Dixie's Daughters New Perspectives on the History of the South
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Dixie’s Daughters new perspectives on the history of the south Florida A&M University, Tallahassee Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers Florida International University, Miami Florida State University, Tallahassee University of Central Florida, Orlando University of Florida, Gainesville University of North Florida, Jacksonville University of South Florida, Tampa University of West Florida, Pensacola THIS PDF IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, PRINTING, OR RESALE. #FACTSNOTHATE new perspectives on the history of the south Edited by John David Smith “In the Country of the Enemy”: The Civil War Reports of a Massachusetts Corporal, edited by William C. Harris (1999) The Wild East: A Biography of the Great Smoky Mountains, by Margaret L. Brown (2000; first paperback edition, 2001) Crime, Sexual Violence, and Clemency: Florida’s Pardon Board and Penal System in the Progressive Era, by Vivien M. L. Miller (2000) The New South’s New Frontier: A Social History of Economic Development in Southwestern North Carolina, by Stephen Wallace Taylor (2001) Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940–1970, by John A. Kirk (2002) The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854–1861, by Robert E. May (2002) Forging a Common Bond: Labor and Environmental Activism during the BASF Lockout, by Timothy J. Minchin (2003) Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture, by Karen L. Cox (2003) THIS PDF IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, PRINTING, OR RESALE. #FACTSNOTHATE Dixie’s Daughters the united daughters of the confederacy and the preservation of confederate culture Karen L. Cox Foreword by John David Smith, Series Editor university press of florida Gainesville · Tallahassee · Tampa · Boca Raton · Pensacola · Orlando · Miami · Jacksonville · Ft. Myers THIS PDF IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, PRINTING, OR RESALE. #FACTSNOTHATE Copyright 2003 by Karen L. Cox Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved First cloth printing, 2003 First paperback printing, 2004 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cox, Karen L., 1962– Dixie’s daughters: the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the preservation of Confederate culture / Karen L. Cox; foreword by John David Smith. p. cm. — (New perspectives on the history of the South) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8130-2625-3 (alk. paper) ISBN 0-8130-2812-4 (pbk.) 1. United Daughters of the Confederacy—History. 2. Southern States— Civilization. 3. Popular culture—Southern States. 4. Southern States—Politics and government—1865–1950. 5. Political culture—Southern States. 6. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Influence. I. Title. II. Series. E483.5 C68 2003 369'.17—dc21 2002040904 The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida. University Press of Florida 15 Northwest 15th Street Gainesville, FL 32611–2079 http://www.upf.com THIS PDF IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, PRINTING, OR RESALE. #FACTSNOTHATE For Hilda Brody THIS PDF IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, PRINTING, OR RESALE. #FACTSNOTHATE THIS PDF IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, PRINTING, OR RESALE. #FACTSNOTHATE Contents List of Illustrations ix Foreword by John David Smith, series editor xi Preface xv Note on Sources and Evidence xix List of Abbreviations xx 1. Journey into the Lost Cause 1 2. The Sacred Trust 8 3. The Rise of the UDC 28 4. The Monument Builders 49 5. Confederate Progressives 73 6. Combating “Wicked Falsehoods” 93 7. Confederate Motherhood 118 8. Vindication and Reconciliation 141 Epilogue 159 Notes 165 Bibliography 195 Index 207 THIS PDF IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, PRINTING, OR RESALE. #FACTSNOTHATE THIS PDF IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, PRINTING, OR RESALE. #FACTSNOTHATE Illustrations 2.1. Winnie Davis 15 2.2. Caroline Meriwether Goodlett and Anna Davenport Raines 17 3.1. Virginia McSherry 31 3.2. Rassie White 33 3.3. Cornelia Stone 36 3.4. Mildred Rutherford 40 3.5. Elizabeth Lumpkin 42 4.1. Confederate monument in Augusta, Georgia 50 4.2. Advertisement from marble company 51 4.3. Moses Ezekiel 55 4.4. Katie Behan 57 4.5. Confederate souvenir spoon 58 4.6. Monument unveiling, Lebanon, Tennessee 60 4.7. Richmond children with Jefferson Davis monument 61 4.8. Monument unveiling, Dallas, Texas 62 4.9. En route to monument unveiling 63 4.10. Young girls representing the Confederate states 64 4.11. A “living” flag in New Orleans 65 4.12. A “living” flag in Richmond 66 4.13. The Confederate monument at Arlington National Cemetery 69 4.14. Daisy Stevens presents the Arlington monument to President Woodrow Wilson 71 5.1. Beauvoir, Mississippi’s soldiers’ home 79 5.2. Caroline Helen Plane 81 THIS PDF IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, PRINTING, OR RESALE. #FACTSNOTHATE 5.3. The Virginia Daughters 83 5.4. Lizzie George Henderson 88 5.5. Varina Davis 89 5.6. Carr-Burdette College advertisement 92 6.1. Adelia Dunovant 94 6.2. The White House of the Confederacy 99 6.3. Laura Martin Rose 108 6.4. Advertisement for Rose’s primer for children 109 6.5. Leonora Schuyler 113 7.1. “Little” Laura Galt 119 7.2. Baby with Confederate flags 120 7.3. A young girl in Confederate dress 121 7.4. Portrait of Jefferson Davis 132 7.5. Children of the Confederacy in Tennessee 134 7.6. Decca Lamar West 138 8.1. Daisy McLaurin Stevens 151 8.2. Cordelia Powell Odenheimer 154 x Illustrations THIS PDF IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, PRINTING, OR RESALE. #FACTSNOTHATE Foreword Writing in 1941, Wilbur J. Cash described the South as a “tree with many age rings, with its limbs and trunk bent and twisted by all the winds of the years, but with its tap root in the Old South.” Late-nineteenth-century southern white polemicists, determined to venerate and vindicate their antebellum and Confederate “tap root,” crafted the Lost Cause myth. This integrated set of ideas argued that differing interpretations of states’ rights, not slavery, caused the Civil War and that the right of secession stood deeply embedded in American constitutional history. Lost Cause spokesmen sketched an idealized portrait of the antebellum South, one that romanticized white paternalism and African American slavery and glorified the valor of Confederate soldiers. They contrasted the suppos- edly faithful, contented, and productive slaves of the Old South with their allegedly disloyal, troublesome, and inefficient descendants, the freed- men and freedwomen of the New South. In her timely, well-researched, and insightful analysis of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), Karen L. Cox, who teaches at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, argues that elite southern women, not men, led the way in constructing the Lost Cause image. The first scholar to underscore the role of gender in commemorating and preserving the ideals of the Old South, Cox writes persuasively that women provided sustained leadership in fashioning the Lost Cause. From the 1890s through World War I, the women of the UDC expanded woman’s sphere by playing prominent roles in southern public life, cham- pioning the region’s conservative social and racial values, and celebrating the role of Confederate women during the Civil War. Within a decade of THIS PDF IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, PRINTING, OR RESALE. #FACTSNOTHATE its founding, the UDC emerged as “one of the most socially and politi- cally effective organizations in the region.” The movement to celebrate the Confederate past began soon after Appomattox, when Ladies’ Memorial Associations commenced honor- ing and memorializing the slain Confederates by sponsoring Confeder- ate memorial days. “Across the South,” Cox writes, these organizations “helped to extend women’s domestic role as caretakers into the public sphere as they memorialized dead fathers, brothers, and sons buried in Confederate cemeteries.” The UDC, established in 1894, built upon this foundation and functioned as a benevolent, historical, educational, and social organization that vindicated Confederate veterans. “Daughters” (as they were known throughout the region) “raised the stakes of the Lost Cause by making it a movement about vindication, as well as memor- ialization.” They defended the South’s actions in seceding and fighting the Federal government. Much like the Confederates themselves, UDC members asserted that their ancestors, not those of northerners, were the “true” interpreters and inheritors of the Founding Fathers’ revolu- tionary legacy and the U.S. Constitution. Transforming Confederate “de- feat into a political and cultural victory,” Cox explains, the Daughters pre- served and transmitted what she terms “Confederate culture.” “Confederate culture” dominated America’s historical memory of the Old South and the Confederacy for decades and was not dislodged until the rise of the modern Civil Rights movement. Ironically, the UDC ac- complished in peacetime what their Confederate forebears had failed to achieve during war. The Daughters did so by memorializing dead Con- federate soldiers and the society that they had fought to preserve. UDC members rewrote history by transforming the Confederates from trai- tors into patriots. They raised funds to support homes for aging and indi- gent Confederate veterans and their widows. They erected monuments to the Confederate dead at courthouses and town squares throughout the South. And they distributed Confederate flags and library books to public schools for white children. As Cox makes clear, the UDC made a con- certed effort to use these symbols to educate white children in the alleged glories and venerable traditions of the Old South. The Daughters recognized the importance of weaving Confederate traditions into the “true” history of the Civil War in textbooks and public culture on the state, local, and national levels. Determined to document xii Foreword THIS PDF IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, PRINTING, OR RESALE.