The Flag Unfurled: The Negotiation of Civil War Memory in Confederate Displays

Abstract

Contextualization of symbols and monuments in the eras they were constructed, dedicated, and used remains important to exploring nuances of Civil War memory even as arguments about Confederate symbols continue to plague American society and public memory. This study explores the traces of Civil War memory in newspaper coverage of four Confederate monument celebrations across geographic sections. Discourse and narrative analyses of 258 articles, published in seven US newspapers in the 1890s and 1920s, examines how the promotion of the reconciliation strategy distorted memory of the Civil War away from fact to promote economic and political advantage while marginalizing realities of wartime atrocities and slavery. Analysis examines Lost Cause symbolism embodied in the Confederate flag in addition to the monuments themselves. This study contends that newspaper coverage served as strategic sites where narratives of sectional reunion and reconciliation took precedence over historical memory, thus influencing remembrances of the Civil War and perpetuation of symbols.

Notes

1 The New York Times quoted Penn State professor emeritus of history William Blair who said, “The Confederate flag made it deeper into Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, than it did during the Civil War.” See Maria Cramer, “Confederate Flag an Unnerving Sight in Capitol,” New York Times, January 9, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/us/politics/confederate-flag-capitol.html.

2 Becky Little, “How The U.S. Got So Many Confederate Monuments,” History, A&E Television Networks, LLC, August 31, 2018, https://www.history.com/news/how-the-u-s-got-so-many-confederate-monuments (accessed December 3, 2019).

3 Approximately 1.6 million African Americans fled the South for opportunities in the North and Midwest between 1910 and 1930. Jim Crow law, lynchings, and a crippled cotton industry provoked many to leave in the face of intense racial prejudices and job losses. Northern city populations rose by approximately 40 percent between 1910 and 1930. And according to the Tuskegee Institute, lynching in the United States occurred most frequently between 1892 and 1930. Though the number of individuals lynched declined from two-hundred thirty in 1892 to thirty-three by 1923, prejudice and segregation after World War I allowed Confederate memory to continue. See Lakisha Odlum, “The Great Migration,” Digital Public Library of America, http://dp.la/primary-source-sets/the-great-migration (accessed May 8, 2020).

4 These monument unveilings remain historically significant because of the growth surrounding Memorial Day celebrations, veteran attendance, the rise of Jim Crow segregation, and national news coverage. Notably, the Chicago monument stood as the first Confederate monument above the Mason and Dixon Line. See David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 191, 260–265.

5 Michael Schudson, “Dynamics of Distortion in Collective Memory,” in Memory Distortion: How Minds, Brains, and Societies Reconstruct the Past, edited by D.L. Schacter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 346–364.

6 Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire,” Representations 26, no. 2 (1989): 12.

7 Cynthia Mills, “Introduction,” in Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory, edited by Cynthia Mills and Pamela H. Simpson (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2003), xxi.

8 David Ulbrich, “Lost Cause,” in Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History, edited by David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000), 1221.

9 Gary W. Gallagher, Jubal A. Early, the Lost Cause, and Civil War History: A Persistent Legacy (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1995).

10 Gallagher, Jubal A. Early, 9–12.

11 Kirk Savage, “The politics of memory: Black emancipation and the Civil War monument,” in Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, edited by J.R. Gillis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 127–149.

12 Catherine W. Bishir, “Landmarks of Power Building a Southern Past, 1885–1915” in Southern Cultures: The Fifteenth Anniversary Reader, edited by Harry L. Watson, Larry J. Griffin, Lisa Eveleigh, Dave Shaw, Ayse Erginer, and Paul Quigley (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 58.

13 Bishir, “Landmarks,” 58; Reiko Hillyer, “Relics of Reconciliation: The Confederate Museum and Civil War Memory in the New South,” The Public Historian 33, no. 4 (2011): 37–39.

14 Blight, Race and Reunion, 201–202.

15 Hillyer, “Relics of Reconciliation,” 45.

16 Blight, Race and Reunion, 3. Note: Italics added by article author to highlight two primary themes in this study.

17 Hillyer, “Relics of Reconciliation,” 58.

18 Blight, Race and Reunion, 204.

19 Hillyer, “Relics of Reconciliation,” 58–59.

20 Hillyer, “Relics of Reconciliation,” 60–61.

21 Hillyer, “Relics of Reconciliation,” 61.

22 Brown, “Confederate Monuments,” 45.

23 John McCardell, “Reflections on the Civil War,” The Sewanee Review 122 no. 2 (2014): 296. Especially in Virginia between Reconstruction and World War I, as historian T.R.C. Hutton noted, life revolved around a “Jim Crow system dedicated to business elites, moderation paternalism, social order, and hierarchy” in a system equally bound to white supremacy and white responsibility. See also T.R.C. Hutton, “Sleuthing for Mr. Crow: Detective William Baldwin and the Business of White Supremacy,” Journal of Southern History 85 no. 2 (May 2019): 286–287.

24 Cultural hegemony can be defined as authority creation and perpetuation of legitimizing symbols used to create a dominant view or narrative of experience, winning consent of subordinate groups to strengthen dominant social order while relegating other views or narratives to societal margins. The notion, first proposed by Antonio Gramsci, locates dominance and subordination within capitalist societies through political and moral examinations. See T.J. Jackson Lears, “The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities,” American Historical Review, 90 no. 3 (1985): 567–593; Thomas Brown, “Confederate Monuments,” in The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture Vol. 4: Myth, Manners, and Memory, edited by Charles Reagan Wilson (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 47.

25 Janice Hume, Obituaries in American Culture (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2000), 13.

26 Andrew Baker, “American Hero, Confederate Idol,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 127 no.1 (2019): 43.

27 Robert E. Bonner, “Flag Culture and the Consolidation of Confederation Nationalism,” Journal of Southern History 68 no. 2 (2002): 293–332.

28 Bonner, “Flag Culture,” 325.

29 Baker, “American Hero,” 42–68.

30 Bonner, “Flag Culture,” 325.

31 Bonner, “Flag Culture,” 293–332.

32 Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). Note: Theorist Emmanuel Levinas originated the idea of the “Other” and “Othering” theory through a series of four lectures at the Collège Philosophique in Paris’ Latin Quarter in 1946 and 1947. He established the alterity of another, noting that in identity construction, human beings discover entities in contrast to the self, assuming the existence of an alternative viewpoint or complete alternative identity encompassing ideology, culture, and worldview. See Emmanuel Levinas, Le Temps et l’Autre [Time and the Other]: Lectures in Paris at the College Philosophique, 1946–1947, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1990).

33 Travis D. Boyce and Winsome M. Chunny, “’I Want to Get Rid of My Fear’: An Introduction,” in Historicizing Fear: Ignorance, Vilification, and Othering,” edited by Travis D. Boyce and Winsome M. Chunnu (Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press, 2019), 7–8.

34 Mark Auslander, “The ‘Family Business’: Slavery, Double Consciousness, and Objects of Memory at Emory University,” in Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies, edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2019).

35 Auslander, “Family Business,” 312.

36 Carolyn Kitch, “Anniversary of Journalism, Collective Memory, and the Cultural Authority to Tell the Story of the American Past,” Journal of Popular Culture 36, no. 1 (August, 2002): 45, 48, quoted in Janice Hume and Amber Roessner, “Surviving Sherman’s March: Press, Public Memory, and Georgia’s Salvation Mythology,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 86 no. 1 (2009): 124–125; Carolyn Kitch, “Placing journalism inside memory—and memory studies,” Memory Studies, 1, no. 3 (2008): 317.

37 Kitch, “Placing journalism inside memory—and memory studies,” 312.

38 This study examines newspaper articles and editorials related to four significant monument unveilings: those of Robert E. Lee in Richmond (May 29, 1890), Charlottesville (May 21, 1924), and New York (May 22, 1923), and the monument to Confederate prisoners at Camp Douglas in Chicago (May 30, 1895). Scholars like David Blight have noted these monuments are historically significant because of growth surrounding Memorial Day celebrations, veterans from both sides of the war in attendance, the rise of Jim Crow segregation at the turn of the century and after World War I, and national news coverage. For prior example of similar study, see Hume and Roessner, “Surviving Sherman’s March,” 123.

39 According to N.W. Ayer & Son’s American newspaper annual from 1890, circulations for the papers in this study ranged as follows: New York Times, 50,000; Chicago Tribune, 75,729; Chicago Inter-Ocean, 125,000; Atlanta Constitution, 143,923; Washington Post, 19,900; New York Age, 4,300. This annual recorded no circulation numbers for the Alexandria Gazette in 1890. Circulations in 1923: New York Times, 542,039; Chicago Tribune, 807,945; Atlanta Constitution, 115,145; Washington Post, 81,612; New York Age, 25,000. The Chicago Inter-Ocean ceased publication in 1914. N.W. Ayer and Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory, Philadelphia: N.W. Ayer and Sons, 1880–1909; N.W Ayer and Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory, Philadelphia: N.W. Ayer and Sons, 1910–1923.

40 As historians Hieke Huistra and Bram Mellink argue, doing so allows for an expedient process to uncover “new sources that can change our understanding of thoroughly studied historical episodes.” See Hieke Hulstra and Bram Mellink, “Phrasing History: Selecting Sources in Digital Repositories,” Historical Methods: A Journal of Qualitative and Interdisciplinary History 49, no. 4 (2016): 220–229; Melissa Greene-Blye, “Great Men, Savages, and the End of the Indian Problem,” Journalism History 46, no. 1 (2020): 32–49.

41 These numbers owe in part to the fact articles from the Alexandria Gazette are not available for 1923 and 1924, while articles for the New York Age are not available for 1895. However, the significant disparity signals a difference not owing to archival access, rather a shift in remembrance and the need for remembrance.

42 This study acknowledges race as a social construction. Humans constitute their social world through communication, using stocks of cultural knowledge and experience within situated groups to form narrative frames of understanding. See Thomas R. Lindlof and Bryan C. Taylor, Qualitative Communication Research Methods (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2019), 63–64. Note: This study capitalizes “Black” as a reflection of the senses of identity and community it carries. White is not capitalized because, as Mike Laws writes, it “risks following the lead of white supremacists” in this context. This convention follows the Chicago Manual of Style. See Mike Laws, “Why we capitalize ‘Black’ (and not ‘white’),” Columbia Journalism Review, June 16, 2020, https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php; The Chicago Manual of Style, Twitter, June 22, 2020, 5:00 p.m. https://twitter.com/ChicagoManual/status/1275171833365528578?s=20.

43 Joseph Medill’s Tribune became the leading Republican-leaning newspaper in Chicago. The Tribune touted nationally-focused news articles while the equally partisan Inter-Ocean served as “an upper-class arbiter of cultural tastes,” developing foreign and domestic news services and illustrations—the first Chicago paper to do so. See “Newspapers,” Encyclopedia of Chicago, Chicago Historical Society, 2005. www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/889.html; Willis J. Abbot, “Chicago Newspapers and Their Makers.” Review of Reviews 11 (1895): 646–655; Rufus Blanchard, Discovery and Conquests of the Northwest, with the History of Chicago, no. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1900), 239–240.

44 Grady’s legacy also remains in monuments and spaces across Georgia, though some have been removed. In February 2020, the Atlanta community debated the name of Henry W. Grady High School, now Midtown High School. Grady’s legacy also faced challenge in June 2020 at the University of Georgia following alumni efforts to remove his name from the Grady College of Journalism & Mass Communication. See Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1944), 1354; Raisa Habersham, “Grady High School students call for school name change,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Cox Enterprises, February 10, 2020; Maureen Downey, “Opinion: ‘We Are Grady’ But who was Henry Grady?” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 6, 2020.

45 Speaking to businessmen in the Northeast, Grady discounted the feudal antebellum South and reliance on slavery to promote a harmonious region ready for economic progress: “No section shows a more prosperous laboring population than the Negroes of the South; none in fuller sympathy with the employing and land-owning class.” Meanwhile, he turned to Southern counterparts and asserted, “The supremacy of the white race of the South must be maintained forever, and the domination of the negro race resisted at all points and at all hazards.” Dueling messages enticed business ties among white industrialists in both sections. See Henry Woodfin Grady, The New South and Other Addresses, edited by Edna Henry Lee Turpin (New York: Maynard, Merrill, & Co., 1904), 38; Kathy Roberts Forde, “An editor and his newspaper helped build white supremacy in Georgia,” The Conversation, February 15, 2019, https://theconversation.com/an-editor-and-his-newspaper-helped-build-white-supremacy-in-georgia-111030.

46 “Booker Washington a Prophet of National and Race Good Will,” New York Age, May 11, 1905, 2.

47 “Was Washington Wrong,” New York Age, December 3, 1921, 4.

48 See “Alexandria Gazette, 1834–1974,” Chronicling America, Library of Congress, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn8502.

49 As media scholar Susan J. Douglas argued, media historians must often create their own archives for studies examining trends and culture, broadly. Selected material must be relevant to events and turning points. This study includes multiple newspapers guided by criteria of relevance outlined in corresponding literature. As Douglas notes, no archive can be complete, for some materials do not presently exist or have not existed in an accessible form. In this study, articles from the Alexandria Gazette are not available for 1923 and 1924, while articles for the New York Age are not available for 1895. See Susan J. Douglas, “Writing From the Archive: Creating Your Own,” The Communication Review 13, no. 1 (2010): 3.

50 Narrative analysis seeks to unearth common themes and structure of text in journalism while discourse analysis situates word choice in relation to ideology, thus reflecting the cultural and political contexts in which it originated. See Hume and Roessner, “Surviving Sherman’s March,” 119–137; Lori Amber Roessner, “Constructing Monuments,” in Political Pioneer of the Press: Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Her Transnational Crusade for Social Justice, edited by Lori Amber Roessner and Jodi Rightler-McDaniels (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018), 107–127; S. Elizabeth Bird and Robert W. Dardenne, “Myth, Chronicle and Storytelling: Exploring the Narrative Qualities of News,” 333–350; Roger Fowler, Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press.

51 F.D. Mussey, “General Lee in Bronze,” Chicago Inter-Ocean, May 30, 1890, 3.

52 “The Lee Statue,” Alexandria Gazette, May 10, 1890, 2.

53 The Washington Post reported the Confederate army’s gray uniform had been modeled after that of the Seventh New York Regiment. The regiment had come to Richmond in 1859 as an escort to the remains of President James Monroe who had originally been buried in New York. His remains were moved to Hollywood Cemetery in Virginia. As the military organizations of Virginia had no regulation uniform, the First Virginia Infantry adopted a fully gray uniform using the memory of the Seventh as a model. Confederate uniforms were then derived from the First Virginia Infantry, an indirect result of the Seventh’s visit. See “The Origin of the Gray,” Washington Post, April 16, 1890, 1.

54 “The Lee Statue. Will The Seventh Regiment Attend the Unveiling?” New York Times, April 10, 1890, 1.

55 “Lee Statue,” 1.

56 “Lee Statue,” 1.

57 “Invited to Honor Lee,” Washington Post, April 9, 1890, 2.

58 “The Seventh’s Invitation. The Lee Monument Committee Rises to Explain,” New York Times, April 15, 1890, 1; “Lee Statue,” 1.

59 “Still Trembling at the Rebel Yell,” Alexandria Gazette, April 14, 1890, 1.

60 “Still Trembling,” 1.

61 “Still Trembling,” 1.

62 “From Washington,” Alexandria Gazette, May 26, 1890, 2.

63 “A Confederate Holiday,” Atlanta Constitution, May 12, 1890, 4.

64 “A Confederate Holiday,” 4.

65 “A Confederate Holiday,” 4.

66 “The Great Lee in Living Bronze: Ceremonies at the Unveiling in Richmond,” Atlanta Constitution, May 29, 1890, 1.

67 “Great Lee in Living Bronze,” 1.

68 “In Honor of Gen. Lee,” Chicago Tribune, May 30, 1890, 1.

69 “The Lee Statue Unveiled: Thousands of Veterans Honor His Memory,” New York Times, May 29, 1890, 1.

70 On January 9, 1861, Mississippi adopted an Ordinance of Secession and raised a blue flag with a white star over the capitol building in Jackson. The “Bonnie Blue” flag had been used in 1810 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after disputes about the territory’s sovereignty led citizens of then West Florida to declare their own republic. West Floridians’ independent spirit remained in the South, and the flag became a rebellion emblem, thanks in large part to a song by actor Harry Macarthy. “The Bonnie Blue Flag” was one of the most popular Confederate songs aside from “Dixie.” See William S. Powell, “Bonnie Blue Flag,” Encyclopedia of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Mussey, “General Lee in Bronze,” 3.

71 Mussey, “General Lee in Bronze,” 3.

72 Mussey, “General Lee in Bronze,” 3; “The Speech and the Flag,” Chicago Inter-Ocean, May 31, 1890, 4.

73 “Column 1,” Alexandria Gazette, May 30, 1890, 2.

74 “Column 1,” 2.

75 The Tribune reported four ex-Confederate men placed the flag in the hands of the Washington statue, but other papers differed in coverage. The New York Times said a “venturesome boy” daringly climbed nearly seventy-five feet to place the flag in the “hands of the Father of His Country.” Meanwhile, the Alexandria Gazette reported a “party of enthusiastic Confederates” placed the flag and scattered flowers around the statue. Each paper, striving to craft an event story, created a narrative arc embellished to fit the dramatic trend leaning toward Yellow Journalism, capitalizing on poignant images like that of the Washington statute. Fact stood subordinate to story. See, “In Honor of Gen. Lee,” 1; “The Lee Statue Unveiled,” 1; “Echoes from Richmond,” Alexandria Gazette, May 30, 1890, 2.

76 “Virginia News,” Alexandria Gazette, May 31, 1890, 2; “The Oration: An Eloquent Effort Befitting the Great Demonstration,” Washington Post, May 30, 1890, 1–2.

77 “An Incident of the Lee Monument Unveiling,” New York Age, June 7, 1890, 2.

78 Cincinnati Commercial Gazette quoted in “Robert E. Lee,” New York Age, May 31, 1890, 2.

79 Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, 2.

80 “Rather Mixed,” Atlanta Constitution, May 31, 1890, 4.

81 “Robert E. Lee,” 2.

82 “Robert E. Lee,” 2.

83 “At Washington,” Alexandria Gazette, May 31, 1890, 2.

84 “Southerners Revere Their Flag, but Are True to the Other Banner,” Washington Post, June 2, 1890, 7.

85 “Underwood Collection (MSS 58),” MSS Finding Aids, Manuscripts & Folklife Archives, Western Kentucky University.

86 “Confederate Monument Dedication,” New York Times, March 22, 1895, 10.

87 “Sons of Veterans Denounce Confederates,” Chicago Tribune, May 15, 1895, 3.

88 “Gen. Underwood works hard to make the dedication ceremonies a success,” Chicago Tribune, May 4, 1895, 4.

89 Article detailing James Longstreet’s partisanship, Alexandria Gazette, May 4, 1895, 2.

90 “Confederate Celebration at Chicago,” Washington Post, May 4, 1895, 6.

91 “The Chicago Monument. Gen. Underwood, an ex-Confederate, Answers Some Criticisms,” Washington Post, May 9, 1895, 7.

92 “The Chicago Monument,” 7.

93 “Beautiful Flowers Atlanta’s Offering to the Confederate Dead Goes to Chicago,” Atlanta Constitution, May 27, 1895, 5.

94 “They Wore the Gray,” Chicago Inter-Ocean, April 1, 1895, 7; “Guns Now Are Mute,” Chicago Inter-Ocean, May 31, 1895, 1.

95 “The Chicago Monument,” 7.

96 “Wiping Out Sectionalism,” Atlanta Constitution, May 23, 1895, 6; “The Blue and the Gray,” New York Times, May 13, 1895, 4.

97 “Better Relations,” New York Age, July 15, 1922, 4.

98 “Negro Headlines,” New York Age, July 1, 1922, 4.

99 “Hall of Fame Nominations Are Already Being Made,” Boston Globe, February 25, 1923, 41. New York University received a donation of $250,000 philanthropist Helen Gould Shepard, daughter of railroad magnate and Tammany Hall backer Jason Gould, to construct the hall.

100 “Hall of Fame Nominations,” 41.

101 “Hall of Fame Nominations,” 41.

102 “Hall of Fame Nominations,” 41.

103 “Hall of Fame Nominations,” 41.

104 “Statue of Gen. Lee Unveiled,” 3.

105 “Better Relations,” 4.

106 “Better Relations,” 4.

107 John D. Stevens, “The Black Press Looks at 1920’s Journalism,” Journalism History 7, no. 3–4 (1980): 111.

108 Stevens, “The Black Press Looks,” 109–113.

109 Stevens, “The Black Press Looks,” 110.

110 N.W. Ayer and Son's American Newspaper Annual and Directory (Philadelphia: N.W. Ayer and Sons, 1910–1923).

111 Column 1, Alexandria Gazette, 2.

112 Kitch, “Anniversary Journalism, Collective Memory, and the Cultural Authority to Tell the Story of the American Past,” 45,48, quoted in Hume and Roessner, “Surviving Sherman’s March,” 124–125.

113 Hillyer, “Relics of Reconciliation,” 45; “Chicago’s Troops, The First Regiment, Numbering 1000 Men, Coming to Atlanta,” 8.

114 “A Confederate Holiday,” 4; “The New North,” 4; “From Washington,” 2.

115 “Statue of Gen. Lee Unveiled,” 3.

116 The Editors of LIFE, Gone with the Wind: The Great American Movie 75 Years Later (Chicago: TI Inc. Books, 2014), 108.

117 The Editors of LIFE, Gone with the Wind, 98, 100.

118 Christopher A. Graham, “Lost Cause Myth,” The Inclusive Historian’s Handbook, American Association for State and Local History, May 13, 2020, https://inclusivehistorian.com/lost-cause-myth/.

119 Bonner, “Flag Culture,” 331.

120 Bonner, “Flag Culture,” 331.

121 Bonner, Flag Culture,” 331.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexia Little

Alexia Little is a former magazine feature writer and sports columnist. She now serves as an associate content creator at Vanderbilt University after earning her master’s in journalism and mass communication at the University of Georgia. This work derived in part from her master–s thesis, “Lost in the Cause: Collective Memory of the Civil War in Newspaper Coverage of Confederate Monument Constructions and Dedications.”