In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, the south needed a way to justify its involvement and uplift its living and dead. Memorializing the dead through monuments was one of the many ways they achieved this end.

“If ever a people were bound in honor to cherish the memory of their defenders, the people of Georgia and the South are thus bound, to say nothing of State pride and kindred sympathy. You may say you do cherish their fame, but the time is not yet. When will it come? When you too are dead and cannot be called upon for your mite? If one dies to save you or your liberties, who will be under the greatest obligations of gratitude, you or your descendants? … It is your duty to make it now, as an example to the young and to those who may take your places when you are gone.”1

The traditional narrative concerning Reconstruction monuments is that they were put up primarily or solely to act as somber memorials to soldiers and the defeat of their cause.2 While this function played a role, it is evident that they were significantly more nuanced. A closer inspection reveals that they also served to venerate the soldier, recast the Confederate cause, and celebrate the Confederate cause.

Explore the pages on this site to see an interactive map of Confederate monuments, examples of monument dedication rhetoric throughout Reconstruction that affirm the additional functions, and a look at some of the discourse today surrounding the place of Reconstruction Confederate monuments in America.

  1. James M. Smythe, “The Confederate Monument,” (Augusta, GA, 1872), ms4299, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, The University of Georgia Libraries, https://dlg.usg.edu/record/guan_4299_bro1872c6undersized?canvas=0&x=1031&y=1536&w=9138 ↩︎
  2. Gaines M. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South, 1865 to 1913 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987), 45-46 ; W. Stuart Towns, Enduring Legacy: Rhetoric and Ritual of the Lost Cause (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2012), 34 ; Karen L. Cox, No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2021), 29. ↩︎