No Common Ground

Starred review from March 1, 2021

In her superb contribution to the history of the South, Cox (Dixie's Daughters) targets the massive influence of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) on Southerners in the late 1890s and beyond, especially in the area of monument building. According to the author, members were motivated not just to honor their veteran ancestors, but to vindicate them as well. Cox maintains that the UDC spent millions of dollars on statue projects, and that much of the money was appropriated from state and local governments. She argues that, while funding monuments and memorials and lobbying for their placement were critical aspects of the UDC's work in the early 20th century, its agenda looked toward the future as much as it commemorated the past. According to Cox, UDC advocates sought to ensure that future generations of white Southerners would hold up their Confederate ancestors as heroes and would themselves defend the same principles for which their forerunners fought, including an all-out defense of states' rights. VERDICT This is an invaluable study of all-too-frequently misplaced genealogical and regional venerations. Highly recommended for U.S., antebellum, Civil War, African American, and Southern historians and scholars, and for all readers.--John Carver Edwards, formerly with Univ. of Georgia Libs.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2021
A chronicle of the effort to erect and protect or remove Confederate statues or other monuments. Cox, a historian of the American South, estimates that several hundred monuments to the Confederacy exist in cemeteries, town squares, and other public spaces, and many have faced political and legal challenges in recent years. In this engrossing social history, the author writes that while these memorials began with an impulse to remember the dead, the United Daughters of the Confederacy soon began using them to promote the so-called "Lost Cause" view that in the Civil War, the South fought not for slavery but for states' rights. Cox follows changes that have occurred since Reconstruction in the stances of friends and foes of the monuments, including Black activists whose opposition grew during the civil rights era and gained further momentum during recent protests centered on Confederate battle flags or statues of Robert E. Lee in cities such as Charleston, New Orleans, Charlottesville, and Richmond. The author argues that such monuments and symbols, like flags, are not harmless throwbacks: "They are weapons in the larger arsenal of white supremacy, artifacts of Jim Crow not unlike the 'whites only' signs that declared black southerners to be second-class citizens." For such reasons, Cox makes an implicit case for removing monuments from publicly funded spaces without reconciling that position with her view that monuments are "essentially, a local problem" and decisions about them should be made by "a cross-section of community stakeholders." She suggests no compromises that might work if residents of a community disagree on removal--there may be "no common ground" among people for whom monuments represent "competing visions of history." Nonetheless, this clear and thorough account, essential for Southern libraries, is likely to become a standard reference work on its subject. A well-documented history of Confederate monuments and the conflicting views they inspire.

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