Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Whose Heritage Is It? - Dispatch #2: Baltimore, Confederate Women of Maryland Monument

Stop #2 in today's road trip was just a few blocks away from the first.  Like the Jackson & Lee Monument, the monument to the Confederate Women of Maryland was removed in 2017, one hundred years after its dedication in 1917.  The statue was the result of a movement founded in 1894 in Nashville, Tennessee called the United Daughters of the Confederacy.  Among the group's mission, establishing statues throughout the states of the confederacy to "tell the glorious fight against the greatest odds a nation ever faced, that their hallowed memory should never die."  For the record, Maryland was NOT a part of the secessionist confederate rebellion.  Funding for the monument was supplemented by significant grants from the United Confederate Veterans and the State of Maryland itself.



The statue was designed by J. Maxwell Miller, and art professor at the nearby Maryland Institute College of Art.  The three figures in the design represent a mother holding her dying son in the "pieta" pose, with a second women standing and looking out past the other two.  It is located on a small triangle of land called the Bishop Square Park directly across from Johns Hopkins University.

Pictures from today's road trip.  The statue is, of course, gone.



The text on the front reads: TO THE CONFEDERATE WOMAN OF MARYLAND 1861-1865 "THE BRAVE AT HOME"

On the back side of the pedestal the text reads: IN DIFFICULT AND DANGER REGARDLESS OF SELF THEY FED THE HUNGARY CLOTHES THE NEEDY NURSED THE WOUNDED AND COMFORTED THE DYING.

In 2016, a year before it was removed, a placard was placed in front of the statue titled "Reconciling History".  It contained an extensive text designed to contextualize for the visitor the history of the statue and how it fits into history.  The placard was not present today.



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