United Daughters of the Confederacy

This article is about the patriotic-hereditary society. For the United Daughters of the Confederacy Memorial Building, see Memorial to Women of the Confederacy.
United Daughters
of the
Confederacy

Abbreviation UDC
Motto "Think, Love, Pray, Dare, Live"
Established September 10, 1894 (1894-09-10)
Founders Caroline Goodlett,
Anna Raines
Type Patriotic-Hereditary society
Legal status Federally chartered corporation
Purpose Social, benevolent, historical, memorial
Headquarters Memorial Building,
328 North Boulevard,
Richmond, Virginia
Region served
Nationwide
Membership (2014)
18,802
President-General
 Pamela Trammell
First Vice-President-General
 Patricia Bryson
Second Vice-President-General
 Nelma Crutcher
Third Vice-President-General
 Laura Conner
General Executive Board
Publication UDC Magazine
Subsidiaries Children of the Confederacy
Website hqudc.org
Formerly called
 National Association of the Daughters of the Confederacy

The United Daughters of the Confederacy, Inc., founded in 1894, is an association of female descendants of Confederate veterans. Its role in the first half of the 20th century was to preserve and uphold the memory of the Confederate veterans, especially those husbands, sons, fathers and brothers who died in the war. Their long-term impact was to promote the Lost Cause image of the antebellum plantation South as an idealized society crushed by the forces of Yankee modernization.

Focus

Further information: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

The UDC was influential primarily in the early twentieth century across the South, where its main role was to preserve and uphold the memory of the Confederate veterans, especially those husbands, sons, fathers and brothers who died in the war. Its long-term impact was to promote the Lost Cause image of the antebellum plantation South as an idealized society crushed by the forces of Yankee modernization.[1]

Memory and memorials became the central focus.[2] In Missouri, a border state, the United daughters of the Confederacy was active in setting up its own system of memorials in distinction to black memories and Unionist white memories.[3]

History

Statue in Bentonville Square

Across the Southern United States, associations were founded after the Civil War, chiefly by women, to organize burials of Confederate soldiers, establish and care for permanent cemeteries for Confederate soldiers, organize commemorative ceremonies, and sponsor impressive monuments as a permanent way of remembering the Confederate cause and tradition.[4] They were "strikingly successful at raising money to build Confederate monuments, lobbying legislatures and Congress for the reburial of Confederate dead, and working to shape the content of history textbooks."[5] They also raised money to care for the widows and children of the Confederate dead. Most of these memorial associations eventually merged into the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which grew from 17,000 members in 1900 to nearly 100,000 women by World War I.[6]

Historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall argues that the UDC was a powerful promoter of women's history:

UDC leaders were determined to assert women's cultural authority over virtually every representation of the region's past. This they did by lobbying for state archives and museums, national historic sites, and historic highways; compiling genealogies; interviewing former soldiers; writing history textbooks; and erecting monuments, which now moved triumphantly from cemeteries into town centers. More than half a century before women's history and public history emerged as fields of inquiry and action, the UDC, with other women's associations, strove to etch women's accomplishments into the historical record and to take history to the people, from the nursery and the fireside to the schoolhouse and the public square.[7]

The organization encouraged women to publish their experiences in the war, beginning with biographies of major southern figures, such as Varina Davis' of her husband Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. Later, women began adding more of their own experiences to the "public discourse about the war", in the form of memoirs, such as those published in the early 1900s by Sara Pryor, Virginia Clopton and Louise Wright and others. They also recommended structures for the memoirs. By the turn of the twentieth century, a dozen memoirs by southern women were published. They constituted part of the growing public memory about the antebellum years and the Lost Cause, as they vigorously defended the Confederacy.[8]

After 1900 the UDC became an umbrella organization coordinating local memorial groups.[9] The goal was to foster and shape public memory across the South by promoting visibility and a positive image of Confederate veterans. The UDC women specialized in sponsoring local monuments to anonymous soldiers. After 1945, they were active in placing historical markers along Southern highways.[10]

The UDC has also been active in national causes during wartime. According to the organization, during World War I, it funded 70 hospital beds at the American Military Hospital on the Western front and contributed $82,000 for French and Belgian war orphans. Homefront campaign raised $24 million for war bonds and savings stamps. Members donated over $800,000 to the Red Cross. During World War II, the U.D.C. gave financial aid to student nurses.

Similar organizations

The UDC was quite prominent, but not at all unique in its appeal to upscale white southern women. "The number of women's clubs devoted to filiopietism and history was staggering," says historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage. He notes two typical club women in Texas and Mississippi, who between them belonged to the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Daughters of the American Revolution, Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, Daughters of the Pilgrims, Daughters of the War of 1812, Daughters of Colonial Governors, and Daughters of the Founders and Patriots of America, Order of the First Families of Virginia, and the Colonial Dames of America, as well as a few other other historically oriented societies. Comparable men, on the other hand, were much less interested in historical organizations, and devoted their energies to secret fraternal societies, while they emphasized athletic, political and financial exploits to prove their manhood. Brundage notes that after women's suffrage came in 1920, the historical role of the women's organizations eroded.[11]

In their heyday in the first two decades of the 20th century, Brundage concludes that:

These women architects of whites' historical memory, by both explaining and mystifying the historical roots of white supremacy and delete power in the South, performed a conspicuous civic function at a time of heightened concern about the perpetuation of social and political hierarchies. Although denied the franchise, organized white women nevertheless played a dominant role in crafting the historical memory that would inform and undergird southern politics and public life.[12]

Goals of the group

UDC marker at the Jefferson Davis Memorial Historic Site

As stated in the Articles of Incorporation of 1894, the Objectives of the society are Historical, Benevolent, Educational, Memorial and Patriotic and include the following goals:

Controversy over insignia

In July 1993, Senator Jesse Helms made several attempts to extend a patent on the United Daughters of the Confederacy insignia, which included the Confederate flag, and needed to be renewed every 14 years. Initially it had been a rider on a bill for Olestra, a fat substitute, but Senator Carol Moseley Braun, then a freshman Senator and the only black one, discovered it and removed it in committee.[14] Helms then introduced it directly onto the Senate floor, proposing an amendment to the national service bill, which would provide educational grants in return for various forms of service. With many senators unaware of what they were voting on, he won a test vote, 52 to 48.

Then Senator Moseley Braun took the floor in outrage at the defense of a symbol of slavery, supported by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.[15] She told the Senate[16]

"On this issue there can be no consensus. It is an outrage. It is an insult. It is absolutely unacceptable to me and to millions of Americans, black or white, that we would put the imprimatur of the United States Senate on a symbol of this kind of idea...This flag is the real flag of the Confederacy."

But Senator Howell Heflin of Alabama supported Moseley Braun, and said his family was "rooted in the Confederacy."[17]

Children of the Confederacy

"Children of the Confederacy Creed" plaque at the Texas State Capitol

The UDC has a youth auxiliary called the Children of the Confederacy (CofC). The UDC is open to both males and females "from birth" to the CofC convention after their 18th birthday, who can trace their lineage to a Confederate ancestor, or to a member of the UDC. The group has historically held meetings with veterans, widows and historians of the Civil War, observed Confederate Memorial Days, decorated graves, sponsored scholarships and published pamphlets and catechisms presenting the "Southern version" of the Civil War.[18] Today they also engage in activities such as book drives for Beauvoir, fundraising for the Ronald McDonald House, canned food drives as well as veterans causes.[19][20] The first CoC chapter was organized by the Mary Custis Lee Chapter of the UDC in Alexandria, Virginia in 1896. It was formally incorporated on May 6, 1897. New chapters were established in Virginia and Alabama by 1898.[21]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Karen L. Cox, Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and preservation of Southern Culture (University Press of Florida, 2003) pp. 1-7
  2. ↑ Cynthia Mills, and Pamela Hemenway Simpson, eds. Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory (U. of Tennessee Press, 2003)
  3. ↑ Megan B. Boccardi, "Remembering in black and white: Missouri women's memorial work 1860-1910" (PhD. Dissertation,, University of Missouri--Columbia, 2011, online.
  4. ↑ Cynthia Mills and Pamela H. Simpson, eds., Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory (2003)
  5. ↑ Faust 2008, pp. 237–247.
  6. ↑ Blight 2001, pp. 272–273.
  7. ↑ Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, "'You must remember this': Autobiography as social critique." Journal of American History (1998): 439-465 at p 450. in JSTOR
  8. ↑ Gardner 2006, pp. 128–130.
  9. ↑ Janney, 2012
  10. ↑ H. E. Gulley, "Women and the Lost Cause: Preserving A Confederate Identity in the American Deep South." Journal of Historical Geography (1993) 19#2 pp 125-141
  11. ↑ W. Fitzhugh Brundage, "White Women and the Politics of Historical Memory in the New South, 1880-1920." in Jane Dailey, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, & Bryant Simon, eds., Jumpin' Jim Crow: Southern Politics from Civil War to Civil Rights (Princeton UP, 2000) pp. 115-39. esp. 119, 123, 131
  12. ↑ Brundage, "White Women and the Politics of Historical Memory in the New South, pp 115-16
  13. ↑ "History of the UDC | United Daughters of the Confederacy". Hqudc.org. 1919-07-18. Retrieved 2016-03-08.
  14. ↑ "Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond & the Confederate Flag - Carol Moseley Braun". YouTube. Retrieved 2016-03-08.
  15. ↑ "Senator MoseleyBraun Remarks Confederate Insignia | User Clip". C-SPAN.org. Retrieved 2016-03-08.
  16. ↑ Clymer, Adam (1993-07-23). "Daughter of Slavery Hushes Senate". NYTimes.com. Retrieved 2016-03-08.
  17. ↑ "Senator Heflin Confederate Insignia | User Clip". C-SPAN.org. Retrieved 2016-03-08.
  18. ↑ Free Speech and the Lost Cause in the Old Dominion Fred Arthur Bailey The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography , Vol. 103, No. 2, "Play the Bitter Loser's Game": Reconstruction and the Lost Cause in the Old Dominion (Apr., 1995), pp. 2350-1
  19. ↑ "Children of Confederacy Active in Community Service". Timesexaminer.com. 2012-03-21. Retrieved 2013-02-11.
  20. ↑ "Children of Confederacy, DAR bring gifts to vets". Sptimes.com. Retrieved 2013-02-11.
  21. ↑ Rutherford 1916, p. 28.

References

  • Blight, David (2001). Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 
  • Cox, Karen L. Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (University Press of Florida, 2003)
  • Faust, Drew (2008). This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 
  • Gardner, Sarah (2006). Blood And Irony: Southern White Women's Narratives of the Civil War, 1861-1937. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. 
  • Gulley, H. E. "Women and the Lost Cause: Preserving A Confederate Identity in the American Deep South." Journal of Historical Geography (1993) 19#2 pp 125–141.
  • Janney, Caroline E. Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies' Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause (Univ of North Carolina Press, 2012); shows the UDC worked closely with local memorial associations
  • Mills, Cynthia and Pamela H. Simpson, eds. Monuments To The Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory (2003)
  • Rutherford, Mildred Lewis (1916). What the South May Claim. Athens, Georgia: M'Gregor Co. Retrieved June 15, 2014. 
  • United Daughters of the Confederacy, Inc., Business Office. Minutes of the One Hundred and Twenty-first Annual General Convention of the United Daughters of the Confederacy held in Richmond, Va. November 6-10, 2014. Richmond, Virginia: Author. 
  • United Daughters of the Confederacy, Inc., Business Office (2013). U.D.C. Handbook (6th ed.). Richmond, Virginia. 

Further reading

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