The Origins of Monument Avenue and the Robert E. Lee Statue
Before 1890, Monument Avenue was not the “grand avenue” that it is today. Propelled by vocal elite of old Southern wealth, the once-vacant swath of farmland outside of the city limits, would become what was considered a worthwhile business proposition.8
Following Robert E. Lee’s death in 1870, two organizations composed of Confederate officers and women from prestigious Richmond families formed to commemorate the deceased general. In 1886, the Virginian General Assembly combined the two organizations thus forming the Lee Monument Association (LMA). Under the oversight of Governor Fitzburgh Lee, the nephew of Robert E. Lee and former Confederate general, LMA voted to place the monument on the undeveloped land anticipating that the West End would become a flourishing site of economic and real-estate growth. The plan ultimately proved successful; soon after the city annexed the land, Monument Avenue became a thriving terminus connecting these fashionable and wealthy suburbs directly to the city center.9
The Lee monument became the center of Richmond’s “New South,” which adopted the myth of the Lost Cause, remained in step with national ideals, and identified with Southern resistance and values.10 On the day of the dedication, Archer Anderson, an Iron Works businessman and former Confederate, orated:
“A people carves its own image in the monument of its great men…It is, besides and above all, the unique combination in him of moral strength with moral beauty, of all that is great in heroic action with all that is good in common life, that will make of this pile of stone a sacred shrine, dear throughout coming ages, not to soldiers only, but to all ‘helpers and friends of mankind.11’”
In his book Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-century America, Kirk Savage expounds upon Lee’s central role as the embodiment of the Confederacy. Unlike Jefferson Davis, whose popularity waned after his “cause célèbre and a major affront to Southern white ‘manhood’” when he attempted to flee the States disguised as a woman, Lee exemplified the South’s idea of the valorous masculinity.12 Virginians revered the native-born Lee personally as well as professionally for his military prowess. Notably, despite his service in the United States army, Lee declined the offer to command the Union Army in 1861. In a heartfelt letter to his sister, Lee stated that "with all of my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, and my home." Two days later, Lee became a general in the Confederate Army.13
By selecting Lee and placing his statue away from the capitol, which already memorialized the Confederacy with various erected Civil War statues and preserved earthworks from the era of the “Old South,” Richmond attempted to distance itself from the narrative of slavery and politics. Now with Lee as the historical centerpiece, Savage continues, the story of the Lost Cause “became a glorious military record rather than a political struggle to secure a slaveholding nation.14”
Richmond’s popular publication, the Times, in 1890 described the unveiling of the Lee monument to be “a day long to be remembered in the annals of Virginia.”15 Conversely, the Richmond Planet, a publication which advocated for the rights of the African-American community, reported that the fanfare surrounding Lee’s monument “served to retard [Virginia’s] progress in the country and forged heavier chains with which to be bound.”16 Over a hundred years later, Monument Avenue still creates rifts in the community over the competing cultural implications imbued in the boulevard’s monuments.
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