“No infidelity to the Union”
Jefferson Davis had been in his grave only a few months when, in the spring of 1890, the South once more gave itself over to the enshrinement of a Confederate hero—this time in Richmond, Va., where a towering equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee was unveiled. For almost twenty years groups of women, old soldiers, school children and church congregations had painfully accumulated the fund now translated into majestic bronze.
Even the smallest Southern town was sooner or later invaded by a bewildering number of agents from: the Lee Memorial Association, the Lee Monument Association, the Ladies’ Lee Monument Association, and Lee Memorial Episcopal Church at Lexington, Washington and Lee University and the Southern Historical Society.
Public squabbles among the rivals raged for years. But there was also competition within Richmond itself. Only a few days before the men had organized, a few women launched the Ladies’ Lee Monument Association, which included matriarchs from several influential families from tidewater Virginia. They were only a handful but they were resolute, and they surpassed all the men in raising funds, with an immediate appeal to churches throughout the South—$3,000 came from Savannah alone. For fifteen years the women’s group refused to join the men’s association and went its own way, steadily adding to the fund. General Jubal A. Early of the Richmond group went so far as to send a spy to learn the women’s secrets. But the dowagers survived and it was not until 1886, when all but two members had died or moved out of Virginia, that the Ladies’ Lee Monument Association was persuaded to combine its efforts (and its substantial treasury) with the men’s Lee Monument Association of Richmond.
It was many years before the fund reached $15,000. And it was 1886, when the end was in sight, before the Ladies’ Association, in one of its final acts, offered $3,000 in prizes for the best models of an equestrian statue of Lee. Though the cash prizes went to others, it was the work of a Frenchman, Marius Jean Antonin Mercié, which caught the eyes of the Richmond judges, and after submitting two more models he won a contract for the immense statue of the hero. Lee’s boots, saddle, hat and uniform were sent to the sculptor, whose previous work included bas-reliefs at the Louvre, “Young David” in Luxembourg Palace, and “Genius of the Arts” in the Tuileries. The Confederacy took him for its own and remained in a state of excitement during his years of work.
A granite pedestal forty feet high was designed by a French architect, one Pujot, and Richmond marked the laying of its cornerstone in 1887, an occasion which drew thousands of veterans and other patriots from the South at large. Into the cornerstone went: a history of the Monumental Church, statistics of the City of Richmond, records of R. E. Lee Camp of the United Confederate Veterans, Masonic records, Confederate and U. S. money, a square and a compass made from a tree that grew over the grave of Stonewall Jackson, the Lee family tree, Chamber of Commerce reports, souvenirs of the Fredericksburg battlefield, a picture of Lincoln in his coffin, several visiting cards, a program of the cornerstone ceremonies, Richmond newspapers and other publications, including a book by Carlton McCarthy, Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life in the Army of Northern Virginia.
Colonel Charles Marshall, the Baltimore lawyer of Lee’s wartime staff who had written the general’s celebrated farewell order was orator of the day and spoke on “The Secret History of the Army of Northern Virginia.” He said of the statue-to-be: “It will perpetuate no infidelity to the Union as it was, and will teach no lesson inconsistent with a loyal and cheerful obedience to the authority of the Union as it is.” There was dissent from Colonel Elliot Shepherd, editor of the New York Daily Mail, who protested that Lee was a traitor unworthy of such honor. This drew an impassioned response from a Richmond judge: “We therefore ask that you will relent in your wrath, fold the ensanguined garment, realize that the war is over, allow the holiest emotions of humanity to find a place in your bosom, permit us, the citizens of a common country, to obey the promptings of loving hearts and do honor to the memory of that great and good man, General Robert E. Lee.”
The city got its first glimpse of its new historic treasure on May 7, 1890, when four huge wooden crates arrived. A contractor was hired to assemble the work, but Richmonders were determined to move the heavy statue themselves. Loaded on oversized wagons, the dismembered sculpture was hauled through the city by school children, young women, aging veterans and others, all pulling on ropes—more than a mile of rope—as they towed the bronze burdens to their resting place. Major B. W. Richardson, the eighty-year-old president of the Richmond Blues, was first to seize a line—but 10,000 others followed him. Veterans who arrived belatedly and could find no places were provided with fresh rope—and one group became so excited that when their rope was cut at the end of the march, they circled the site once or twice before realizing that they had been freed.
Small boys carved their names on the statue through slats of the packing cases; the ropes were cut up and sold for souvenirs; the watching crowd, estimated at about the size of the pulling crews, lined the streets and crowded the fields, with many men and boys perching in trees and on telegraph poles. “Very few colored persons,” it was noted, were among the volunteers who drew the wagons. Someone got a peek at the features of Lee’s head, which was “about the size of a half-barrel,” and was to tower some sixty feet above ground when erected. The sight through the packing case boards as reported by a local newspaper was reassuring:
“He was handsome as a youth; he was better looking still when he was in the old army; but the perfection of his manly beauty was reached in the Confederate service. Then he was at the apex of his mental and physical power. So Mercié has endeavored to picture him … a model soldier and man, a hero whose fame will forever gild our history’s pages.”
The statue, which weighed twelve tons, was riveted together on a wooden platform, and, concealed under heavy drapes, was raised on the pedestal in time for the unveiling ceremony on May 29, 1890, a spectacle attended by crowds estimated at 100,000.
Lee had been dead for almost twenty years, but there were still living two full generals, eight lieutenant generals, thirty-one major generals, and about 160 brigadiers of the Confederacy. Many of these appeared in the four-mile parade, which required two and a half hours to pass a given point. The older generals rode in carriages. Among the celebrities were Generals James Longstreet, John B. Gordon, Jubal Early, Wade Hampton, Edward P. Alexander, Joe Wheeler and scores of other famous men.
Providing a touch of irony that the more knowledgeable of older veterans could appreciate, Joseph E. Johnston, Lee’s old rival and detractor of Jefferson Davis, had been chosen to unveil the statue—he was the oldest living general.
Several Confederate widows, including Mrs. Stonewall Jackson and Mrs. George Pickett, drew the attention of the crowd.
Chief marshal was the old commander’s nephew, an ex-governor of Virginia, General Fitzhugh Lee. Also on hand were Robert E. Lee’s children, Mildred and Agnes, Custis, Rooney and Robert E. Lee, Jr.
It was, as an observer said, “the largest crowd of distinguished people in Virginia history.” A visiting Louisianian declared, “Virginia’s great heart is in her throat today.”
Lively notes were provided by a street band from New Orleans which had been imported by the Washington Artillery of that city. A popular number was the ragtime tune, “Down Went Mr. Ginty,” and a less-welcome one was “Marching through Georgia,” which was played but once. Colonel Archer Anderson, an orator of the day, gave the address, which ended: “Let this stand as a memorial of personal honor that never brooked a stain, of knightly valor without thought of self, of far-reaching military genius unassailed by ambition, of heroic constancy from which no cloud of misfortune could ever hide the path of duty.
“Let it stand as a great public act of thanksgiving and praise, for that it has pleased almighty God to bestow upon these Southern states a man so formed to reflect His attributes of power, majesty and goodness.
“Let this man, then, teach to generations yet unborn, these lessons of His life. Let it stand, not as a record of civil strife, but as a perpetual protest against whatever is low and sordid in our public and private relations.”
Joe Johnston then rose, with a veteran who had lost a leg standing stiffly on one side, and another veteran who had lost an arm on the other side. The old general pulled a cord and the statue was unveiled. There was silence for a moment, then a roll of cheering rebel yells. Cannon fired, musket volleys roared, hats were tossed into the air. Many old soldiers wept, declaring that the image of “Marse” Robert on Traveler was perfection itself. A sham battle between aging mounted troopers followed, a fury of charge and countercharge which rang with saber blows and shouts that roused memories of fields lost and won so long ago.
The bronze memorial was left alone at last, identified for posterity only by its inscription, “LEE.”
The imposing statue became one of the most visible symbols of the Confederacy’s reviving pride in its war heroes and gave further impetus to the proliferation of military statuary in the region. It also inspired veterans’ organizations, which now began a rapid expansion. The sight of the mounted “Marse” Robert was enough to send visiting survivors of the gray legions into nostalgic frenzies and fetch forth a quavering of rebel yells—a reaction which would have dismayed the gentle peacemaker of Washington College.
The infant United Confederate Veterans group, which had grown from state organizations, held its second South-wide convention in Richmond in 1891, when the Lee statue was a major attraction. Inspired perhaps by this reminder of the chieftain who had almost won their war, some delegates to the UCV convention helped to give the movement a new vigor and spirit which were to mark its career down to the final parade.
The Southern phoenix began to soar in the opening session of this Richmond convention, though its first moments bore no such promise. Several speakers labored their way through dull recitations of some aspect of the war or problems of the veterans. There was a lingering air of guilt and apology in the attitudes of these men—almost as if they were conscious of a hostile audience in the North. The listening veterans may have shared some of that awareness: they had been defeated in a long and bloody war, oppressed by an unscrupulous regime during Reconstruction and frequently taunted by conquerors who insisted that slavery, and not States’ Rights, had been the root cause of the war.
These were not men to muse about such matters. As the speeches droned on, the UCV delegates began to nod. But there was one whose boredom gave way to anger. Delegate Chiswell (Buck) Langhorne, late of the nth Virginia Infantry, who became increasingly restless as the dreary recitals continued, longed to change the atmosphere of the session. He had quite another concept of the proper fare for these old soldiers, hungry for a revival of the vivid memories of the grand adventures of their youth.
Langhorne had begun his postwar career as a tobacco auctioneer in Danville, where he had won a certain fame as the originator of the singsong chant which was to become so familiar in the auction houses of the region, the theme song of the colorful tobacco industry. Langhorne, who was now on his way to wealth as a railroad builder, was the father of the celebrated Langhorne sisters—one of whom became Lady Astor and another the Gibson Girl, symbols of style and elegance on both sides of the Atlantic.
The irrepressible Langhorne endured the pompous speeches for a time, but then rose to interrupt a solemn passage with a burst of song:
“Oh! I wish I was in the land of cot-ton.…”
The crowd came to its feet, bellowing “Dixie” and yelping the rebel yell until the hall resounded with triumphant, defiant cries. The wake was transformed into a celebration of Rebel pride in the Southern heritage. Memories aroused by the roar of the country auctioneer Langhorne awoke wartime memories and revived the pride they had always felt in their army. In such a mood their war became idealized, if not sanctified. Whatever their views on slavery or any other issue, none of these old soldiers could conceive of their cause as having been a disreputable one. Memories that surfaced in that hour became a familiar part of the lore—and folklore—with which Southern writers and orators rallied the heirs of Confederate traditions and lambasted the foe which had Overcome, but never Defeated, the gray legions. An abiding theme of the postwar publications of war memoirs by old Confederates was that it was Too Damned Bad they had failed, and that it was only fate that had deprived them of victory.
Men who had been steeped in the romances of Sir Walter Scott and the Arthurian legend, as literate Southerners had been, could lose themselves in such illusions. A body of belief grew up about the Invincible Lee and his army, and from the believers came the inevitable sigh of “What Might Have Been.” This grew into a tradition as durable as the perennial study of the campaigns of the fratricidal war itself. Spontaneously, it seemed, men from all parts of the South, and from generation to generation, asked themselves the tantalizing questions:
If Beauregard had pursued the panicstricken enemy in its flight into Washington from the field of Manassas/Bull Run.… If Albert Sidney Johnston had not bled to death from his minor wound, when victory seemed to be within his grasp at Shiloh.… If the Monitor had not appeared as if by magic to challenge the Merrimac at the mouth of the Chesapeake.… If “Stonewall” Jackson had survived the tragic volley from his own men at Chancellorsville.… If Lee’s order of concentration before Antietam had not been used as a cigar wrapper, found by the enemy.… If Great Britain had recognized the Confederate States.… If Jeb Stuart had not been tardy, or Longstreet insubordinate, at Gettysburg.…
The twentieth-century historian Bernard DeVoto, who had little patience with the South’s romantic concept of the Civil War and of its own unique regional character, conceded the power of the appeal of the Lost Cause. The defeated Confederacy, he protested, was in a fair way to win the renaissance as the nation prepared to mark the centennial of the conflict. DeVoto identified the heart of the Confederate mystique:
“The whisper of a great Perhaps.… Almost … four hours in Hampton Roads … a shot in the spring dusk at Chancellorsville … Spindrift blown back from where the high tide broke on Cemetery Ridge. A passionate if! sleeps uneasily in the grandsons’ blood.”