Question

what are the archaeological and material meanings of Confederate monuments?

Answer 1

In the Confederate items pantheon, statuary may be somewhat different from flags, license plaques, and other collectibles emblazoned with Confederate symbols. Statues and memorials aspire to make timeless socio-historical statements, and define or create memory, capturing idealized or distorted war visions that tell as much about their makers and viewers as their subject matter. Yet monuments routinely begin to appear esthetically dated or even reactionary as time passes. Viewed from the perspective of the early 21st century, many Confederate monuments are pure artifacts of 150 years of superficial South and Confederate delusions.

Some of those public monuments may foster counter-intuitively reflective and sober discussions about the Civil War, which is a heritage of a century and a half, rather than an objective historical event. These debates, however, risk being bypassed by current Confederate supporters who misrepresent the past of the Confederacy and studiously ignore why an imaginary Confederate legacy has become so appealing if not unsettling well outside of the South.

The most successful revolutionaries found popular positions in the cities of the South, where they became symbols of a moral cause rather than a country that had been won over. What figure was more revered than Robert E. Lee, who was commemorated in 1884 in a number of Southern cities including a memorial to New Orleans. Planning for perhaps the most prominent Lee memorial, a Richmond, Virginia statue on Memorial Street, started in 1876 and was finished in 1890. In 1907 Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart followed Lee to Monument Avenue, a month later Confederate President Jefferson Davis was installed and in 1919 Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson joined them

The Phoenix monument was erected in the midst of an integration backlash which witnessed a similar embrace in many other communities of conservative Confederate history. However, despite the best efforts of memorial-makers to cast their messages as timeless, it is impossible to separate reception of 21st century memorials from contemporary experience. While Phoenix contemplates on the public landscape the local meaning of Confederate things, other communities have removed or seriously contemplated removing those monuments.