A Wish for Confederate Memorial Day

Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer

Anderson County is one of seven counties in South Carolina to close offices Friday to mark Confederate Memorial Day, S.C. is one of seven Southern states that still hold a day for the memorial. It is only an official holiday in three states.

It’s a good time to reflect upon and study the history surrounding the reasons for the continued support for the day, a uniquely American holiday, particularly in the South.

Though statues in general have largely lost their place as a public tribute, Confederate statues still dot town squares across the South, where more than 700 statues and memorials reside, including the one on the courthouse square in Anderson. Workers installed the Confederate memorial in downtown Anderson in 1902.

The Confederate monument in downtown Anderson has been a lightning rod of controversy for decades, and it’s unlikely the issue of a monument to the lost cause of the Confederacy in the middle of downtown Anderson is ever going to go away.

We are hardly the only community in the state (and nation) facing the challenge of what to do about such statues or other elements bearing the name of those who fought against the United States in the Civil War, or those who were adamantly pro-slavery.

South Carolina law complicates the issue for counties who might want to move or remove such statues. Twenty-five years ago, our lawmakers made compromises to remove the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse in Columbia by passing the Heritage Act of 2000 which forbids the moving, renaming or modification of any “monument, marker, memorial, school, or street erected or named in honor of the Confederacy” without the support of two-thirds of both the house and senate.

There are few loopholes in the act if public property is involved.

Clemson University dropped Calhoun’s name from the school’s honor college, which was allowed because it was the name of a department. But when the university’s board of trustees also approved changing the name of Tillman Hall, named after the notorious Sen. “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman, back to “Old Main,” the name the building was previously known as until 1948, the legislature failed to support the vote.

Anderson’s Confederate monument hasn’t moved in 118 years, but the message it conveys, the truth of history, has moved beyond Southern provincial sentimentalization of the War Between the States.

What began as an idea on Declaration Day in 1886, eventually led to a local group raising funds for the statue which was dedicated in January 1902 in a ceremony that featured the Clemson College band playing “Taps” as the statue was unveiled. A series of speeches and a parade of Confederate veterans were also part of the event.

At the top of the monument stands Anderson native Major William Wirt Humphreys, who despite being injured in several battles, served throughout almost the entire Civil War, returning to Anderson where he served in a number of prominent positions.

After completing Centre College in Danville, Ky. In 1857, Humphreys moved to South Carolina where he was admitted to the bar in 1860.

When war started Humphreys volunteered to organize Company B. Later as captain of the company, he went to Virginia and was in the Battle of First Manassas, Williamsburg, Seven Pines, Gaines Mill and Frayser's Farm, where he was wounded.

He later was promoted to Major of the Palmetto Sharpshooters and took part in campaigns in Suffolk, Va., and Knoxville, Tenn. He was in seizure of Petersburg, Va., and left one day before the Battle of the Crater.

After the war, Humphreys returned to Anderson and to a law practice and enter politics. He was elected probate judge in 1868, an office he held until 1882. He became president of the Savannah Valley Railroad and was elected mayor of Anderson in 1878 He aided in the re-election of Wade Hampton as state governor and was made a Major General of the S.C. Militia in 1880.

He lived with his wife Anna Josephine Cully of Anderson in a large Victorian house on West Whitner Street, at the modern-day location of the Mimosa trailer park.

Humphreys is buried in Old Silverbrook Cemetery.

The monument also includes two inscriptions which may have resonated with Confederate veterans in 1902, but which today are both offensive and baffling to the modern mind.

The first, ironically on the monument’s South side, a quote common to Confederate memorials reads:

"The world shall yet decide, in truth's clear, far-off light, that the soldiers who wore the gray, and died with Lee, were in the right."

History makes it difficult to conclude the cause of the Confederacy was in any fashion as “in the right”

The longer inscription on the monument’s East side extols the chivalry of the South’s cause, a myth largely put forth in later years by the Daughters of the Confederacy.

While some continue to insist the War Between the States was fought over states’ rights and other economic issues, it’s clear issue of economics were tied to the South’s refusal to end the practice of slavery.

While there were certainly many Southern foot soldiers who may have never owned slaves, those who sent them to war certainly did, and were hell-bent on protecting their slaves and the right for others to own slaves.

By the time of the Civil War, most other civilized nations had long abandoned the practice of slavery, even though indenturement continued for some groups, such as the Irish.

But support for slavery as an economic engine and philosophical justification remained deeply embedded in the minds of Southern leaders as the cotton plantations they made possible. Slavery was chiefly about maintaining the lifestyles of wealthy plantation owners and others who profited from unpaid labor, making it a central part of the succession from the United States and the formation of the Confederacy.

When the Confederacy lost, it was difficult for those who still had a stake in the old ways to let it go. Southerners lost more than 250,000 soldiers during the war. And as people of storytelling, the memories of those losses lingered.

Both of my great-great grandfathers fought for the Confederacy, and tales of their leaving and returning home after long absences were still being passed down more than 100 years later. Such stories are important parts of family history, and should be remembered and retold.

But honoring the leaders of a group which waged war against the United States of America less than 100 years after the nation waged war for the concept “That all men are created equal,” should today serve as an affront to all Americans.

There are no public monuments or statues praising England’s King George III or any of his generals or the loyalists who fought for the British anywhere in this country. So why do monuments or statues of Jefferson Davis or any of his generals memorializing their efforts on town squares remain?

It’s long past time to move these monuments and statues to places where they can be properly preserved and used to teach the full measure of history, not seek to errantly glamorize localized statues which are steeped in nostalgia and represent dark times for the South.

These tributes to the past belong in museums, and Anderson’s monument would be well served by moving it a few blocks over to the grounds of the Anderson County Museum. The museum is one of the best in the country for its size, and would be the perfect spot since inside there is already a substantial exhibit on the Civil War. The museum would be able to properly maintain and protect the monument, as well as teach those who visit the imporatance of the era which it represents.

Such a move would not be an attempt to destroy history. Instead, it offers a chance to enhance the history by preserving such artifacts and putting them in context in a place where learning about the past is part of a sacred mission.

History is preserved in great detail in books in every library in the country, as well as in various art forms and other documentaries. Moving the statues and monuments to places where they will be seen in context and the full light of history for generations to come not only provides better understanding, it reflects, as do other museum exhibits, how far our area has progressed and notes the men and women who made such momentum possible.

But to paraphrase the words on the monument, it’s clear: "The world knows today in truth's clear light, that the soldiers who wore the gray and died with Lee, no matter their intentions, were NEVER in the right.”

Last month we marked the 164th anniversary of South Carolina’s shelling for Fort Sumter, (Erik Larson’s excellent “The Demon of Unrest” offers a thorough account of the events surrounding Fort Sumter) which launched the Civil War and eventually cost the lives of more than 700,000 citizens, and a day that was marked four years later to the day by the return of the United States flag over what was left of the fort, where it belonged..

Given the current political climate, it’s not likely the state legislature possesses the fortitude to return jurisdiction of Confederate monuments and memorials to the counties in which they reside. But on this Confederate Memorial Day 2025, let us "Accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope."