Date of Award
10-26-2015
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
History, MA
First Advisor
Gary Edwards
Committee Members
Cherisse Jones-Branch; Sarah Wilkerson-Freeman
Call Number
LD 251 .A566t 2015 E44
Abstract
Resting in the southeast corner of the Arkansas state capitol is the Little Rock monument honoring the women of the Confederacy. Known as the Southern Mother, the Arkansas division of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) erected this monument to commemorate the sacrifices of Arkansas women during the Civil War. Sculpted by J. Otto Schweizer, a Swiss-American from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, this monument represents two versions of Arkansas’ Civil War history: that of the sculptor, and that of its patrons. Arkansas broke away from the national UCV in 1906 and proceeded on its own to memorialize Confederate women’s war time sacrifices. Paid for by a state appropriation of $10,000, the Arkansas UCV were able to commemorate in stone a specific memory of Arkansas history during the Civil War. The monument effort began on a national scale in 1896, but did not come to fruition in Arkansas until May 1913. Several conflicts occurred with members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who opposed the monument idea and preferred that donations were routed into more social programs like retirement homes and scholarship programs. This monument occurred during a time of vast memorialization during the height of the Lost Cause, but the history behind it shows a more individual nature of healing traumatic wounds.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Elledge, Zachary Lynn, "Defeat and Memory at the Arkansas State Capitol: The Little Rock Monument to the Women of the Confederacy, 1896-1914" (2015). Student Theses and Dissertations. 725.
https://arch.astate.edu/all-etd/725
