The Confederate Memorial is a monument in downtown Wilmington, North Carolina that was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the estate of Gabriel James Boney in 1924. The monument is an 11-ton granite backdrop tablet, a granite pedestal, and a bronze sculpture of two soldiers. In the early morning hours of June 25, 2020, the City of Wilmington removed the statue, citing public safety and protection of historical relics. The city government later covered the tablet and pedestal with a black shroud, obscuring the inscriptions. The removal of the statue was coincident with the announcement by the city government that three police officers had been fired for "brutally racist" conversations recorded on official police equipment. The city government did not reveal the storage location or a date for reassembly of the monument.
The monument was designed by Henry Bacon, who had been the principal designer of the Lincoln Memorial. He spent much of his youth in Wilmington and is buried there.
The statue was sculpted by Francis Herman Packer, a native of Germany who lived on Long Island, New York and was a student of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. A decade earlier, Packer had been hired by a United Daughters of Confederacy chapter in Wilmington to sculpt the Confederate George Davis Monument, located one block to the north and dedicated in 1911..
The motto Pro Aris Et Focis translates from Latin as "For Altars and Hearths." The motto has been used for centuries mostly by military organizations, and is often transliterated in myth as "for God and Country." In the context of Lost Cause mythology, "For Altars and Hearths" is intended to place within the public memory the falsehood that the Confederacy did not fight in the American Civil War principally for the preservation of chattel slavery. Historians have argued that similar monuments erected by the UDC are pieces of a far wider national effort by the UDC and others, decades after the surrender of the confederacy, to insert the false Lost Cause Narrative into the public memory, announce to nonwhites the final defeat of Reconstruction, and to support white supremacy.
Siting and Context
The monument was erected in 1924 at the northmost end of the grassy median within the 100 block of South Third Street, at its intersection with Dock Street. The intersection is one block south of the historic crossroads of the city at Third Street and Market Street. The monument marks the northern entrance to an elite neighborhood—one built, beginning in the mid-18th century, by the city's wealthiest and most powerful whites. The nearest building, at 100 South Third Street, is the Elizabeth Bridgers House, a 15,000 square foot mansion constructed in 1905 for the widowed daughter-in-law of Confederate politician Robert Rufus Bridgers.
Damage and Dismantling
1954
A motor vehicle knocked the statue down. It was repaired and re-erected on the same spot.
1999-2000
In late 1999, a motor vehicle knocked the entire monument from its foundation and onto South Third Street. The foundation was cracked and the backdrop tablet was knocked over. The monument and statue were removed for repair and, where necessary, replacement with new granite. Architect Charles Boney told the Wilmington Star-News soon after the collision that he was committed to ensuring the memorial would be repaired and then restored at its original site:
“It’s a part of my heritage and it’s a part of the city’s history, so I just want to make sure it’s fixed right.”
While re-erecting the tablet at the original location, the crane fell damaging overhead power lines, parked motor vehicles and a nearby wall. The monument pieces were again removed for repair and replacement. During re-re-erection in 2000, the works were again damaged. That damage was repaired and the monument restored to its original location and configuration.
2003
An unknown person broke the bayonet from the rifle held by the Confederate soldier in Packer's statue and took the piece of bronze. The statue went unrepaired for at least 10 years.
2020
In March 2020, during a time of peaceful protest against racism, an unknown person placed a white flag of surrender in the statutes hands. In early June 2020, two individuals, in an act of nonviolent protest against racism, painted Black Lives Matter on the front base of the statue. In June 2020, during a period of declaration of a state of emergency, the city government blocked public access to the monument with traffic cones and crime scene tape. In the early morning hours of June 25, the City of Wilmington removed the statue and covered the remaining tablet and pedestal, and their Lost Cause inscriptions, with a black shroud. These actions happened coincident with the city government's announcement that three police officers had been fired for "brutally racist" comments recorded on official police equipment.
