"Great Generals and Christian Soldiers": Commemorations of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in the Civil Rights Era," in Civil War in Art and Memory, Kirk Savage, Ed. in the National Gallery of Art Studies in the History of Art (Yale University Press, 2016), 147-170. (original) (raw)

2016, Civil War in Art and Memory, Kirk Savage, Ed.

Unveiled in 1948 and 1953, respectively, the Lee and Jackson statues in Baltimore and the Lee and Jackson bay at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. were the culmination of two commemorative campaigns, originating in the late 1920s and early 1930s, at a time when the ideology of the Lost Cause nurtured partisan feelings in the South while calls for reconciliation in the North reshaped the reception of these two Confederate generals in the minds and hearts of Americans. The dedication of these “memory sites” also coincided with the emergence of the Civil Rights movement in two cities marred by their own fraught past and marked by Jim Crow laws well into the twentieth century. These highly politicized monuments, funded entirely by individuals and sharing commonalities in iconography, epitomize the intentions of those who commissioned them to inscribe Lee and Jackson into a narrative of national healing that obfuscated not only historical racial experiences but most importantly contemporary realities. Lionized in the pantheon of southern heroes by the 1920s, Lee and Jackson were memorialized in the North as “theoretical Unionist[s],” men of outstanding Christian ethic and chivalry saved from infamy by the redemptive authority of their character. By mid-century, the lives and accomplishments of Lee and Jackson were seen as a neutralizing antidote to disruptive cultural dislocations, unnerving social and racial conflicts and even as the “glorious heritage of all freedom-loving people.” Expressive of shifting political and ideological contexts, the two generals were uplifted from partisan perspectives and sectional affiliations to become ethical beacons divorced from racial politics. The patrons of the two monuments, J. Henry Ferguson and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, respectively, privileged their Christian character, all the while obfuscating their allegiance to a racial hierarchy of white supremacy as the two generals came to hold particular significance in a utopian revisionism of the historical past. Extolled in presidential speeches and writings from Theodore Roosevelt to Woodrow Wilson and held in high esteem by President Truman, Lee and Jackson were virtually sanctified for their valor and their dedication to national patriotic ideals that were compromised only by their allegiances to the state of their birth. Their ascendancy from southern heroes to national icons however, occurred while black citizens were embroiled in protracted battles for residential, educational and social desegregation and wished to recognize past and present injustices on the national arena. In this paper I explore the details of the commission and realization of these two commemorative sites, their iconography, and the reaction of contemporaries to their political implications. My focus is on the ideological beliefs and intentions of the patrons and the multifaceted political underpinnings that defined the reception of these monuments at mid-century.