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[[File:Confederate_monument_Elmira_NY.jpg|thumbnail|250px|left|Monument to Confederate dead in Elmira, NY]]

As one travels across the southern United States, it is not unusual to find monuments and memorials to the Confederate dead in many small towns. In fact, these sculptural pieces, often composed of the same statues and plinths from the Monumental Bronze Co. of Bridgeport, Conn., can be found as far north as Pennsylvania and New York. A study in 2016 found some 1,500 monuments still standing.<ref>David A. Graham, "The Stubborn Persistence of Confederate Monuments," <i>The Atlantic</i>, April 26, 2016, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/the-stubborn-persistence-of-confederate-monuments/479751/</ref> While in recent years these monuments have become a new source of political conversation their very erection was a movement by Confederate women.

====Formation of Women’s Organizations and the beginnings of the Lost Cause====

These women’s groups were part of a larger social movement which melded the Victorian ideal of the woman as the “Angel in the House” with a need to do something to cope with the large scale grief and death.<ref>Catherine W. Bishir,"A Strong Force of Ladies": Women, Politics, and Confederate Memorial Associations in Nineteenth-Century Raleigh." <i>The North Carolina Historical Review</i> 77, no. 4 (October 2000): 455-91.</ref> Groups of middle and upper-class women came together, seeking to memorialize the large numbers of dead in their families and communities as well as their lost cause of the Confederacy.<ref>Janney, <i>Burying the Dead</i>, 58</ref> These early efforts came in the same vein as the later romanticism of the plantation most famously seen in “Gone With the Wind” - a book and film which serves, for many individuals in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as their main point of reference for what pre-war southern life was like, as well as the southern experience during the war.<ref>Anya Jabour, <i>Scarlett's Sisters: Young Women in the Old South</i>, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 281.</ref> Like Margaret Mitchell’s later fiction, these public memorials were designed to maintain the social and cultural hierarchy of the old south, in this case by placing visual reminders of white male Confederate veterans and the Confederacy in public places and at high vantage points.<ref>Mills, <i>Monuments</i>, 141.</ref> These actions epitomize the postwar political climate during which Confederate Veterans and their children dominated the positions of power in local governments and communities, but while those politicians were men in male roles, the monuments represent a trend in women’s work outside the home and their incursion within the traditionally masculine realm of politics.<ref>Mills, <i>Monuments</i>, 16.</ref>

Originally Confederate monuments were kept within the private sphere, such as within local Confederate cemeteries. Here they memorialized individuals or groups of local dead just as did private tombstones. In this way, women retained their association with the family while also using their grief as a political tool. Soon, however, women's organizations moved their memorial efforts onto public land, frequently with the help of public funding.<ref>Karen L. Cox, <i>Dixie's daughters the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the preservation of Confederate culture,</i>, (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2003), 57.</ref> Fundraising for such projects brought women into working relationships with the political and economic elect - contact they had previously only had on a social level.<ref> Mills, Monuments, 12.</ref> It was these fundraising endeavors that allowed for a greater range of elite women's roles in the years following the war, as they were faced with a world very different from that of the first half of the nineteenth century.<ref> Mills, Monuments, xvi.</ref>

The manner in which Confederate women's groups lobbied for government funds showed one aspect of their savvy in manipulating images of traditional womanhood. Rather than present themselves in a way which could be perceived as threatening to those men who were in positions to aid their goals, they instead portrayed both their organizations and efforts as in need of male assistance.<ref>Mills, <i>Monuments</i>, 18. </ref> This is particularly evident in the planning of dedication and memorial ceremonies - where male speakers who were sympathetic with either the local Ladies Memorial Association or the later chapters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy were placed in the front with a backdrop of aesthetically pleasing female figures. These female backdrops were often the relatives of prominent Confederate leaders or community members. This helped to reinforce that their importance and significance to the proceedings came through their association with men rather through their own merits - further allowing the women to continue their mission without causing affront through what would have been perceived as non-feminine pursuits.

A further theory for the actions of these groups of women speaks to the connection between women keeping busy and their grief. Some scholars attach the two concepts together beginning at the end of the Civil War and contends that a large part of the activism seen after the war comes simply from that desire to remain busy in an attempt to assuage the overwhelming feelings associated with loss. This business could be seen through handiworks, community organization, or working within the family but is viewed as a reaction to the state of mourning which the nation as a whole fell into following the Civil War.

Through their unique triangulation of mourning, memorialization, and the lost cause Confederate women were successful across the reunited nation at changing the narrative of the Civil War. In a highly problematic manner, these women were able to shift the view from the freed African Americans as victims to Southern gentry as victims. By placing the "Old South" as an idyllic culture which had been destroyed by the so-called "Northern Aggression" these women created a climate where racist societal changes met little objection. Beyond the educational works which ensured that history was taught from the perspective of the white planter class the large monuments served to reinforce these ideas by visually placing Confederates above everyone else. Despite the fact that these monuments portrayed those who had lost the conflict they were portrayed as victors on the field of morality, vindicated by accepted history.

===Conclusion===

The prevalence of Confederate monuments throughout the United States, both in those regions which seceded and those which did not is due to the efforts of women's organizations, working within the social confines of the time. Through this effort, these women were able to put forward a version of history which differed from that within the official record but which many today still accept as fact. These organizations also led to other groups which still exist today including the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

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*[[Why Was Vicksburg “The Gibraltar of the Confederacy?”]]

*[[Interview:African American Soldiers During the Civil War: Interview with Author Bob Luke]]

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