A Civil War marker on the East end of Jefferson City commemorates Confederate Gen. Sterling Price's decision against attacking the city. The marker states: "Deciding against attack the Confederate Army under General Sterling Price turned from Jefferson City, October 7, 1864."
Over the years, this marker has attracted little notice or curiosity by passersby. But recently, controversy has swirled around neo-Confederate markers such as this in nationwide protests calling for their removal. Few knew this was a neo-Confederate marker or what it memorialized. Fewer still knew of the organization that paid for and erected the marker. The plaque reads, "This marker dedicated April 5, 1933 by Winnie Davis Chapter United Daughters of the Confederates." This is the rub.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy was established in 1894 with a mission to glorify and vindicate the lost cause of the South. They were amazingly successful in shaping a narrative to their benefit. Between the 1890s and 1950s, they erected more than 700 markers honoring Confederate veterans. These were mostly throughout the South but some in northern states costing millions in today's dollar.
Their most effective means of conveying their revisionist history was to rewrite public school textbooks that painted a rosier picture of the Southern cause. Children were taught Southerners were patriots, not rebels or traitors, and were victims of a "war of Northern aggression." In her extensively researched book "Dixie Daughters," Karen Cox writes, "There was nothing innocuous about imparting the Lost Cause narrative to a younger generation, as that narrative was replete with racial stereotypes, emphasized the inferiority of blacks, and exaggerated the benevolence of slave ownership." As schools were segregated and Black children got discarded textbooks from white schools, Black children were taught to believe in their own inferiority. Cox believes the systemic racism that we experience today took its roots then.
"Their efforts provided the cultural underpinning that upheld Jim Crow legislation, especially Black disenfranchisement that state legislatures had cemented into place by 1900," she writes.
The early Daughters regarded the Klu Klux Klan as protectors and "Klan activities as necessary to restore law and order to the region and restore Anglo-Saxon supremacy." School textbooks they rewrote included chapters idealizing the Klan and glorifying Southern heroes.
The Daughters' mission was not entirely about monuments and textbooks. They provided homes for disabled Confederate veterans and their widows and offered scholarships to school children. This benevolence was limited to white veterans and white children.
The UDC perpetuated a claim that the war was not about slavery but about state's rights. This would surprise Alexander H. Stephens, vice president of the Confederate States of America in his now famous 1861 Cornerstone Address. As the South's justification for succession, he said, "Our new government's foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man." There was no mention of state's rights in his address.
Jefferson City's marker was originally placed at the intersection of Greenberry and Hough Park roads. Historical accounts suggest this was Price's closest approach to the city before turning his troops west, deciding not to attack. Local legend claims Price spared the city because he loved it. No apparent historical documents support this including Price's personal journals and those of his generals. The origin of this myth might be a 1933 Capital Daily News account of the dedication of the UDC marker in Jefferson City. The journalist speculated, "While many reasons have been advanced as to why Price passed up Jefferson City, it is believed the real reason was his love for the city." This was written 69 years after the event. This myth is repeated today. Is it evidence of the success of the Daughters to change the narrative and elevate Confederate veterans to heroic and benevolent status?
According to Robert L. Hawkins III, his grandmother, Elizabeth Bell Hunter was a president of the local Winnie Davis UDC chapter. The local chapter, he says "was first and foremost about taking care of the Confederate veterans themselves - particularly those in the M. M. Parsons Camp of the United Confederate Veterans" and was not racially motivated.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy of today states on its website, the Daughters "totally denounce any individual or group that promotes racial divisiveness or white supremacy."
Its membership is currently about 10,000. At their height, membership reached 100,000. Members must still be able to trace their lineage to a Confederate veteran and one that never renounced the Confederacy.
The Price monument was relocated three blocks north in 1955 when the new Moreau Heights Elementary School was built. It now sets on city property.
Black intellectual W.E.B. Dubois wrote in 1931, that the most accurate inscription on all neo-Confederate monuments should read, "Sacred to the memory of those who fought to Perpetuate Human Slavery."
This article was edited at 2 p.m. Sept. 28, 2020, to correct the title of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Jenny Smith is a retired chemist with the Missouri State Highway Patrol Crime Lab and former editor of the Historic City of Jefferson's Yesterday and Today newsletter. She is on the News Tribune Reader Advisory Board.