Editorial: West Virginia Must Confront Its Confederate Monuments
/In the autumn of 1910, a crowd of thousands gathered on the capitol grounds in downtown Charleston, West Virginia. The women and men, many of whom were Confederate veterans adorned once again in gray, had come from all over West Virginia to witness the dedication of a monument to Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy a year before, and sculpted by a former VMI cadet who knew Jackson, the monument was intended to acknowledge Jackson’s link to West Virginia. The Confederate general had been born in Clarksburg, (West) Virginia. As the Calhoun Chronicle opined approvingly of the statue, “The world knows that a masterful genius named Stonewall Jackson passed this way, and West Virginia can not prevent, if she would, the linking of her name with that of her greatest son.” Speeches were made, applause reverberated, and the handsome monument unveiled in beautiful weather.
Yet the crowd that day saw the dedication of the Confederate monument not only as a moment to honor Stonewall Jackson, but also as an opportunity to opine on contemporary political matters. Among the crowd, civilians and veterans alike wore “Lily White” campaign buttons. In the early 1900s, the Lily White campaign called for the disfranchisement of African American voters. In West Virginia, the Democratic Party unsuccessfully ran on a Lily White platform in 1908. In 1910, the Democratic Party had hoped to win over black voters by dropping the platform, but much to their chagrin, their old campaign buttons were awash in the crowd that gathered to commemorate Jackson. Although the Democrats attempted to disavow the Lily White campaign, the damage was done. West Virginia was home to only 15,000 African Americans, but they were an influential voter block. The Lily White buttons ensured that most black voters would stick with the party of Lincoln.
The Jim Crow politics intertwined with the history of Charleston’s Stonewall Jackson statue speak to the complicated and racist legacies Confederate monuments often hold. In 1910, West Virginians who turned out to honor Stonewall Jackson’s legacy naturally linked that cause with the disfranchisement of black voters. They understood the relationship between racism and Confederate iconography; after all, the Confederacy itself was built on the idea of undemocratic, slaveholders’ republic.
It is therefore a shame that one hundred and ten years later, West Virginia has largely failed to confront the racist reality of its Confederate monuments. While communities across the nation have begun to challenge and rethink their relationships with Confederate monuments, West Virginia has lagged.
Stonewall Jackson Statue on State Capitol Grounds in Charleston, WV (Photo by Kenny Kemp, Charleston Gazette Mail)
Only in recent days has progress, albeit limited, begun. On Monday, the City of Charleston removed a UDC plaque in Ruffner Park that listed the names of the Kanawha Riflemen, a local Confederate company in the 22nd Virginia Infantry. Included among the names was “William Armistead, colored cook, faithful during war.” As Charleston Mayor Amy Goodwin rightly noted, “It perpetuates the falsehoods that slaves enjoyed being slaves and preferred not to be free. It’s offensive. It needed to be removed. And we removed it.” In Lewisburg, Mayor Beverly White (the city’s first African American mayor) determined not to remove the town’s Confederate monument but promised “to create interpretive signage to educate our communities not divide our communities.”
Yet many Confederate monuments across the state remain unchallenged. Confederate statues rest in Charleston (on capitol grounds), Clarksburg, Hinton, Lewisburg, Mingo, Parkersburg, Romney, and Union. In Clarksburg, West Virginia, the County Commission has refused to remove a downtown statue of Stonewall Jackson erected in the 1950s—an era when Confederate monuments were erected across the South in reaction to the Civil Rights movement. As Angelica Scott of the West Virginia Black Heritage Festival noted, “We are well aware that the relocation of this monument will not erase this country’s long history of slavery. However, it sends a message that the deplorable history of our county, of our country and state is neither condoned nor respected.”
Angelica Scott’s comments speak to the heart of the matter. Confederate monuments glorify the Confederacy and by extension, slavery and white supremacy. Taking down these monuments does not destroy history—which will continue to be taught in schools, written about in books, discussed in classrooms and living rooms and internet forums—but rather indicates the Confederacy and its cause are not worth celebrating. It’s especially egregious to have a Confederate monument on the government grounds of West Virginia’s state capitol, a location which lends greater gravity and legitimacy to the statue. It’s also ironic that a state born from opposition to the Confederacy—a state Jackson himself did not see as legitimate—should honor one of its greatest opponents.
The time has arrived for West Virginians, both its people and the state government, to acknowledge the racist nature of the Confederacy, the racist legacies of Confederate monuments, and either remove or reinterpret these monuments to better reflect the values of the 21st century.
A Civil War historian, Dr. Zac Cowsert holds a PhD in history from West Virginia University, where he also received his master's degree. He earned his bachelor's degree in history and political science from Centenary College of Louisiana in Shreveport. Zac’s dissertation explored the American Civil War in Indian Territory (modern Oklahoma), and his research interests include the Civil War Trans-Mississippi, Southern Unionism, and the interactions between Civil War armies and newspaper presses. ©
Sources & Further Reading
Karen L. Cox. Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Southern Culture. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003.
Gaines M. Foster. Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
“George Byrne Reveals Plan and Recalls the Pledge of Democracy to Disfranchise the Negroes.” October 13, 1910. Clarksburg Weekly Telegram.
Caroline E. Janney. Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies' Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
Stephanie McCurry. “The Confederacy Was an Antidemocratic, Centralized State.” June 21, 2020. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/confederacy-wasnt-what-you-think/613309/
Cynthia Mills and Pamela H. Simpson, eds. Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003.
Dave Mistich. “West Virginia, Born Out of the Civil War, Grapples with Confederate Monuments.” June 20, 2020. NPR. West Virginia Public Broadcasting. https://www.npr.org/2020/06/20/881017611/west-virginia-born-out-of-the-civil-war-grapples-with-confederate-monuments
Annie Moore. "City leaders say Lewisburg Confederate Monument will stay." June 26, 2020. WVVA. https://wvva.com/2020/06/26/city-leaders-say-lewisburg-confederate-monument-will-stay/
Mike Nolting. “Harrison County Commission hears from public again on Stonewall Jackson statue but takes no action.” July 1, 2020. MetroNews. https://wvmetronews.com/2020/07/01/harrison-county-commission-hears-from-public-again-on-stonewall-jackson-statue-but-takes-no-action/
Todd Roxy. "Confederate Memorial Party Removed in Charleston, W.Va." June 30, 2020. West Virginia Public Broadcasting. https://www.wvpublic.org/post/confederate-memorial-partly-removed-charleston-wva#stream/0
Kirk Savage. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth Century America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
“Stonewall Jackson.” April, 1910. Calhoun Chronicle.
“Unveiled Is Monument of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson in the City of Charleston.” September 27, 1910. Clarksburg Daily Telegram.