Founding
Women's associations like the UDC had been gaining popularity since before the Civil War, but the last decades of the nineteenth century witnessed a surge in the sheer number of organizations and the coalescing of these associations into national unions. Beginning in the North and Midwest in the 1880s but quickly spreading throughout the nation, groups of women had begun to organize societies devoted to literature, art, scientific culture, general self-improvement, and Progressive reform.
Raised on a large Kentucky plantation, Goodlett was the sister of a Confederate officer who died in the war and the wife of a Confederate veteran. Raines was the Georgia-born daughter of a Confederate officer, and both she and Goodlett had been active in memorial associations. A correspondence between the two that began over whether their separate organizations might share a name eventually led to the formation of the United Daughters with the aim of uniting various women's groups under a single constitution. That document made clear one of the UDC's primary purposes: to instill "a proper respect for and pride in the glorious war history, with a veneration and love for the deeds of their forefathers … and to perpetuate a truthful record of the noble and chivalric achievements of their ancestors." Such veneration would be accomplished through history, education, the construction of monuments, honoring the Confederate dead, the care for widows, and the establishment of museums and relic collections.
The popularity of the Daughters, and indeed most other such groups, shrank over time as the lives of women and American attitudes toward history changed. In 2001, the group estimated its national membership to be 20,000. By 2018, divisions were still active in eighteen states and the District of Columbia. These included Ohio, California, and West Virginia, but no longer New York and Illinois.
History
Civil War history was at the heart of the UDC's mission. In particular, the group's founders emphasized the importance of "furnishing authentic information from which a conscientious historian will be enabled to write a correct and impartial history of the Confederate side during the struggle for Southern independence."
The office of historian-general was created in 1908 in part to review histories and textbooks for material that the UDC deemed "unjust to the South." Rutherford, a Georgian who served in the position from 1911 to 1916, gave speeches, published pamphlets, and wrote newspaper columns that promulgated the Lost Cause view of the war. In one address, delivered on October 22, 1915, she told her audience that "true history" would erase any further sectional conflict.
Mildred Rutherford also published A Measuring Rod to Test Text Books, and Reference Books in Schools, Colleges and Libraries (1919), which was updated by Marion Salley during her term as historian-general, from 1928 to 1931. In conjunction with the United Confederate Veterans, the UDC advocated for history of which they approved, seeking changes to or the removal of books that didn't meet their standards. As the historian Elizabeth Gillespie McRae has pointed out, they benefited from free textbook programs adopted by many states by the end of the 1930s. "While providing the state's schoolchildren with free [often UDC-approved] textbooks," she has written, "the programs also recycled the state-owned textbooks from white schools to black ones, eroding black control over the textbooks in their segregated schools."
Education
From its earliest years, the UDC prioritized the education of students of all ages. To meet the needs of primary school students, the Daughters established the auxiliary organization Children of the Confederacy, the first chapter of which was formed in Alexandria in 1896 and incorporated by the General Assembly in 1898. The Children of the Confederacy aided the Daughters in their memorial and benevolent work but also became the recipients of their educational efforts. The UDC created a series of catechisms intended for study and rote memorization, and these, according to the scholar Amy Lynn Heyse, "were perhaps the UDC's most significant contribution to the South." They instilled in schoolchildren from an early age the tenets of the Lost Cause, helping to shape how whole generations of white people came to understand the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the enslavement of African Americans.
[14] What was the feeling of the slaves towards their masters? They were faithful and devoted and were always ready and willing to serve them. [15] How did they behave during the war? They nobly protected and cared for the wives of soldiers in the field, and widows without protectors; though often prompted by the enemies of the South to burn and plunder the homes of their masters, they were always true and loyal. [16] What were the principles of the Southern people? They believed that each State should regulate her own affairs, according to its best interests, with no meddling with the management of other States, and that each State should loyally support the Constitution of the United States.
The UDC also established essay contests, provided college scholarships to male and female descendants of Confederate veterans, and built dormitories for women at schools such as South Carolina's Winthrop College and Nashville's Peabody Normal College (later part of Vanderbilt University). Hoping to exert a long-time influence on interpretations of the war, the UDC donated books to college libraries. In 1919, for example, a New York chapter donated 8,000 books, documents, and etchings to Peabody College. Through their textbook campaigns, scholarship funds, and library funds, the UDC encouraged the next generation of white southerners to demonstrate pride in their white southern heritage in an effort to quell the political, social, and cultural changes unleashed by the war, emancipation, Reconstruction, and the industrializing society around them.
At the 1909 national convention, a UDC member questioned whether it was appropriate to have a UDC scholarship at Columbia Teachers College, which admitted black students. The scholarship was dropped and others subsequently added, including at Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, New York; Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia; and at the University of Virginia School of Law. The UDC's extensive scholarship program continued into the twenty-first century, as did the Children of the Confederacy. Alexandra Ripley, the author of Scarlett (1991), a sequel to Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind, attended Vassar with help from the UDC's scholarship.
Memorials
The UDC's first major monument project occurred in 1899 when the United Confederate Veterans proposed transferring control of the fund-raising and planning for a statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis in Richmond. By 1901 the Daughters had taken charge, and the monument was unveiled in 1907. On June 6, 1900, Congress authorized the bodies of 267 Confederate soldiers to be reinterred at Arlington National Cemetery. For a host of reasons, the Virginia Division of the UDC, led by Janet Randolph, vehemently opposed the move, believing that the bodies should remain in the South and that the work of the Daughters had been coopted by men. Nevertheless, in 1906 the UDC received permission to erect a monument there. Designed by the Virginia sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel, the Confederate Monument was unveiled on June 4, 1914.
In January 1923, Charles Stedman, a U.S. Representative from North Carolina, introduced a bill on behalf of the UDC to build a so-called Mammy monument in Washington, D.C., to honor enslaved women. "The very few who are left look back at those days [of being enslaved] as the happy golden hours of their lives," he said, but the bill was never enacted.
The reasons for the boom in Confederate monuments was multifaceted. First, it coincided with the high point of UDC membership and the increasing death rate of Confederate veterans. As more and more Confederates passed away, their children and grandchildren felt compelled to honor their Civil War service. Second, the flurry of monument building also coincided with the City Beautiful Movement, which popularized monuments in public spaces. Third, monument building by the UDC followed lock-step with Union memorialization efforts. For example, the most significant Union memorials in Washington, D.C., were dedicated early in the twentieth century, including to William T. Sherman (1903), George B. McClellan (1907), Philip Henry Sheridan (1908), and Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, both in 1922. Finally, it coincided with a period of racial unrest. Jim Crow laws solidified segregation across the South, efforts at disfranchisement prevented significant African American participation in electoral politics, and lynching became a means of violently imposing white control on the black population.
In response to these events, the UDC defended its memorials. At Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee, officials decided to rename Confederate Memorial Hall, prompting the Tennessee Division to sue for breach of contract. In 2016, the group won a $1.2 million judgment, or the present-day equivalent of the $50,000 donation made by the Daughters in 1935. Other lawsuits were filed and won, although the Daughters also attempted to distance themselves from "certain hate groups [that] have taken the Confederate flag and other symbols as their own," according to a statement released by the UDC president-general, Patricia M. Bryson, on August 21, 2017, nine days after the violence in Charlottesville. Bryson wrote that the group "totally denounces any individual or group that promotes racial divisiveness or white supremacy."
Benevolent and Other Work
The UDC maintained Confederate graveyards and helped build veterans' homes throughout the South. In Richmond the Daughters constructed the Home for Needy Confederate Women, which opened at 1726 Grove Avenue on October 15, 1900. The home's twenty-five to thirty beds were not nearly enough to fill the need, and financial difficulties almost forced it to close. Elizabeth Hoskins Montague, the wife of Andrew Jackson Montague, worked at the home for fifty-two years. She helped secure funding and eventually doubled the home's capacity. In 1932 the home moved to 301 North Sheppard Street with space for 100 residents. The final seven women moved out in August 1989, with the last surviving resident, Osa Lee Yates, the daughter of a Confederate soldier, dying on April 30, 1997. She was ninety-eight.
The Daughters also made a point of recognizing Confederate veterans. On April 26, 1900, the group awarded Captain Alexander S. Erwin, of Athens, Georgia, the first Southern Cross of Honor, and in 1919 made descendants of veterans eligible if they had served in World War I. Eventually the Confederate-descended veterans of all U.S. wars and conflicts became eligible for the UDC's highest honor.
Legacy
In the aftermath of the civil rights movement, the Daughters' veneration of their Confederate heritage—and, by association, white supremacy—has made them the subject of controversy. Despite this legacy, the UDC continues to perform many of the duties described in its founding documents, namely benevolent and memorial work on behalf of Confederate memory. The national UDC headquarters remains on North Boulevard in Richmond.
Time Line
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September 10, 1894 - The United Daughters of the Confederacy is formed in Nashville, Tennessee, by Caroline Meriwether Goodlett and Anna Mitchell Davenport Raines as a national "federation of all Southern Women's Auxiliary, Memorial, and Soldiers' Aid Societies."
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1896 - The first chapter of the Children of the Confederacy, an auxiliary group of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, is formed in Alexandria.
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1899 - The United Confederate Veterans propose transferring control of plans for a Jefferson Davis monument in Richmond to the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
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1900 - By this year the United Daughters of the Confederacy can claim more than 20,000 members nationwide, including 3,200 in Virginia.
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April 26, 1900 - The United Daughters of the Confederacy awards the first Southern Cross of Honor to Captain Alexander S. Erwin, of Athens, Georgia.
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June 6, 1900 - Congress authorizes the bodies of 267 Confederate soldiers to be reinterred at Arlington National Cemetery.
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October 15, 1900 - The Home for Needy Confederate Women opens at 1726 Grove Avenue in Richmond.
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1906 - The United Daughters of the Confederacy receives permission from the federal government to erect a Confederate monument in Arlington National Cemetery.
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1907 - A monument to Jefferson Davis, planned and funded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, is unveiled in Richmond.
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1907 - Christine Boyson, a student at Columbia University, controversially wins an essay contest sponsored by the United Daughters of the Confederacy despite labeling Robert E. Lee a "traitor."
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1908 - The United Daughters of the Confederacy creates the office of historian-general in part to review histories and textbooks for materials the UDC deems "unjust to the South."
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1909 - A statue of a Confederate soldier funded in part by the United Daughters of the Confederacy is unveiled in Charlottesville.
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February 1909 - The Richmond Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy votes to censure the judges of a UDC essay contest for awarding $100 to an essay that labeled Robert E. Lee a traitor.
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October 1909 - The national convention of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, in Houston, Texas, votes to drop a scholarship at Columbia University.
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1913 - The so-called Silent Sam statue of a Confederate soldier, a gift of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, is unveiled at the University of North Carolina.
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June 4, 1914 - The Confederate Monument, sculpted by Moses Jacob Ezekiel, is unveiled at Arlington National Cemetery.
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1916 - The United Daughters of the Confederacy sponsors a Confederate fountain in Helena, Montana.
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1916 - The owners of Stone Mountain, in Georgia, deed the north face to the United Daughters of the Confederacy for a Confederate memorial.
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1918 - By this year the United Daughters of the Confederacy can claim more than 100,000 members nationwide.
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1919 - The United Daughters of the Confederacy makes Confederate-descended veterans of World War I eligible to receive the Southern Cross of Honor.
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January 1923 - A bill on behalf of the United Daughters of the Confederacy is introduced in Congress proposing to build a so-called Mammy monument to enslaved women in Washington, D.C. It does not pass.
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1928 - A total of 9,232 women in Virginia claim membership in the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
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1932 - The Home for Needy Confederate Women moves to 301 North Sheppard Street in Richmond.
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1933 - Nine women in France report membership in the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
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1935 - The United Daughters of the Confederacy donates $50,000 toward the construction of Confederate Memorial Hall, a dormitory at Vanderbilt University.
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1938 - The Elliott Grays Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy erects a monument to 220 Confederate soldiers and 577 Union soldiers that are recorded, as well as hundreds of other soldiers of whose burial no record was made, in Shockoe Hill Cemetery in Richmond.
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1961 - A memorial to Confederate soldiers is erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Phoenix, Arizona.
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1963 - A marker honoring Confederate soldiers is placed in Boston, Massachusetts, by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
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March 3, 1972 - The carving of a Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain, Georgia, is completed.
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August 1989 - The final seven women move out of the Home for Needy Confederate Women in Richmond.
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April 30, 1997 - The last surviving resident of Richmond's Home for Needy Confederate Women, Osa Lee Yates, dies at the age of ninety-eight. She was the daughter of a Confederate soldier.
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2001 - The United Daughters of the Confederacy estimates its membership to be 20,000.
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June 17, 2015 - The white supremacist Dylann Roof murders nine African Americans at their church in Charleston, South Carolina.
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2016 - The Tennessee Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy wins a lawsuit stemming from Vanderbilt University's decision to rename Confederate Memorial Hall.
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February 6, 2017 - The Charlottesville city council votes 3–2 in favor of removing the Robert E. Lee statue and renaming Lee Park.
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August 12, 2017 - White supremacists rally around the statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville and one is charged with using his car to murder one and injure nineteen others.
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August 21, 2017 - After violence in Charlottesville, the president-general of the United Daughters of the Confederacy releases a statement condemning "certain hate groups."
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2018 - Divisions of the United Daughters of the Confederacy are active in eighteen states and the District of Columbia.
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July 2018 - A city-appointed commission in Richmond recommended removing the Jefferson Davis statue.
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August 20, 2018 - Protestors at the University of North Carolina topple the Confederate statue known as Silent Sam.
References
Further Reading
Cite This Entry
- APA Citation:
Janney, C. E. United Daughters of the Confederacy. (2019, January 11). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/United_Daughters_of_the_Confederacy.
- MLA Citation:
Janney, Caroline E. "United Daughters of the Confederacy." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, 11 Jan. 2019. Web. READ_DATE.
First published: January 13, 2010 | Last modified: January 11, 2019
Contributed by Caroline E. Janney, John L. Nau III Professor in History of the American Civil War and director of the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia.