Terry's Texas Rangers, State Capitol Building, Austin, TX
Texas, Post-Reconstruction
Terry’s Texas Rangers otherwise known as the 8th Texas Cavalry were a group of cavalrymen that fought on behalf of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. The monument is erected just outside the Austin state capitol building amidst a host of other war memorials ranging from the Alamo to the Korean War. It is comprised of a large bronze statue depicting a ranger armed with a rifle riding a horse. On it are two quotes praising the work of Terry’s Texas Rangers in fighting for the Confederacy. <br /><br />“There is no danger of a surprise when the rangers are between us and the enemy”-Confederate General Braxton Bragg <br /><br />“The Terry Rangers have done all that could expected or required of soldiers.”-Confederate President Jefferson Davis <br /><br />Sculpted by Italian artist Pompeo Coppini, this monument was produced as a part of a wider period of monument building in Austin Texas from 1901 to the early 1930s. During this period artists, primarily Coppini, were commissioned to build numerous busts, statues, and monuments dedicated to Texan and American military history, with the bulk being comprised of Confederate memorials.<br /><br />This monument stands as one among many other Confederate memorials that lionize and honor Texas’s participation in the Civil War on behalf of the Confederacy. It places Texas’s famous rangers as heroes of the Confederacy next to memorials of those who fought in World War II and the Korean War. If one were not reading its dedication, a passerby would likely think it was a monument to just the Texas Rangers and not the Confederacy. Its existence and placement serve as a reminder of just how strong Confederate memory maintains a hold on the state of Texas.
Pompeo Coppini
“Terry’s Texas Rangers Monument.” Texas State Preservation Board. Accessed November 28, 2023. https://tspb.texas.gov/prop/tcg/tcg-monuments/04-terrys-texas-rangers/index.html
“Capitol Grounds Monuments.” Texas State Preservation Board. Accessed November 28, 2023. https://tspb.texas.gov/prop/tcg/tcg-monuments/index.html
Erected: 1907
Michael Westfall
English
Sculpture
Hist 402A Fall 2023
Austin, TX
Allendale Veterans Garden of Honor
Allendale Veterans Garden of Honor, Confederate Monuments, Emancipation, Veterans
The Allendale Veterans Garden of Honor consists of 9 statues of veterans who served from Allendale who had served in seven conflicts from the Civil War to the Gulf War and a statue to women's veterans.[1] Along with the statues of veterans at the center of a circle formed by the statues sits an obelisk topped with an American eagle. The focus of this entry in the archive is a sculpture including a Union soldier and Confederate soldier standing back to back with an enslaved African American child reaching for a plaque with the words "Freedom for Slaves" written on it and the date Jan 5, 1863, Allendale as pictured in the first image.[2] In 2020 with the rise of the black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in response to the deaths of George Floyd and their African Americans at the hands of police controversy grew around these statues in particular. The Michigan Association of Civil Rights Activists (MACRA) and members of BLM sought to have the statue removed due to the racist positioning of the child and the conflation of Confederate soldiers with other American veterans.[3] The Confederate soldier would be tarred and feathered by activists with a cardboard sign with “TRAITOR” written on it hanging from its neck as seen in the third image. However, in June 2021 the townships board voted to keep the statues but have a committee made to consider possible changes to the statue.
For this archive, this entry shows how Confederate monuments are not purely a phenomenon of the South. Of particular interest is how the Confederate soldier is placed in the larger context of a general memorial to veterans placing Confederate soldiers who fought in rebellion against the United States alongside those who fought for the same nation. Underlying this placement is the assumption that Confederate soldiers were equally honorable as these other soldiers even as they fought not only in a rebellion but for the continuation of the institution of slavery. Such ideas being represented in a town in Michigan illustrates how the presentation of the South's role in the Civil War being commendable and worthy of memorials silences the goal of the preservation of slavery ignoring the experiences of enslaved people and the continuing obstacle of institutional racism that their descendants face.
This entry is one of many that expands this archive outside the geographical confines of the South and considers the racial angle these monuments have. As can be seen by examining the archive, monuments to the Confederacy are found throughout the United States and the problem of how the Confederacy is represented and remembered is not purely a Southern issue. Implicit in these monuments is an assumption that the Confederacy fought not for slavery but for states' rights and followed in the footsteps of the Founding Fathers. This monument is obvious in its racial overtones with its placement of an enslaved child. As Kirk Savage has noted, such inclusions of African Americans at the feet of white figures removed the agency of the enslaved and represented them as in need of saving rather than recognizing their autonomy and humanity. As can be seen in this monument inherent in Confederate monuments are ahistorical claims about why secession occurred and the motivations of those who prosecuted it.
Joyce Sweers
AAA. https://www.aaa.com/travelinfo/michigan/allendale/attractions/veterans-garden-of-honor-511608.html.
Fisher, Jada. “How this Confederate soldier statue became part of a veterans memorial in Michigan.” Mlive (Michigan), July 14, 2020. https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2020/07/how-this-confederate-soldier-statue-became-part-of-a-veterans-memorial-in-michigan.html.
Ambu, Kylie. “Group wants changes made to Allendale Civil War statue.” 13 On Your Side (West Michigan), June 16, 2020. https://www.wzzm13.com/article/news/local/civil-war-statue-in-allendale-park-sparks-debate/69-66352a63-d5c5-4476-bad0-40db64b4f1e2.
Allendale For Equality. https://allendaleforequality.org/.
Tunison, John. “Confederate statue in Allendale ‘tarred and feathered’ by groups seeking removal.” Mlive (Michigan), January 8, 2021. https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2021/01/confederate-statue-in-allendale-tarred-and-feathered-by-groups-seeking-removal.html?outputType=amp&__twitter_impression=true.
Savage, Kirk. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth Century America. New edition. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2018.
1988-1998
Samuel McMillan
English
Sculpture
HIST 402 2023
Allendale, MI
Judah P. Benjamin Monument
Judah B. Benjamin, United Daughters of the Confederacy, Antebellum Architecture, Plantations, Slavery
The Judah B. Benjamin Confederate Memorial was originally a 3,400-acre sugar plantation with at least 190 slaves built by Robert Gamble between 1845 and 1850.[1] Gamble was able to gain the property at no cost due to the Florida Armed Occupation and Settlement Act of 1842 which was designed to occupy areas which the indigenous Seminole people had fled to with plantations with armed militia to end any existing resistance.[2] The plantation would serve as a hiding place for Judah B. Benjamin Confederate Secretary of War as he fled from Union forces at the war's end and left the country for England where he became a prominent lawyer. The area would eventually come under the ownership of the Judah B. Benjamin chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) in 1925. The UDC later deeded the land to the State of Florida, and it is currently operated by the Division of Recreation and Parks, Department of Environmental Protection.
This monument serves to drive the connection between the erection of seemingly apolitical monuments and the maintenance of a particular perception of the past. Most of the monuments in this archive are obvious in their nature as memorials but this entry serves to upend this trend and reveal the underlying reasoning for the raising of monuments to the Confederacy and its related figures. The plantation discussed here has a history that extends before and beyond the Civil War yet emphasized in its name and usage is its association with the Judah B. Benjamin and the Confederacy.[3] This is done to push the ahistorical narrative of the Lost Cause in which the Civil War in the Confederacy in a manner that ignores that slavery was the main reason the southern states seceded from the Union and presents the Confederacy as a noble entity an inheritor of the will of the Founding Fathers.[4] Slavery plays only a small role in how the plantation is presented to the public which is especially strange considering what period it is associated with in its name. The site still serves as a place for events led by the UDC who began the project of presenting the plantation as a memorial to the Confederacy rather than as a place to consider the implications of slavery and how it functioned in the United States.
The value of this entry is how it illustrates the changing perception of Confederate monuments and the expansion of what can be considered a Confederate monument. What constitutes a monument is not just what it was specifically built for but how the physical entity itself is used and what historical narratives its presentation supports. This monument does not follow the models of most of the entries in this archive, most of which are structures in towns and cities specifically constructed to memorialize figures or events associated with the Confederacy. This site was built as a plantation, not a memorial yet it is used for similar ideological goals and so falls into the category of the sort of objects this archive seeks to record. It should be kept in mind this archive is not only for objects but for how these objects are used, removed, and seen by the public. Conflicting ideas of how this monument shows how all objects in this archive are neither eternal nor fixed, their continued existence dependent upon the will of the public who witness and interact with them.[5]
Robert Gamble, enslaved workers
Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Judah P. Benjamin Confederate Memorial at Gamble Plantation Historic State Park. April 21, 2015. https://floridadep.gov/sites/default/files/JPBGamblePlantation_Approved%20Plan_April2015_5mb.pdf.
Stuart, John. Society of Architectural Historians. https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/FL-01-081-0017.
Sims, John. “Here’s the slave memorial I have imagined for Florida’s Gamble Plantation” Tampa Bay Times August 28, 2020. https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2020/08/28/heres-the-slave-memorial-i-have-imaged-for-floridas-gamble-plantation-column/.
Bardes, John. “‘Defend with True Hearts unto Death’: Finding Historical Meaning in Confederate Memorial Hall.” Southern Cultures 23, no. 4 (2017): 29–45. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26391717.
Young, James Edward. The Stages of Memory: Reflections on Memorial Art, Loss, and the Spaces Between. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016.
1842-1845
Samuel McMillan
English
Antebellum Plantation
HIST 402 Fall 2023
Gamble Plantation, FL
Our Confederate Dead, Anderson County Courthouse, Anderson, South Carolina
This Confederat monument is located in Anderson County, Anderson, South Carolina. The statue is of native Anderson County Confederate soldier William Wirt Humphreys. The statue was made to honor all Confederate soldiers from Anderson County and the idea of it began in 1886. The real planning began in 1891 when local school teacher Leonora Hubbard encouraged her young students to raise money for the statue's development. This inspired many of the locals and sixteen years later in 1902, the monument was unveiled. The statue has inscriptions on the north, west, and south sides. On the side pointing north, there is a Palmetto tree--symbol of South Carolina--over crossed swords on top of a laurel wreath. This sign represents the Confederate cavalry. On the lower side of that inscription, there is a Battle Flag and a section of the poem "The Conquered Ban" by American poet and Confederate proponent Father Abram Joseph Ryan. On the west side, there is an inscription, “CSA” and a cannon that represents the Confederate artillery. On the lower die is inscribed a list of the great battles of the war. On the south side of the monument, there is another inscription that represents the Confederate navy. And finally, on the east side, there is an inscription that says "Our Confederate Dead," where the monument gets its name. According to a 2017 <em>Greenville News</em> article, the monument is surrounded by a steel fence after protests began throughout the south asking for Civil War monuments to be removed. According to the article, this particular statue had not yet been targeted but the fence was put there as a precaution against vandalism. As of June 2020, after the Black Lives Matter protests, there is a petition to remove it. <span>The County Council had a meeting to debate the removal. County has no control because it is up to the state. They are hoping to relocate it if the state allows it. </span>
1902 by Citizens of Anderson County.
1. "Anderson Confederate Monument Erected in Jan.1902." Accessed 09 December 2021. http://andersonobserver.com/news/2017/8/17/anderson-confederate- monument-erected-in-jan-1902.html
2. "Anderson County Confederate Monument." Accessed 09 December 2021.
https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=155713
3. "Editorial: The fate of Confederate monuments should reside with local residents" Accessed 09 December 2021.
https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/opinion/2017/09/06/editorial-fate-confederate-monuments-should-reside-local-residents/637243001/
"Growing calls to remove Confederate monument in Anderson" https://www.wyff4.com/article/growing-calls-to-remove-confederate-monument-in-anderson/32804240#
The idea to make a monument was first brought up in 1886 on "Declaration Day" but it was not unveiled until 1902.
Andrea Mercado, Raylene Castellano
English
Confederate Monument
HIST 402A Fall 2021
Tribute to Confederate soldiers in the United States.