The Confederate Memorial (Wilmington, North Carolina)

The Confederate Memorial is located in Wilmington, North Carolina, at the intersection of South 3rd Street and Dock Street. It was erected in 1924 by the Daughters of the Confederacy and a local Confederate Veterans Association. The funding for the monument was provided from Gabriel James Boney, who, upon his death in 1915, left $25,000 (approx. $644,000 today) to be used towards a memorial to the Confederacy that he had fought for during the Civil War. 

The monument erected is 40 feet tall and consists of a bronze statue of two Confederate soldiers, one holding a rifle with a bayonet standing in guard of another soldier who is wounded on the ground wielding a broken sword, in the foreground and a white granite stele (a stone slab that typically has a commemorative inscription) with inscriptions behind the two soldiers. The inscription on the base of the statue reads:

Confederates blend your recollections 

Let memory weave its bright reflections

Let love revive life's ashen embers For love is life since love remembers

PRO ARIS ET FOCIS 

This monument is a legacy of Gabriel James Boney Born Wallace, NC 1846 – Died Wilmington, NC 1915

While the granite stele is inscribed with:

1861–1865

To the Soldiers of the Confederacy

Erected by a Committee under the testator's Will, representing the Daughters of the  Confederacy, The Confederate Veterans Association, and his Executor 

MCMXXIV

This monument is a great example of how influential the post-Civil War culture has been in American history. The monument's dedication to the daughters of the Confederacy (later the United Daughters of the Confederacy, or UDC for short) and the donor show to modern America that the Confederate way of life did not completely disappear after the Civil War. After the war, there were still veterans who would support the Confederacy till their death. A major theme to emerge from the Confederates' loss in the Civil War was the Lost cause movement.

It is important to clarify how the Lost Cause movement came into being when discussing Confederate monuments as The Confederate Memorial in Wilmington. The post-Civil War southern culture has humble beginnings; The Confederate army's widows started various associations, such as the Ladies Memorial Associations and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, throughout the South that provided proper burials for fallen soldiers and honor said soldiers. The LMA's and the UDC would set up memorial days and celebrations and advocate for creating statues and monuments of the Confederate generals and soldiers. The creation of these monuments and the desire to honor the fallen is a sentiment shared with the Lost Cause ideology created in the south during this time. 

The Lost Cause Movement that the LMA's and the UDC helped spread throughout the south changed how people viewed the cause of the Civil War. It sought to glorify the southern agenda and make the Confederate people appear in the best possible light. The Lost Cause romanticized much of the southern way of life so that public perception surrounding the Confederate state's dependence on slavery would not be taught in future generations. This change in public perception resulted from the creation of many Confederate statues, like The Confederate Monument in Wilmington. As a by-product of the Lost Cause movement, the monuments helped glorify the southern Confederate way of life through the glorification of the soldiers and generals of the Confederacy. This included spreading white supremacist ideals and downplaying the rampant racism that dominated the minds of the Confederates while also creating an illusion about how important slavery was to the South, which would affect the South for generations to come in the form of the Jim Crow era. These statues, many of which are still present today, pushed these old ideas into the public mind in the years following the Civil War and attempted to justify slavery and white supremacy as a just but ultimately "lost" cause.

The Latin phrase on the monument, "PRO ARIS ET FOCIS," translates to "For Altars and Firesides." This phrase is deeply rooted in the Lost Cause movement and is a great example of what that movement stood for. Since the Lost Cause movement sought to separate the Confederacy from being labeled as racist, they changed the narrative of the Civil War's cause to the Confederate states fighting over state rights and protection of those rights, not over slavery. So, the altars and firesides they supposedly fought for was a way of saying that they fought in the Civil war to protect their homes and way of life. 

By honoring Confederate soldiers, the monuments normalize the extreme racism, bigotry, and hatred that the Confederacy represented in today's society. A more modern example of the persistence of Civil War/Lost cause ideals is shown through the increase in Confederate monuments built in the 1950s and 1960s. During these two decades, huge civil rights and racial equality movements were happening in America. The Lost Cause supporters built more statues and introduced textbooks that pushed their agenda in response to the movements. The Confederate Memorial in Wilmington, in particular, was removed in June 2020 after protestors surrounded the monument in light of racist comments made by three Wilmington police officers. Comments made by a few Wilmington police officers. According to the city of Wilmington's Twitter, the monument was removed "in order to protect the public safety and to preserve important historical artifacts." an Article written by Simone Jasper on The News and Observer wrote that the removal came with mixed reactions. One person was quoted saying, "whatever the initial reason for removal, let's make this permanent because it's the right thing to do." while another was said in a Facebook post that the removal was a "knee jerk reaction to anarchists. If you wanted a plan it could have been done as a compromise." (Jasper) The removal of this monument comes at a very heated moment in the push for greater racial equality in America, which was given the national spotlight after the murder of George Floyd. After Mr. Floyd's death, there was a nationwide push to remove any remnants of the Confederacy that promoted the era's ideals.

• “State.” Accessed November 13, 2020. https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/collection/p16062coll18/id/18612.
• “Lost Cause, The.” Accessed October 5, 2020. https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/lost_cause_the.

• “Ladies Memorial Associations - Essential Civil War Curriculum.” Accessed October 4, 2020. https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/ladies-memorial-associations.html.

• NPR.org. “Confederate Statues Were Built To Further A ‘White Supremacist Future.’” Accessed October 9, 2020. https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544266880/confederate-statues-were-built-to-further-a-white-supremacist-future

• Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001.

• Jasper, Simone. “Confederate Statues Removed from NC City after Officers Were Fired for Racist Remarks.” Newsobserver, Raleigh News & Observer, 25 June 2020, 9:19am, www.newsobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article243786597.html.
• Who is the Wilmingtonian who designed the Lincoln Memorial? (2009, June 1). MyReporter.Com. http://www.myreporter.com/2009/06/the-wilmingtonian-who-designed-the-lincoln-memorial/

• Push to remove confederate statues from Wilmington gets support of Historic Wilmington Foundation. (n.d.). Https://Www.Wbtv.Com. Retrieved November 29, 2020, from https://www.wbtv.com/2020/06/10/push-remove-confederate-statues-wilmington-gets-support-historic-wilmington-foundation/

• https://www.whqr.org/post/safety-reasons-city-wilmington-removes-confederate-monuments#stream/0