Confederate monuments and memorials

Confederate monuments and memorials in the United States include public displays and symbols of the Confederate States of America (CSA), Confederate leaders, or Confederate soldiers of the American Civil War. Many monuments and memorials have been or will be removed under great controversy. Part of the commemoration of the American Civil War, these symbols include monuments and statues, flags, holidays and other observances, and the names of schools, roads, parks, bridges, buildings, counties, cities, lakes, dams, military bases, and other public structures. In a December 2018 special report, Smithsonian Magazine stated, "over the past ten years, taxpayers have directed at least $40 million to Confederate monuments—statues, homes, parks, museums, libraries, and cemeteries—and to Confederate heritage organizations."
This entry does not include commemorations of pre-Civil War figures connected with the origins of the Civil War but not directly tied to the Confederacy, such as Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney, congressman Preston Brooks, North Carolina Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin, or Vice President John C. Calhoun, although monuments to Calhoun "have been the most consistent targets" of vandals.
Monuments and memorials are listed alphabetically by state, and by city within each state. States not listed have no known qualifying items for the list.
Memorials have been erected on public spaces (including on courthouse grounds) either at public expense or funded by private organizations and donors. Numerous private memorials have also been erected.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, "Confederate monuments aren't just heirlooms, the artifacts of a bygone era. Instead, American taxpayers are still heavily investing in these tributes today." The report also concluded that the monuments were constructed and are regularly maintained in promotion of the Lost Cause, white supremacist mythology, and over the many decades of their establishment, African American leaders regularly protested these memorials and what they represented.
A small number of memorializations were made during the war, mainly as ship and place names. After the war, Robert E. Lee said on several occasions that he was opposed to any monuments, as they would, in his opinion, "keep open the sores of war". Nevertheless, monuments and memorials continued to be dedicated shortly after the American Civil War. Before 1890, most were erected in cemeteries as memorials to soldiers who died in the war. Many more monuments were dedicated in the years after 1890, when Congress established the first National Military Park at Chickamauga and Chattanooga, and by the turn of the 20th century, five battlefields from the Civil War had been preserved: Chickamauga-Chattanooga, Antietam, Gettysburg, Shiloh, and Vicksburg. At Vicksburg National Military Park, more than 95% of the park's monuments were erected in the first eighteen years after the park was established in 1899. But monuments began appearing in public places with the emergence of the Jim Crow South.
Confederate monument-building has often been part of widespread campaigns to promote and justify Jim Crow laws in the South. According to the American Historical Association (AHA), the erection of Confederate monuments during the early 20th century was "part and parcel of the initiation of legally mandated segregation and widespread disenfranchisement across the South." According to the AHA, memorials to the Confederacy erected during this period "were intended, in part, to obscure the terrorism required to overthrow Reconstruction, and to intimidate African Americans politically and isolate them from the mainstream of public life." A later wave of monument building coincided with the civil rights movement, and according to the AHA "these symbols of white supremacy are still being invoked for similar purposes." According to Smithsonian Magazine, "far from simply being markers of historic events and people, as proponents argue, these memorials were created and funded by Jim Crow governments to pay homage to a slave-owning society and to serve as blunt assertions of dominance over African-Americans."
According to historian Jane Dailey from the University of Chicago, in many cases, the purpose of the monuments was not to celebrate the past but rather to promote a "white supremacist future". Another historian, Karen L. Cox, from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, has written that the monuments are "a legacy of the brutally racist Jim Crow era", and that "the whole point of Confederate monuments is to celebrate white supremacy". Another historian from UNC, James Leloudis, stated that "The funders and backers of these monuments are very explicit that they are requiring a political education and a legitimacy for the Jim Crow era and the right of white men to rule." They were erected without the consent or even input of Southern African Americans, who remembered the Civil War far differently, and who had no interest in honoring those who fought to keep them enslaved. According to Civil War historian Judith Giesberg, professor of history at Villanova University, "White supremacy is really what these statues represent." Some monuments were also meant to beautify cities as part of the City Beautiful movement, although this was secondary.
In a June 2018 speech, Civil War historian James I. Robertson Jr. of Virginia Tech said the monuments were not a "Jim Crow signal of defiance" and referred to the current trend to dismantle or destroy them as an "age of idiocy" motivated by "elements hell-bent on tearing apart unity that generations of Americans have painfully constructed." Katrina Dunn Johnson, Curator of the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, states that "thousands of families throughout the country were unable to reclaim their soldier's remains--many never learned their loved ones' exact fate on the battlefield or within the prison camps. The psychological impact of such a devastating loss cannot be underestimated when attempting to understand the primary motivations behind Southern memorialization."
Many Confederate monuments were dedicated in the former Confederate states and border states in the decades following the Civil War, in many instances by Ladies Memorial Associations, United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), United Confederate Veterans (UCV), Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), the Heritage Preservation Association, and other memorial organizations. Other Confederate monuments are located on Civil War battlefields. Many Confederate monuments are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, either separately or as contributing objects within listings of courthouses or historic districts. Art historians Cynthia Mills and Pamela Simpson argued, in Monuments to the Lost Cause, that the majority of Confederate monuments, of the type they define, were "commissioned by white women, in hope of preserving a positive vision of antebellum life."
In the late nineteenth century, technological innovations in the granite and bronze industries helped reduce costs and made monuments more affordable for small towns. Companies looking to capitalize on this opportunity often sold nearly identical copies of monuments to both the North and South.
Another wave of monument construction coincided with the Civil Rights Movement and the American Civil War Centennial. At least thirty-two Confederate monuments were dedicated between 2000 and 2017, including at least 7 re-dedications.
Scholarly studies of the monuments began in the 1980s. In 1983 John J. Winberry published a study which was based on data from the work of R.W. Widener. He estimated that the main building period for monuments was from 1889 to 1929 and that of the monuments erected in courthouse squares over half were built between 1902 and 1912. He determined four main locations for monuments; battlefields, cemeteries, county courthouse grounds, and state capitol grounds. Over a third of the courthouse monuments were dedicated to the dead. The majority of the cemetery monuments in his study were built in the pre-1900 period, while most of the courthouse monuments were erected after 1900. Of the 666 monuments in his study 55% were of Confederate soldiers, while 28% were obelisks. Soldiers dominated courthouse grounds, while obelisks account for nearly half of cemetery monuments. The idea that the soldier statues always faced north was found to be untrue and that the soldiers usually faced the same direction as the courthouse. He noted that the monuments were "remarkably diverse" with "only a few instances of repetition of inscriptions".
He categorized the monuments into four types. Type 1 was a Confederate soldier on a column with his weapon at parade rest, or weaponless and gazing into the distance. These accounted for approximately half the monuments studied. They are, however, the most popular among the courthouse monuments. Type 2 was a Confederate soldier on a column with rifle ready, or carrying a flag or bugle. Type 3 was an obelisk, often covered with drapery and bearing cannonballs or an urn. This type was 28% of the monuments studied, but 48% of the monuments in cemeteries and 18% of courthouse monuments. Type 4 was a miscellaneous group, including arches, standing stones, plaques, fountains, etc. These account for 17% of the monuments studied.
Over a third of the courthouse monuments were specifically dedicated to the Confederate dead. The first courthouse monument was erected in Bolivar, Tennessee, in 1867. By 1880 nine courthouse monuments had been erected. Winberry noted two centers of courthouse monuments: the Potomac counties of Virginia, from which the tradition spread to North Carolina, and a larger area covering Georgia, South Carolina and northern Florida. The diffusion of courthouse monuments was aided by organizations such as the United Confederate Veterans and their publications, though other factors may also have been effective.
Winberry listed four reasons for the shift from cemeteries to courthouses. First was the need to preserve the memory of the Confederate dead and also recognize the veterans who returned. Second was to celebrate the rebuilding of the South after the war. Third was the romanticizing of the Lost Cause, and the fourth was to unify the white population in a common heritage against the interests of African-American Southerners. He concluded: "No one of these four possible explanations for the Confederate monument is adequate or complete in itself. The monument is a symbol, but whether it was a memory of the past, a celebration of the present, or a portent of the future remains a difficult question to answer; monuments and symbols can be complicated and sometimes indecipherable."
The Monument Movement was a national movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. The Union and Confederate monuments were erected as community memorials. In the North and South communities came together in the time of war, contributing their men and boys (and a few documented women), then they came together again to memorialize these soldiers and their contributions to the cause as they saw it. Citizens paid subscriptions to memorials, for monument associations, taxes were issued, the GAR, Allied Orders, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the United Confederate Veterans all lead fundraisers.
The monument to Confederate Colonel Francis S. Bartow was erected after First Manassas but was destroyed before or during Second Manassas. The other early monuments were Union monuments at Battle of Rowlett's Station in Munfordville, Kentucky in January 1862 for the men of the 32nd Indiana killed. It was removed for its own protection from the elements in 2008. Other early Union monuments before the war ended were the Hazen Brigade Monument in Murfreesboro and the 1865 Ladd and Whitney Monument in Lowell, Massachusetts.
The Northern memorials recorded in the survey work to date lists 11 monuments erected before 1866 including the previously mentioned monuments. Another ten monuments were documented in 1866, and 11 more in 1867 by the time the first post-war Confederate monuments were erected in Romney, Hampshire County, West Virginia and Chester, Chester County, South Carolina in 1867.
In addition to monuments to the Union and Confederate honorees, the Monument Movement saw the placement of Revolutionary War Monuments for the 100th of the American Revolution from 1876 to 1883. In the W.H. Mullins Company catalog, The Blue and the Gray, it notes with Union and Confederate Monuments the company's recent installments of monuments for the Revolutionary War at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina.
As of June 19, over 12 Confederate monuments had been vandalized in 2019, usually with paint.
As of April 2017, at least 60 symbols of the Confederacy had been removed or renamed since 2015, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). At the same time, laws in various Southern states place restrictions on, or prohibit altogether, the removal of statues and memorials and the renaming of parks, roads, and schools.
A 2017 Reuters poll found that 54% of adults stated that the monuments should remain in all public spaces, and 27% said they should be removed, while 19% said they were unsure. The results were split along racial and political lines, with whites and Republicans preferring to keep the monuments in place, while Black Americans and Democrats were more likely to support their removal. A similar 2017 poll by HuffPost/YouGov found that one-third of respondents favored removal, while 49% were opposed.
Support for removal increased during the George Floyd protests, with 52% in favor of removal, and 44% opposed.
Confederate monuments are widely distributed across the southern United States with a few dozen scattered throughout the border states and several hundred at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The distribution pattern follows the general political boundaries of the Confederacy. Of the more than 1503 public monuments and memorials to the Confederacy, more than 718 are monuments and statues. Nearly 300 monuments and statues are in Georgia, Virginia, or North Carolina. The western states that were largely settled after the Civil War have few or no memorials to the Confederacy.
In the National Statuary Hall Collection, housed inside the United States Capitol, each state has provided statues of two citizens that the state wants to honor. Six Confederate figures are among them. The dates listed below reflect when each statue was given to the collection:
In addition to these pieces, four additional sculptures of Confederate figures have been removed since the turn of the 21st century.
Prior to 2023, there were nine major U.S. military bases named in honor of Confederate military leaders, all in former Confederate states. Following nationwide protests over the murder of George Floyd by a police officer, the United States Congress in 2021 created The Naming Commission in order to rename military assets with names associated with the Confederacy. The United States Secretary of Defense was required to implement a plan developed by the commission and to "remove all names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honor or commemorate the Confederate States of America or any person who served voluntarily with the Confederate States of America from all assets of the Department of Defense" within three years of the commission's creation.
By October 2023, all nine bases had officially been redesignated under new names proposed by the commission.
Several ships named for Confederate leaders fell into Union hands during the Civil War. The Union Navy retained the names of these ships while turning their guns against the Confederacy:
As of 24 June 2020, there are at least 122 public spaces with Confederate monuments in Alabama.
As of 20 August 2020, only two Confederate related plaques on public property remain in Phoenix and Sierra Vista, Arizona.
As of 24 June 2020, there are at least 65 public spaces with Confederate monuments in Arkansas.
As of 23 July 2020, there were at least four public spaces with Confederate monuments in California.
As of June 24, 2020, there is at least one public space with Confederate monuments in Delaware.
As of 24 June 2020, there are at least nine public Confederate monuments in Washington, D.C., mostly in the National Statuary Hall Collection. (See above)
As of 24 June 2020, there are at least 63 public spaces with Confederate monuments in Florida.
An August 2017 meeting of the Florida League of Mayors was devoted to the topic of what to do with Civil War monuments.
As of June 24, 2020, there are at least 201 public spaces with Confederate monuments in Georgia.
The settlement of Idaho coincided with the Civil War and settlers from Southern states memorialized the Confederacy with the names of several towns and natural features.
As of June 24, 2020, there are at least three public spaces with Confederate monuments in Idaho.
The four memorials in Illinois are in Federal cemeteries and connected with prisoners of war.
As of June 24, 2020, there is at least one public space with Confederate monuments in Indiana.
As of June 24, 2020, there is at least one public space with Confederate monuments in Iowa.
Veterans Memorial Park in Wichita, Kansas holds one Confederate and Union monument, a Reconciliation Memorial. "The intent of this memorial is to bring folks together and reconcile their differences," As Confederate Monuments Come Down Across U.S., Wichita Memorial Comes Into Question. The Memorial is a small obelisk with text honoring North and South combatants on both sides. See Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials#Kansas for monuments which have been removed.
As of 24 June 2020, there are at least 37 public spaces with Confederate monuments in Kentucky.
As of 24 June 2020, there are at least 83 public spaces with Confederate monuments in Louisiana.
There are at least 7 confederate monuments on public land. They are generally in or near cemeteries.
As of December 27, 2022 there is one statue on a large stone of General Robert E. Lee at the Antietam battlefield, visible from the road. It was on private land adjacent to the park, and was donated with the land.
The "Talbot Boys" statue in Easton, Maryland was the last Confederate monument removed from public property on March 14, 2022.
As of May 2019, all public memorials had been removed.
As of June 29, 2020, there is at least one known public monument of a confederate soldier in Michigan. It is located in Allendale, Michigan, a town in Ottawa County. A part of the Veterans Garden of Honor (1998) which features nine life sized statues of soldiers from various wars, the statue in question depicts a union soldier and a confederate soldier back to back with a young slave at their feet holding a plaque reading "Freedom to Slaves," and the date January 5, 1863.
Murray County Central High School in Slayton, and United South Central High School in Wells both use a Rebel mascot and the nickname "Rebels."
As of 24 June 2020, there are at least 147 public spaces with Confederate monuments in Mississippi.
As of 24 June 2020, there were at least 19 public spaces with Confederate monuments in Missouri.
As of 24 June 2020, there are at least 2 public spaces with Confederate monuments in Montana.
As of June 24, 2020, there is at least one public space with Confederate monuments in Nevada.
There are at least two public spaces dedicated to the Confederacy in New Jersey.
As of June 24, 2020, there is at least one public space with Confederate monuments in New Mexico.
As of 24 June 2020, there are at least 3 public spaces with Confederate monuments in New York.
As of 24 June 2020, there are at least 164 public spaces with Confederate monuments in North Carolina.
As of 24 June 2020, there are at least 5 public spaces with Confederate monuments in Ohio.
As of 24 June 2020, there are at least 13 public spaces with Confederate monuments in Oklahoma.
As of 24 June 2020, there are no public spaces with Confederate monuments in Oregon.
As of 24 June 2020, there are at least 3 public spaces with Confederate monuments in Pennsylvania.
As of 24 June 2020, there are no public spaces with Confederate monuments in Rhode Island.
As of 24 June 2020, there are at least 194 public spaces with Confederate monuments in South Carolina.
In July 2020 the Confederate flag was removed from the patch of Gettysburg South Dakota police officers.
As of June 24, 2020, there is at least one public space with Confederate monuments in South Dakota.
As of 24 June 2020, there are at least 105 public spaces with Confederate monuments in Tennessee. The Tennessee Heritage Protection Act (2016) and a 2013 law restrict the removal of statues and memorials.
The Tennessee legislature designated Confederate Decoration Day, the origin of Memorial Day, as June 3, and in 1969 designated January 19 and July 13, their birthdays, as Robert E. Lee Day and Nathan Bedford Forrest day respectively.
As of 24 June 2020, there are at least 205 public spaces with Confederate monuments in Texas. "Nowhere has the national re-examination of Confederate emblems been more riven with controversy than the Lone Star State."
Many monuments were donated by pro-Confederacy groups like Daughters of the Confederacy. County governments at the time voted to accept the gifts and take ownership of the statues.
Note: "There are similarly named streets in towns and cities across east Texas, notably Port Arthur and Beaumont, as well as memorials to Dowling and the Davis Guards, not least at Sabine Pass, where the battleground is now preserved as a state park"
As of 24 June 2020, there were at least 241 public spaces with Confederate monuments in Virginia, more than in any other state. Virginia also has numerous schools, highways, roads and other public infrastructure named for Confederates. Some have been removed since. Lee-Jackson Day ceased to be a State holiday in 2020.
As of 24 June 2020, only one public space contains a Confederate connected monument in Washington.
At least two private properties contain a Confederate memorial or fly a CSA flag:
As of 2020 there were 21 public spaces with Confederate monuments in West Virginia.