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• The Evolution of the Language of North Carolinian Confederate Memorialization

Today, Confederate memorialization is more controversial than ever. In the last decade alone, over 150 Confederate monuments have been removed from prominent locations in town squares, courthouses, and cemeteries across the United States. Five years ago, students and activists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill toppled the "Silent Sam" statue, a fixture on the campus since 1913.

Some participants and observers of the controversy surrounding Confederate memorials claim that these statues explicitly honor slavery and the defense of it by the Confederacy, others believe them to be an integral part of their Southern cultural identity and heritage. But Confederate memorialization is not so straightforward as it may appear. In fact, it evolved over generations from a means of gathering and burying the dead to a celebration of the Confederate cause and legacy. This evolution can be traced in the language used in the monuments' inscriptions and in the dedication speeches delivered at the unveiling of the memorials.

To analyze the general trends in language over time, this paper uses a personalized word count program written in Python (see Figure 1)^Fig.1 that takes a block of text as input and lists the words used and how often they were used as a dictionary in descending order as output. The results from this program include the inscriptions from 116 Confederate common soldier monuments erected in North Carolina. For the purposes of this paper, I define a common soldier monument as a stone structure or plaque dedicated with the sole purpose of honoring the soldiers of the Confederacy as a whole instead of one individual or a group of individuals.

In North Carolina, I define three major periods of evolution, which are monuments dedicated between 1865-1902 by local memorial associations, monuments dedicated between 1903-1917 when the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) assumed commemorative leadership, and monuments dedicated between 1918 to the present day in the postwar world.

The earliest Confederate monument in North Carolina, which was erected in 1868 at the Fayetteville Cemetery, bears a simple inscription on its front face: "In memory of the Confederate dead."¹ Just three years earlier, the Civil War had come to its end at Appomattox, and the South, but particularly North Carolina, was reeling from the losses. In fact, North Carolina sent nearly ninety percent of its white male population between ages fifteen and fifty, almost 125,000 men.² The state suffered the most casualties of any Confederate State — over 40,000 — leaving an already poor state without much of its workforce. To make matters worse for its grieving white citizens, the sheer scale of wartime deaths was so great that many dead soldiers did not receive proper burials, leaving many families without a way to properly mourn those who died while in service. In the North, Congress funded efforts to locate, gather, and bury Union soldiers who had been buried on the battlefield.³ But no federal funds were appropriated to pay for the retrieval and burial of Confederate dead.

Southern white women took it upon themselves to give the Confederate dead proper burials, and thus the earliest Confederate memorial groups were born: the Ladies Memorial Associations (LMA). Across the former Confederacy these were locally based organizations and generally independent from another. In North Carolina perhaps less than a dozen associations were founded. Despite this small number and a relative lack of “fundraising aura” due to North Carolina’s political division regarding the war and not being a major site for the war, by 1872 there were five monuments honoring the Confederate dead.⁴ The Ladies chose to use monuments as commemorative landscapes because they are one of the most enduring forms of acknowledgement, and they can create an open dialogue between past, present, and future. These early monuments were all located in local cemeteries where Confederate dead were buried in pro-Confederate areas of the state. In keeping with their setting, they were unassuming obelisks or crosses adorned with concise inscriptions. Similarly, the dedication ceremonies for these memorials resembled funerals. For example, the ceremony for the 1870 Oakwood Cemetery monument opened with prayer and choir music, followed by a Memorial Day address and benediction, and concluded with participants placing flowers on Confederate graves throughout the cemetery.⁵

During the 1870s and 1880s conservative white politicians, including Zebulon Vance, a former Confederate officer who was elected governor in 1876, assumed power in the state.⁶ As public symbols, monuments are most effective when they are endorsed and supported by the community rather than an individual. Usually, proposals for monuments were made by a group, such as the Ladies Memorial Association, who then sought the approval of local officials. Thus, having conservative or pro-Confederate leadership in both local and state government bolstered the ability of the Ladies Memorial Associations to fundraise and gather support for their cause. Displaying both diligence and acumen, the Ladies tirelessly advocated for building monuments in honor of the Confederate dead.

However, the nature of Confederate memorialization in North Carolina started to change with the large monument that was erected in front of the capitol in Raleigh in 1895. Prior to the Raleigh monument, nearly all of North Carolina's Confederate memorials had been erected in cemeteries and focused on honoring the Confederate dead. Not until 1892 was a Confederate monument erected in a "civic space," or a public location where it is seen by many on a daily basis, in North Carolina.⁷ This innovation was relatively late compared to other southern states.

There are two likely explanations for why white North Carolinians were late in situating memorials in prominent civic spaces. First, the state itself was deeply politically divided about the Civil War, in fact, North Carolina had been the last state to secede from the Union and more state residents fought for the Union than from any other Confederate state. Second, postwar politics perpetuated many of the divisions in the state, especially regional divisions. As a result, Confederate memorialization for several decades after the war was concentrated in a few areas of the state. Finally, the disproportionate casualties borne by the state likely required a longer period to privately grieve rather than publicly celebrate. For example, Tennessee erected the earliest Confederate civic-space monument in 1868, but had only suffered around 3,000 casualties of an estimated 135,000 soldiers given to the Confederacy, only a two percent casualty rate, as opposed to North Carolina’s casualty rate of over thirty percent.

The Raleigh capitol monument marks in many ways a key shift in Confederate memorialization in the state, but especially in ceremony. Prominent figures paraded through the capitol streets as a crowd of nearly thirty thousand gathered to watch the unveiling of the monument by the granddaughter of Confederate general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, signifying a generational shift in those responsible for memorialization and commemoration from those who lived through the war to those born after.⁸ While previous monuments placed heavy emphasis on remembering the past, now monuments would be built with the memory of future generations in the forefront of the minds of the sponsors. The UDC would continue using young children, often of high-ranking local officials or UDC members, in the unveiling of monuments for the same reason, to emphasize that these monuments would be beacons of Confederate ideals and culture long after the deaths of Confederate veterans.

Furthermore, monuments increasingly celebrated Confederate soldiers as opposed to the previous focus on the Confederate dead. The 1903 Henderson County Confederate monument was the first in the state to be dedicated to all Confederate soldiers.⁹ While it may seem like an unimportant nuance in word choice, this rebranding is crucial to understanding the evolution of memorialization, as it is an explicit shift from the past and those who died to the present and those vets who are still alive. As well, in honoring the Confederate soldier as opposed to the Confederate dead, monuments implicitly celebrate the Confederate cause and the Confederate “civilization” that all soldiers fought for rather than simply honoring the valor of those who died in battle. In general, the majority of Confederate monuments in North Carolina and elsewhere honored all soldiers rather than specific officers or figures.

The UDC took the lead in erecting the so-called common soldier Confederate monuments which came to dominate many of North Carolina's civic spaces. Founded in 1894, three decades after the end of the Civil War, the UDC expanded rapidly and brought unparalleled organizational resources to Confederate commemoration. By 1903, when the first UDC-sponsored monument was dedicated in North Carolina, the UDC had around 40 local chapters in the state; at its peak there were 188 state chapters.¹⁰ The women's club movement was exploding across the South and the country, enabling such rapid expansion compared to the Ladies Memorial Association. Furthermore, the Daughters were much more centralized in their administration than the memorial associations, often holding regional meetings with chapters across the South. Moreover, the organization benefited from a close relationship with the Confederate Veteran, a widely circulated journal devoted to the celebration of Confederate veterans and the activities of both the United Confederate Veterans and the UDC.¹¹ Eventually, the journal became the official organ of the UDC, publicizing the activities of local UDC chapters and campaigns to erect new Confederate memorials.

Monument building was only one facet of the Daughters' activities. The UDC focused on education, taking the view that children could be raised to be "living monuments" who would "defend the principles" of the Confederacy.¹² The UDC also militantly promoted a "true" history of the war. By doing so, the organization assumed a central role in the creation and dissemination of the "Lost Cause" ideology. The romance of the Lost Cause did not express a desire to return to the Confederacy itself, but rather represented an idealization of the Confederacy and the cause for which the Confederates fought.¹³ Several core ideas defined the ideology. First, as one Southern governor stated, Confederates were simply "crushed ... under the Juggernaut wheels of superior numbers and merciless power."¹⁴ Northern might had overwhelmed an otherwise just and honorable Confederate cause. Second, Confederate defenders were adamant that the southern states had acted legally when they seceded from a Union that was violating their constitutional rights by encroaching on their local self-government and property (in the form of slaves).¹⁵ Finally, Reconstruction was portrayed as the darkest period in the history of the region and that the proper order was not reestablished until conservative white Southerners regained power during the 1870s.¹⁶ Only then could white southerners begin to build the New South and more openly honor their Confederate past.

The Confederate memorial tradition as a whole can be seen as an important element in the consolidation of the Lost Cause ideology, as it gave cultural symbolism the "ghosts of the Confederacy."¹⁷ It soothed and supported the Confederate veterans by dissociating them from the destruction and causes of the war and by associating them instead with the economic and social postwar revival.¹⁸ Ultimately, when repeated over and over in speeches and in culture, particularly during Memorial Days and monument dedications, the Lost Cause ideology became truth to the generation of Southerners born after the war.

Monuments in the UDC era addressed three principal audiences: aging veterans of the war (icons of a hallowed past); those who were too young to have experienced the war but grew up suffering from the aftermath (representatives of the present); and young white children (embodiments of future generations to come). As a result, commemorations became celebrations instead of wakes, and prideful instead of solemn. Most commemorations in the UDC era included parades with historical floats, marching veterans, elaborate decorations including Confederate colors, flags, and symbols, and rousing renditions of "Dixie" or "Dixie's Land," the unofficial anthem of the Confederacy.¹⁹ The ceremonies drew large crowds and local newspapers nearly always wrote glowingly about them. The Lumberton Robesonian, for instance, described the 1907 dedication of the Robeson County Confederate Monument as "the biggest day Lumberton has ever known."²⁰

The UDC also promoted important changes in the design of the Confederate memorials by adorning monuments with sculptures of anonymous "common" soldiers. In fact, 26 of the 33 North Carolina monuments erected in civic spaces during the UDC era were common soldier statues.²¹ This evolution was made feasible in part by the expansion of monument building companies, which manufactured ready-made common soldier monuments and advertised them in the Confederate Veteran. Monument manufacturers also offered flexible ways to pay for monuments so that monuments could be ordered even before fundraising for them was complete. Furthermore, manufacturers could fulfill orders for monuments comparatively quickly, allowing the UDC to erect monuments as quickly as funds could be collected to purchase them. One measure of the UDC's success at mobilizing North Carolina communities is the density of monuments across the state; during the UDC era of memorialization between 1903-1917, one in every three North Carolina counties constructed a Confederate monument.²²

The First World War gave Americans a new group of soldiers to honor, and when combined with the economic hardships brought on by the Great Depression, Confederate memorialization started to dwindle in the 1920s and 1930s. With Confederate veterans were on their last legs and most of the "true" daughters of Confederate soldiers who had ties the earliest Confederate memorialization aging and dying, monument inscriptions sometimes explicitly acknowledged the passing of a generation. (The last monument in North Carolina known to be witnessed by Confederate veterans was built in 1926).²³ Now some monuments in the state incorporated veterans of World War I and even the Spanish-American War as well as Confederate veterans in multi-war monuments. For example, the Montgomery County Veterans Memorial erected in 1926 honors the "sons who served in the World War ... sons who served in the Spanish American War ... women who did their part in all wars ... and sons who served in the Confederate States Army."²⁴

Having filled many of the state’s most prominent civic spaces with monuments, Confederate memorialists shifted their focus. As the automobile industry car-based tourism boomed, roadside plaques became a new and favored way to commemorate past heroes and historic events.²⁵ Many roads themselves were named after key Confederate figures, the most prominent being the Jefferson Davis Highway which ran from Virginia to Texas. Plaques were also much cheaper and easier to produce, making them a logical choice for a generation struggling through the Great Depression with fewer ties to the Confederate cause than their ancestors. Gone were the days of the soldier statues, which only made a return in 1959 when the Alexander County Confederate monument was dedicated. Cemetery memorialization also was revived, particularly in western North Carolina, which had not been a prominent site of Confederate memorialization in the pre-UDC era, when cemetery monuments were most common.²⁶

Furthermore, the massive impact of World War II made sure that Confederate memorialization would never regain prominence in the United States. The reunified United States was now the world’s dominant superpower with three victories in the three wars waged since the Civil War, along with a prospering economy. The "true" daughters and sons who had the strongest connection to the cause were either dead or too old to be in a position of influence, and the younger generations were looking at a bright future rather than a dark past.²⁷ And while the Civil War centennial led to a brief spike in memorialization, commemorations were much more low-key, with many unveiling dates and programs remaining unknown by historians to this day. Finally, the Civil Rights movement brought with it a national questioning of the memory of the Civil War that white Southerners had spent generations fortifying, leading to physical commemoration essentially ceasing in North Carolina for over twenty five years. Today, monuments are being removed rather than erected.

Sponsors carefully composed the inscriptions on Confederate monuments to reflect their message and purpose. Space on these monuments was quite limited, and every word carved into them cost scarce money, so language was chosen with the utmost precision. In some cases, inscriptions were barebones and simple, with some variation on "to the Confederate dead" being a staple. For other monuments, inscriptions included excerpts from poems such as the Bivouac of the Dead, battle songs, and rallying cries to the Confederate culture and heritage like its motto, "Deo vindice [with God as our protector]," or the cry of "lest we forget." There also was regional and temporal variation in these monuments, as each decision to raise a monument was one made by a local group and North Carolina had complex and divided loyalties during the Civil War. That being said, by analyzing the language of the monuments, noticeable trends in the different eras of Confederate memorialization are evident.

The language of the inscriptions on the early memorials reflects their primary intent of mourning the dead. For a full list of words used in pre-UDC inscriptions, see Figure 2.^Fig.2 In the nineteen North Carolina common soldier monuments erected before 1902, the most common words on inscriptions were Confederate, used 21 times, dead, used 17 times, memory, used 8 times, and soldiers, used 8 times. Most inscriptions were quite simple, usually offering some variation on "to the Confederate Dead," a message that does not carry any apparent unstated meaning. Words that honor the Confederacy as a whole or the Lost Cause were uncommon; the phrase "Lost Cause? appears only twice, honor twice, glory three times, and heroes once. In this era, the Lost Cause ideology had not been fully fleshed out and had not yet become a fetish of white Southern cultural heritage. It's likely that many of the state's white residents were too busy grieving their loved ones to think about whether the cause they had been fighting for was right, especially in a state that suffered so many casualties and that was quite divided during and after the Civil War. Most of the memorials from this era were in cemeteries rather than civic spaces, and ceremonies bore a closer resemblance to a funeral than a celebration.

The language of the monuments in the UDC era of memorialization reflects the changing emphasis in early twentieth century Confederate memorialization. For a full list of words used in UDC era monuments, see Figure 3.^Fig.3 Just as the ceremonies became more prideful, so did the language. For example, more and more inscriptions and orators invoked the so-called Rebel Boast, which praises the valor of North Carolina’s soldiers who were "first at Bethel, farthest at Gettysburg and Chickamauga, last at Appomattox." In other words, North Carolinians demonstrated their dedication to the Confederate cause by giving their lives at the first battle of the war (Bethel), carrying the Confederate banner farthest at crucial battles like Gettysburg and Chickamauga, and laying down their arms last at the end of the war at Appomattox. In the UDC era, the Rebel Boast appeared 4 times on the 49 common soldier memorials. Furthermore, the use of CSA, which appeared only once in the pre-UDC era, appeared 20 times on monument inscriptions. While CSA could stand for either Confederate States Army or Confederate States of America, both honor the Confederate culture as a whole, the former indirectly through honoring all soldiers, the latter by explicitly honoring the Confederacy. Finally, the term heroes, which only appeared once in the pre-UDC era, appeared 14 times in the UDC era. Confederate soldiers were no longer simply courageous by serving, they were heroic by facing insurmountable odds in defense of an honorable cause, reflecting the tightening grip of the Lost Cause narrative on white Southern culture.

These different choices in language illustrate an evolution from monuments that mourned the memory of the dead to those that celebrated the legacy and values of the Confederate soldiers and cause. Likewise, the Lost Cause ideology is much more visible in these monuments than in the pre-UDC monuments. For example, the Iredell Confederate monument, erected in 1906, includes the inscription "a cause though lost, still just." Similarly, the Forsyth County memorial, dedicated in 1905, endows "peace to their ashes ... glory to their cause." Some inscriptions were more muted, such as the text on the Perquimans County monument at Hertford, built in 1912, which declared "They fought for what they / believed to be right / and sealed their / faith in blood." As a whole, the language used on UDC era monuments was more verbose, prideful, and celebratory with regards to Confederate culture.

The inscriptions on monuments dedicated after the First World War are much more tempered, indicative of a generation that had moved on and accepted the new world they found themselves in. For a full list of words used in the postwar era monuments, see Figure 4.^Fig.4 In the 48 common soldier memorials in the postwar era, heroes and heroism only appeared 6 times, the Rebel Boast only appeared once, and CSA only 4 times. This decrease in Lost Cause language reflects a shift back towards simply memorializing rather than celebrating the Confederacy. This conclusion is only strengthened by the high usage of the term memory, which appeared 22 times as opposed to 13 in the UDC era and 8 in the pre-UDC era. As postwar monuments physically changed from grandiose soldier statues to more plain and uninspiring plaques, the language changed as well. Rather than celebrating the Confederacy or harkening back to the Lost Cause, inscriptions were much more matter-of-fact and focused on memorialization. The front face of the 1930 Rockingham Confederate Soldiers Memorial, for instance, reads, "erected ... in loving memory of our / Confederate soldiers." Even monuments that hint at the Lost Cause narrative did so without much embellishment. The inscription on the 1943 McDowell County Confederate Veterans Memorial in Oak Grove Cemetery, Marion, states that it was erected "in honor of the men / of McDowell County / who died in the cause / of the / Confederate States." Simply put, this generation was so far removed from the Civil War that they lost their connection to the Old South and any Lost Cause beliefs, reflected in the tamer language in their memorialization.

With nearly every commemoration of a Confederate monument came a dedication speech, or even several. Usually, these speeches were given by either high ranking public officials such as mayors, judges, or even governors, former veterans, and UDC or UCV members. Oratory played a massive role in 19th century public life, not just in the South, but across the United States. While the inscriptions on the Confederate monuments are the language that survives with them, inscriptions do not have an orator's power to articulate an argument and convince people of its validity. In particular, Southern orators had the power to spread Lost Cause ideology at monument commemorations and public holidays such as Memorial day far better than an inscription, and they would reach audiences far beyond those in the UDC or those subscribed to Confederate Veteran. In short, orators were essential in spreading the Lost Cause ideology to the everyday Southern citizen.

Dedication speeches from the pre-UDC era focused on honoring the Confederate dead. Most speeches extolled the virtues of courage and valor of those who died in the Confederate ranks. When orators addressed potentially divisive or controversial topics, such as the causes of the Civil War, they generally prefaced it by affirming their benign intentions. For instance, Col. Alfred Waddell remarked at the 1895 dedication of a Confederate monument in Raleigh, "Let no man say that ... I am digging up sectionalism, and trying to revive animosities of the past."²⁸ To the extent that the cause of the Civil War was mentioned it was usually traced to the North interfering with the states’ rights. Slavery was rarely, if ever, addressed in speeches from this era. As for the purpose of the monuments, Reverend L. C. Vass stated at the 1885 dedication of a New Bern Confederate Monument that Confederate monuments were "lasting memorials to those whose name and fame we will not willingly let die."²⁹

By the last decade of the century, more Lost Cause ideology popped up in speeches. At the 1894 dedication of the cornerstone to the large monument that stood in front of the capitol in Raleigh, the Hon. Thomas W. Mason asked a question that would define the goals of the Confederate commemoration for the next several decades: "Shall we say of the Confederate soldier that he died in vain?" Mason answered by declaring that they died "not for the lost cause of a dead Confederacy, but ... the vital cause of a living Union."³⁰ This counterintuitive rhetoric disassociates the Confederate soldier with the Confederate cause, and simply paints him as a soldier who followed orders when Lincoln rallied the troops to invade his state. In fact, it could even be said that since this war was necessary in the eyes of the Lost Cause narrative, the sacrifice of the soldiers was necessary to propel the restored Union into prosperity.

Celebratory language was commonplace in dedication speeches during the UDC era. W. M. Hammond boasted as much prior to the 1906 Anson County Confederate Soldiers Monument unveiling: "We of the South have no longer either occasion or motive to conceal the sentiments that impelled us to the struggle, nor to plead the dear prerogative of grief."³¹ White southerners, in short, did not have to hide their reverence for the Lost Cause or ideals of the Confederacy. As well, most orators referred to the Confederate soldiers as "heroes," and continued to preach that a war between the states was inevitable due to the North encroaching on the Southern States' rights and freedoms. Likewise, secession was perfectly acceptable under the United States Constitution. For example, Hammond stated that the cause of the Confederacy was to protect their "rights, whether of person or property,"³² a subtle reference to defending slavery. Even so, monument dedicators still prefaced their speeches with vows that they were in no way trying to revive sectionalism. At the Mecklenburg County Confederate Soldiers Monument dedication in 1910, Judge Armistead Burwell stated that the ideal Confederate soldier was "neither an advocate of human slavery, nor a favorer of the disruption of the Union," but simply loved his state and served it when its freedoms were under threat.³³ In other words, North Carolinians loved the Union, but when Lincoln rallied the troops and prepared for war, North Carolina was forced to rally to the Confederacy in order to protect their state, a claim they had the luxury of making as the last state to secede. These efforts to remove blame from the Confederacy and its soldiers also perpetuated the Lost Cause ideology. If the South was not at fault, then clearly the cause they were fighting for should be something to strive for.

Although racial language was surprisingly scarce in dedication speeches and inscriptions alike, when it did appear, it was usually in the context of discussions of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race and the inherent inferiority of black people. For example, Governor William Walton Kitchen stated at the 1909 dedication of a Granville County Confederate Monument that "the world is beginning to appreciate that it is not in the power of all the armies ever drilled or any constitution ever written to make the white man and the black equal on this earth."³⁴ Kitchin tacitly asserted that neither the result of the Civil War nor the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment could make white Southerners change their mind about the inferiority of blacks. Julian Carr remarked at the 1913 dedication of the now-removed "Silent Sam" monument on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that the Confederate soldier "saved the very life of the Anglo-Saxon race in the South," and that the South has the "purest strain" of the Anglo-Saxon race."³⁵ However, orators left slavery largely unmentioned, with an exception being references to the faithful slave myth, such as former Senator John Gatling's remarks at the 1915 Gatesville Confederate Soldiers Memorial about "the faithful slaves [who] remained true ... many of them refused all offers of freedom and labored on to help feed, clothe, and protect."³⁶

In the postwar era, speeches were tempered in their language, generally praising the honor and valor of the Confederate soldiers while still balancing regional pride with a declaration of loyalty to the United States. There were some mentions of racial language, but only in the early 1920s while the UDC was still memorializing, such as at the 1921 Caswell County Confederate Monument when UDC member Mary Kerr Spencer boasted that North Carolinians had the "finest and purest strain of Anglo-Saxon blood.”³⁷ Similarly to the inscriptions, speakers also included veterans of the first World War in their speeches, often drawing comparisons between the two groups and stating that they had the same honor and bravery, a tactic used by both Gen. Albert Cox at the dedication³⁸ of the 1923 Holly Springs Confederate Memorial and former Governor Cameron Morrison³⁹ at the 1930 Richmond County Confederate Soldiers Memorial in Rockingham. Especially after World War II, many monuments did not have commemoration speeches on record; as The Statesville Record and Landmark said of the 1959 Confederate Monument in Taylorsville, monuments at the time felt almost like an afterthought.⁴⁰ In fact, there is even record of pushback on Confederate memorialization by city councils after the Civil Rights movement. For example, city council member Harvey Gantt emphasized in a 1977 proposal for a Confederate Soldiers Monument in Charlotte that he did not think "placing a monument in a prominent place in this city ... to honor soldiers who fought in defense of slavery is right."⁴¹ And in the latest dedication speech of a Confederate monument in North Carolina, in Whitehall during the year 2008, it was evident that the goals of monuments in this era have changed drastically. As SCV member Dan Boyette said, "what we want to tell is not just about the Confederate soldier, but about the people involved ... it's not just about one section of people, it's not just one race of people, it's everybody,"⁴² marking a shift back to memorializing and remembering history rather than celebrating the ideals and culture of a lost Confederacy.

Over the past 150 years, Confederate memorialization has seen drastic change. What started as a way for widows and grieving families to mark the mass graves of unknown soldiers who were left to rot evolved into public celebrations of heritage and ideals and later faded out of the public realm with an acceptance of a new world. From honoring the dead and past to all soldiers and the present to past, present, and future, the sponsors, methods, locations, and physical monuments themselves have all experienced change over time to further the goals of their benefactors. But it is in the language, the messages themselves that these benefactors left to be inscribed for eternity, where their true purposes and those changes in purposes can be uncovered. From language of grief in the pre-UDC era to prideful language in the UDC era to language of remembrance in the postwar era, the inscriptions and speeches reflect the evolution of North Carolinian Confederate monuments.