Confederate monuments were the product of a campaign to rewrite history, not to preserve it.
There were few Confederate monuments in the thirty years after the Civil War ended in 1865. Placement of monuments came in two waves, the first much larger than the second. One wave began at the turn of the last century and the other began about 1956 (See chart).
Source: There are certain moments in US history when Confederate monuments go up
First Wave
The first sustained wave of monument placement began in the late 1890s, peaking in 1911, and then tapering off to lower rate of placement in the 1920s and early 1930s. Why this spike?
By the 1890s, Confederate veterans were dying off and Southern elites feared younger generations would lose the “right” perspective on the history of the Civil War. The “Lost Cause” movement began to take root in the South as a response. The mission was to recast the Confederacy as a heroic and just attempt a preserve Southern way of life while minimizing the experience and impact of slavery.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy was birthed in 1894. Organized by daughters and granddaughters of the Southern elite, they set out to promote the Lost Cause narrative through textbook writing, children’s programs, and the erection of monuments promoting the Lost Cause. Their financial and political clout gave them considerable influence, especially in the formerly Confederate states.
In 1896, the Supreme Court handed down its Plessy vs Ferguson ruling, institutionalizing the Separate but Equal doctrine. By 1914, Less than twenty years later, all Southern states and most Northern cities had enacted laws segregating people.
From 1902 to 1907, Tom Dixon wrote a popular trilogy of novels from 1902-1907, targeting the “unfair” treatment of the South in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” fifty years earlier. The middle novel, “The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan,” was the inspiration for D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” in 1915, glorifying the Klan and employing deeply racists troupes. It was the first true blockbuster movie. Not coincidentally, 1915 was the birth of the Second Ku Klux Klan. By 1922, the Klan had a million members, possibly as many as five million by 1925, and millions more in sympathy. Lynching was prevalent all through this period as were race massacres like the Red Summer of 1919 and the Tulsa massacre of 1921.
Second Wave
The United Daughters of the Confederacy began to lose steam in the 1920s and from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s monument erection mostly subsided. But another smaller spike in from about 1956-1965. What happened here?
In 1954, in Brown vs the Board of Education, the Supreme Court overruled Plessy vs Ferguson, effectively delegitimizing segregation. The Civil Rights Movement came into its own at the time. Up went more monuments to persevere the ethos of the Lost Cause and white supremacy, dropping off after 1965 and the passage of civil rights legislation. The financial and political clout to promote these efforts was not as powerful by this date.
Conclusion
The great majority of Confederate monuments were never a product of some high-minded project to help us holistically remember the past. They were the product of concerted effort to rewrite the past with the Lost Cause narrative. They were integral to waves of white supremacy that swept America, attempting to whitewash the past and intimidate people of color. They have no business standing in places of honor in our public spaces. Their removal aids in the remembrance of history, not its neglect.
For a short history of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and their role in promoting the Lost Cause and Confederate monument placement, view this video.
