A few
steps east of where our parents are buried in the Owingsville Cemetery stands a
statue of a Confederate soldier, six feet tall on a seven-foot base and, of
course, facing northward. I sometimes wonder if he ever makes eye contact with
the Union soldier facing southward that stands atop a massive war memorial in
downtown Indianapolis, where my family and I have lived for the last six years.
The
Owingsville monument has stood sentinel since 1907 and I have looked at it
dozens of times. Others have too, I know. It’s on the National Register of
Historic Places, so it’s probably garnered a good bit of attention over the
years.
Imagine
a bright, warm afternoon in the early part of the twentieth century. A parade
forms. School lets out early so girls and boys can join the festivities and, in
some cases, participate in them by singing songs and reading essays written for
the occasion. The parade stops at the center of town for the unveiling and
dedication of the monument.
As we
know from Owingsville, sometimes the monument landed elsewhere, like a
cemetery. Or, in the case of Kentucky’s largest Confederate memorial, it stands
at what is now one of the primary entrances to the University of Louisville
campus.
I don’t
know if a parade or other public events accompanied the dedication of the
Confederate soldier in Owingsville, but what I have described occurred in towns
and cities across the South when the well funded and extremely well organized
Daughters of the Confederacy unveiled their monuments.
Until a
couple of years ago, my impression of the Daughters of the Confederacy was that
of a genteel group of tea-sipping, hat-wearing Southern belles who gathered
occasionally to enjoy each other’s company and to tell stories of another era.
The
Daughters were interested in telling stories alright, but with a particular
angle. (I should say “are interested.” Numerous chapters exist today, including
several in northern and western states.) And I’m sure they exuded remarkable grace
and charm, but make no mistake about it, they were a force to be reckoned with.
The
Daughters believed that their ancestors’ defeat in the Civil War represented a
terrible disgrace. Worse, in their view, was that those same ancestors and most
people in the South had been completely discredited and even demeaned in the
years subsequent to, as the Daughters would have termed it, the War of Northern
Aggression. The Daughters made it their mission to revive and preserve
Confederate culture. More so than the men in many cases, the Daughters crafted
and promoted the Lost Cause myth through an extensive organization and with
various efforts.
The
monuments are probably the best known of those efforts today, but the Daughters
also distributed Confederate flags, developed curriculum that promoted Southern
values for white children in public schools, provided portraits of Jefferson
Davis and Robert E. Lee to be hung in those schools, built hospitals and
nursing homes, and offered scholarships to college-bound Confederate
descendants.
My
reading about the Daughters has been both fascinating and troubling, especially
as the Daughters attempted to preserve racial discrimination and exclusion even
as many people in the country were working tirelessly to improve race relations.
In her book Dixie’s Daughters, Karen
Cox contends that the Daughters’ efforts set back the acceptance and inclusion
of African-Americans in this country by several decades, even to the point of
undermining the work of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, a full century
after the close of the Civil War.
When I
read that I thought of the African-Americans with whom I went to school, grew
up and played ball. I also think of the many African-Americans with whom I now
work. And even though I find the Owingsville Cemetery one of the dearest and
most peaceful places in the world, it now holds a different kind of sadness
than it did before.
~Bill Kincaid
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Thomas Darnell's marker is just one of many markers placed by the Daughters of the Confederacy in the Owingsville Cemetery.
We'll post pictures of the rest of the markers in the future. |
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| He stands facing north - on eternal lookout for Yankees. |
