Confederate monuments and memorials in the United States include public displays and symbols of the Confederate States of America (CSA), Confederate leaders, or Confederate soldiers of the American Civil War. Many monuments and memorials have been or will be removed under great controversy. Part of the commemoration of the American Civil War, these symbols include monuments and statues, flags, holidays and other observances, and the names of schools, roads, parks, bridges, buildings, counties, cities, lakes, dams, military bases, and other public structures. In a December 2018 special report, Smithsonian Magazine stated, "over the past ten years, taxpayers have directed at least $40 million to Confederate monuments—statues, homes, parks, museums, libraries, and cemeteries—and to Confederate heritage organizations."
This entry does not include commemorations of pre-Civil War figures connected with the origins of the Civil War but not directly tied to the Confederacy, such as Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney, congressman Preston Brooks, North Carolina Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin, or Vice President John C. Calhoun, although monuments to Calhoun "have been the most consistent targets" of vandals.
Monuments and memorials are listed alphabetically by state, and by city within each state. States not listed have no known qualifying items for the list.
History
Monument building and dedications Memorials have been erected on public spaces (including on courthouse grounds) either at public expense or funded by private organizations and donors. Numerous private memorials have also been erected.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, "Confederate monuments aren't just heirlooms, the artifacts of a bygone era. Instead, American taxpayers are still heavily investing in these tributes today." The report also concluded that the monuments were constructed and are regularly maintained in promotion of the Lost Cause, white supremacist mythology, and over the many decades of their establishment, African American leaders regularly protested these memorials and what they represented.
A small number of memorializations were made during the war, mainly as ship and place names. After the war, Robert E. Lee said on several occasions that he was opposed to any monuments, as they would, in his opinion, "keep open the sores of war". Nevertheless, monuments and memorials continued to be dedicated shortly after the American Civil War. Before 1890, most were erected in cemeteries as memorials to soldiers who died in the war. Many more monuments were dedicated in the years after 1890, when Congress established the first National Military Park at Chickamauga and Chattanooga, and by the turn of the 20th century, five battlefields from the Civil War had been preserved: Chickamauga-Chattanooga, Antietam, Gettysburg, Shiloh, and Vicksburg. At Vicksburg National Military Park, more than 95% of the park's monuments were erected in the first eighteen years after the park was established in 1899. But monuments began appearing in public places with the emergence of the Jim Crow South, coinciding with the nadir of American race relations.
Jim Crow
Confederate monument-building has often been part of widespread campaigns to promote and justify Jim Crow laws in the South. According to the American Historical Association (AHA), the erection of Confederate monuments during the early 20th century was "part and parcel of the initiation of legally mandated segregation and widespread disenfranchisement across the South." According to the AHA, memorials to the Confederacy erected during this period "were intended, in part, to obscure the terrorism required to overthrow Reconstruction, and to intimidate African Americans politically and isolate them from the mainstream of public life." A later wave of monument building coincided with the civil rights movement, and according to the AHA "these symbols of white supremacy are still being invoked for similar purposes."American Historical Association, AHA Statement on Confederate Monuments (August 2017) According to Smithsonian Magazine, "far from simply being markers of historic events and people, as proponents argue, these memorials were created and funded by Jim Crow governments to pay homage to a slave-owning society and to serve as blunt assertions of dominance over African-Americans."
According to historian Jane Dailey from the University of Chicago, in many cases, the purpose of the monuments was not to celebrate the past but rather to promote a "white supremacist future". Another historian, Karen L. Cox, from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, has written that the monuments are "a legacy of the brutally racist Jim Crow era", and that "the whole point of Confederate monuments is to celebrate white supremacy". Another historian from UNC, James Leloudis, stated that "The funders and backers of these monuments are very explicit that they are requiring a political education and a legitimacy for the Jim Crow era and the right of white men to rule." They were erected without the consent or even input of Southern African Americans, who remembered the Civil War far differently, and who had no interest in honoring those who fought to keep them enslaved.Confederate Monuments and Civic Values in the Wake of Charlottesville. Dell Upton, Society of American Historians, September 13, 2017 According to Civil War historian Judith Giesberg, professor of history at Villanova University, "White supremacy is really what these statues represent."Confederate monuments: What to do with them?. Grier, Peter. Christian Science Monitor, August 22, 2017 Some monuments were also meant to beautify cities as part of the City Beautiful movement, although this was secondary.
In a June 2018 speech, Civil War historian James I. Robertson Jr. of Virginia Tech said the monuments were not a "Jim Crow signal of defiance" and referred to the current trend to dismantle or destroy them as an "age of idiocy" motivated by "elements hell-bent on tearing apart unity that generations of Americans have painfully constructed." Katrina Dunn Johnson, Curator of the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, states that "thousands of families throughout the country were unable to reclaim their soldier's remains--many never learned their loved ones' exact fate on the battlefield or within the prison camps. The psychological impact of such a devastating loss cannot be underestimated when attempting to understand the primary motivations behind Southern memorialization."
Many Confederate monuments were dedicated in the former Confederate states and border states in the decades following the Civil War, in many instances by Ladies Memorial Associations, United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), United Confederate Veterans (UCV), Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), the Heritage Preservation Association, and other memorial organizations.Confederate Monument in Forsyth Park , City of Savannah website, accessed April 24, 2010 Other Confederate monuments are located on Civil War battlefields. Many Confederate monuments are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, either separately or as contributing objects within listings of courthouses or historic districts. Art historians Cynthia Mills and Pamela Simpson argued, in Monuments to the Lost Cause, that the majority of Confederate monuments, of the type they define, were "commissioned by white women, in hope of preserving a positive vision of antebellum life."
In the late nineteenth century, technological innovations in the granite and bronze industries helped reduce costs and made monuments more affordable for small towns. Companies looking to capitalize on this opportunity often sold nearly identical copies of monuments to both the North and South.
Another wave of monument construction coincided with the Civil Rights Movement and the American Civil War Centennial. At least thirty-two Confederate monuments were dedicated between 2000 and 2017, including at least 7 re-dedications.
Scholarly study Scholarly studies of the monuments began in the 1980s. In 1983 John J. Winberry published a study which was based on data from the work of R.W. Widener. He estimated that the main building period for monuments was from 1889 to 1929 and that of the monuments erected in courthouse squares over half were built between 1902 and 1912. He determined four main locations for monuments; battlefields, cemeteries, county courthouse grounds, and state capitol grounds. Over a third of the courthouse monuments were dedicated to the dead. The majority of the cemetery monuments in his study were built in the pre-1900 period, while most of the courthouse monuments were erected after 1900. Of the 666 monuments in his study 55% were of Confederate soldiers, while 28% were obelisks. Soldiers dominated courthouse grounds, while obelisks account for nearly half of cemetery monuments. The idea that the soldier statues always faced north was found to be untrue and that the soldiers usually faced the same direction as the courthouse. He noted that the monuments were "remarkably diverse" with "only a few instances of repetition of inscriptions".
He categorized the monuments into four types. Type 1 was a Confederate soldier on a column with his weapon at parade rest, or weaponless and gazing into the distance. These accounted for approximately half the monuments studied. They are, however, the most popular among the courthouse monuments. Type 2 was a Confederate soldier on a column with rifle ready, or carrying a flag or bugle. Type 3 was an obelisk, often covered with drapery and bearing cannonballs or an urn. This type was 28% of the monuments studied, but 48% of the monuments in cemeteries and 18% of courthouse monuments. Type 4 was a miscellaneous group, including arches, standing stones, plaques, fountains, etc. These account for 17% of the monuments studied.
Over a third of the courthouse monuments were specifically dedicated to the Confederate dead. The first courthouse monument was erected in Bolivar, Tennessee, in 1867. By 1880 nine courthouse monuments had been erected. Winberry noted two centers of courthouse monuments: the Potomac counties of Virginia, from which the tradition spread to North Carolina, and a larger area covering Georgia, South Carolina and northern Florida. The diffusion of courthouse monuments was aided by organizations such as the United Confederate Veterans and their publications, though other factors may also have been effective.
Winberry listed four reasons for the shift from cemeteries to courthouses. First was the need to preserve the memory of the Confederate dead and also recognize the veterans who returned. Second was to celebrate the rebuilding of the South after the war. Third was the romanticizing of the Lost Cause, and the fourth was to unify the white population in a common heritage against the interests of African-American Southerners. He concluded: "No one of these four possible explanations for the Confederate monument is adequate or complete in itself. The monument is a symbol, but whether it was a memory of the past, a celebration of the present, or a portent of the future remains a difficult question to answer; monuments and symbols can be complicated and sometimes indecipherable."
The Monument Movement The Monument Movement was a national movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. The Union and Confederate monuments were erected as community memorials. In the North and South communities came together in the time of war, contributing their men and boys (and a few documented women), then they came together again to memorialize these soldiers and their contributions to the cause as they saw it. Citizens paid subscriptions to memorials, for monument associations, taxes were issued, the GAR, Allied Orders, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the United Confederate Veterans all lead fundraisers.