ORIGIN/BACKGROUND
In 1903, the UVA Board of Visitors authorized the Ladies’ Confederate Memorial Association of Albemarle County to erect “at some suitable place at the University” bronze plaques to commemorate students and alumni who died in the service of the Confederacy. The “suitable place” chosen was on the Rotunda, with tandem bronze plaques on either side of the door facing the Lawn. Conspicuously absent, however, was any mention of alumni who fought for the Union.
The top of the memorial tablets read, “The Honor Roll In Memory of the Students and Alumni of the University of Virginia Who Lost Their Lives in the Military Service of the Confederacy 1861-1865.” The plaques then listed the names of the over five hundred students and alumni who had died during the conflict. Interestingly, many individuals listed are familiar to UVA students, who may recognize names such as “Cabell”, “Carr”, “Cocke”, “Maupin”, “McCormick”, and “Ruffner” from buildings and locations around Grounds. This demonstrates the university’s foundations as a Confederate institution, and reveals the extent to which such influence persists even today. Lastly, the bottom of the memorial tablets also acknowledged the Ladies Confederate Memorial Association and the year of the plaque’s dedication, 1906.
Transcription of Rotunda Confederate Plaques
The dedication ceremony on May 23, 1906 featured a speech given by Randolph McKim, a former UVA student who had served as a Confederate soldier and military chaplain and was also a prominent promoter of the Lost Cause. Interestingly, in a memoir published in 1910, McKim confessed to being one of seven students responsible for breaking into the Rotunda and raising the Confederate flag atop the dome in early 1861, prior to Virginia’s official secession from the Union. In his oration, McKim admired those who died for their “supreme sacrifice” and praised the University itself for staying open throughout the war, a symbol of the “cause and spirit of the South.” President Alderman’s remarks in accepting the two tablets were slightly more characteristic of Lost Cause rhetoric however. “It is fit and proper that these names should shine in immortal youth on the front of the building recalling in its antique beauty the grandeur of the older world,” he said, “ as their mighty sacrifices recall unselfish consecration and love of country, the antique virtues of that same older world.” Although true “love of country” may be better attributed to those Virginians who chose to fight for the Union instead of the Confederacy, this romanticization of the Old South served to idealize the Lost Cause and mythologize the past.
McKim's Written Speech at the Dedication of Confederate Tablets on South Front of the Rotunda (and Transcription):
“We are met together this morning to do honor to those alumni and students of the University of Virginia who paid the supreme sacrifice during our Civil War. It is well that we consider the record of this University during those fateful years. No fiction that could be devised, no record ever preserved could speak more eloquently of the cause and spirit of the South.”
“Virginia was the battlefield of the Civil War; yet do you know my friends, that only for a single day during those eventful years did this University close her doors? Though the roaring cannons of Piedmont, Manassas, and Appomattox reverberated among these ancient columns, the classes of this university were suspended for but a single day during those four years of furious strife.”
“We are not to interpret this to mean that Virginia was not affected. No, by no means! This roster of hallowed names bears silent testimony to the part her sons played in that noble struggle. From an attendance of six hundred and four in the year preceding the outbreak of the war, she was reduced to an average attendance of fifty-four during the succeeding four years. In ‘63, one hundred thirty-eight students were graduated, but in ‘64 there were only eleven. In the summer, our campus received the wounded from the First Battle of Manassas – both Yanks and Rebels alike. On our walks and under the shade of those stately trees, might have been seen the beardless boy worshipping in silent admiration his wounded and battle-scarred classmate.”
“This university is one of the few in the South which was not closed during the War. The Board of Visitors decided that our doors were to remain open; and that we should go on preparing our young men for those days when the sword of war should be sheathed, and when military practice should give way to the pursuits of agriculture, commerce, and the arts.”
“These two tablets are erected to commemorate the death of over five hundred sons of this university. In a larger sense we trust that, occupying as they do a conspicuous place on either side of the door to this house of learning, they will daily serve to remind students passing in and out that even in the darkest hours of the history of our state, the torch of learning was not allowed to die out. May the recipients of those treasures inside, be daily reminded of the record of their predecessors; and may they ever keep well trimmed and oiled that lamp of learning which has always been the pride and heritage of this university.”
REMOVAL
More than 100 years after their initial dedication, the Board of Visitors voted unanimously to remove the Confederate plaques from the Rotunda following the infamous white supremacist attacks of August 11th and 12th, 2017. UVA students themselves led the movement against the plaques, yet another example of the efficacy of student activism against Confederate symbols on Grounds. In the resolution passed on September 15th, 2017, the Board called for the plaques to be “preserved as artifacts of the era in which they were erected.” Furthermore, it called on the University to consider memorializing all who served in the Civil War – on both sides – with a new tablet on the Rotunda or finding another way to “tell the University’s history more fully.” Then-President Teresa Sullivan explained that efforts had been underway long before the events of August 11th and 12th to add another plaque recognizing University students who fought for the Union during the Civil War. However, the recent events gave a greater sense of urgency to such changes in memorialization.
The Board’s resolutions were also spurred by a list of 10 demands posed by the Black Student Alliance in the wake of the August 11th/12th events.
Such demands were endorsed by a number of other student groups, including UVA’s Student Council. The first demand on the list was to remove the Confederate plaques on the Rotunda, which the Board addressed. Another demand that the Board fulfilled was acknowledgement of a 1921 donation to the University from the Ku Klux Klan and reinvestment of the same amount adjusted for inflation towards helping the victims of the violent Aug. 12 rally. One demand that was not addressed at the time, but has been addressed more recently, is that “UVA’s historical landscape must be balanced.” The list of demands asserted that “the statue of Jefferson serves as an emblem of white supremacy, and should be re-contextualized with a plaque to include that history”. It also argued that “more buildings named after prominent white supremacists, eugenicists, or slaveholders should be renamed after people of marginalized groups”. This sixth demand to alter the memorial landscape of the university was largely addressed by the actions taken earlier this year by the Board of Visitors, which passed resolutions to contextualize the Thomas Jefferson statue, rededicate or remove the Hume Memorial Wall, and rename the Curry School of Education, among other initiatives dedicated to racial equity.
Interestingly, following the Board’s unanimous vote to remove the plaques, there still seemed to be some dissension amongst members. Board member Thomas DePasquale said the Board needed to be careful with how they treated the plaques because he said the Confederate soldiers were also American soldiers fighting for their country. However, Board member Barbara Fried replied that the plaques showed an incomplete story of the Civil War. “I don’t think we’re trashing the dead. The fact that no Union soldiers were placed on those plaques says it all,” Fried said. Also in contrast to DePasquale’s point, Board member Maurice Jones argued the soldiers commemorated on the plaques fought for the Confederacy, not the United States. “These were not young men dying for America. They were dying for the Confederacy,” Jones said. Following Jones’s comments, Rector Frank M. Conner III closed the discussion on the subject of the Confederate plaques to avoid it becoming “irreconcilable.” Such comments reflect the continued tensions surrounding Civil War memory and the pervasive divisiveness that it seems to engender even today, more than 150 years after the end of the conflict.
'NEGLECTED ALUMNI'
In the decades after the Civil War, UVA honored Confederate Cavaliers in numerous ways, such as by rewarding medals to Confederate soldiers and hosting Confederate reunions, in addition to the Confederate cemetery statue and Rotunda plaques memorializing the Confederate dead. Noticeably, only the Confederate dead are honored on the statue and the plaques made no mention of Unionist students and alumni who died. This isn’t to say that such individuals simply didn’t exist however. While support for the Confederacy was overwhelming, it was not unanimous. In fact, 57 students and one professor from UVA served in the Union Army during the Civil War. However, these UVA Unionists shared a neglected obscurity as the university chose instead to glorify its Confederate past. As a result of the university’s efforts in the postbellum period to construct a war-time narrative of unity, there was no room for acknowledgement of its own Union soldiers and sailors. For example, the Alumni Bulletin often went into great detail on the military service of Confederate veterans, but rarely made any mention of UVA’s Union soldiers.
Such a blatant omission was even called out by an October 1913 editorial in the Staunton Daily News, which criticized the lack of attention paid to Virginia students who served in the Union military during the Civil War. The article was entitled “Neglected Alumni” and was meant to call attention to the grave oversight on the part of Virginia colleges for ignoring students who served in Federal forces. “In this day, when we rejoice in a reunited land, when Lee's statue lies in the capitol at Washington and when the bitterness of a half-century and old strife has been forgotten, our Virginia schools can surely remember with pride their sons who saw the path of duty differently from the way that most of their brother alumni did," the editorial stated. Such an argument reflects a reconciliationist memory strand, which focuses on the shared heroism and gallantry of soldiers rather than the causes for which they fought. However, UVA instead chose to stick to its selective, pro-Confederate memory of the Civil War.
The UVA Nau Center for Civil War History has engaged in substantial efforts recently to shed more light on the hidden history of Southern Unionism. By uncovering the stories and experiences of alumni and students who fought for the Union, the Nau Center hopes to complicate the traditionally Confederate-dominated history of UVA during the war. Although the Lost Cause tradition emphasized southern unity and unanimity, such a view distorts historical fact. Just as the Confederate plaques were removed for their one-sided memorialization, this UVA Unionists project demonstrates the importance of telling the whole story.
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