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 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 iii 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 iv 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. v 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 vi 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 vii 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. 1 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. 2 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. 3