Confederate Monuments Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War and American Memory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002. Hardy, Michael. Remembering North Carolina's Confederates. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2006. North Carolina Department of Resources. "North Carolina Civil War Monuments." 2010. http://ncmonuments.ncdcr.gov. Savage, Kirk. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Vincent, Tom. "'Evidence of Womans Loyalty, Perseverance, and Fidelity': Confederate Soldiers' Monuments in North Carolina, 1865-1914." The North Carolina Historical Review 83 (January 2006): 61-90. Women & the Lost Cause Bishir, Catherine. “'A Strong Force of Ladies': Women, Politics, and Confederate Memorial Associations in Nineteenth-Century Raleigh.” The North Carolina Historical Review 77 (October 2000): 455-491. Cox, Karen L. Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003. Mills, Cynthia and Pamela H. Simpson, eds. Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art and the Landscapes of Southern Memory. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003. Janney, Caroline E. "The Lost Cause." In Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. July 27, 2016. https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Lost_Cause_The#start_entry. Monument to North Carolina Women of the Confederacy Berent, Irwin M. The Monuments and Statues on the Capitol Square of North Carolina. Greenville, NC: East Carolina University Press, 1985. Documenting the American South: Commemorative Landscapes of North Carolina. "Monument to the North Carolina Women of the Confederacy, Raleigh." http://docsouth.unc.edu/commland/monument/99/
Dedicated on June 10, 1914. Located in Union Square, southwest of the Capitol building, facing Morgan Street. Sponsored by Ashely Horne, former Confederate Colonel and representative in the North Carolina General Assembly. Coincided with political efforts to reinstall racial inequality, including the passage of Jim Crow laws in 1900 (Bishir,1993, p.18).
Significance & Symbolism
Monument Quick Facts
Monument to North Carolina Women of the Confederacy Raleigh, NC
Further Reading
"In short, as some one truly phrased it, the mistress was the greatest slave on the plantation which moved at her command." -Daniel Harvey Hill, Address at the Unveiling of the Memorial, 1914
"Erected to the North Carolina Women of the Confederacy by Ashley Horne Capitol Square, Raleigh, N.C.," Durwood Barbour Collection of North Carolina Postcards (P077), North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, Wilson Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
"As the elite whites of the South constructed their monuments and reconstructed the causes and meanings of the Civil War, they ignored their former slaves and memorialized a society built upon a bedrock of white supremacy." -Tom Vincent, "Confederate Soldiers' Monuments in North Carolina," 2006
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During the early twentieth century, North Carolina’s white elites redoubled efforts to place the South and the Civil War in a positive light by creating a narrative now known as the Lost Cause. This interpretation romanticized the Confederacy, downplayed the role of slavery in southern society, and encouraged nostalgia among the southern elite for their way of life before the war. Placing Confederate monuments in public spaces was critical in developing the Lost Cause narrative, embedding it as a part of southern culture and declaring white political power. The Monument to NC Women of the Confederacy features bronze casts of a boy grasping a sheathed sword kneeling beside a seated woman holding an open book. This scene places white, southern women within the Lost Cause narrative as the individuals who sacrificed their loved ones to a noble cause, guarded homes during the Civil War, and preserved memories of the Confederacy in their nurturing of subsequent generations. Armed with a sword, the young boy prepares to fight in a future battle for the South. Primary sources confirm the monument’s symbolism and purpose. For example, Daniel Harvey Hill's dedication speech (quoted below) reflects elites' efforts to place white southern women within the Lost Cause narrative by reinforcing the idea of plantation mistresses as the backbone of the South's way of life and of the Confederate war effort. The monument's symbolism worked in tandem with efforts to minimize slavery in its silence of the approximately 300,000 individuals enslaved in North Carolina, including those owned by Ashley Horne's family. The quote by archivist Tom Vincent (below) illustrates the relationship between the Lost Cause narrative, white supremacy, and Confederate monuments. White elites in the South used Confederate monuments and the Lost Cause narrative to justify Jim Crow laws and to bolster white supremacy in the twentieth century.
