 r t on Sept. 23, 1864. 11 out their mischief. 10 Union forces did not physically harm residents, save a pregnant woman that suffered a miscarriage and died when federals fired into her house, and a female slave who was raped. Nevertheless, this sort of behavior towards a civilian population this early in the war was as of yet unheard of and received negatively by southerners and some northerners, even though many in the North applauded Turchin fo being tougher on the rebels. To add to insult, the army later court-martialed and found Turchin guilty for his actions in Athens, but President Lincoln pardoned him and promoted him to the rank of Brigadier General. Federal forces remained in Athens until driven out by General Nathan Bedford Forres The events that took place in Athens during the Civil War created separate memories for males and females that influenced the structure of the monuments. Many of the men who later joined the UCV were not in Athens during the sack or the two-year occupation by federal troops. The women who would later make up the Joseph E. Johnston chapter of the UDC, however, experienced those occurrences firsthand. They witnessed federal soldiers break into their houses, steal their goods, and damage their city. Furthermore, women were the target of many insults and sexual propositions, and were helpless to respond to the taunts of the occupying powers. With these events in the memories of Athens women, it is easily perceptible how they could remember and memorialize the war not as a glorious period in southern history, but as an encroachment upon their homes by the Yankees that they were powerless to stop. 10 Bradley, Conciliation to Conquest, 114. 11 Walker, History of Limestone County, 107-128; Bradley, Conciliation to Conquest, 109-117; Chicoine, John Basil Turchin, 77; Karaminski, ?Civilians, Soldiers, and the Sack of Athens, Alabama.? 42 The opposing male and female memories of the war are visible through their monuments. The first monument, which originally stood on the town square, rests today in the Athens City Cemetery in the middle of the Confederate Circle?an area which contains the graves of approximately fifty Confederate soldiers from all over the South that died in the vicinity of the city during the war. Unlike the numerous monuments throughout the South that display a soldier standing in a straight posture, the six foot soldier of Athens, made of Italian marble, rests at ease pressed against a stump. Clutching his hat, he leans on his gun, gripping the barrel while his arms are crossed. The most noticeable image of this statue is its facial expression. As the soldier's uncovered head bows towards the graves of the deceased, his face contains a strong image of sadness and loss. The pedestal upon which the soldier rests, constructed for the statue when it moved to the cemetery, 12 contains the letters "C.S.A." and a depiction of a column. 13 Next to the column, an engraving resembling a scroll reads, "In memory of the strangers who in the baptism of our soil with their heroic blood, have honored us. Lest we forget." 14 Finally, an urn stands before the monument that contains an excerpt from Phillip James Bailey's poem Festus, which reads, "The brave die never. They but change their country's arms for more-their country's heart." 15 The use of this quotation, along 12 See Figures 3 and 4; Alabama Division, Alabama?s Confederate Monuments and Markers, 90-95 (this includes a list of the soldiers buried in the Confederate Circle, as well as the units they served with); B. A. C. Emerson, ed., Historic Southern Monuments: Representative Memorials of the Heroic Dead of the Southern Confederacy (New York: Neale Publishing Company, 1911), 16-17. 13 See Figure 3. 14 Alabama Division, Alabama's Confederate Monuments and Markers, 93. 43 with the placement of the monument and the dead in the cemetery, suggests a feeling among the female members of the UDC that while they may accept life under the U.S. government again, they will never be completely reconciled; instead, by honoring the deceased, who died fighting the North, they attempt to preserve this last thought of resistance. Evidence suggests that the UDC originally intended to place this first monument in the cemetery from the start, and that male persuasion prevented them from doing this. The first indication that the women wanted the original monument constructed there was the fact that as early as 1900, they strove to build some sort of cemetery memorial. With the discovery of cannon balls on the property of a local family in February of that year, the UDC intended to purchase the rediscovered projectiles and ?have them converted into a monument in the [Confederate] circle, and later to be used to surround the monument they proposed to erect.? 16 The UDC went on to present its idea for a cemetery monument to Jerry Ragsdale, a monument maker from Pulaski, Tennessee, who persuaded the women to place the monument on the square so that visitors to Athens could view the work that the women were undertaking. This is the first sign that males and females differed on how memorialization should proceed. While women preferred to place the monument well away from the square among the seclusion of the city cemetery, a male believed that the monument should be something to be proud of and shown off to visitors 15 Huey, History of the Alabama Division, 202-203. No information can be found on when the urn was placed in the cemetery, but since this source from the UDC gives a description of it, it is assumed the Johnston Chapter was responsible for its placement. 16 Jerrye Todd Austin, Confederate Soldiers from Limestone County, Alabama: "Lest We Forget" (Athens, AL: Joseph E. Johnston Chapter No. 198 United Daughters of the Confederacy, 1996), 215. 44 (and in fact the builders placed the finished monument so that passengers riding the train could view it as they came into town). 17 Another sign that the original statue was intended for the cemetery comes from the soldier?s posture: from where it stands in the cemetery, the soldier's bowed head appears to look down to the graves of the dead Confederates. Furthermore, when describing the original statue, later sources state that it stands with "his head bowed as if in prayer, watching over the soldiers who lie sleeping beneath the sod and boughs of old cedar trees." 18 The ease at which this statue fits into the cemetery, along with the fact that the women of the UDC originally intended to place a monument among the Confederate dead, implies that the women planned for the original Athens monument to stand there. A final indicator that women wanted to memorialize in the cemetery is visible in a 1936 excerpt by Mary E. Mason, president of the UDC when the chapter erected the 1909 monument. The excerpt, which is factually incorrect, in essence rewrote history and removed the majority of male contributions to memorialization in Athens. Giving that Mason served as president of the chapter during the time in which veterans were most active in memorializing, it is likely that this statement does not represent a failure of her memory, but rather presents an idealized chapter history that Mason and other UDC members wished took place. 17 ?Monument,? Alabama Courier, 31 October 1906, quoted in Austin, Confederate Soldiers from Limestone County, Alabama, 221. 18 Alabama Division, Alabama Monuments and Markers, 93; Limestone Heritage Committee, Heritage of Limestone County, 27. 45 Looking at Mason's interpretation of the first monument, she writes that: the first outstanding work of the [Johnston] chapter was the erection of a beautiful soldier statue in the Confederate Circle at the cemetery, with marble headstones at more than fifty graves, bearing the initials of the soldiers corresponding with the name and rank of these soldiers, and also eight unknown, carved on a boulder beside the statue. 19 She goes on to write that "the chief results of the chapter's work, since the Confederate memorial, have been the erection of the Confederate Monument on the Public Square in 1909 during the presidency of Miss Mary E. Mason." 20 According to the history provided by Mason, the first important thing accomplished by the chapter was to build a memorial in the cemetery to the Confederate dead, after which the women went on to construct the 1909 monument at the courthouse. There is no reference to the switching of the monuments, and male assistance in memorializing the Confederacy is only briefly mentioned. 21 Mason was able to get away with altering history without interference from males at this time because by 1936, most veterans had passed away, and their sons possessed little interest in upholding the memory of the Confederacy. 22 Looking back over these various pieces of information, it is visible that the UDC intended their original monument to stand in the cemetery. It was only the desire of the male veterans for a more celebratory soldier statue in the center of town, coupled with their dominant 19 Huey, History of the Alabama Division, 202. 20 Ibid., 203. 21 Ibid., 202-203. Mason wrote that Athens resident Thomas Maclin Hobbs, who paid the majority of the cost for the new monument and cemetery base "rendered more assistance to the United Daughters of the Confederacy in collecting and preserving local history and traditions than any other citizen of Limestone County." 22 Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 178. 46 position in the Lost Cause movement, which prevented the women from having their solemn monument among the resting Confederates. In contrast to the appearance of the older monument in the cemetery, the courthouse monument, a ten-and-a-half foot concrete base and pedestal (which was part of the original monument), presents a celebratory aspect of the war. The statue, also carved of Italian marble, depicts a soldier standing alert. He holds the top of his gun with both hands, with the butt against the ground and the barrel pointing almost straight up. With his hat on his head, his eyes look out over the square, while his face displays no discernable emotion. 23 The base depicts a furled flag and the dates 1861-1865 on its northern face, and reads "CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS OF LIMESTONE COUNTY." 24 The East face reads, "IN MEMORY OF LIMESTONE'S SONS THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED BY THEIR SURVIVORS AND JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON CHAPTER U. D. C. 1909." 25 The western face contains the most celebratory message provided by the women who originally raised the base, which reads "ENNOBLED BY TRIUMPH EXALTED BY DEFEAT," 26 as well as an engraving reading "THOMAS H. HOBBS CAMP NO 400 U.C.V." 27 Finally, the southern face contains an excerpt from a poem 23 See Figure 5; Alabama Division, Alabama's Confederate Monuments and Markers, 92; Emerson, Historic Southern Monuments, 16-17. 24 See Figure 5. 25 See Figure 6. 26 See Figure 7. 27 See Figure 9. 47 from Henry Timrod, known as ?the Poet Laureate of the Confederacy? 28 , and reads "the knightliest of the knightly race who, since the days of the old, have kept the lamp of chivalry alight with hearts of gold." 29 In comparing this monument to the one located in the cemetery, it is evident that it presents a more positive view of the war, a view that deserved celebration, not mourning. By convincing the UDC to replace the original, solemn statue with this triumphant soldier, the veterans attempted to erase all perceptions of the war as a traumatic experience for their community and for the South in general. Both Athens monuments have their origins with the 1898 discovery and reburial of Confederate remains in a single plot in the city cemetery, which afterwards became the Confederate Circle. The Johnston UDC Chapter, which spearheaded the movement to rebury the dead, went on to place markers on the graves of the dead and in 1906 began raising funds to erect a monument to honor the deceased. The $1,250 dollar monument was purchased and raised in the summer of 1909, and the unveiling took place on June 26 of that year. The weather was hot, yet the occasion still drew a large crowd of veterans, UDCs, and local residents. The organizers built a makeshift platform west of the monument, from which the speakers conducted the ceremonies. Following a brief doxology, invocation, and the singing of "All Hail the Power," Dr. Lin Cave, pastor at the Vine Street Christian Church in Nashville addressed the crowd. Cave, who served under 28 Linda Sue Grimes, ?Poet Laureate of the Confederacy-Henry Timrod,? Bella Online: The Voice of Women, http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art46600.asp [accessed 18 January 2008]. 29 See Figure 8. 48 Robert E. Lee until his surrender at Appomattox, had recently been appointed the Chaplain-General of the UCV at the regional meeting in Memphis. 30 Following Cave's oration, Aurora McClellan delivered a speech which attempted to portray the statue not as a monument of shame, but instead a symbol indicating that the South would rebuild and restore its former glory. Interestingly enough, McClellan evoked the image of the losers of another war, the British in the American Revolution, to illustrate how this was possible, stating that: When in 1780 in our own Mobile bay, the imperial banner of England was displaced by the Spanish flag, and when later Cornwallis surrendered his sword to Washington at Yorktown, no sense of shame crimsoned the cheeks of the vanquished. Neither has the insignia of dishonor been stamped upon the heroic faces of those men of a kindred race,-the gray veterans of the Sixties, on the days that have followed the eventful one at Appomattox. 31 In comparing the defeated Confederate soldiers to the British, who went on after their loss to become a territorial and economic giant on the global stage, McClellan attempted to convince the audience (and especially the veterans) that men could lose a war and yet still be perceived as noble and strong. Through this message, the veterans might see the monument as acceptable, despite its solemn appearance. McClellan?s attempt to portray the monument as an image of the resurgent South also included a discussion of its solemn structure. Addressing the look on the soldier's face, she said that ?the eyes...look out from the marble brow with prescient gaze and see beyond??the battle-line - the new life to hearts that beat, like battle drums that never 30 Alabama Division, Alabama Monuments and Markers, 91; "Will Unveil Monument," Limestone Democrat(Athens, AL), 24 June 1909, p. 1, "Confederate Monument Unveiled Last Saturday, 1 July 1909, p. 1. 31 "Confederate Monument Unveiled Last Saturday," Limestone Democrat, 1 July 1909, p. 1. 49 sound retreat.?? 32 Finally, McClellan attempted to describe the purpose of the monument in its entirety, stating that: It is not a tomb. Hence we have not evoked an angel from the stone. It is not the mausoleum of their consecrated ashes, but a messenger in reverential attitude, with the smile of perpetual youth on his lips, and animated with the quenchless spirit of the Confederate soldier. 33 In this statement, McClellan is not just speaking about this statue, but the southern spirit itself. By discussing the monument as a messenger instead of a tomb, she is hinting that Confederate Cause is not dead, but very much alive, and that through the "perpetual youth" and "quenchless spirit" of the Confederate soldier, the South will always be prepared to fight. After McClellan spoke, Mayor Fred Wall accepted the monument for the town of Athens, the band played "Auld Lang Syne" and the veterans and UDCs held a barbecue on the courtyard. 34 With the ceremonies concluded, the women assumed that they had presented an image of the war which all could associate with. Although the veterans of Athens attended the unveiling and appeared to accept the new monument, it was not long before they challenged the solemn view of the war the Athens women presented. As time passed, the city leaders of Athens decided to pave the streets around the square. For work to commence, however, the monument needed to be moved. That provided the veterans with an opportunity to voice their complaints about the statue. Their main issue was the placement of the head in a bowed position, which veterans felt 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 50 "made them look like they had been 'whooped.'" 35 They did not originally demand that the city replace the entire monument, but rather wanted the head placed in an erect position. In November 1910 the UCV petitioned the UDC to undertake this task. Unfortunately, the UDC had exhausted all of its funds on constructing the monument, and could not afford any modifications to the statue. In response, the UCV voted to change the monument themselves to resemble the soldier statue in Tuscumbia, which featured a similar soldier to the Athens statue that stood straight up with his hat on his head, and began taking subscriptions towards that goal. 36 The veterans did not have to place too much effort into modifying the monument. Shortly after the UCV began raising money, Thomas Maclin Hobbs, son of Thomas Hubbard Hobbs (who was a local slave-owner, member of the state legislature, and the namesake for the local UCV chapter as a result of his death in Virginia during the war) offered to pay for a completely new monument and a separate base. In doing so, the new statue could stand upon the old base on the courthouse lawn, while the old statue could rest upon the new base in the cemetery. It is uncertain if Hobbs paid the entire cost for the monument and base, due to the fact that Camp Hobbs donated $10 for the structure three months after placement. Furthermore, the veterans assisted the UDC in obtaining a booth in the fair for the purpose of raising more funds for the monument. Hobbs did provide enough of the cost, however, to justify his selection of two quotes to be added to 35 Alabama Division, Alabama Monuments and Markers, 91. 36 Alabama Division, Alabama Monuments and Markers, 91; Phillip Reyer, ed., Minutes of Camp Hobbs # 400, Confederate Veterans, Athens, Alabama, 1909-1930, (Athens, AL: Limestone County Department of History and Archives, 1996), located in the Limestone County Department of History and Archives, Athens, AL, 19-21. 51 both the old and new monuments. For the courthouse monument, Hobbs chose for inscription the quote concerning ?the knightliest of the nightly race,? while the quote concerning "strangers who baptized the soil with their blood" went upon the new base in the cemetery. 37 Like the original statue, the second was sculpted in Italy, and arrived in New York from Naples in May 1912. Unfortunately for the Athens residents, the bill of lading was shipped separately on the Titanic and went to the bottom with the ill-fated vessel in April. Due to this event, the second statue could not be shipped to Athens until a second bill arrived, and the city did not receive and unveil the monument until late June. 38 While the switching of the solemn statue for a celebratory one reflects a gender- oriented difference in the memory of the Civil War, the movement of the original statue to the Confederate Circle also represented a compromise in which males assisted women in erecting their cemetery monument in return for allowing a celebratory statue to stand on the courthouse square. The first indication of this is the fact that the UDC did not resist the veteran calls to move the statue, but rather remained silent about what should be done with it?not even suggesting a change to the appearance in order to make both veterans and the UDC happy. Instead, they sat aside, let the veterans deliberate about what to do with the statue, and finally allowed its replacement. One possible reason for 37 Alabama Division, Alabama Monuments and Markers, 91-94 ; Reyer, Minutes of Camp Hobbs, 24; Austin, Confederate Soldiers from Limestone County, Alabama, 215; Axford, Faye Acton, ed., The Journals of Thomas Hubbard Hobbs: A Contemporary Record of an Aristocrat from Athens, Alabama, Written between 1840 , When the Diarist Was Fourteen Years Old, and 1862, When He Died Serving the Confederate States of America (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1976), vii-viii. 38 "Figure Coming," Alabama Courier (Athens, AL-Morning Edition), 22 May 1912, p. 1; Alabama Division, Alabama Monuments and Markers, 93. 52 the women to allow this exchange was that they knew that the old statue would go to the cemetery, which is what they originally wanted. Furthermore, male assistance helped create the solemn memorial setup in the cemetery that the UDC originally wanted, mainly through Thomas Hobbs and his contribution of a new base and the quotation concerning "the strangers who baptized the soil with their blood" to the older monument. 39 While the undertaking of these actions by a male might seem to go against the argument that women were the more solemn of the genders in memorialization, it is important to recall what Hobbs was trying to accomplish, and also the relation the soldiers in the cemetery had to his father. The donation of the base and quote by Hobbs served to further establish the solemn scene that males originally persuaded the UDC against creating, and which they could now not afford, and in so doing allowed the swapping of the statues without their complaint. On a more personal level for Hobbs, just like the soldiers lying in the Confederate Circle, his father died a great distance from home during the war; in this sense, the base and quote not only served to honor them, but all soldiers that died in far-off locations. 40 In addition to presenting an image of gender conflicts and compromise in Confederate remembrance, memorialization in Athens also provides a glimpse at how Athens residents invoked the celebration of the "faithful slave," and thus presented slavery as a loving, familial institution. The remembrance of the faithful slave, which Kirk Savage defines as one who "has survived emancipation but...retains the appropriate 39 Alabama Division, Alabama Monuments and Markers, 92-93. 40 Ibid. 53 posture and attitude of servility," 41 was in itself a form of resistance to a postbellum society in which African Americans possessed their freedom. As described by David Blight, white southerners thought of emancipation as the destruction of a benevolent system destroyed by invading Union armies, which left in their wake a disordered and jumbled society that lacked the splendor and culture of the older days. 42 In the unveiling ceremony in Athens, the UDC included two aspects of this rhetoric in an attempt to create a picture of a harmonious social relationship destroyed by northerners. The first use of faithful imagery during the Athens ceremony was in the presence of a former slave named Plato Jones, who fit the description of the archetypal "faithful slave." Born during the war, Jones originally belonged to Haywood Jones, one of the richest men in the county. After the war, his former masters moved to Texas while he remained in Athens, yet he still possessed a loving and subservient attitude towards them. 43 On one occasion, upon receiving a letter from the son of his former master thirty years after his emancipation, Jones was "mighty happy to hear about his old missus and his young master and brought the letter to the editor [of the Alabama Courier] to read." 44 Jones? actual participation at the ceremony was quite minimal. He assisted a man referred to as "Treasurer W. Bridgforth" in preparing the barbecue for the post-ceremony. But Jones? reputation as a "faithful slave" was not forgotten by the whites who attended the ceremony, and the local paper made sure to include the statement that ?one of 41 Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves, 158. 42 Blight, Race and Reunion, 259-260. 43 The Alabama Courier (Afternoon Edition), 10 February 1907, p. 3. 44 Ibid. 54 Limestone?s worthiest negroes" was present. 45 In making sure to mention the participation of the "worthy" Plato Jones (who in all probability, did not even remember slavery due to his birth after the start of the war), the white residents of Athens found a way to incorporate the image of the faithful slave into the remembrance of the Civil War. In addition to the presence of Plato Jones, women in Athens also employed the use of writing that depicted a faithful slave at the 1909 unveiling ceremony. McClellan compared the completion of the UDC's memorial work and eventual passing of the organization to the death a female slaveholder in a work entitled Near to Nature's Heart. 46 In the scene, Remus, a faithful slave of fifty years, stands next to his master's bed as she lay dying. In her delirious state, she believes she is riding in a carriage and tells Remus to drive slower. McClellan describes Remus' response, saying that, "the emotional nature of the devoted servant could not be restrained longer, and between sobs he answers; 'Remus ain't drivin' you now, Mistis. I done gib de reins to de Lord Jesus, He'll ky'ar you safe home.'" 47 Going on to liken this scene to the work of the UDC, McClellan explains that, "From Beyond the voices will come to us as Daughters of the Confederacy 'Our peerless leaders [who] give the reins to the Lord Jesus. He will carry us safe home.'" 48 In using this story, the ladies of the UDC reveal the nostalgic view of 45 "Confederate Monument Unveiled Last Saturday," Limestone Democrat, 1 July 1909, p. 1. 46 Unfortunately, searching various sources for the author of this work (which is not the same Near to Nature?s Heart written by Edward Payson Roe) has not provided any results, and further work is required in determining who wrote this work. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 55 slavery that they possess of slavery, as well as the regret they feel concerning its destruction. Women were not alone in this sentimental remembrance of slavery: males also found a way to associate the faithful slave with their celebratory monument. In the November 4, 1914 edition of the Athens Courier, an article entitled ?Monument at Athens? described a meeting between the younger Hobbs and a man named R. L. Culps, at which the former presented the latter with a photograph of the new soldier statue placed on the courthouse lawn. This photo contained more than just an image of the monument, however?standing next to the stone soldier was the former slave of Hobbs? father?a small side-note that the Athens paper nevertheless expounded upon to provide a full description of the ways in which the old servant, named ?Uncle? John Hobbs, was loyal to his master. As described by the Courier, ??Uncle? John Hobbs, the faithful old servant of Captain Thomas H. Hobbs?followed the fortunes of his master throughout the war, and is today a fine type of old antebellum ?Uncle.?? 49 These romantic sentiments expressed by residents concerning ?faithful darkies? and life in antebellum times indicate that the white Athens population, at least in their positive remembrance of slavery and antebellum society, resisted complete acceptance of life in a reconciled nation. Moreover, despite disagreements about males and females in Athens about how the war should be remembered, they found common ground in deciding where African Americans fit into the scheme of remembrance, indicating that white unity took precedence over all other memorial matters. 49 Austin, Confederate Soldiers from Limestone County, Alabama, 215. 56 While the soldier statues of Athens are important to this study of monuments in that they depict a community reaction to wartime trauma through memorialization, they also shed light on another aspect of memory created by warfare: the divergence between males and females on how the war should be remembered, due to a difference in wartime experiences. It was women who either experienced firsthand, or grew up hearing about, the looting and subsequent Union occupation of their city?an event that would not only have created feelings of helplessness, but also anger towards the northern soldiers who committed the crime. Furthermore, it is safe to say that this anger escalated with news of the dismissal of the charges against Turchin and his subsequent promotion. Honoring the Confederates who died in Athens with a solemn monument provided a way for females to remember the men who died attempting to prevent the Union incursion from taking place. The veterans, on the other hand, were fighting at the front away from home during the war and did not experience the humiliating events that took place in their home city, thus leading to a different interpretation of the war from that of women. As evinced by the effort to replace the statue, many veterans tended to look favorably on the war as a necessary and noble cause, and wanted the Confederate monument to reflect that image. This attitude is summed up by Gaines Foster, who writes that "for the veteran, the homage paid to the stone soldier symbolized his community's respect for him. The unveiling ceremony reminded him that he had acted with honor and nobility, had given of himself for the good of all." 50 Finally, white Athens men and women used their monuments as tools to resist postbellum life in a different manner: by presenting slavery as a benevolent system 50 Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 131. 57 destroyed by northerners through the use of "faithful slave" imagery. In pointing out the presence of Plato Jones at the 1909 unveiling, relating the lifespan of UDC work to "Near to Nature's Heart," and portraying ?Uncle? John Hobbs aside the celebratory statue on the city square, Athens residents attempted to show that free blacks missed life under the "peculiar institution," and that their nostalgia resulted from northern interference in the southern way of life. In addition, the imagery also indicated that the white locals believed that African Americans should occupy a subservient position in society and needed to pay proper respect to whites when necessary. As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, the story behind the Athens monuments is deeper than their appearance reveals. Although they are both soldier statues that at one time stood on the square, the impetus to the construction of the original monument was remembrance of the dead and a final resistance to complete reunification. In the next chapter, a situation is discussed that is almost the reverse of the memorial scene in Athens: a city that did not exist during the Civil War, yet which contains funerary style monuments built during the later period of Confederate celebration. 58 CHAPTER III CELEBRATING A PAST THAT NEVER WAS: CONFEDERATE MEMORIALIZATION IN BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA On April 26, 1905, a massive parade composed of city officials, police, veterans, and women from several chapters of the UDC formed at Twenty-First Street opposite the courthouse and marched through the center of Birmingham, Alabama. Thousands repeatedly cheered the aged veterans in the parade, who responded with rebel yells as the procession moved towards Capital Park. The air was alive with music, and onlookers followed the parade by carriage or foot, eventually massing in the park. Once there, the military stood guard to keep the crowds back from the stands, upon which sat officers and members of the Pelham Chapter of the UDC, sponsors, and others who were involved with the activities at hand. 1 Dr. L. S. Handley, pastor at the Presbyterian Church, stood and offered a blessing in which he "spoke most eloquently of the men who had given their lives for the South" and went on to thank "the divine spirit for a reunited country." 2 Following a brief address by Mrs. John Asa Rountree, President of the Pelham UDC Chapter, her daughter Selene Rountree joined by Charles Clisby, the son of another UDC member, stepped onto the stand next to a large object covered by cloth. As thousands 1 "Confederate Monument Unveiled at Capitol Park," Birmingham News, 26 April 1905, p. 1-3, 10. 2 Ibid., 1. 59 watched, they took the cords of the cloth in their hands and pulled, causing it to fall and bring into view what it hid. At this moment, the crowd cheered enthusiastically upon seeing the city's new Confederate monument, and the tune of "Dixie" filled the air. The monument consisted of a stone obelisk, and was dedicated to the Confederate dead resting in Birmingham's Oak Hill cemetery. Afterwards, veterans, UDC members, and others visited cemeteries where they decorated graves and ministers gave prayers. 3 In the context of the thesis that civilian populations who experienced a traumatic event during the Civil War constructed funerary styled-monuments as a last form of resistance to reconciliation, this scene is significant in that it stands as an anomaly. While most cities that erected funerary-style memorials in this period had experienced some sort of incident in their past that made it harder for them to forget the war, Birmingham was not even founded until 1871. Although James Wilson's raid hit Jefferson County in March of 1865, the feelings of loss and hardship remembered in other communities were not present in Birmingham. 4 In spite of this, Birmingham leaders decided to erect older-style monuments in this later period of monument building. This style of memorializing was not only undertaken by the women of the Pelham Chapter, but also by Camp Hardee of the United Confederate Veterans, which erected its own memorial shaft in April 1906 in Elmwood Cemetery. 5 In light of Birmingham's lack of a Confederate past, it is important to ask two questions: why the community decided to 3 "Confederate Monument Unveiled at Capitol Park"; "The Parade was Imposing," Birmingham News, 26 April 1905, p. 10; "Monument to the Confederate Dead," Age-Herald (Birmingham), 31 May 1901, p. 5; James A. Tyson and Ruth M. Hare, "History: Pelham Chapter 67, UDC, Birmingham, AL 1951-1981," unpublished paper, 1982, Birmingham Public Library Archives, Birmingham, AL. 4 Leah Rawls Atkins, The Valley and the Hills: an Illustrated History of Birmingham & Jefferson County (Windsor Publications: Woodland Hills, CA, 1981), 36-39, 53. 5 "Memorial Shaft Dedicated By Camp," Birmingham Age-Herald, 22 April 1906, p. 4. 60 construct Confederate monuments at all, and why leaders decided to build them in the older style instead of as celebratory soldier statues. The first question has two answers. By constructing the monuments, community leaders created a Confederate tradition for a growing city while reaffirming white national unity during a time of particular violence towards African Americans. In response to the second question, by building the Confederate monuments in a more solemn style, Lost Cause leaders invoked images of the past to ease the tensions of older Birmingham residents, reassuring them that while their city was transforming into a bustling metropolis, its foundation rested upon values and virtues handed down to them from the Old South. Several studies are critical for the understanding of Birmingham's memorialization movement. David Lowenthal argues that the way in which Americans view the past is largely affected by what they experience in the present. Communities constantly revise their view of the past on an unconscious level, but in some instances actively contribute to or completely replace a past they perceive as inadequate for their needs in the present. 6 Birmingham provides a prime example of this active alteration to the past to serve such present needs. The community not only constructed Confederate memorials in important locations, but persuaded the UCV to hold their fourth reunion in their city, and buried their veterans in separate cemetery plots as if they died together in battle. 7 Through these actions, elites that funded the monuments and Confederate activities created a multi-tiered Confederate tradition in Birmingham while legitimizing their position as the inheritors of Confederate ideals in the New South. 6 David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: University Press, 1985), xxvi, 325. 7 "The Complete Program," Birmingham News, 26 April 1894, p 1. 61 In discussing the racial background to the Birmingham monuments, Blight's argument that whites reconciled at the cost of black equality and justice predominates. 8 In Birmingham, whites from North and South praised the soldiers of both sections for fighting for their principles and beliefs while overlooking the plight of African Americans in their midst. In terms of Birmingham memorialization, this notion is important in that the city?s two monuments exemplify this type of white reconciliation Blight describes, which is reflected not only in the language used in speeches given at their dedication ceremonies, but by the fact that northerners contributed to their unveiling and dedication. 9 Foster?s Ghosts of the Confederacy is also relevant to the discussion of Birmingham memorialization through its main point, which argues that instead of existing as a movement calling for a return to the past, the Lost Cause helped ease the tensions of southerners as they moved into a new period of social change. In this way, the movement assisted in creating the New South, and in so doing can be categorized as a progressive movement. Few places in the South reflected this social and economic change on the scale of Birmingham, a city with growing industry, a new coal and coke company, and a population that boomed from a few thousand to over a hundred thousand in a thirty year period. Possessing mineral wealth and railroad connections to many major cities in the East, Birmingham beckoned capitalists from all over the country to come and invest their money. It was in this atmosphere of radical change and growth that 8 Blight, Race and Reunion, 2-4. 9 "Confederate Monument Unveiled at Capitol Park," Birmingham News, 26 April 1905, 1-2, 8, 14; "Monument to the Confederate Dead," Age-Herald (Birmingham), 31 May 1901, p. 5 serves as an example of inclusion of northerners into the monument-building process, when it mentions that Amos H. Mylin of Pennsylvania is one of the men of the Alabama Marble and Stone Company who states that the Pelham Chapter of the UDC may take a marble shaft for the purpose of dressing it as a monument. 62 the community constructed the Confederate monuments, which stood to remind Birmingham residents that some aspects of their past would stand firm, even though the world was quickly changing around them. 10 John H. Winberry's description of transitional monuments?monuments that contain both solemn and celebratory themes and represent a shift in the nature of memorialization?assists in explaining the funerary and celebratory aspects associated with Birmingham monuments, especially the Capitol Park monument. 11 In applying this notion to the Capitol Park monument, it becomes evident that it incorporates elements of both funerary and celebratory monuments; referring back to the 1905 unveiling ceremony, several important items of note stand out. Numerous funerary elements are present: the solemn style of the monument, the idea of the monument being dedicated to a distinct group of soldiers lying in a cemetery, and the subsequent decorating of the graves immediately after the program. At the same time, there are celebratory aspects present as well: the monument stands near the town center, and the unveiling included a massive parade and celebration prior to its unveiling. While the sharing of funerary and celebratory elements represents the greater transition of monuments from the cemetery to the town center, it is also important in that it reflects the transition of the community moving into the twentieth century and the effect it had upon their memory of the Civil War. In order to explain why Birmingham constructed monuments based on older models of memorialization, or why they decided to build Confederate monuments at all, 10 Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 6; Ayers, The Promise of the New South, 59. 11 See Introduction. 63 it is necessary to put them into context by briefly discussing the history of the city's development. Prior to the Civil War, the greater area of Jefferson County was a rural region made up of hills and farmland. The largest city at the end of the 1850s was the county seat of Elyton, a dirt-road community of 105 families. Upon the outbreak of hostilities in 1861, many men in the area traveled to Shelby or Tuscaloosa counties to join an Alabama regiment. Jefferson County remained untouched by Union forces throughout most of the war, and it was not until March 1865 that troops under Wilson passed through the area. While there, his men burned Lamson's Flour Mill and the Oxmoor and Irondale furnaces, the most significant furnaces in the area. Another group of federals under General John T. Croxton came through Jefferson County in April 1865, burning the Mount Pinson Iron Works. After the war, investors began to realize the industrial potential the area possessed in terms of iron and coal deposits, and the South and North and Alabama and Chattanooga railroad companies planned to build railroads that intersected in Jefferson County. Real estate promoters decided to sell property at the site of the planned crossing, and on June 1, 1871, founded the new city of Birmingham, named after the larger city in Britain's industrial heartland. 12 This choice of name expressed the promoters? hope that this city would one day become a great industrial center, as well as one of the leading cities of the New South. The young community underwent several hardships in its first years. Following a cholera epidemic in 1873, Birmingham experienced several booms and busts, coming close to bankruptcy several times. In 1879, improving conditions signaled the start of a 12 Atkins, Valley and the Hills, 24-53. Atkins states that Wilson's troops remained in the area anywhere from 3-8 days. 64 massive population explosion in Jefferson County. Within the period of 1880 to 1910 the population grew from 3,000 residents to 133,000. The state of Alabama experienced quickening industrial expansion, and in 1889 produced ten times the iron it had produced in 1880. Birmingham, connected by the Louisville and Nashville railroad to other iron and coal towns like Ensley, Bessemer, and Anniston, benefited greatly. 13 It was in this period of economic and population growth that older residents sometimes felt alienated from their changed surroundings, while newer one would have craved a common historical tradition for their city. In response, the leaders of the Lost Cause in Birmingham felt the need to memorialize the veterans of the Civil War, and in so doing began to create a Confederate tradition for their city that also helped alleviate the tension of quickly moving from an old way of life to a new one. The style and language of the monuments reflects how the designers looked to older memorials for inspiration, although it is more apparent in the case of the Linn Park monument how this choice of design contrasts with the time in which it was used. This monument is a 52-foot obelisk composed of sandstone, and consists of a straight shaft set atop a die and cap. There are several diagrams carved into the die which represent different servicemen of the Confederate military: on one side are crossed sabers for the cavalry and a musket for the infantry, while on the other side is an anchor for the navy. In addition, the builders placed four stone balls on each corner to represent the artillery. On the shaft are representations that could be considered as either wreaths or laurels. 14 13 Atkins, Valley and the Hills, 58-60; Ayers, Promise of the New South, 59; C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951), 126-7; 136. 65 The monument contains four quotations, two on the cornerstone and two on the shaft. The one on the eastern side of the cornerstone, placed ten years before the shaft, reads "In Honor of the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors," 15 while on the northern side it reads "Corner Stone Laid April 26, A. D. 1894." 16 On the shaft, one side reads, "To the Confederate soldiers & sailors. Erected by Pelham Chapter, United Daughters of the Confederacy. Birmingham, Ala., April 26, 1905." 17 Finally, the opposite side of the shaft contains a quote from Jefferson Davis that reads, "The manner of their death was the crowning glory of their lives." 18 In examining the presentation of this monument, it is clear that it incorporates several funerary traits reminiscent of older cemetery monuments, namely its obelisk structure, the wreaths, and the language employed upon it. These funerary aspects, however, are a stark contrast to the surrounding area of Linn Park. Founded in 1873, residents renamed the locale Capitol Park in 1885 as part of a campaign for Birmingham to become the new state capital. 19 While that never occurred, their actions show the importance placed upon the park as a central part of the city, as well as a location suitable for a celebratory-style Confederate monument. 14 See Figure 10; Tyson and Hare, History: Pelham Chapter 67; "The Birmingham Confederate Monument," Confederate Veteran Magazine, August 1908, 423. While CV describes the monument with plural muskets, upon visual inspection by the author it was determined that only one musket portrayed. 15 See Figure 12. 16 "The Birmingham Confederate Monument," Confederate Veteran, 423. 17 See Figure 11. 18 "The Birmingham Confederate Monument," Confederate Veteran, 423. 19 Lori C. Pruitt, "Events at Linn Park Draw Tourists to Downtown," Birmingham Business Journal, http://birmingham.bizjournals.com/birmingham/stories/2002/11/11/focus2.html [accessed 16 November 2007]. The area has since been renamed Linn Park. 66 The contrast of the monument with its surroundings is much more apparent by the fact that it stands between two soldier statues of later wars. A monument to the right is dedicated to servicemen and nurses from the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Insurrection, and the Boxer Rebellion, 20 while a monument to the left is dedicated to Birmingham men who fought in the First World War. 21 These statues, which present soldiers standing alert with arms ready, are similar in presentation to many of the soldier statues to Civil War veterans constructed in other communities at this time. This scenario creates an interesting paradox: while Birmingham contributed to all of the conflicts that these soldier statues stand for, the monument to the Civil War, to which Birmingham did not directly contribute, takes on a more solemn tone. The most logical explanation for this difference in presentation is that the Confederate monument, as a product of an invented tradition, followed lines of remembrance for guidance already undertaken by other communities who did experience and later memorialized the Civil War. The soldier statues, on the other hand, represent the actual feelings of Birmingham citizens who either fought in a foreign war or saw their relatives go off to fight, and in so doing reflect the celebratory feelings that the successful resolution of those conflicts produced. The Elmwood Cemetery monument also presents evidence of this invented tradition, although its obelisk form causes it to appear more at place with its surroundings than the monument in Linn Park. Dedicated to Confederate veterans buried in the cemetery, this monument is a twenty-foot tall shaft made of stone. 22 It is much simpler 20 See Figure 13. 21 Atkins, Valley and the Hills, 165. 22 "Memorial Shaft Dedicated by Camp," Birmingham Age-Herald, 22 April 1906. 67 than the Capitol Park monument, and instead of containing numerous quotes and designs on its structure simply states, "Erected by Camp Hardee U. C. V. 39. To the memory of departed comrades." 23 In addition, the shaft contains the names, units, and date of death of five veterans who passed away in the period of 1889 to 1906. 24 The monument stands on a burial plot acquired by Camp Hardee for deceased veterans prior to its construction; while five veterans rested there at the time of the monument's construction, the UCV buried others there afterward, and today Confederate graves form two rows in front of and behind the monument, literally surrounding it with the dead. This burial plot also includes a memorial stone placed after the monument's construction by the SCV. On one side, this stone provides a brief history of the UCV Camp Hardee Chapter, the burial plot, and the Confederate monument. The other proclaims that the SCV Fighting Joe Wheeler Camp maintains the graves. 25 In addition, this side contains a 1906 quote from Stephen D. Lee, former Confederate general and later national commander of the UCV, stating that "to you sons of Confederate Veterans we submit the vindication of the cause for which we fought," and that it is their "duty to see that the true history of the South is presented to future generations." 26 While this monument is more indistinguishable from its surroundings than the Capitol Park obelisk, it includes visible signs of the invented Confederate tradition. From a distance, the plot in Elmwood Cemetery appears like many other towns with a 23 See Figure 17. 24 See Figure 16. 25 See Figures 15, 18 and 19. The plaque mentions the monument's construction in the past tense, and is in better condition than the monument and veteran grave markers. It is therefore logical to assume that it was placed by the SCV after the monument's placement. 26 See Figures 18 and 19. 68 monument dedicated to Confederate dead. It is different, however, in that the dead in those other towns died in that location during the war, or were originally from that town, died off in battle, and were sent home for burial. Birmingham did not exist before the war, and in this sense had no true war dead to memorialize. Instead, the UCV mimicked other towns by memorializing the dead from their own ranks who passed away after the war ended. This is similar to the Capitol Park monument, which was originally intended to memorialize veterans buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. It did not matter to the builders if the deceased died in the war or were from the Birmingham area?or even Alabama for that matter, as evinced by the fact that one of the dead listed on the monument fought in an Arkansas regiment during the war. 27 All that mattered to them was that they presented Birmingham as having a strong Confederate heritage, complete with deceased Confederate soldiers and monuments to mark the location of their burial. Also similar to the monument in Linn Park, the UCV looked not to the celebratory monuments raised in other towns at this period, but to the original funerary monuments as inspiration for the memorial in Elmwood Cemetery. While it could be argued that they chose the obelisk form simply because it blended better with the cemetery environment, the lack of celebratory language in a period when other communities praised the valor of their Confederate dead implies that Camp Hardee rejected the newer tradition of praising Confederate dead, choosing instead to adopt the older memorial traditions. 28 Employing these older traditions not only allowed the UCV 27 See Figure 16. 28 For a discussion of the celebratory nature of Confederate memorialization during the turn of the century, see Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 127-144. 69 to solemnly memorialize their dead, but to help aging veterans find a fixed point in the past to focus on while the present day world became more unrecognizable to them. In addition to the presentation of the monuments, the means by which the builders imagined, constructed, and unveiled them also contain evidence of an invented tradition that helped residents transition into the twentieth century. This process not only reveals the competing symbolic and business aspects of monument building, but the transition of the leadership of Confederate memorialization in Birmingham from Confederate veterans to the female leaders of the UDC, specifically the Pelham chapter. The idea of building a Confederate monument in Capitol Park began in the months preceding the 1894 UCV reunion in Birmingham, and represented an attempt by the Birmingham Lost Cause leaders, who had already secured the reunion for Birmingham, to further connect their city to the Confederacy. 29 The memorial impulse arose in March 1894 when William Bemey of Camp Hardee asked Rufus N. Rhodes, founder and editor of the Birmingham News and Commander-in-Chief of the SCV, "Why did you not undertake the laying of the corner stone of a Confederate monument during the Reunion?" 30 In response to this, Rhodes, whose father served under Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston and was a close friends of Jefferson Davis, published an article in the Birmingham News asking for donations for the cornerstone of a monument to be placed during the UCV reunion in April in Capitol Park. 31 29 "The Complete Program," Birmingham News, 26 April 1894, p. 1. 30 "Death Comes Peacefully to General Rufus N. Rhodes," Birmingham News, 12 January 1910, p. 14; "Birmingham Confederate Monument," Confederate Veteran, 422. 31 "Death Comes Peacefully to General Rufus N. Rhodes," p. 1;"A Monument to the Immortals," Birmingham News, 11 March 1894, p. 4. 70 The language in Rhodes' request suggests that from the start, the idea behind placing a cornerstone at the reunion was an attempt to create a Civil War tradition in Birmingham. The first indicator of this intent was the lack of planning for a monument once the organizers placed the cornerstone, shown when Rhodes writes that "Birmingham, conceived and built years after the war, by Confederate soldiers and the sons of Confederate soldiers, must some day have in bronze or marble an everlasting testimonial to the Immortals of the South. And now is the time to inaugurate the movement." 32 The actual structure of the monument is not planned, and in stating "some day," Rhodes hints that work on the actual monument will not start anytime soon. To him, what is important is to simply have the corner-stone ready for the reunion a month later in order to hold a memorial ceremony. His hopes for this are revealed when he finishes his article by writing: Let us lay the corner stone of great Birmingham's Confederate Monument in the presence of the grizzled warriors, who shall be our guests in April; let Commander John B. Gordon set it, amid the loud shouts of brave men and the happy tears of prayerful women, while the children learn that the glory of their forefathers is their most precious heritage. 33 By having John Gordon, former Confederate general and national commander of the UCV, place the corner-stone in front of veterans from around the country, the ceremony signaled the creation of a memorial tradition in Birmingham that validated it as a truly southern city with a truly southern heritage. Rhodes' request was well-met, and the paper began receiving donations almost immediately. The list of the first donors reflects the impulse of the social elite to build the 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 71 base. Among the thirteen contributors were included Mayor David Fox, Judge James M. Arnold, W. J. Milner (brother of one of Birmingham's founders and secretary and treasurer of the Elyton Land Company), L. Rogan & Co., the Birmingham News, the Steiner brothers (Bohemian-born bankers), and future Birmingham mayors Frank V. Evans and Mel Drennen. Charles Wheelock, the architect who designed the old Jefferson County Courthouse and the Cathedral Church of the Advent, prepared the plans for the base free of charge. The builders decided that the base would most likely be built from Jasper sandstone, and Wheelock determined that the total cost of the venture would be $800, with $700 going to the construction of the base and $100 covering the cost of laying the cornerstone. 34 At this point, the builders still had no idea what type of monument they were to build once the cornerstone was in place, and only wanted to construct a base "big enough for an arch, an equestrian figure, or a shaft of marble." 35 Donations topped $800 dollars by March 21, 36 when Camp Hardee of the UCV and Camp Clayton of the SCV met to review the bids of five contractors to build the base. Joe M. Meighan of the Oak Hill Marble Yard proposed the lowest bid of $698.45 for a base built from Alabama sandstone, and the delegation awarded him the contract 34 "The Monument to the Heroes Who Wore the Gray," Daily News (Birmingham), 12 March 1894, p. 6. The biographical information of W. J. Milner found in Atkins, Valley and the Hills, 65. Biographical information concerning the Steiner brothers found at Birmingham Free Press, ?All the Truth and More,? Birmingham Free Press, http://www.birminghamfreepress.com/Features/ Politics.html [accessed 6 December 2007]. List of Birmingham Mayors and dates of office available from Your Guide to Birmingham, ?Past and Present Mayors,? Your Guide to Birmingham, http://www.yourguidetobirmingham.com/list_of_mayors.html [accessed 6 December 2007]. Information concerning Charles Wheelock's other works found at Alabama Department of Archives and History, "Historical Markers: Jefferson County," Alabama Department of Archives and History, http://www.archives.state.al.us /markers/ ijefferson.html [accessed 16 November 2007] and in John Schnorrenberg, "Aspiration: Birmingham's Historic Houses of Worship," Design Alabama 11, no. 1, (Spring 2001): 22. 35 "Monument to the Heroes," Birmingham News, p. 6. 36 "808,50 Raised," Daily News Birmingham News, 16 March 1894, p. 6. 72 with the specification that the work be finished by April 22, leaving three days to spare before the reunion. The city council approved the plan to build the base in Capitol Park, and the next day chose a site for construction. 37 Upon selection, Mayor Fox gave a small speech and poured wine on the ground to symbolize a baptism of the site. 38 After this act, Rhodes took a strike with a pick to break the ground, followed by General Fred Ferguson of the UCV and Fox. 39 Almost exactly a month later, thousands of veterans in Birmingham for the UCV reunion assembled and marched to Capitol Park to lay the cornerstone. Rufus N. Rhodes called the assembly to order, and after a blessing gave the podium to Stephen D. Lee for an oration. Following his speech, Commander Jones of Camp Hardee set articles in a box to be placed in the cornerstone, including a Bible, copies of newspapers from the Civil War era, a walking cane made of wood from the keel of the Merrimac, Confederate and U. S. flags, and the shoe of a grandson of a Confederate. Charles Wheelock and James Meighan then moved the stone into position and the Masons, led by Grand Master Francis Pettus, held a ritual in which three girls dressed in red, white, and blue poured corn wine and oil on the spot in a symbolic anointment. Finally, the stone was adjusted into place, and John Gordon stepped up and announced that it was set. A short benediction followed, and the ceremonies concluded with the band playing ?Dixie.? 40 37 "The Contract Let," Birmingham News, 22 March 1894, p. 2. 38 "Birmingham Confederate Monument," Confederate Veteran, 422. 39 Ibid. 40 "Laid: Corner Stone of Birmingham's Monument," Birmingham News, 27 April 1894, p. 7. See Figure 19 for a reference to Stephen D. Lee's role as national Commander-in-Chief of the UCV. 73 43 While many male speakers at the cornerstone ceremony expressed enthusiasm for the monument that would one day stand in Capitol Park, their interest in continuing the memorial work dwindled. In the following years, male Lost Cause organizations failed to take the initiative in continuing the work of the men that placed the cornerstone, and the base stood empty, until the city placed upon it a Spanish gun taken in the Spanish- American War. 41 When interest arose again to complete the task of building a monument on the base, it was not spearheaded by the UCV or SCV, but the Pelham Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The UDC?s adoption of the task of raising the monument is significant in that, similar to cities like Athens, it represents a larger trend in the Lost Cause pointed out by Gaines Foster in which the UDC, and not the SCV, rose to prominence after the turn of the century. Foster explains that even though the UCV expected the SCV to inherit the reins of the Confederate tradition, it never came to pass. Instead, many males that reached adulthood after the war "felt little need for a Confederate organization," as evinced by a dwindling level of participation among members after the turn of the century. 42 The UDC, on the other hand, was an organization that stood out at this time by offering creative outlets and empowering activities for women while still conforming to traditional feminine values, encouraging many to join. UDC membership surpassed that of the SCV in the early 1900s, allowing the daughters to join the UCV in upholding the Confederate tradition. 41 "Birmingham Confederate Monument," Confederate Veteran, 422. 42 Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 172, 178. 43 Ibid., 172-174, 178-179. 74 The female memorial impulse in Birmingham began accidentally, but once the seed of memorialization was planted in the minds of UDC members, they took the initiative to overcome all obstacles to finish the work started in 1894. The moment that started this initiative took place in November 1894, when Mrs. James U. Hardeman of the Pelham Chapter noticed a large piece of marble at the State Fair, purportedly "the largest shaft ever quarried south of the Ohio and Potomac." 44 Believing that the marble would make a suitable monument, she spoke with the president of the fair, who suggested that she write the Alabama Marble and Stone Company and ask for the piece for that purpose. At a meeting of the UDC several months later, the chapter decided to formally ask the company for the piece, and created a committee chaired by Mrs. Hardeman to make the request. 45 Within the request, the Daughters pointed out the benefits that donating the marble would make for business, stating that it would "not only be a lasting monument to the Confederates and an ornament to Birmingham, but a greater advertisement to your company than lying so many months unused at the fair grounds." 46 In response, Frank Evans, the company?s representative, as well as a former mayor of Birmingham, informed the UDC that the board and stockholders would place the marble at their disposal to build a "lasting monument to the Confederacy, an ornament to Birmingham and to the patriotism of the women who seek its erection in Capital Park." 47 44 "Birmingham Confederate Monument," Confederate Veteran, 423. 45 Ibid. 46 "Monument to the Confederate Dead," Age-Herald (Birmingham), 31 May 1901, p. 5. 47 Ibid. For a discussion of commercialism in the monument movement, see Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 167-168. For the dates of Evans' service as mayor, refer to Your Guide to Birmingham, ?Past and Present Mayors.? 75 The Pelham Chapter determined that the cost of dressing the stone would be approximately $550, and immediately began work on raising the money. The chapter received donations from Confederate veterans, from a subscription list posted in the Birmingham News, and from Camp Hardee for $500. It was in this point in the memorialization process that misfortune struck. L. N. Archer, who the chapter chose to design and erect the monument, informed the ladies that handling the marble would be more expensive than simply using the same type of sandstone as the base to make the shaft. In addition, squaring up the marble would place it in the wrong proportions for the base. It was at this point the ladies' work went from largely passive to active. In response to the news concerning the marble, the chapter decided to take the money they already possessed and work towards purchasing a larger and costlier monument made of sandstone. By holding bazaars and fund-raisers, and with another contribution of $540 dollars from the Birmingham News through donations by readers, the chapter worked until they raised enough money to purchase a fifty-two foot sandstone obelisk worth $4,000 dollars. 48 The Camp Hardee UCV monument in Elmwood cemetery was also raised with the assistance of the Pelham chapter, and provides an example of how it was socially acceptable for women to take an active part in memorialization as long as they remained within the bounds of their traditionally ascribed female roles. At this point in time, the UDC was the most active Confederate memorial organization in Birmingham: aside from raising the funds for the Capitol Park monument, the Pelham chapter placed over one 48 "Birmingham Confederate Monument," Confederate Veteran, 423; "History of the Confederate Monument," Birmingham News, 26 April 1905, p. 3. It is important to note that the Confederate Veteran actually lists the height of the monument as fifty-four feet, instead of the fifty-two feet described in the unpublished Tyson and Hare paper "History: Pelham Chapter 67." 76 thousand Crosses of Honors on the graves of Confederate veterans and marked 450 other graves in Elmwood and Oak Hill cemeteries with marble stones. 49 In this sense, it is logical to assume that any other organization that hoped to construct a monument would require at least some assistance from the Pelham chapter, which was the case with Camp Hardee's memorial endeavor. What the UCV did not do, however, was recognize the women for their assistance in raising the monument. This lack of recognition is represented by the fact that news sources, dedication speeches given by UCV members, and the monument itself fail to mention that the UDC helped in constructing the shaft, and it is only in UDC sources that their contribution is pointed out. 50 The reason for this lack of recognition was that acknowledging the UDC's help would, in effect, emasculate the male veterans. This monument was intended to be their monument to their comrades, and stating that they could not finish it without the help of women (many of whom were twenty to thirty years their junior) would place both genders to cross the lines of socially accepted behavior for their sexes. Therefore, the UCV chose to remain silent on the female contribution to their monument. The April 22 unveiling of the Elmwood monument, which cost $210, was overshadowed in the press by the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. That disaster pressed on the minds of the UCV as well, who after the unveiling passed a resolution to raise $50 for Confederate veterans and families in the ruined city. The ceremony, much simpler than the unveiling of the Capitol Park monument, provided an "eloquent tribute 49 Huey, History of the Alabama Division, 227. 50 "Memorial Shaft Dedicated By Camp," Birmingham Age-Herald, 22 April 1906, p. 4; Tyson and Hare, History: Pelham Chapter 67; Huey, History of the Alabama Division, 227; for images of the inscription upon the UCV monument and SCV plaque, see Figures 16-19. 77 to the Lost Cause" in which elements of the invented Confederate tradition manifested themselves. 51 The unveiling lacked the parades and celebrations of the year before, creating a much more solemn atmosphere when the ceremony began. The song chosen for the closing ceremonies was not "Bonnie Blue Flag" or "Dixie" but "Nearer My God, to Thee." Once the ceremony finished, the group placed flowers upon "the graves of the veterans who sleep in peaceful seclusion." 52 These actions show that in every way they could, the UCV attempted to avoid celebratory aspects in this celebration. In addition, the language and choice of song they invoked made it seem like they commemorated men who died during the war, even though in actuality those men lived out full lives. Finally, the makeup of the speakers at the ceremony, which included a doctor, the president of the Pelham Chapter, UDC, and a professor, indicates that those involved with the project to build this memorial were recognized leaders in society. In this way, the monument in Elmwood Cemetery, even more than the Capitol Park monument, provides an example of an attempt to promote a Confederate identity for the city of Birmingham that, in reality, did not exist. In addition to creating an elitist Confederate tradition for Birmingham, the construction of the monuments also served another purpose: to reaffirm white racial unity in remembering the Civil War during a period of increased violence towards African Americans. Around the turn of the century, attacks against blacks escalated?according to David Blight, "between 1897 and 1906, whites lynched at least 884 blacks in 51 "Memorial Shaft Dedicated By Camp," Birmingham Age-Herald, 22 April 1906, p. 4. 52 Ibid. 78 America." 53 Furthermore, as Edward Ayers points out, "lynchings tended to flourish where whites were surrounded by what they called 'strange niggers,' blacks with no white to vouch for them, blacks with no reputation in the neighborhood, blacks without even other blacks to aid them." 54 Within Birmingham, where the population increased from 3,000 in 1880 to 133,000 in 1910, it is safe to assume that whites encountered many blacks that they could place into this category. Several acts of violence took place against African Americans in the area during this period. The most violent of these attacks occurred on May 11, 1901, three weeks before the Alabama Marble and Stone Company donated the marble piece from the State Fair to the Pelham Chapter, UDC. In the attack, which occurred in Leeds on the outskirts of Birmingham, the assailants shot an African American male in the back numerous times and threw his body on the Southern Railway track so that a passing train would mutilate the corpse. The Birmingham News, which speculated that a mob murdered the man for assaulting a white woman, believed that the victim was wrongly accused of the crime for which he was murdered. Attacks like the 1901 assault occurred throughout the period in which the UCV and UDC built the monuments, and many were attacks against African American males alleged to have assaulted white women. 55 53 Blight, Race and Reunion, 344. 54 Ayers, The Promise of the New South, 157. 55 Ayers, The Promise of the New South., 59; "Negro Shot to Death Near Leeds," Birmingham News, 11 May 1901, p. 1; Accounts of attacks on African American males in Birmingham can be found in the Birmingham News on 27 September 1889 ("Poor Van"), 2 September 1907 ("White Miner is Shot by A Negro," "Dead Negro Found"), and New York Times, 17 September 1898, "Lynching at Birmingham, ALA." The Birmingham News article "Dead Negro Found" describes a case similar to the 1901 attack where the body of an African American male was found lying on train tracks. 79 What this meant in terms of the memorialization efforts that took place in this period was that while these attacks were occurring, whites looked the other way and celebrated the glory of the Civil War soldier from both sides while forgetting what the war meant to American society: emancipation and freeing of blacks. The guilt of forgetting this fact, as Blight points out, rested with whites from both North and South, as both sections fostered reconciliation at the cost of black dignity and equality. In Birmingham, signs of this white reconciliation achieved in this fashion expressed itself in northerners contributing to the building and dedication of the Confederate monuments and in the actual speeches given at the monument unveiling ceremonies. There are several examples of northern inclusion in the process of erecting and dedicating the Birmingham Confederate monuments. The original subscription list in the paper for the monument base in 1894 contains the first occurrence of this: a donation for $10.00 is simply listed as "Cash, by a Union soldier." 56 The Age-Herald mentions another case of northern assistance in 1901, when Auditor General Amos H. Mylin of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania belonged to the committee of the Alabama Marble and Stone Company which donated the State Fair marble to dress as a monument. At the unveiling of the Capitol Park monument, not only did the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) march in the parade, but the sons of federal veterans as well. Even at the solemn unveiling of the monument in Elmwood cemetery, northern participation occurred when Major Clyde Miller of the GAR spoke to the assembled veterans and guests. 57 56 "808,50 Raised," Birmingham News, 16 March 1894, p. 6. 57 "Monument to the Confederate Dead," Age-Herald (Birmingham), 31 May 1901, p. 5; ""Nominate Quay's Candidates," New York Times, 24 May 1894"; Everything in Readiness for Unveiling Tomorrow," 80 This spirit of white reconciliation belonged not only to northerners, but to southerners as well, as evinced by the language used in their speeches at the unveiling ceremonies. At the 1894 cornerstone ceremony, Stephen D. Lee expressed hope that the generation that completed the monument "may?take up our life work of loyalty to our reunited country as we lay it down, and crown it with success worthy of their forefathers." 58 At the 1905 unveiling ceremony, E. P. Smith for the Birmingham News, reading an address for Rufus N. Rhodes of the SCV, who could not attend due to illness, stated that: Americans have no peers on the face of the earth. On both sides were Americans, and Americans are brave men. Brave men, fighting, fight with the daring of good men, but differences settled, brave men understand one another quickly. No richer, nobler heritage of heroism and patriotism was ever bequeathed to mortals here below than that left Americans by the immortals of the Civil War. 59 In this way, both northerners and southerners used the monument to reconcile their differences while barely acknowledging the role of slavery in the war, and all the while assaults on African Americans continued. 60 While the creation of a Confederate tradition and white reconciliation are reasons that explain why Birmingham citizens built Confederate monuments, they do not explain why they chose to build the types of monuments that they did. The UCV and UDC could have opted to construct celebratory monuments like soldier statues, but instead chose to Birmingham News, 25 April 1905, p. 2; "The Parade was Imposing," Birmingham News, 26 April 1905, p. 10"; Memorial Shaft Dedicated By Camp," Birmingham Age-Herald, 22 April 1906, p. 4. 58 "Laid: Corner Stone of Birmingham's Monument," Birmingham News, 27 April 1894, p. 7. 59 Confederate Monument Unveiled at Capitol Park," Birmingham News, 26 April 1905, p. 2. 60 Lee does acknowledge slavery as a factor leading to the war in "Laid: Corner Stone of Birmingham's Monument," p. 7, but holds both sections accountable for it by stating that ?slavery, the indirect cause of the war, the North is as much responsible for as the South.? 81 build solemn obelisks. Gaines Foster maintains that "the rituals and rhetoric of the [Confederate] celebration offered a memory of personal sacrifice and a model of social order that met the needs of a society experiencing rapid change and disorder." 61 In other words, by looking backwards to the past, people invoking the Lost Cause found a way to psychologically move forwards into the future. Applying this to Birmingham, Confederate memorialization did this and more by allowing large business owners, politicians, and other well-to-do citizens (many of whom were not originally from Birmingham) to legitimize their leadership role in the community. In laying the cornerstone to the Capitol Park monument, this group not only took the first steps towards creating a Confederate tradition, but sent a message to all Birmingham residents indicating that even though the social elite represented a world radically different from the Old South, they still acknowledged its values as part of present-day society. Through these actions, this group hoped to persuade Birmingham citizens to acknowledge their way of life as the natural evolution of society in the South and submit to it. The later construction of memorial shafts dedicated to Confederate soldiers furthered this notion, indicating that their service helped contribute to the bustling metropolis that Birmingham became by the turn of the century. More evidence of this notion rests in the speeches delivered at the monument unveilings, in which speakers made it very clear that through memorialization, they invoked the past to ask people to come to terms with the ever-changing present. At the 1905 unveiling Mrs. Charles G. Brown, chairman of the monument committee for the Pelham chapter, illustrated this point in a speech that merits quoting at length, stating: 61 Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 6. 82 Birmingham...is a new city of ambitious possibilities?a fecund laboratory in which nature's dynamic elements are being united and assimilated and with the force and grasp and power of a young giantess she is unearthing and throwing into the seething furnaces of the present and the future the geological formation of past centuries and forging implements of structural power for the on-coming tomorrow?then, how fit, how full of patriotic foresight is it, that here in this young city be erected this memory-monument, symbolizing the superb chivalry, the chaste sentimentality, the magnificent courage, the high ideals of manly honor and womanly purity and sublime devotion to duty, even unto death, lest in the blind rush for material power and prosperity we forget the sweet heroic past. 62 Colonel Denson echoed this sentiment in the same ceremony, exclaiming that: It is well for it [the monument] to be here, as in the conflicts and competitions of industrial development and progress we neglect and forget the outer, the more exalted and pious aspirations of duty, generated by our sublime and unparalelled [sic] history, and permit the nobler sentiments of our nature to sink unheeded and forgotten into the great vortex of money. 63 These sentiments at the unveiling of the Linn Park monument illuminate the image these speakers espoused of Birmingham representing a continuation of the Old South, but also the fear they and other Birmingham residents possessed of moving too fast into the future without remembering their past, even if it was an invented past. In Alabama, and indeed the entire South, Birmingham became a city set apart from others. While many towns grew slowly throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Birmingham experienced a population increase that bought many new societal elements into one place in a very short time. By building these monuments, the white social elite created a Confederate tradition for a city that had no tradition, reaffirmed their unity in a time of violence against African Americans, and found a way to psychologically transition into the New South while reaffirming themselves as the spearhead of that movement. 62 Confederate Monument Unveiled at Capitol Park," Birmingham News, 26 April 1905, p. 1. 63 Ibid., p. 2. 83 CONCLUSION NO SURRENDER: THE SECOND CONFEDERATE MONUMENT OF GAINESVILLE, ALABAMA With the growth of the Confederate celebration during the turn of the century, more communities began to construct soldier statues in town centers. In Alabama Montgomery, Auburn, and Athens, however, builders chose to erect solemn monuments that reflected the wartime trauma they endured. The overall rise in monument building in the South peaked in 1910 with the construction of almost 40 monuments throughout the region, but began a sharp decline soon afterwards as white southerners became less interested in celebrating the Confederacy. By the 1920s, new monuments averaged five or less a year. 1 This did not mean that white southerners halted the expression of discontent at the outcome of the Civil War through memorialization during this period. As evinced by one monument in a small community in western Alabama built with the contributions of women from all over the state, resistance to reconciliation survived the diminishment of Confederate celebration in southern culture and lived on well into the twentieth century. 1 Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 196-197; Winberry, ?Lest We Forget,? 110. 84 The city of Gainesville, like Auburn, served as a soldiers? hospital center during the war, exposing local citizens to injured and dead soldiers and the trauma associated with them. Mrs. D. H. Williams of the local LMA wrote in 1904 that ?many sick and wounded soldiers were brought into our midst, reminding us most forcibly of the horrors of war and causing us to congratulate ourselves that we were far from the scene of active hostilities.? 2 The presence of the hospital during the war inspired the populace to memorialize it later, and the LMA dedicated a funerary shaft to soldiers who died in the facilities and were buried in the local cemetery on April 26, 1876?well within the earlier solemn phase of Confederate memorialization. Another event occurred in Gainesville, however, that motivated women to erect another obelisk after both the solemn phase and celebratory phase of Confederate remembrance?the surrender of General Nathan B. Forrest?s troops to federal forces in May 1865. More importantly, it was not just the Gainesville residents that willed the construction of this monument, but the entire Alabama Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. 3 In discussing Forrest?s surrender, one gets a sense of the desperation felt in Gainesville during the final spring of the war. Fresh from fighting against Union generals Abel Streight and Wilson, Forrest?s men were resting in Gainesville when they received word of Lee?s surrender at Appomattox. The news had a profound effect on the 2 Confederated Southern Memorial Association, History of the Confederated Memorial Associations of the South (New Orleans: Graham Press, 1904), 54. 3 Confederated Southern Memorial Association, History of the Confederated Memorial Associations, 54- 55; J. P. Young, The Seventh Tennessee Cavalry (Confederate): A History (Nashville: M. E. Church, 1890; reprint, Dayton, OH: Morningside Bookshop, 1976), 136-139; Huey, History of the Alabama Division, 96. See Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy and Winberry, ??Lest We Forget?? for discussions of the earlier solemn phase of Confederate memorialization. 85 weary soldiers: some wept, while many others wanted to gather weapons and horses and travel to the Trans-Mississippi Department to continue the fight. It was only at Forrest?s urging to lay down their arms that the men accepted the futility of fighting and agreed to surrender?but not before they took the regiment?s battle flag, cut it into tiny fragments, and dispersed it amongst themselves. Afterwards, Union General Edward Canby arrived to offer terms of surrender, issue paroles, and allowed the defeated Confederates to return home. 4 While no record exists as to the reaction of the townsfolk to the surrender of the famous general in their midst, it likely that it was similar to that of the soldiers, producing feelings of hopelessness in some, a willingness to continue the fight with others, and finally a grudging acceptance of fate by all. The fact that the men under Forrest?s command were never actually overwhelmed in a final battle, however, opened the possibility for a later interpretation by Lost Cause leaders that federal forces did not actually defeat them, but that the Confederates laid down their arms on their own accord?an interpretation that later manifested in the monument commemorating the end of the war in Gainesville. The drive to build the monument commemorating this event began in November 1916, when the Alabama Division of the UDC, following a suggestion of former female Gainesville resident C. W. Brownson, assigned Mrs. C. W. McMahon of nearby Livingston, AL as chairman of the project and began collecting funds for construction in 4 ?Attention! Men Who Rode with Forrest!? Confederate Veteran, 117; Young, Seventh Tennessee Cavalry, 137-138. 86 an effort ?to mark this?spot for the information of future generations.? 5 Their work was quickly halted, however, with the entrance of the U. S. into the First World War, and the ladies of the Alabama Division set aside their memorial efforts to undertake humanitarian work for a new generation of soldiers. After the armistice, however, the ladies began their memorial work with a renewed zeal, hurrying to complete the monument while the last Civil War veterans still lived. By March 1923 they had acquired the land on which the actual surrender occurred, and had the monument placed and prepared for dedication on April 17 of that year. 6 Although the Forrest monument is the only structure examined in this study not directly dedicated to a specific group of deceased Confederates, it still contains more solemn than celebratory elements. While the monument is located across from the town center, the actual site at which it resides is designed to give off the appearance of a cemetery plot. It stands on raised ground and is enclosed within an iron gate, a stone walkway leads to the monument and circles around it, and two stone flower pots resembling urns stand in front of the main obelisk. The monument itself is a stone obelisk similar in appearance to the funerary shafts of the solemn phase of Confederate memorialization. 7 Upon its front face is inscribed an image of a waving Confederate battle flag and the initials ?CSA,? under which is an inscription which states that, ?On this spot General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his daring followers were paroled by 5 ?Where Forrest Surrendered,? Confederate Veteran Magazine, November 1916, 523; ?Attention! Men Who Rode with Forrest!? Confederate Veteran, March 1923, 118. 6 Men Who Rode with Forrest!? Confederate Veteran, March 1923, 117-118; Huey, History of the Alabama Division, 96. 7 ?Attention! Men Who Rode with Forrest!? Confederate Veteran, March 1923, 117-118; see Figure 20. 87 General Canby of U. S. A. May 15, 1865. General Armstead and his brave men were paroled here the same day.? 8 Further down on the face is another inscription, the same excerpt from O?Hare?s ?Bivouac of the Dead? that appeared on the Auburn monument thirty years prior, that reads ?Nor shall their glory be forgot while fame here record keeps.? 9 Finally, the back of the monument contains information concerning its dedication, stating that it was, ?Erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Apr. 17, 1923. Mrs. E. L. Huey, President. Mrs. C. W. McMahon, Chairman.? 10 Upon a closer examination of the physical presentation of the Forrest monument and the efforts undertaken to construct it, several important attitudes and expressions by its builders come to light that persisted from earlier monuments, the first of which was an attempt by the UDC to place their own interpretive stamp on history. While the inscription upon the monument states that troops under Forrest and Armstead were paroled in Gainesville, nowhere does it mention that they actually surrendered; in a sense, it seems to imply that the war simply ended and the men went home, without the Confederates in Gainesville ever suffering defeat. The choice to exclude the mention of Forrest?s surrender grew from the fact that his men never experienced a final decisive loss, but chose to lay down arms on their own accord. While they officially may have surrendered in May 1865, in the minds of the women of the UDC, this did not contain the same connotations as the surrenders of Lee or Johnston, who actually were routed and worn down by enemy forces. In the careful selection of language on the Gainesville 8 See Figures 21 and 22. 9 See Figure 23. See Chapter 1 for a discussion of O?Hare?s poem ?Bivouac of the Dead.? 10 See Figure 24. 88 monument, the UDC could ensure that for all time, southerners would know that even though Forrest decided to stop fighting, he was by no means ?whooped.? Aside from the actual language on the monument, the solemn nature of its form and the surrounding site indicate a feeling of grief and mourning at the death of the Confederate cause, a sign that the monument?s builders still held a belief that life could have been better under an independent southern government rather than as part of the larger United States. This reluctant acceptance of a reunited country is also apparent in the aid provided by the UDC women during the Great War. Although the women gladly halted their work on the Forrest monument to donate their time and abilities to the U.S. war effort, they wrote in Confederate Veteran Magazine that ?we?gave of our means to help the boys in khaki, yet never forgetting our old veterans, our first love, nor did we withhold our aid in educating the descendants of our veterans.? 11 As with the previous example, this attitude illustrates the buried, yet persistent, nature of feelings rejecting total reconciliation that the women of the UDC possessed: while these ladies could patriotically support a united war effort against a foreign foe, they still believed that their primary goal was memorializing the Confederacy and instilling the views they possessed about the end of the war in future generations of white southerners. As with the other monuments in this study constructed within the twentieth century, the Forrest monument serves as an example of the control women wielded over Confederate remembrance once Civil War veterans began to die out. While veterans played a larger role in earlier memorialization efforts in Alabama, 12 by 1923 their 11 ?Attention! Men Who Rode with Forrest!? Confederate Veteran, March 1923, 117. 89 numbers were so thin that they could no longer exert any leadership over the Lost Cause. Furthermore, the lack of any desire among younger generations of males effectively left females as the uncontested head of Confederate remembrance. 13 Due to this development, it was women who undertook the fund-raising and organization effort in the drive to place the monument in Gainesville, while the only male participation in the memorialization process included the presence of a few veterans from surrounding counties at the unveiling and the reading of the ?Conquered Banner? by the grandson of General Forrest?s personal escort. 14 This scenario in Gainesville is significant in that it illustrates how women in Alabama developed into powerful leaders of the Lost Cause, but only once control of the movement passed from the veterans to them; prior to this, veterans held just as much sway, if not more, in honoring the Confederacy. Another important aspect associated with the Forrest monument was one unchanged since earlier years of memorialization?the ability it provided women to reaffirm white unity in times of violence against African Americans. This racial violence occurred throughout the period in which the UDC conceived of and raised funds for their monument. During 1916-1923, thirteen African Americans were lynched or murdered throughout the state of Alabama. 15 Furthermore, the year 1923 began with the Rosewood massacre in adjacent northern Florida, one of the largest violent outbreaks against 12 See Chapters 2 and 3. 13 Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 172-174, 178-179. 14 ?Unveiling of Forrest Monument,? Our Southern Home (Livingston, AL), 28 March 1923, p. 1; ?Forrest Monument Unveiling,? Our Southern Home, 25 April 1923, p. 1. 15 See The National Lists, ?The Lynching Century? at http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Base/8507/NLists.htm [accessed 9 April 2008] for a list of lynchings throughout the South in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 90 African Americans that ever occurred in the United States, in which numerous African Americans were murdered and the majority of the black community from which the tragedy took its name was burned to the ground. 16 In light of these events, the Gainesville monument provided the opportunity for the builders to foster the idea of white unity by commemorating a group of soldiers which they believed possessed the greatest traits and attributes of the white race. These men, they stated, ?were as grand in defeat as they were in war,? and ?accepted their paroles in good faith, returned to their desolated homes to face life with a noble courage?and took up the task of restoring a ruined country.? 17 Moreover, the builders avoided all references to slavery when describing the war, implying instead that white southerners fought to uphold principle and defend their homes, a view that was evinced by their expressed hopes that the monument would become ?an inspiration to the young men of this and coming generations, to bring to the service of their country a higher measure of responsibility and deeper, truer conception of duty.? 18 In pointing to the perceived nobility of these men while simultaneously ignoring the racial aspects of the Civil War, the Gainesville monument served as a rallying point for whites to stand together in this time of racial upheaval, much like the Capitol Park monument in Birmingham constructed almost two decades earlier. 19 16 For a timeline of events that occurred in Rosewood Florida in January, 1923 see Displays for Schools, ?Remembering Rosewood,? Displays for Schools, http://www.displaysforschools.com/history.html [accessed 27 January 2008]. 17 ?Attention! Men Who Rode with Forrest!? Confederate Veteran, March 1923, 117. 18 ?Unveiling of Forrest Monument,? Our Southern Home, 28 March 1923, p. 1. 19 See Chapter 3 for a discussion of the Capitol Park monument and race. 91 A final, yet important, detail concerning the Forrest monument is that in being constructed by the Alabama Division of the UDC (instead of by a local chapter in the vicinity of Gainesville), all of the connotations it contained concerning the final result of the Civil War were expressions not only of this small local community, but of women from all over the state of Alabama. The importance placed on this monument by the Alabama UDC is visible in an article within the March 1923 issue of Confederate Veteran Magazine, in which the Alabama Division directly asked the veterans and families of veterans who served with Forrest for contributions in order to complete the monument by the UDC convention in the following May. Furthermore, presidents of the Alabama Division took a special interest in the completion of the Gainesville monument from its ideological conception. Dixie Bibb Graves, president of the Alabama Division of the UDC, wife of future Alabama Governor Bibb Graves, and (through appointment by her husband) a future U. S. senator, personally accepted contributions for the monument at the start of fund-raising in 1916. Top-level participation continued until the monument?s completion in 1923, when Graves? successor to the Alabama Division Presidency, Mrs. Mattie McAdory Huey, 20 presided at the ceremony as the main speaker, where she provided an address that onlookers described as ?soul-stirring.? 21 In summation, while the idea for the Gainesville monument began on a local level, the interest of the statewide division of the UDC and its leaders in the project indicated that 20 ?Attention! Men Who Rode with Forrest!? Confederate Veteran, March 1923, 117-118; Huey, History of the Alabama Division, 147. Biography of Dixie Bibb Graves found at Biographical Directory of the Unites States Congress 1774-Present, ?Graves, Bibb Dixie, (1882?1965), Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=G000391 [accessed 22 February 2008]; ?Where Forrest Surrendered,? Confederate Veteran Magazine, November 1916, 523. 21 ?Forrest Monument Unveiling,? Our Southern Home, 25 April 1923, p. 1. 92 women from greater parts of Alabama found some sort commonality through the thinly- veiled feelings of resistance symbolized by the memorial shaft. While the monument in Gainesville is only one marker, it is a significant window into the white southern mindset in that it represented the same undertones concerning race, gender, and interpretation of the Civil War that earlier, yet similar monuments incorporated and espoused. Most notably, its solemn d?cor in reference to a traumatic event in the war indicated that many in the South had not moved on, that they thought the war?s outcome could have been different, and that they sometimes felt that maybe the outcome should have been different. Moreover, while the birth of the idea for the Forrest monument among Gainesville locals further signifies that small towns tended to serve as repositories for pent-up feelings of resistance to national unity, the support the monument received from the statewide UDC organization indicates that these feelings were not always secluded to these small areas. At the end of the 1800s and beginning of the 1900s, the construction of late- funerary or solemn-styled monuments indicated the continued, albeit diminished, feelings of unhappiness with the outcome of the war and resistance towards national reconciliation. As the new century unfolded and the United States began to establish itself as a truly global power, Americans were able to find common ground in uniting together against foreign foes. In this new era of American growth in world affairs, however, some views, ideas, and attitudes possessed by Alabama?s white southerners refused to change, and the expressions of dissatisfaction at the results of the Civil War continued not only into the 1920s, but much deeper into the twentieth century. A brief 93 example of this dissatisfaction with the national government is visible in the expressions of a later generation of white Alabamians that lived during another period of increased racial tension. On April 24, 1963, almost 40 years to the day after the dedication of the Gainesville monument, U. S. Secretary of State Robert Kennedy was in Montgomery to meet with Alabama Governor George Wallace to discuss race relations in Alabama, an issue many Alabama citizens viewed as a struggle of state against federal authority. While riding to the capitol, Kennedy noticed picketers carrying signs that decried his interference with state affairs and associating him with communist leaders. 22 On the capitol dome, the Confederate battle flag flew under the state flag, while the American flag was noticeably absent. While his visit marked the first time the battle flag flew over the capitol, it would remain throughout the remainder of Wallace?s terms as Governor, as well as those of his successors. 23 As Kennedy?s entourage walked into the building, they witnessed delegates from an organization known as the ?Women for Constitutional Government? place a red and white wreath upon the brass star that commemorated the spot on which Jefferson Davis took the oath of office, in order to (as one member stated) ??keep the enemy off sacred ground.?? 24 Upon witnessing the profound reaction his 22 Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (New York: Shimon & Schuster, 1995; reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), 120-123. 23 John M. Coski, The Confederate Battle Flag: America?s Most Embattled Emblem (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005) 152-153. 24 Carter, Politics of Rage, 120. 94 presence produced among the local Alabama populace, Kennedy remarked to one of his aides ??it?s like a foreign country.?? 25 While the Civil Rights movement served as a catalyst for a large amount of the display of Confederate imagery in the 1960s, the persistence of these displays in the years since points out that to some extent, a sizeable group of white southerners still resist complete reconciliation with the North. These displays range from something as simple as a song, such as Hank Williams, Jr.?s country hit ?If the South Would?ve Won,? 26 to the intense debates over the use or incorporation of the Confederate battle flag by state governments and the recent arguments between white and black residents of Selma, Alabama concerning the removal of a monument commemorating Nathan B. Forrest from city property, and illustrate the great lengths that white southerners will go to in order to preserve their distinct identity within the Union. More importantly for this study, many of the funerary/solemn styled monuments described here are actively maintained by various groups in their communities today, with the author finding numerous graves marked with new Confederate battle flags?an occurrence which raises the same questions that pertained to the monuments? original builders?questions that ask if it is possible for a group to be considered truly reconciled while they commemorate those who died fighting the national government. 27 25 Ibid. 26 Coski, Confederate Battle Flag, Illustration 45. 27 Coski, Confederate Battle Flag, 235; Ed Ballam, ?Forrest Monument?s Removal in Selma May Lead to Court,? The Civil War News, http://www.civilwarnews.com/archive/articles/forrest_monument.htm [accessed 3 April 2008]; see Figures 25 and 26. 95 While the Civil War ended in 1865, its conclusion signaled the start of a new war: the war to describe the results of the conflict, instigated by white southerners who wanted to place their ancestors and themselves in the best light possible and retain whatever minute ideological independence they could after defeat. This war has been ongoing since the late 1800s and is still heavily fought in the present, spurred on by the Lost Cause ideology that is so ingrained in southern culture that it is considered fact by many in the region today. These expressions of resistance to total national reconciliation show no sign of abating in the near future, and it is safe to venture that white southerners? especially those within the Heart of Dixie?will claim for generations to come that that they are ?American by birth, southern by the grace of God.? 96 PHOTOGRAPHS Figure 1: Confederate Monument, Pine Hill Cemetery, Auburn, Alabama. Photograph by author. 97 Figure 2: Inscription upon monument in Pine Hill Cemetery. Auburn, AL. Photograph by author. 98 Figure 3: 1909 Confederate monument located in Athens City Cemetery, Athens, AL. This monument originally stood on the courthouse lawn. Photograph by author. 99 Figure 4: Bowed head of 1909 monument. Athens, AL. Photograph by author. 100 Figure 5: Confederate monument, courthouse lawn, Athens, AL. The base was placed in 1909 with the original statue, while the present statue was placed in 1912. Photograph by author. 101 Figure 6: Quotation inscribed upon base on courthouse lawn. Athens, AL. Photograph by author. Figure 7: Quotation inscribed upon base on courthouse lawn. Athens, AL. Photograph by author. 102 Figure 8: Quotation inscribed upon base on courthouse lawn. Athens, AL. This quote was placed upon the request of Thomas Maclin Hobbs. Photograph by author. Figure 9: Engraving upon base on courthouse lawn. Athens, AL. Photograph by author. 103 Figure 10: UDC Monument in Linn Park (Capitol Park at unveiling), Birmingham, AL. Photograph by author. 104 Figure 11: Inscription, Linn Park monument. Birmingham, AL. Photograph by author. Figure 12: Cornerstone, Linn Park Monument. Birmingham, AL. Photograph by author. 105 Figure 13: Monument to veterans of the Spanish-American War, Boxer Rebellion, and Philippine Insurrection, Linn Park. Birmingham, AL. Photograph by author. Figure 14: Inscription upon monument in Fig. 4, Linn Park. Birmingham, AL. Photograph by author. 106 Figure 15: UCV monument, Elmwood Cemetery, Birmingham, AL. Photograph by author. 107 Figure 16: List of deceased veterans, UCV monument, Elmwood Cemetery. Birmingham, AL. Photograph by author. Figure 17: Inscription, UCV monument, Elmwood Cemetery. Birmingham, AL. Photograph by author. 108 Figure 18: Side 1, SCV marker, Confederate plot, Elmwood Cemetery. Birmingham, AL. Photograph by author. Figure 19: Side 2, SCV marker, Confederate plot, Elmwood Cemetery. Birmingham, AL. Photograph by author 109 Figure 20: Forrest Monument, Gainesville, AL. Photograph by author. 110 Figure 21: Engraving of battle flag upon Forrest Monument. Gainesville, AL. Photograph by author. Figure 22: Inscription upon Forrest Monument. Gainesville, AL. Photograph by author. 111 Figure 23: Inscription of O?Hare stanza, Forrest Monument. Gainesville, AL. Photograph by author. Figure 24: Inscription on back of Forrest Monument. Gainesville, AL. Photograph by author. 112 Figure 25: Battle Flag placed in urn at Athens Confederate Monument the city cemetery, Athens, AL. Photograph by author. 113 Figure 26: Multiple graves marked with Confederate battle flags in Elmwood Cemetery, Birmingham, AL. The shaft of the Elmwood Confederate Monument is visible in the background. Photograph by author. 114 APPENDIX: LIST OF MONUMENTS RESEARCHED IN THIS STUDY THAT FALL INTO THE CATEGORY OF ?LATE-FUNERARY STYLE / SOLEMN MONUMENTS.? Athens, AL-Confederate monument originally located at courthouse, later moved to Athens City Cemetery; unveiled June 26, 1909. Auburn, AL-Confederate monument located in Pine Hill Cemetery, unveiled April 28, 1893. Birmingham, AL (2)-Confederate monument located in Linn Park, unveiled April 26, 1905; confederate monument in Elmwood Cemetery, unveiled April 22, 1906. Boligee, AL-Confederate monument in located cemetery, unveiled 1896 (source: Confederated Southern Memorial Association, History of the Confederated Memorial Associations of the South, 48). Gainesville, AL-Confederate monument located near town center, unveiled April 17, 1923. Huntsville, AL-Confederate monument located in Maple Hill Cemetery, unveiled July 21, 1901; paid for and given by Anna Buell Drake Robertson (source: Alabama Division, Alabama's Confederate Monuments and Markers, 102). Lannett, AL / West Point, GA-Confederate monument originally standing at 8 th Street in West Point, standing today near Fort Tyler; unveiled May 23, 1901. It is important to note that even though this monument stands in Georgia, the close collaboration between the two communities of West Point and Lannett, AL (which are in fact known as the twin cities) on the construction of this monument merits its inclusion into this study. Further meriting the monument?s inclusion is the fact that even though it stood in a public place, it was dedicated to soldiers buried elsewhere. (source: ?Confederate Monument was Unveiled Memorial Day, ?01,? Valley Times (Valley, AL), 22 September 1959, p. 2). 115 Marion, AL-Confederate monument located in the Marion city cemetery, unveiled April 26, 1882 (source: Widener, Confederate Monuments, 12). Montgomery, AL-Confederate monument to Independent Rifles located in Oakwood Cemetery, unveiled April 26, 1884. 116 BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Manuscript Collections Auburn, Alabama. Record of the Town Clerk 1894-1900: Financial Record and Minutes. Ledger. Located in Auburn City Hall, Auburn, AL. Mell Scrapbooks 1891-1906. Special Collections, Ralph B. Draughon Library, Auburn University, Auburn, AL. Pearson, Ann. The Ann Pearson Papers. Special Collections, Ralph. B. Draughon Library, Special Collections, Auburn University, Auburn, AL. United Daughters of the Confederacy Records. Special Collections, Ralph B. Draughon Library, Auburn University, Auburn, AL. Published Primary Material Age-Herald (Birmingham). 31 May 1901-22 April 1906. 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