On June 3, 1907, four days after the Stuart Monument was unveiled on Richmond’s Monument Avenue, the celebrations of the Confederate Reunion continued with the unveiling and dedication of the Jefferson Davis Monument just several blocks west, past the Lee Monument. This tribute to the life of the former president of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War also introduced a platform for the South’s controversial, ongoing defense and reasoning of Confederacy’s Lost Cause into the 20th century.
After Davis’s death in 1889, the Jefferson Davis Monument Association led the movement to have a monument erected in his honor. Davis was buried in New Orleans; however, in 1893, his body was moved to Richmond and he is now buried in Hollywood Cemetery. The city offered a site at Monroe Park in 1892 where his widow, Varina Davis, laid a ceremonial cornerstone. However in spite of that fanfare, there was little success with fundraising due to conflict in design choice. In 1899, the association presented the United Daughters of the Confederacy with the mission to carry out the plans for the monument. The UDC sought to have a memorial arch built in Davis’s honor closer to the State Capitol, where the Confederate legislature met and the White House of the Confederacy, the Davis’s former home during the war. However, discord continued with regards to funding and the design persisted and their location and design proposals were shelved. The UDC then contacted the city council for a location on Monument Avenue after the Stuart Monument Association was granted an area. In 1904, the city complied with the UDC’s request by providing the intersection of Monument Avenue and Cedar Street (since renamed Davis Avenue) and appropriated $1,000 towards construction of the Davis Monument. The location chosen was the start of a defense line during at the beginning of the war, to which a commemorative cannon was placed in 1915 by the city. Approximately one mile east, another cannon was placed by the city in 1938, to exhibit the width cordoned off against Union forces in Richmond.
A proposal from the design team of Edward Valentine and William Noland, two Virginians, was the chosen for the monument. The men were highly regarded in their respective fields. Valentine, a renowned sculptor, was respected for his statue of Robert E. Lee in Lexington; and Noland, regarded as the state’s leading architect, was a part of the company hired to add the extension to the State Capitol, which was completed in 1906. They’d chosen to depict the memory of Davis’s strength as the distinguished orator he was known and to pay homage to the Confederate forces, the states that fought for its cause, as well as to highlight the meaning and principles that formed the Confederacy.
Prior to the Civil War, Davis was the United States Senator from Mississippi. He had also served as the United States’ Secretary of War, and like Lee, he was a West Point graduate, which reinforced the support to appoint him as president of the newly formed government in opposition of the Union. An excerpt of his resignation speech from his Senate seat as Mississippi seceded is engraved on the monument, noting his “motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited”, which included the South’s institution of slavery.
Below the monument’s screen of eighteen-foot tall columns, known as the exedra, stands a bronze statue of Davis, facing east, toward the Lee Monument. The most unique and highly recognized feature of the monument is the female statue designed of a classical nature, named “Vindacatrix”, standing high on the monument’s centered sixty-foot tall Doric column. At her base reads the inscription, Deo Vindice (“by God, the protector”) which was also noted on the Confederacy seal, leading citizens to nickname the statue “Miss Confederacy”. Embossed on the wide bands surrounding the column are additional Latin phrases: Pro Jure Civitatum (“for the rights of states”) and Pro Aris et Foci (“for hearth and home”), upon which the Confederacy declared its fight. The thirteen columns of the exedra represent eleven of the states which seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy and as well as for Kentucky and Missouri, which did not secede but sent delegates to the Confederate Congress. On each pier of the outer ends of the statue are inscriptions for the Confederate Navy and Army forces respectively.
After the war, Davis was imprisoned and set to stand trial for treason. It is believed that due in part to his esteemed list of Northern counsel as well as his failing health, bail was set in lieu of the trial. The bond was paid by several Northern dignitaries including Cornelius Vanderbilt, promptly freeing Davis from further conviction.
The unveiling of the Davis Monument capped off the 1907 Confederate Reunion with reports of a crowd up to about 200,000 attendees. A theme of reconciliation rang through the bands with tunes ranging from “Dixie” to “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “America”. The monument was to further symbolize the nation’s direction towards healing as the involvement of the Northern dignitaries seemed to warrant. However, with Vindicatrix standing high over the pronounced reverence to the defunct Confederate government and its cause, the latest monument seemed to counter an expected, unifying message of Monument Avenue. The monument’s theme and subsequently that of the thoroughfare would continue to engage racial debates in the area for many years.
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