Confederate Soldiers & Sailors Monument

The Confederate Soldiers & Sailors Monument in 2010

The Confederate Soldiers & Sailors Monument is a 52-foot-tall sandstone obelisk located at the southern entrance of Linn Park, at the terminus of 20th Street North. It was given to the city by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1905.

In 1894 the park, then known as Capitol Park, held no other monuments and was decorated only by towering Hudgins' fountain at its center. The cornerstone for the base for a future monument was laid during the 1894 Reunion of United Confederate Veterans in Birmingham, on April 26, a date observed as Confederate Decoration Day, the anniversary of General Joseph Johnston's surrender to Union General William Sherman at Bennett Place, North Carolina in 1865. It was designed by architect Charles Wheelock and constructed by Jooseph Meighan of Oak Hill Marble and Stone Works. The $1,020 cost was raised in four days by a campaign publicized in the Birmingham News. The cornerstone includes a sealed box containing a Bible, a Confederate flag, a bronze medal honoring the Declaration of Independence, several newspapers and lists of Confederate organizations. News publisher Rufus Rhodes introduced UCV Commander-in-Chief Stephen D. Lee, the featured speaker at the ceremony.

Over the next few years, the plinth remained empty. After the Spanish-American War concluded in August 1898 the city installed a surplus artillery piece from the conflict on top of it. In 1900, at the behest of Jennie Rountree, Birmingham's John Pelham Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, organized in 1896, took up the challenge of completing the Confederate monument. The women of the chapter organized a week-long bazaar in the City Market on the ground floor of Birmingham City Hall and made another appeal for funds through the Birmingham News. Once $4,000 was raised, the group commissioned stone contractor L. N. Archer to fabricate and install the obelisk.

The completed monument was formally dedicated on April 26, 1905, now observed for the first time, statewide as "Confederate Memorial Day". A grand parade of over 1,000 people, including the entire student body of Birmingham High School, the corps of cadets from Howard College, the Birmingham Police Department and Birmingham Fire Department, numerous "carriages and tally-hos," and several military bands, made its way from Jefferson County Courthouse to the park. Mayor Mel Drennen and Governor Russell Cunningham accepted the gift on behalf of the City of Birmingham and the State of Alabama. After many more speeches, the crowd processed to Oak Hill Cemetery to decorate the graves of 45 Confederate dead.

The possibility of removing the monument was implicit in the 1919 proposal by architects Frank Hartley Anderson, William Warren and Eugene Knight for a Memorial Civic Center that would serve as a comprehensive memorial with an emphasis on the recently-ended "Great War". During his visit for the Olmsted Brothers' 1925 report and recommendations for "A Park System for Birmingham" landscape architect W. B. Marquis wrote that "The Confederate Monument located on the axis of 20th St. at the south end of the park probably must be retained although there may be some possibility of changing its position." The firm, delayed by uncertainties about the designs for a new Birmingham Public Library and Jefferson County Courthouse, never presented a detailed plan for redesigning what was, by then, renamed Woodrow Wilson Park. In their report they merely recommended that the park "is generally considered as a possible civic center and should, if possible, be so planned and developed."

In 2015, in the wake of a mass shooting at an African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina, activist Frank Matthews called for the monument to be removed on the grounds that its depiction of deadly weapons alongside quotes from Jefferson Davis were offensive, and that its sentiment has nothing to do with Birmingham. The Birmingham Park and Recreation Board voted on July 1 to pursue relocating the monument by consulting with attorneys and with the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

Inscriptions

(south face)

TO THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIER & SAILOR
ERECTED BY PELHAM CHAPTER No. 67
DAUGHTERS OF THE CONFEDERACY
BIRMINGHAM, ALA.
APRIL 26, 1905

(north face)

"THE MANNER OF THEIR
DEATH, WAS THE CROWNING
GLORY OF THEIR LIVES."
JEFFERSON DAVIS.

(west face)

A relief sculpture of an anchor to represent the Confederate Navy

(east face)

A relief sculpture of crossed sabers and a musket to represent the Confederate Cavalry and Infantry

References

• "Confederate Monument is Unveiled in Capitol Park." (April 27, 1905) Birmingham Age-Herald, p. 5
• "The Birmingham Confederate Monument" (August 1908) Confederate Veteran. Vol. 16, No. 8
• Davis, Michael: "In Remembrance: Confederate Funerary Monuments in Alabama and Resistance to Reconciliation, 1884-1923" May 10, 2008 - accessed October 20, 2010
• Wright, Barnett (June 23, 2015) "Activist Frank Matthews: Remove the 'racist' Confederate monument from Birmingham." The Birmingham News
• Bryant, Joseph D. (July 1, 2015) "Birmingham city officials take steps to remove Confederate monument at Linn Park." The Birmingham News
• Almond, Mark (July 2, 2015) "A close-up look at Birmingham's embattled Confederate monument." The Birmingham News
• Birmingham Historical Society Newsletter (July 2015)