Circa1865

Diabolical Plot at Appomattox

“The most vehement of all the controversies during the 1932 convention erupted at sessions of the Confederated Southern Memorial Association, an organization composed of representatives of various women’s organizations scattered over the South who were in charge of Confederate cemeteries and similar institutions.

A proposed monument at Appomattox was the cause of this unfortunate outburst. The suggestion for such a memorial originated with the citizens of Appomattox and the nearby city of Lynchburg, and legislation providing for the shaft had been introduced in Congress by Senator Claude Swanson and Representative Henry St. George Tucker, both of Virginia.

A contest was held for the design and William C. Noland, one of Virginia’s most distinguished architects who had designed the Jefferson Davis Monument in Richmond, was chairman of the committee that made the award.

Noland and his associates chose the entry submitted by a Philadelphia firm. It called for a fifty-seven-foot shaft, banded with laurel, with the great seal of the United States on the front, an image of US Grant on one side and of Robert E. Lee on the other. The pavement under the base was to be blue and grey. The inscription was: “North – South; Peace – Unity. Appomattox, the Site of the Termination of the War Between the States, 1861-1865.”

The CSMA convention went into an uproar over the proposal. A resolution was introduced rejecting the entire concept. The memorial was termed “an insult to General Lee and to every Southern soldier who fought and died for the Confederate cause.” An overheated Southern lady termed it a memorial to “that butcher Grant.”

Mrs. Norma Hardy Britton of Washington, DC, a member of the CSMA, was the sole person to speak on behalf of the monument. She argued that the plan was a “mark of conciliation from the North,” a statement that almost precipitated a fight among the members,” according to the Richmond News Leader. The great majority took the view that it was a diabolical plot concocted by the North to humiliate the South.

When the vote was taken, only four persons supported the plan.”

(The Last Review: The Confederate Reunion, Richmond 1932. Virginius Dabney. Algonquin Books, 1984, pp. 22-24)