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Monuments and Ruins: Atlanta and Columbia Remember Sherman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 March 2016

THOMAS J. BROWN
THOMAS J. BROWN*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of South Carolina. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

Commemorations of the burning of Atlanta and Columbia reveal the relationship of form and content in Confederate memory. Atlanta monuments announced civic rejuvenation to national audiences, particularly tourists. Columbia ruins lamented the fracture of local elites' political dominance. The divergent cultures informed Margaret Mitchell's fabrication of Lost Cause myth in Gone with the Wind (1936) and Elizabeth Boatwright Coker's excavation of Lost Cause legend in La Belle (1959). The decline of monuments and ruins contributed to the transformation of the Lost Cause into a different configuration of Confederate memory during the decade of the Civil War centennial.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , May 2017 , pp. 411 - 436
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2016 

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References

1 William Henry Peck, The M'Donalds: or, the Ashes of Southern Homes, a Tale of Sherman's March (New York: Metropolitan Record Office, 1867), 168. Yankee depravity is infinite but not universal in the novel: a kindly Union soldier rescues the heroines.

2 Richard M. McMurry, Atlanta 1864: Last Chance for the Confederacy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 196–97; Stephen Davis, What the Yankees Did to Us: Sherman's Bombardment and Wrecking of Atlanta (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2012).

3 Marion B. Lucas, Sherman and the Burning of Columbia (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1976); Charles Royster, The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 3–33.

4 Caroline E. Janney, Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 181, illustrates the exaggeration of intersectional interaction. For examinations of Confederate memory in different southern states see Anne Marshall, Creating Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010); and Thomas J. Brown, Civil War Canon: Sites of Confederate Memory in South Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015).

5 Gaines M. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Carol Reardon, “William T. Sherman in Postwar Georgia's Collective Memory, 1864–1914,” in Joan Waugh and Gary Gallagher, eds., Wars within a War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 223–48. The memorial style of Columbia partly reflected the cultural influence of Charleston, where a lack of industrialization encouraged emphasis on proud persistence rather than dynamic resurgence as promoters packaged the city for automobile tourism in the twentieth century. See Stephanie E. Yuhl, A Golden Haze of Memory: The Making of Historic Charleston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); W. Fitzhugh Brundage, The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), chapter 5.

6 Anne Sarah Rubin, Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman's March and American Memory (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 206. This informative book contrasts interpretations of the burning of Atlanta and Columbia largely from the perspectives of northern visitors rather than city residents (161–64). Edward Caudill and Paul Ashdown, Sherman's March in Myth and Memory (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008), does not address local contexts of Sherman remembrance.

7 For introductions see Christopher Woodward, In Ruins (New York: Pantheon Books, 2001); H. W. Janson, The Rise and Fall of the Public Monument (New Orleans: Graduate School of Tulane University, 1976).

8 “The Confederate Monument,” Atlanta Constitution, 2 July 1870, 2; Wendy Hamand Venet, A Changing Wind: Commerce and Conflict in Civil War Atlanta (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 214–19.

9 “Atlanta's Honor to the Memory of General Robert E. Lee,” Atlanta Constitution, 18 Oct. 1870, 1; “Memorial Day,” Atlanta Constitution, April 28, 1874, 2.

10 “Confederate Monument,” Atlanta Constitution, 30 June 1870, 2; Ren Davis and Helen Davis, Atlanta's Oakland Cemetery: An Illustrated History and Guide (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012), 23.

11 “Confederate Valor,” Atlanta Constitution, 26 April 1894, 5.

12 “Speech of Hon. John Temple Graves,” in Joel Chandler Harris, ed., Life of Henry W. Grady, Including His Writings and Speeches (New York: Cassell Publishing Company, 1890), 378–82, 380.

13 “In Living Bronze,” Atlanta Constitution, 22 Oct. 1891, 1; “Democracy's Feast,” Atlanta Constitution, 22 Oct. 1891, 3; “Etched and Sketched,” Atlanta Constitution, 23 Oct. 1891. David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), situates Grady within the larger development of reconciliationist discourse. See also Reiko Hillyer, Designing Dixie: Tourism, Memory, and Urban Space in the New South (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014), 141–45.

14 Harvey K. Newman, Southern Hospitality: Tourism and the Growth of Atlanta (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999).

15 The city installed the cyclorama in a fireproof stone museum in Grant Park in 1921. The Works Progress Administration funded its restoration and enhancement with a diorama that featured red clay, shrubbery, cannon, and plaster figures of soldiers. Local historian and artist Wilbur G. Kurtz completed the restoration of the prime tourism attraction in ample time for the 1937 observance of the Atlanta centenary, for which Kurtz was the commission chair. Wilbur G. Kurtz, The Atlanta Cyclorama: The Story of the Famed Battle of Atlanta (Atlanta: City of Atlanta, 1954), 14, 24–28; David O'Connell, The Art and Life of Atlanta Artist Wilbur G. Kurtz: Inspired by Southern History (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2013), 61–71.

16 “Lamp-Post Tablet Will Be Dedicated by Old Guard,” Atlanta Constitution, 26 Oct. 1919, 19; “Eternal Flame of Confederacy Relit, Rededicated,” Atlanta Constitution, 15 Dec. 1939, 25.

17 Daniel J. Sherman, The Construction of Memory in Interwar France (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), 313–15; Amy J. Kinsel, “From Turning Point to Peace Memorial: A Cultural Legacy,” in Gabor Boritt, ed., The Gettysburg Nobody Knows (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 219–20.

18 “Scenes in Columbia, South Carolina, the Morning after the Fire,” Harper's Weekly, 9 (1 April 1865), 200–1Google Scholar; “The Burning of Columbia, South Carolina, February 17, 1865,” Harper's Weekly, 9 (8 April 1865), 217 Google Scholar.

19 Harvey S. Teal, Partners with the Sun: South Carolina Photographers, 1840–1940 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 100, 116–19.

20 Emma LeConte, When the World Ended: The Diary of Emma LeConte, ed. Earl Schenck Miers (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987; first published 1957), 77; David P. Conyngham, Sherman's March through the South, with Sketches and Incidents of the Campaign (New York: Sheldon and Company, 1865), 335; D. H. Trezevant, The Burning of Columbia, S. C.: A Review of Northern Assertions and Southern Facts (Columbia: South Carolinian Power Press, 1866), 8. See also Megan Kate Nelson, Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012), 44–59.

21 William A. Link, Atlanta, Cradle of the New South: Race and Remembering in the Civil War's Aftermath (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 55.

22 The South Carolina Monument Association: Origin, History, and Work (Charleston, SC: New and Courier Book Presses, 1879), 40, 44.

23 Charles J. Holden, “‘Is Our Love for Wade Hampton Foolishness?’ South Carolina and the Lost Cause,” in Gary W. Gallagher and Alan T. Nolan, eds., The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000), 60–88.

24 Brown, Civil War Canon, 156–57; Russell Maxey, South Carolina's Historic Columbia: Yesterday and Today in Photographs (Columbia: R. L. Bryan Company, 1980), 42–43.

25 William Gilmore Simms, Sack and Destruction of the City of Columbia, S. C. (Columbia: Power Press of the Daily Phoenix, 1865), 48; Report of the Historical Commission to the General Assembly of South Carolina at the Regular Session of 1931 (Columbia: General Assembly Joint Committee on Printing, 1931), 5; Christie Zimmerman Fant, The State House of South Carolina: An Illustrated Historic Guide (Columbia: R. L. Bryan Company, 1970), 118.

26 Charles E. Lee, “Mid-century Supplement, 1936–1966,” in Helen Kohn Hennig, ed., Columbia, Capital City of South Carolina, 1786–1936, repr. edn (Columbia: State Printing Company, 1966; first published 1936), 436–37. The Confederate monument of First Presbyterian Church, fashioned from a column damaged by Sherman's troops during the occupation of the state house, echoed the motif of the ruined capitol. Robert S. Siegler, A Guide to Confederate Monuments in South Carolina: “Passing the Silent Cup” (Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1997), 262–64.

27 “Marker to Be Unveiled on Site of First State House in Columbia,” The State (Columbia), 24 Feb. 1938, 1.

28 Davis, What the Yankees Did to Us, 411–12; Gould B. Hagler Jr., Georgia's Confederate Monuments: In Honor of a Fallen Nation (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2014), 156–57.

29 William Gilmore Simms, Sack and Destruction of the City of Columbia, S.C., ed. A. S. Salley (n.p.: Oglethorpe University Press, 1937), 97 n. 23. An alternative version reported that Mitchell pointed the soldiers to Washington Street Methodist Church.

30 Margaret Babcock Meriwether, “Hampton-Preston Museum Option Expires Shortly,” The State, 30 Nov. 1940, 1.

31 Alfred Price, Blitz on Britain: The Bomber Attacks on the United Kingdom, 1939–1945 (London: Ian Allan, 1977), 103; Peter Stansky, The First Day of the Blitz: September 7, 1940 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 3.

32 Woodward, C. Vann, “The Irony of Southern History,” Journal of Southern History, 19, 1 (Feb. 1953), 3–19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 19; “Atlanta's Honor to the Memory of General Robert E. Lee,” Atlanta Constitution, 18 Oct. 1870, 1.

33 Deborah C. Pollack, “Marie Boozer: The Extraordinary Life of a Notorious Southern Beauty,” unpublished MS, 11, quoting Manly Wade Wellman. I am deeply grateful to Ms. Pollack for generously permitting me to read and cite her assiduous research.

34 Lawrence Buell, The Dream of the Great American Novel (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 224.

35 Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind (New York: MacMillan Company, 1936), 142–43. Subsequent references, also from this edition, are provided parenthetically in the text.

36 Helen Deiss Irvin, “Gea in Georgia: A Mythic Dimension in Gone with the Wind,” in Darden Asbury Pyron, ed., Recasting: Gone with the Wind in American Culture (Miami: University Presses of Florida, 1983), 57–68.

37 Ed Kauffman and Giner Curwen, “Action: Final Promotion Plan,” 6 Jan. 1978, Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina (hereafter SCL), Folder 637.

38 Deane Ritch Lomax, “She Collected Men!”, Charlotte Observer, 2 Aug. 1959; Bonita Appleton, “Another Beauty from the Old South,” Jackson-Clarion Ledger, 19 July 1959, both in Coker Papers, SCL, Folder 653.

39 Margaret Mitchell to Henry Steele Commager, 10 July 1936, in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind Letters, 1936–1949, ed. Richard Harwell (New York: MacMillan Publishing, 1976), 39.

40 Elizabeth Boatwright Coker, La Belle (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1959), 8. Subsequent references, also from this edition, are provided parenthetically in the text.

41 Elizabeth Boatwright Coker, “Sandal or Scandal: Being the True Story of the Countess Pourtales, Formerly Miss Marie Boozer of Columbia, S.C.” (unpublished MS), 5, Coker Papers, SCL, Folder 654.

42 C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut's Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 753.

43 Yates Snowden, ed., The Countess Pourtales (n.p.: S. & H. Publishing, 1915), 42–43.

44 Coker, Elizabeth Boatwright, “La Belle Marie: The Final Chapter,” Sandlapper, 9, 10 (Nov. 1976), 46–48 Google Scholar, 46. Pollack, “Marie Boozer,” 200-15, 240–42, traces the spread of these tales. See also Tom Elmore, The Scandalous Lives of Carolina Belles Marie Boozer and Amelia Feaster: Flirting with the Enemy (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2014).

45 Elizabeth Boatwright Coker to Naomi Burton (copy), n.d., Coker Papers, SCL, Folder 636.

46 Coker followed Snowden, 9, in distorting the eyewitness testimony of Edward L. Wells, Hampton and His Cavalry in ’64 (Richmond, VA: B. F. Johnson Publishing Company, 1899), 402–3, 409, which expressly reported that Boozer was not the woman found with Kilpatrick. See generally Eric J. Wittenberg, The Battle of Monroe's Crossroads and the Civil War's Final Campaign (New York: Savas Beatie, 2006), 252–54. E. L. Doctorow, The March (New York: Random House, 2005), 226–38, 245–47, revisits this legend.

47 Nell S. Graydon, Another Jezebel (Columbia, SC: R. L. Bryan Company, 1958), 156; Graydon, Tales of Columbia (Columbia, SC: R. L. Bryan Company, 1964), 126–27. Marie Boozer's only child was named Preston. Yates Snowden, “A Study in Scarlet,” in Snowden, The Countess Pourtales, 5–17, 5, is the source for John Preston's supposed remark about Boozer.

48 Hyman Rubin III, South Carolina Scalawags (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), 14–15; Benjamin Ginsberg, Moses of South Carolina: A Jewish Scalawag during Reconstruction (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 108.

49 John M. Sherrer, “A Comprehensive History of the Hampton-Preston Mansion in Columbia, South Carolina,” MA thesis, University of South Carolina, 1998, 42.

50 Helen King, “The Hampton-Preston Mansion,” The State, 24 Aug. 1958, 3-C.

51 Margaret Mitchell to Harriet Ross Colquitt, 7 Aug. 1936, in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind Letters, 50.

52 John Brinckerhoff Jackson, The Necessity for Ruins and Other Topics (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980), 89–102; Rudy Koshar, From Monuments to Traces: Artifacts of German Memory, 1870–1990 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 153–64; Mario Carpo, “The Postmodern Cult of Monuments,” Future Anterior, 4 (Winter 2007), 51–60. Woodward, In Ruins, 209–21, discusses Coventry Cathedral and other notable exceptions.

53 Jennifer W. Dickey, A Tough Little Patch of History: Gone with the Wind and the Politics of Memory (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2014), 75. The most influential American monument to emerge from World War II, the Marine Corps Memorial dedicated in 1954, illustrates the same pattern.

54 David B. Freeman, Carved in Stone: The History of Stone Mountain (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997), 177.

55 Davis, What the Yankees Did, 191.

56 Sherrer, 57.

57 Graydon, Tales of Columbia, 181. On urban renewal and southern memory see Brundage, The Southern Past, chapter 6.

58 Sherrer, 79.

59 Christopher A. Thomas, The Lincoln Memorial and American Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 162; Cook, Robert, “(Un)furl That Banner: The Response of White Southerners to the Civil War Centennial of 1961–1965,” Journal of Southern History, 68, 4 (Nov. 2002), 899–912 Google Scholar.

60 Brown, Civil War Canon, 201–35; John M. Coski, The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), 89–128, 252–55.

61 Kirk Savage, Monument Wars: Washington, D. C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 261–70.

62 Alan Blinder, “150 Years Later, Wrestling with a Revised View of Sherman's March,” New York Times, 14 Nov. 2014.

63 Rubin, Through the Heart of Dixie, 33; James W. Loewen, Lies across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong (New York: New Press, 1999), 279.

64 Hsieh, Wayne Wei-Hsiang, “Total War and the American Civil War Reconsidered: The End of an Outdated Master Narrative,” Journal of the Civil War Era, 1 (Sept. 2011), 394–408 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, surveys this scholarship.