Why Were Confederate Monuments Built?

"The present generation, I am persuaded, scarcely takes note of what the Confederate soldier meant to the welfare of the Anglo Saxon race during the four years immediately succeeding the war, when the facts are, that their courage and steadfastness saved the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South – When “the bottom rail was on top” all over the Southern states, and to-day, as a consequence the purest strain of the Anglo Saxon is to be found in the 13 Southern States – Praise God.

I trust I may be pardoned for one allusion, howbeit it is rather personal. One hundred yards from where we stand, less than ninety days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings where was stationed a garrison of 100 Federal soldiers. I performed the pleasing duty in the immediate presence of the entire garrison, and for thirty nights afterwards slept with a double-barrel shot gun under my head."

At its original creation, the monument was a water fountain located in front of the courthouse, with separate faucets labeled “For White People” and “For Colored People.” In 1960, the fountains were removed, as were all traces of segregation from the monument itself. Since then, it is only a fountain in name.

Slavery in the South rested upon the natural supremacy of the white race over the black, and the total and inevitable disqualification of the latter for an equal struggle with the former. Labor in the South, unlike Oriental bondage, Roman servitude, and feudal village, was not the subjection of equals, differing in opportunity, but the subjection of one extreme of humanity to the other, of the most abject to the most enlightened. The real inequality of the races had made subordination prescriptive. No higher encomium could possibly be pronounced upon the practical beneficence of Southern institutions than the one tacitly sanctioned by the last amendment, viz : that they had been sufficient to educate the lowest of earth’s savages to take his place among the highest of earth’s freemen.

The South stands ready to welcome all good citizens who seek to make their homes within her borders. But the South detests and despises all, it matters not from whence they came, who, in any manner, encourages social equality with an ignorant and inferior race.

Carr celebrated the defeat of Reconstruction, the subsequent victory of white supremacy and the Confederate veteran’s role in both. But just how common was Carr’s decision to bring up race and Reconstruction at a monument to the ordinary Confederate soldier?

To answer this question, I searched for dedication speeches that were given at Confederate soldier monuments across North Carolina. Most orations were given by veterans and state officials. I successfully tracked down 30, and they support two conclusions: 1) white nationalism was a fixture of Confederate monumentation, and 2) Confederate soldier monuments honored veterans for their postwar success in eroding black equality as much as for their failed wartime sacrifices.

In front of Charlotte’s common soldier monument, dedicated in 1910, Judge Armistead Burwell admonished his audience to “be reminded by this silent soldier ... to protect from taint the Saxon blood that courses in your veins.”

At a 1909 dedication, Gov.William Kitchin extolled whites for their subjugation of black Americans, Central Americans, Asians, Africans and Native Americans. In this project of global racial ordering, he proudly proclaimed, “the Confederate veteran has had his full share.”

At the dedication of the Pittsboro soldiers’ monument in 1907, Judge Walter Clark told fellow veterans “in the years following (the war) you were equal to the highest duties of the citizen.”

Gov. Thomas Bickett told a Rocky Mount audience in 1917 that “the example of the heroism and fortitude of the Confederate soldier has been worth more since the war was over than the war cost.” Kitchin was “glad the leaders in war had become the leaders in peace.”