Detailed Commentary
A discussion of the Confederate Monument in Rockville.

This essay is a detailed analysis of the meaning the Confederate Monument had for the citizens that erected it.  It covers a detailed history of its origins and the ceremony dedicating it.  It draws on content of that ceremony to reach conclusions on what it meant to those involved and their intended legacy.  In doing, a broad range of other symbols are explained, such as the state seal, flag and song, and other Civil War era displays.  Plus, late 19th century state politics and Montgomery County history are described.  

The Confederate Monument and its Symbolism

A monument tells a story of the past, not written in words but in symbols and implied connotations.  Because of this, its intended message is often misinterpreted in later years when the political atmosphere and cultural values of society have changed drastically.  More than any other monument in Montgomery County, the Rockville monument depicting a Confederate soldier has been the subject of controversy and conflicting interpretations.  Yet is was not intended to reinforce division among the ante-bellum ideology of the South.  Erected nearly fifty years after the Civil War, the monument was meant as a tribute to the symbolic soldier it represented.

In order to be able to better understand the meaning of this, or any, monument, we must put aside all our modern opinions, values and political views and try to see the monument through the eyes of those who built the monument in another time.  Of primary importance are the facts about the monument -- when and where the monument was erected, who erected it, where the money came from to build it, the physical appearance of the monument and its inscriptions -- as well as the political, economic and social atmosphere at the time and place that the monument was built. 

The story of the Rockville Confederate monument begins in 1906 at the Monocacy Cemetery in Beallsville, where friends had gathered to mourn the death of a veteran of the war.  After the memorial service, Richard Poole Hayes suggested that a monument be built in the cemetery to honor the men of Montgomery County who fought for the Confederacy.  Hayes had been a private in Company B of the 35^th Virginia Cavalry, serving from September 1962 until the end of the war.

No action was taken on Hayes' suggestions until the E. V. White Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (U.D.C.) was formed in 1911.  This group spearheaded a movement, which was joined by the Ridgely Brown Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Ridgely Brown Cmap of the United Confederates Veterans (U.C.V.), to erect a monument, not at the cemetery as was first suggested, but at the county seat of Rockville.  Mr/ Hayes led the fund-raising effort on behalf of the United Confederate Veterans, along with George R. Rice (1^st Maryland Cavalry), Spencer C. Jones (Co. A, 1^st Maryland Cavalry) and Frank Kilgore (Co. D, 35^th Virginia Cavalry).  After $3600 was raised by the three organizations through charity events and public subscription, Michale J. Falvey of Washington was hired to construct the monument.  The monument, according to the E.V. White Chapter, U.D.C.., was "to honor our soldiers in this county who left home and firesides to cast their lot with the Southland, and to be an inspiration to the youth of our land to uphold principle, honor, and a firm trust in God above all else."

Michael J. Falvey (1859-1921) founded the Falvey Granite Company in Washington D.C., in 1886, after having worked as a stonemason on the Washington Monument.  The company, located near Rock Creek Cemetery, specialized in cemetery monuments and usually the artist would make a small model in plaster which would then be transferred to stone by a stonemason.  In the case of a bronze statue such as the Rockville monument, however, the artist would have made the model full-size in order to have it cast by a foundry.  Although the Falvey Company is still in operation, records before 1927 are no longer in existence.  The present owner, Merle L. Cox, Jr. thinks the Rockville statue may have been made by Fred E. York, a well-known monument artist who is known to have worked for the company in the 1920s and 1930s.  The daughter of Spencer C. Jones, one of the monument fund-raisers, married a Thomas Falvey but the exact relationship between Michael and Thomas Falvey and its influence, if any, on the choice of Michael Falvey's company to construct the monument are not known.

The monument is life-size bronze of a young cavalry private, arms folded and looking into the distance.  It stands on an eight-foot granite pedestal.  The inscription on the face of the pedestal reads: "To our heroes of Montgomery County, Maryland, that we may through life not forget the Thin Grey Line, 1861 (CSA insignia with laurel wreath) 1865."

The most popular form for the Civil War monuments, Union and Confederate, was the solitary private soldier statue.  One of the reasons for this popularity was that it demonstrated the ideal of classical beauty through the soldier's relaxed stance and intent expression.  It was also a symbol of the individual rights of man, of equity, of democracy over tyranny, in contrast to the previous secular sculpture in Europe since Medieval times which had been dedicated to famous individuals or great victories.  Not since the time of the Greeks, with their democratic ideals, had monuments been built to the comon soldier. 

Although the stance of the soldier is similar to the stance of catalogue--ordered private-soldier statues which proliferated in the country at the time, the cavalry boots and sword and the individualized facial features amek the Rockville statue unique.  Because it is unique, someone had to have posed for the statue.  Some ha ve suggested that this model was Falveys, but there is no evidence to substantiate this claim.

The monument was placed in front of the county courthouse, facing south, and was unveiled June 3, 1913.  June 3 was Confederate Memorial Day in many areas of the south as it marked the birth of Jefferson Davis.  The local newspaper coverage of the ceremony stated that the location was "almost within a stone's throw of the place where our Revolutionary fathers gathered to express their repudiation of the assumed rights of Great Britain to levy taxation on our people without representation....  more than three thousand souls assmbled to do homage to those who, dominated  by a like courage and patriotic spirit, voluntarily enlisted in the cause of the South."  many veterans from Baltimore attended the ceremony, some greeting each other for the first time since the war.  The speakers stood on the porch of the courthouse while 50 to 75 veterans lined the sidewalk in front, facing the audience. 

The ceremony opened with the Damascus Cornet Band paying "Maryland, My Maryland."  The master of ceremonies was supposed to have been the Honorable Spencer C. Jones but illness prevented him from attending and judge Edward C. Peter presided in his absence.  Judge Peter "birefly outlined the important part taken by the citizens of Montgomery County in the Civil War, lef by Colonel Elijah V. White from the western section, and by Colonel Ridgely Brown and Colonel Gustavus Dorsey from the eastern section of the county."  Also mentioned were Captain Thomas Griffith and Captain Frank Bond.  Judge Peter emphasized the courageous character of their service as well as that of the men who served under them.  There was an invocation by Reverend James Taylor, a Prebyterian minister from Washington D.C., and then hym was sung, "Nearer, My God, To Thee."

The featured sepeaker was the Honorable J. Thomas Heflin from Alabama.  He spoke to the gallantry of the Confederate soldiers and the hardships they endured and their devotion to a cause which was never lost, only overpowered.  He made a point to defend the soldiers as not being traitors, and ended with a tribute to the "fortitude and majestic loaylty" of the women of the South.  As recorded in the newspaper, "one of the most pathetic scenes of the day ocurred when the veterans present responded in tears to the sentiments of the speaker."

Three little girls and two little boys, all children of members of the fund-raising organizations, pulled the cord to unveil the statue and the "released the Confederate and Maryland flags which concealed the statue and unfurled also the American flag to the gentle breezes."  There was the firing of a salute, the playing of "Dixie" and then a brief speech by Congressman Frank Clark of Florida.  The ceremony concluded with a benediction by Reverend Louis Watson and the playing of "Taps" followed by the "Star Spangled Banner."

This dedication ceremony for the Rockville Confederate monument is a good example of the second stage , or reconciliation stage of memorialization after the Civil War.  As the years passed after the war and the people who had actually experienced it were replaced by a second generation, the Civil War commemoration ceremonies and monuments moved out of the cemeteries and into the town squares.  Funereal aspects of the ceremonies such as flowers, choirs singing hymns and the reading of sentimential poetry were replaced by bands playing patriotic music and more emphasis on oratory.  The speakers were now congressmen and judges rather than ministers.  The opening and closing prayers were retained, as well as an occasional hymn, but they paid tribute more to the veterans whi had recently passed away than to those who had died in the war.  The flowers of rememberance were replaced by the laruel wreath, a Greek symbol of honor.  In the Confederate monument in Baltimore, titled "Gloria Cictis" (glory to the vanquished), the angel of glory holds a laurel wreath over the form of a dying Confederate youth.

Other symbols used in the ceremony included the song "Maryland, My Maryland", the United States flag and the state flag.  :Maryland, My Maryland", which was sung and played at all the Confederate ceremonies after the war, was written by James Ryder Randall, a Marylander living in Louisiana at the time of the Baltimore riot in April 1861.  To understand the song, we need to know something about events at the time of the riot.  When the war began, most Marylanders had wanted both to uphold states' rights and to hold the Union together.  Many had stong feelings of kinship with Virginia, just across the Potomac River, where they had family or business ties.  Early in 1861 a meeting was held in Baltimore at which the delegates resolved to resist any effort to make maryland "a highway for federal troops, sent to make war upon our sister States of the South" and urging Governor Hicks to call the legislature into session to discuss seceding.  although Hicks sympathized with the South, he counted himself a strong Union man, doubted the wisdom of secession and adopted a wait-and-see policy.  The stage was set for violence, and a riot broke out April 9 when citizens attacked a regiment of Massachusetts volunteers who arrived in Baltimore on the way to Washington.

Randall wrote "Maryland, My Maryland" as a call to the citizens of the state to arm for the fight.  "The despot's heel is on thy shore ...  Come! for thy dalliance does thee wrong, Maryland! .. Virginia should not call in vain."  The song became very popular during the war with both Maryland Confederate soldiers and the southern sympathizers at home.  When Lee's army crossed Montgomery County, maryland, on the way to Antietam in September 1862, regimental bands played "Maryland, My Maryland" to cheering crowds of local citizens.  The song was unique in that it was the only original of the patriotic war songs to survive after the war.  After the war, the song was sung at so many popular events that is was finally adopted as the official state song by the Maryland General Assembly in 1939.  Even by 1913, the year our county's Confederate monument was unveiled, the song had become more a traditional part of a ceremony than an act of rebellion and most people, then as now, only knew the first two or three of the thirteen verses. 

In addition to "Maryland, My Maryland" the singing of "The Star Spangled Banner" became more frequent in the later Confederate ceremonies, indicating by its presence as increase in nationalist feelings, as opposed to states' rights.  The American "Stars and Stripes" was also used more and more as the stages of the Confederate ceremony progressed, until in the last ceremonies it seems to have become a requirement.

"The Star Spangled Banner," written by Francis Scott Key during the War of 1812, became immediately popular when it was published in a Baltimore newspaper and individual copies of it sold in the streets.  It was not, however, a military song, could not be marched to, and was difficult to sing, so it waned in popularity.  its rise to fame after the Civil War accompanied the increasing non-military use of the flag, since the song is a tribute to the flag.  It was not often played or sung at dedication ceremonies, Union or Confederate, until after 1900.

The United States flag, designed in 1777, was primarily used by the Navy, since ships had to have a way of identifying each other's nationality from a distance.  In the Revolutionary Was, the War of 1812 and the Civil War, the Amry carried regimental flags which gave each regiment its own special identity and had refernce to their home areas, symbolizing hearth and home to the men.  During the Civil War, the poem "Barbara Fritchie: by John Greenleaf Whittier sparked a popular response to the public display of the American flag and it significance, but it was not until the 1890s that the American flag began to be flown over buildings that were not military and to be used in non-military ceremonies.

This transformation was mainly due to the efforts of the Women's relief Corps of the Grand Army of the Republic, founded in 1884, and the Daughters of the American Revolution, founded in 1890.  These organizations azealously pursued what they felt was their patriotic duty to promote the teaching of patriotism and good citizenship inthe schools and the veneration of the flag as the symbol of our united country.  As a result, the government began making special rules about the use of the flag, legislating traditions.  The new universal use of the American flag represented the change from local allegiances to a national allegiance. 

Maryland had no official flag during the Civil War.  it did, however, have an official state seal, adopted in 1854m which bears the heraldic coat-of-arms of the Calvert and Crossland families on a shield flanked by figures of a farmer and a fisherman.  Calvert was the family name of the Lords Baltimore who founded Maryland and Crossland, the family of the mother of the first Lord Baltimore.  The shield is divided into four quadrants; two showing black and yellow checker pattern of the Calvert family and two showing the cross bottony (French botonee) in red and white of the Crossland family.  The black and yellow checker pattern had been used before the Civil War, especially by the city of Baltimore, on flags representing Maryland.

Because of this traditional use of the black and gold checker pattern, southern-sympathizing Marylanders during the war adopted the other quadrant of the shield on the state seal, the red and white cross.  Especially in Baltimore, red and white became known as "secession colors" and were worn on articles of clothing to indicate allegiance to the southern cause.  General Dix, commanding the City of Baltimore in the summer of 1861, forbade the displaying of these red and white symbols of resistance.  Many Maryland Confederate soldiers wore a small cross bottany pin of brass or tin on the uniforms to signify that they were from Maryland.

The current official Maryland flag, adopted in 1094, is a combination fo the black and yellow checker pattern of the Calvert family, the symbol of the Union Marylanders, and the white cross on a red field of the Crossland family, the symbol of the Conferedare Marylanders.  The combination had been used on the state seal in 1854 and when it was used on the Maryland flag, it stood for reconciliation.  The Maryland flag's first recorded public display was at the parade celebrating the Coty of Baltimore 150^th birthday in October 1880.

In addition to understanding the symbolism of the songs and flags used at the dedication of the Confederate monument in 1913, we need some understanding of the polotical atmosphere in Montgomery County at the time, which reflected that in the state.  Both were linked to events which took place years before, during and at the end of the Civil War.

during the Civil War, Maryland was under military rule and the political power held by the Radical Union party headed by Augustus Bradford, elected governor in 1861.  The new state constitution, passed in 1864, had not only freed the slaves, making Maryland the first state to do so voluntarily, but had imposed an "ironclad" oath of allegiance to be taken by anyone voting or running for office.  This oath effectively dis-enfranchised southern sympathizers and those who had fought for the South.

As soon as the war was over, things began to change in Maryland politics, and the Conservative Union party, with Thomas Swann as govenor, took over power.  The Registration Act of the General Assembly passed in March 1965 provided that registrars, appointed by the governor, were to list all white males 21 years of age and older and to exclude from voting all persons who did not take the oath.  With the freeing of the slaves and the end of the war, the primary question for many Marylanders became the re-enfranchising of the rebels.

Many former Unionists now went over the the Democratic party in order to fight the Registration Law, the most famous being Montgomery Blair of Montgomery County, previously a staunch Unionist.  Blair was elected president of the Anti-Registration Convention held in January 1866.  Capitalizing on the fearof "Negro rule," he called for a union of the people of Maryland "for the honor, glory and prosperity of our good old Commonwealth" to fight the takeover of the government by the Republicans.  "They will hold power over us and other Southern states by present appliances until the blacks are inducted to be managed by the Freedman's Bureau, and absolutely controlling the whole of the states in which slavery has existed, and so the Union."

 The Registration Law could not be changed without drafting a new constitution and the voting on this would be ruled by the Registration Law.  Governor Swann found a way around this, however.  Since the registrars who administered the oaths to prospective voters were appointed by the governor, he simply replaced all the registrars with men from lists provided by the southern sympathizers. 

Although the oath was still technically in effect, it was not administered by the registrars.  As a result, the old rebels and southern sympathizers were allowed to vote in the next election.  The Democrats took over political power in 1867, devised a new State Constitution which did away with the hated oath, and reapportioned the state in order to give more delegates to the southern counties where the vote would probably be Democratic and take power away from Baltimore and the northern counties.  Past support of the Southern cause became part of the credentials for those seeking appointed posts. 

Political leadership in Montgomery County in the 1880s and 1890s belonged to Montgomery Blair, William Viers Bouic and George Peter.  At the turn of the century Peter's sonm Edward C. Peter, came to the forefront, along with Edward Wootton, Spencer C. Jones, and Blair's nephew, Blair Lee, all Democrats.  Both Wootton and Jones had fought for the Confederacy and after the war Jones practiced law in Rockville and was elected the state's attorney, state senator, and mayor of Rockville for two terms.  Of Montgomery County's Confederate veterans, three were elected as county commissioners, five as state delegates, two as state senators and three as state's attorney.  However, despite where their sympathies had been during the war, in the years that followed "for a variety of reasons, political leaders were compromise-minded; they had a mixed economy dependent to a large degree on their relations with the north."

Montgomery County, with a tremendous population growth, moved with the rest of the state toward industrialization and commercialization.  It was of utmost importance that a unity of the formerly divided people be achieved, for without this unity economic progress would be stymied by internal conflict.  The primary concerns of Democratic political leaders in the county were progress and the promotion of nationalism, which meant they did not dwell on the differences of the past or promote ante-bellum ideologies as these would have been adverse to their purposes.

The major political and economic changes, coming on the heels of the division of loyalties during the war, had a great effect on Maryland society.  Former communities and social networks were disintegrating and new ones being created.  Associations became a way of centering their communities and all kinds of associations, both social and political, came into being in the latter part of the 19^th century.  The Confederate associations which built Confederate monuments and held Confederate ceremonies were very much a part of this new social configuration, and many of these organizations had much political power, having as members wealthy businessmen, politicians and well-to-do women.

The United Confederate Veterans national organization was formed in 1889 and the Sons of Confederate Veterans, an offshoot of the United Confederate Veterans, was formed a few years later.  The United Daughters of the Confederacy grew out of the Ladies Auxiliaries of the United Confederate Veterans organizations.  A number of ladies from these groups decided to form their own independent national group, which they did in 1894 in Nashville, Tennessee.  Not only widows, sisters, and descendants of veterans, but any woman who sympathized with the southern cause could join the United Daughters of the Confederacy.  They sponsored Memorial Day ceremonies, raised funds for monuments, maintained museums and relic rooms, provided educational materials for schools, and sponsored the Children of the Confederacy organization in 1896.  They even offered scholarships for needy sons and daughters of Confederate veterans.  These kinds of activities had a special appeal to reform-minded women.

The Ridgely Brown Camp of the United Confederate Veterans was formed in January 1892, one of its founding members being Spencer C. Jones, and the Ridgely Brown Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy was formed from the ladies' auxiliary.  These and the United Daughters of teh Confederacy all had as members some very powerful people in montgomery County.

There were about 180 Confederate veterans in Montgomery County at the end of the war, their number substantially depleted by the time the Rockville monument was built.  There were, of course, knwon Union veterans in the county but there are no records of any Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) Camp in Montgomery County, possibly because the G.A.R. excluded the working class and black veterans who made up most of the county's Union group, and unfortunately no Union monuments were erected in the county.

In Confederate ceremonies, the veterans themselves were an important symbol.  They were always placed at the head of the parades and given places of honor at ceremonies, usually facing the audience.  They often wore their old uniforms, along with all the badges and ribbons, and were looked on as living symbols of the Confederacy and the lost cause.  As they died and fewer and fewer of them were available for the ceremonies, the presence of what few old survivors remained drew even more emotion from the crowd.  The fact that many of these veterans were also veterans of the Spanish-American War, where northeners and southerners fought side by side, tended to change the public's view toward these veterans as symbols only of the Confederate cause.  With the Spanish-American War, southerners had a victory and a unity to look back on instead of just a defeat. 

The "Thin Gray Line" in the monument's inscription, a nickname for the Maryland men inthe Confederate army, was a reference to both their sparseness and to their Revolutionary War heritage.  Maryland volunteers during the Revolutionary War, the Maryland line under the leadership of John Eager Howard, distinguished themselves in the Battle of Long Island and became renowned as the "Old Line," hence one nickname for Maryland, "The Old Line State."  In coverage of the ceremony by The Sentinel, this identification of the Confederates with the heroes of the Revolution is emphasized.

Although vestiges of the Confederacy and the "lost cause" can be seen in the monnument and the ceremonies at its unveiling, what these symbols meant to the second generation who raised the money for the statue and attended the ceremony was very different from what they meant to the people who had participated in the war.  The second generation had no remembrance of a lost cause, but had heard many a story of the war and were influenced by the romantic aura of the myth of the south, the myth of the southern belle and the dashing cavalryman and the happy slave.

On the other hand, many years went by between the end of the Civil War and this unveiling of the Confederate monument and the increased population, economic progress and plans of the political leaders placed an emphasis on a new nationalism and a unity of the people of the county.  This nationalism and unity are exemplified in the reference in the ceremonial speeches to the courage and loyalty of the Marylanders who fought for the South (rather than defending their cause), the comparisons to the Revolutionary War heroes, the praise of honor over glory, and the inclusion of the symbols of the Maryland flag, the American flag and the national anthem in the ceremony.  Especially significant is the effect of the raising of the American flag as the Confederate and Maryland flags are lowered.

The image some people have of the Confederate monument at Rockville does not conform with the reality.  It was no monument to Southern beliefs but rather a tribute to the soldiers.  Seen in its historical context and with knowledge of the interpretation of its symbolism, the Confederate statue in Rockville is revealed as a monument, not to war and animosity, but to peace and re-unification.