The Muddled History of Confederate Monuments

Manatee County has officially joined a long list of Southern communities who are internally embattled over whether to remove monuments to the Confederacy. As Friday’s emergency county commission meeting called to address planned protests on Monday demonstrated, ignorance of our past may be the greatest obstacle in addressing our present and deciding our future.

The monument in question sits on the grounds of the historic Manatee County Courthouse in downtown Bradenton. The granite pillar was dedicated in 1924 by the Judah P. Benjamin Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, during the height of the group's popularity. It also took place during a very violent time in the post-Reconstruction era when lynchings still occurred and the brutally-racist Jim Crow laws ruled the segregated South.

The UDC is a controversial group that spent the bulk of their efforts during these years erecting monuments to the confederacy and promoting revisionist history through the "Lost Cause of the Confederacy" narrative, which seeks to minimize the role of slavery and frame the war as a brave and gallant effort, waged primarily over states' rights. Our local monument commemorates Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, along with the "Memory of Our Confederate Soldiers."

The monument also features the so-called Confederate Flag, that while not the actual flag of the Confederacy, was adopted as a symbol of white supremacy by the Klu Klux Klan and many segregationists during this era and later saw a resurgence in popularity amongst Southern whites who opposed the Civil Rights movement. Many such monuments were placed at Southern courthouses during this era, perhaps as a symbol that the South was still the South under Jim Crow.

There is certainly nothing in the history of the UDC to suggest that these monuments were erected to remind us of the horrors of our past in order to prevent us from revisiting them in the future, as so many of their defenders–including several commissioners at Friday's meeting–have suggested. Quite the opposite, they intended to "to instruct and instill into the descendants of the people of the South a proper respect for and pride in the glorious war history."

As a part of their monument effort, the UDC also led the movement to establish a Confederate monument of unprecedented scale at Stone Mountain, Georgia. In 1915, Helen Plane, a charter member of the UDC and head of its Atlanta chapter, enlisted noted sculptor Gutzon Borglum to work on an enormous memorial carving, which began in 1923. Mrs. Plane actually wanted to include Klu Klux Klan members on the mountain alongside the Confederate generals, but Borglum ultimately included only Generals Lee and Jackson, along with Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

The UDC's favorable assessment of the Klansmen was not an isolated incident and would continue for decades. In 1934, the UDC began publishing The Southern Magazine. In it, the group defended the Klan as saviors of the South and justified their atrocities as both necessary and courageous, while noting that it had the additional benefit of providing them with "fun." One article referred to Klansmen as the "bravest men in the south" and "among the very best citizens of our country." This is undeniably the spirit in which these monuments to secessionists were erected, and any talk about them being part of our history should acknowledge that.

During this debate, many defenders of the monuments have likened General Lee to George Washington, while wondering aloud if our first President will be next. This of course is an absurd comparison as Washington was the first President of the United States and General Lee led an army in a war against these United States. I know of no other instance where monuments are erected to commemorate the losing side on the winner’s ground, and no matter what side a state fought on during the Civil War, they remain part of these United States today.