At Least We Have Democracy
In Privacy Screen (certe habemus democratia), I position the former Confederate Monuments of Richmond, Virginia within a US tradition of using classical architectural motifs to allude to respectability and democracy. On a two-paneled folding screen I have stamped images of Richmond monuments, including Robert E Lee, Jefferson Davis, J.E.B. Stuart and Confederate Soldiers and Sailors. The prints emphasize the pedestals’ architectural details but omit details of the cast figures intended to be memorialized. The semi-transparent fabric screens allow diffuse light to pass through but obscure the shapes behind them.
Privacy Screen (certe habemus democratia), ink on polyester, MDF frame, 70” x 38” x 2”, 2021.
The Post Civil War Moment in Virginia
All of the Richmond Confederate monuments I have chosen to research were unveiled between the years of 1890 and 1930, during the period that most Confederate monuments in the nation were erected, as identified by the Southern Poverty Law center.[1] This moment was ripe for white supremacist leadership’s memorialization because it coincided with the widespread introduction of Jim Crow laws in the South, following the half-hearted federal control during reconstruction.
In Virginia, the 1902 state constitution enacted measures to control the polls, and supposedly to fight voter fraud and government corruption.[2] Poll taxes and literacy tests, were enforced by government-chosen poll workers, who invariably used them to prevent potential Black voters from registering and contributed to Southern working class’s disenfranchisement. Over three years, the number of registered voters in Virginia was reduced by half, and the number of Black men registered decreased from 147,000 to less than 10,000. In the 30 years after the Civil war, almost 100 Black men were elected the state legislative branch, but after 1900 Virginia would not see a Black legislator elected until 1968.[3] Despite being in effect until 1974, the 1902 constitution itself was never properly ratified by a popular vote.[4] The moment was a profound failure to any democracy that included Black men within the demos.
The Classical Inspiration
According to Civil War historian, John Coski, the Richmond Confederate Monuments could not have been built on public land and using public funds without Black Richmonder’s systematic oppression.[5] Despite this, the monuments were deeply interested in allying themselves with an aesthetic of democracy through the classical Greek and Roman tradition.
According to records of the city committee that commissioned and approved it, the 100-foot-tall column memorializing “Confederate Soldiers and Sailors” was designed explicitly in the model of Pompey’s Pillar in Alexandria, Egypt.[6] The original Roman triumphal column was a celebration of augustus Diocletian and successful conquest in Egypt. Ideologically, the Confederate Soldiers’ and Sailors’ pillar challenges monumentality by honoring the many nameless troops, rather than a single glorious leader. Furthermore, it is celebrating a moment of failure, rather than a military victory. The tower combined the standard soldier’s valorization with the power of the Roman republic’s historical iconography to communicate a doubly tragic loss of life and of their good Democratic values.
The Jefferson Davis memorial, designed by architect William Noland, is a colonnade with two pedestals: a slightly raised figure of Jefferson Davis, and a towering pillar topped with Greek goddess Vindicatrix. Noland works in the Doric order, which combines the general historic appeal of classical architecture with a more specific rational and mathematic flavor.[7] Over and again, the design returns to groups of three: three steps up from the pavement, three fluted sections in the central pillar, three triglyphs on the frieze of each square pier. There is no particular metaphorical reason to surround Jefferson Davis with threes, except that was how Doric architecture should be. The monument adopts the style primarily as a way to conjure notions of strength, masculinity and rationality.[8]
Robert E Lee’s monument was privately financed by the Richmond Ladies Memorial Association and featured a classic equestrian statue atop an elaborate granite base.[9] The LMA commissioned a well-known Parisian sculptor to depict Lee, Marius Jean Antonin Mercié, but Mercié’s first attempt was far too baroque. He has sculpted Lee on a rearing horse, apparently crushing the twisted figures of his enemies below. The second version was a “simple, calm and eternal” portrayal of Lee.[10] The Lee Memorial was the first element of Monument Avenue to be built and so had to take a slightly subtler approach. Later monuments like the J.E.B. Stuart equestrian statue, did feature a rearing horse with ears pulled back, apparently mid-charge.
The base was designed by the architect Paul Pujol and cost almost as much as the statue.[11] Slim columns with volute capitals, an abacus frieze, and corona and cyma molding place it decisively in the Greek Ionic order. Vitruvius popularly characterized the Ionic order as learned and civilized: neither as brutish as the Doric, nor as flowery as the Corinthian.[12] Again, the Ionic effectively softened Lee’s reputation as a military general, and instead focused on praising his intellect and strength of character. During the unveiling of the statue, speakers at the ceremony followed this tactic and emphasized Lee’s moral virtues, instead of his political and military feats.[13]
As presented by Confederate propaganda, the Civil War is the story of a tenacious group of rebels, viciously and undemocratically oppressed under the fist of the Union. Their noble purpose was to conserve their traditions and way of life in the face of national industrialization. The narrative rides on the objectification of Black Southerners and their erasure from what constituted the demos. It requires acceptance of the idea that one’s rights only extend until they usurp another’s rights and that the right of Black people to freedom and citizenship usurped the white master’s right to property.
Critique of Democracy
By positioning the Confederacy as respectable and a movement of “the people,” classical monuments paint our present problems as government oppression of the people’s voices. In the introduction to Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, Judith Butler points out that democracy is vague and infinitely re-definable, not a moral absolute or concrete goal. She claims that any definition of demos requires exclusion, since the in-group can only be defined by what is out.[14] At the time, the demos were the white male landowners, and it was only through Black Americans’ efforts that the voices of those demos could be sufficiently quieted long enough to redefine what could constitute a person.
Rather than coaching the process of democracy, coach a result. Eliminate what does not work. There is sufficient analytical and historical evidence to show that the class conflict under capitalism is neither humane nor sustainable. There is also sufficient evidence to show that under many definitions of “the people,” democracy has no contradiction with capitalism.[15]
Just as in 1902, the US government will not enforce laws equally. Legislation and funding that focuses on preventing voter fraud and corruption and strengthening democracy are not equivalently applied to Black and white potential voters. In the aftermath of the “Save America” rally on January 6th, 2021, there have been cries to prosecute members of the mob harshly. But legislation and funding that focuses on cracking down on protesters aren’t going to solely—or even equally—affect reactionary white supremacist protestors. They will disproportionately affect Black and indigenous people of color, visibly queer people, and radical left demonstrations.
Consider democracy as a tool, which can be used for moral and immoral purposes, like many tools. Democracy itself is neither good nor evil. By their definition of demos, the Civil War was a violation of democracy. The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, the Freedman’s Bureau and other legislation could only be passed by denying the seceding states their right to representation.[16] Allowing Confederate states to vote Black Americans back into slavery would have been wrong. Full stop. It also would have been democratic.
[1] Whose Heritage: Public Symbols of the Confederacy (Southern Poverty Law Report, 2016). Link.
[2] “Virginia’s Constitutional Convention of 1901-1901,” (Virginia Historical Society, 2004). Link.
[3]“2018 Monument Avenue Commission Report,” Prepared for the Office of Mayor and City Council, City of Richmond, (Richmond, VA, 2018). Link
[4] “Virginia’s Constitutional Convention of 1901-1901.”
[5] “If not for the fact of white supremacy in that era…the marginalization, the exclusion of African Americans from the body politic, if not for that, those monuments likely would not have gone up where they did, when they did. They would not have gone up on public property…with public funding, as they all did, if African Americans had had political power commensurate with their numbers in the city of Richmond… they would have been able to prevent them… at that level alone the monuments are testaments to Black powerlessness during that era.” John Coski, “Second Place Trophies: Contexts for Making Sense of Monument Avenue,” Civil War Conversation, American Civil War Museum, Appomattox, Nov. 9, 2017, video, 48:17. Link.
[6] Souvenir from Unveiling Soldiers' and Sailors' monument by Confederate Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument Association, (Library of Congress via Internet Archive, 1894). Link.
[7] “2018 Monument Avenue Commission Report,” Prepared for the Office of Mayor and City Council, City of Richmond, (Richmond, VA, 2018). Link
[8] As according to Vitruvius’s analysis of various Greek and Roman orders. George L. Hersey , “Vitruvius and the Origins of the Orders: Sacrifice and Taboo in Greek Architectural Myth”, Perspecta, Vol. 23, pp. 66-77, (New Haven, Conn: Rizzoli International Publications, 1987). Link.
[9] Caroline E Janney, “Ladies' Memorial Associations,” Encyclopedia Virginia (Virginia Humanities, 2012). Link.
[10] Clement Thiery, “The French Origin of Robert E Lee’s Statue in Virginia”, French-Amerique, June, 25, 2020.
[11] The statue cost about $17,000 while the base cost between $10,000 and $12,000. “Robert E. Lee Monument (sculpture)” in Smithsonian American Art Museum: American Art Catalog, (Smithsonian Institution Research Information System). Link.
[12] Hersey, “Vitruvius and the Origins of the Orders”.
[13] Archer Anderson, Robert Edward Lee. An address delivered at the dedication of the monument to General Robert Edward Lee at Richmond, Virginia, May 29, 1890, (Richmond, Virginia: Lee Monument Association, 1890). Link.
[14] Judith Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, pp. 1-23, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2015).
[15]In Liberalism, the value placed on individual freedom tends to mandate both democracy and a free market.
[16] W. E. B. Du Bois, “Transubstantiation of a Poor White” from Black Reconstruction, pp. 237-324, (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935, Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013). Link.