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Confederate Statues and Their Dirty Laundry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 July 2019
Abstract
Since 2015, America has witnessed a profound shift in aggregate public sentiments toward Confederate statues and symbols. That shift was keenly felt on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin (UT), culminating in the removal of four such statues in 2015 and 2017. However, an inquiry into their creation points to an equally significant shift in sentiments during the 1920s. UT's statues were commissioned in 1919 by George Littlefield, a Confederate veteran and university regent, as part of a larger war memorial. The ostensible purpose of that memorial was to commemorate veterans of both the Civil War and World War I. However, during the 1920s, a new generation of university leaders rejected Littlefield's design—and with it the assertion that the services of Civil and World War veterans were morally congruent and united in a common historical trajectory. This article tracks the ways in which they quietly and yet profoundly undermined the project, causing it to be significantly delayed and then extensively altered. Meanwhile, students and veterans improvised their own commemorative practices that were in stark contrast to the Confederate generation—the latter wanted to remember, while the former wanted to forget.
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- Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2019
References
Notes
1 There is a phenomenally rich documentation surrounding UT's Confederate statues. The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History is home to the papers of their sculptor (Pompeo Coppini) and the project's patron (George Washington Littlefield) as well as the university archives, which include campus publications, architectural plans, the records of the President's Office, and the Faculty Building Committee. Because Coppini lived in Chicago and New York for the duration of the project, he had to deal with Littlefield and the university's leadership through correspondence—rather than in person through winks and whispers.
2 Haley, James Evetts, George W. Littlefield, Texan (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972), 193Google Scholar.
3 “Uncle Nathan Talks of Major Littlefield,” The Austin Statesman, Oct. 14, 1928.
4 Haley, George W. Littlefield, Texan, 240.
5 “Major Littlefield, One of Old South, Now Helping Win War with Germany,” Austin Statesman, Mar. 3, 1918.
6 George Washington Littlefield letter to Bennett Young, George Washington Littlefield Papers, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, May 18, 1918.
7 The anti-German elements of the Gate are worth noting. It was commissioned the same year that the governor of Texas vetoed the UT German department's budget. The previous year, the Board of Regents (on which Littlefield sat) had fired several professors including Edward Prokosch, whose greatest crime was comparing the German Reichstag to the American Congress in his courses. Anti-Germanism had deeper roots among ex-Confederates like Littlefield. On the whole, German Texans (who had competed with Anglos to settle the state) opposed both slavery and secession during the Civil War era.
8 Written in 1922. Reprinted in The Daily Texan, Apr. 30, 1931.
9 Ibid.
10 Unfortunately for Littlefield and Coppini, Woodrow Wilson was also unimpressed. Plans for the Gate had been shared with him through a third party, Albert Sydney Burleson. Refusing to pose for Coppini, Wilson stated his “entire unwillingness to have my effigy mounted as is suggested in association with the proposed memorial. … Moreover, I don't fancy the partner [Davis] they offer me.” Coppini later speculated in his memoir that Wilson “resented the thought of appearing in the same memorial with Jefferson Davis, possibly because they had so much in common.” Woodrow Wilson letter to Burleson, Link, Arthur Stanley, Princeton University, and Woodrow Wilson Foundation. The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 69:369; Coppini, Pompeo. From Dawn to Sunset (San Antonio, TX: Press of the Naylor Company, 1949), 262.
11 William Battle letter to Robert Vinson, Coppini-Tauch Papers, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, Sept. 24, 1921.
12 Ibid.
13 For example, Professor Lindley Keasbey believed the Great War to be about “wealth through conquest” and that peace would only come through social democracy. After news of his pacifist activism during the 1917 summer break became public, Keasbey was swiftly fired by the Board of Regents. The board also investigated the nationality and immigration status of every faculty member. The audit found no “enemy aliens” (those born in Germany) on the payroll, but that didn't stop pressure on teachers they deemed suspect. See Ben Wright, “War Time,” The Alcalde, March/April issue, 2017.
14 Pompeo Coppini letter state Sen Harry Hertzberg, Coppini-Tauch Papers, Sept. 29, 1921. Hertzberg, Coppini's lawyer, replied that he thought Battle a “nincompoop.”
15 H. A. Wroe letter to Pompeo Coppini, Coppini-Tauch Papers, Dec. 9, 1929.
16 The Daily Texan, Nov. 29, 1929.
17 “East vs. West,” The Alcalde, Dec. 1929.
18 Cret was French-born and had previously designed Revolutionary War memorials and World War I cemeteries. He likely had mixed personal feelings about the final design and the memorial's content. Correspondence between him and university officials suggest he refused to have his name appear on the Gate.
19 Pompeo Coppini letter to Winnie Allen, Coppini-Tauch Papers, June 17, 1953.
20 George Washington Littlefield letter to Bennett Young, George Washington Littlefied Papers, May 18, 1918.