Museum of the Lost Cause #museummonday

Organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy  promoted a version of the past that has come to be known as “the Lost Cause.” That term was coined in 1866, and is now used by critics of the idea as code for holding a distorted, pro-Confederate, and pro-white supremacist view of events surrounding the Civil War. 

At the turn of the 20th century, the idea that white people were superior to Black people was a commonly held attitude. This had a widespread effect on peoples’ understandings of the past, and it was a bedrock of the Lost Cause interpretation of the South. Among other things, the Lost Cause mythology declared that African Americans were happy in slavery and that slavery was NOT the major cause of the Civil War.  

CFM 1981.001.0168

“Mammy” image,  1906

By the end of the 19^th century, Southern “patriotic” groups like the UDC had helped create and promote a version of history that revered Robert E. Lee and focused on the bravery and sacrifice of southern white men and their female family members.  As one historian has put it, "With religious fervor the Daughters set out to prove--perhaps to themselves as well as to others--that the Lost Cause had been a just cause."

The local UDC ladies' love of the Confederacy and idolization of Robert E. Lee shine through in their early minutes. The chapter's meetings were held on the 19^th of each month to honor the day of the month that corresponded to Robert E. Lee’s birth date (except then the 19th fell on a Sunday). And they called the artifacts they collected relics, implying that they were somehow holy.

Their ideas about race are less clearly articulated. The UDC’s early minutes do not talk about race explicitly.  But the chapter did declare in 1905 that they supported the “Clansman” a book that glorified the Ku Klux Klan.  And, in the same year, the ladies donated money to help buy a Ku Klux Klan flag for the North Carolina room at the “Museum in Richmond,” which is how the ladies referred to the Confederate Museum.

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Museum of the Confederacy's KKK flag

So, while we don't know what the Museum's labels or exhibits said (or indeed if there were labels!) we can be fairly confident that the early Museum was a proponent of the Lost Cause.

To Memorialize the Confederate Cause #museummonday

The Museum’s early mission was to collect, preserve, and memorialize the Confederacy.  

CFM 2002.008.0521

relic #30

Nine-star confederate sash, about 1861

Women who joined the local UDC chapter were by definition the descendents of  local Confederate soldiers and officers. They wanted to keep the memory of their loved ones alive, and promulgate the idea that their sacrifice was not in vain. The collected a variety of items connected to the city, people who lived here, and military and home front experiences. 

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“relic #12”

Candle from the Beauregard, about 1863

CFM 2002.008.0354

Relic # 244

Major General Whiting’s cane, about 1860

CFM 2002.008.0270 home made goose fan, 1863

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“Relic #58”

homespun gloves

The Museum's first home

The Museum made its home in the Wilmington Light Infantry building for 20 years, starting in 1898.

Wilmington Light Infantry building, about 1913

Sometimes, the Museum struggled to open.

According to the January 1901 President’s Report “…the room has not been open for visitors since last May, and some donations are still unrecorded.”

But the Museum kept going and members kept collecting. For example, the minutes for the UDC’s April 19, 1901 meeting noted "Mrs. Davidson has presented the museum with some valuable papers, and also a cap worn by her husband during the war." We still have Robert Davidson's kepi in the collection, and we still collect Civil War era artifacts.

CFM 2002.008.0264 Robert Davidson’s Kepi, about 1862

 In 1899, the Museum changed location for the first time in its history – it moved from one room to another within the WLI Building!

To celebrate that fact, the ladies reported that “In October we held our very pleasant and successful ‘tea’ – opening our museum on that occasion for the first time in the new room so kindly given up to us by the Veteran corps of the Light infantry.”

A picture that, perhaps, includes some of the veterans who agreed to a room swap with the Museum.  Outside Wilmington Light Infantry Armory, about 1907

Beginning the Work

“So it only remains for us to begin the work” – UDC President’s report, January 19, 1898.

After hesitating for years, the UDC decided to start collecting artifacts.

Currier and Ives triple Portrait of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson, from approximately 1863

 

President Eliza Hall Nutt Parsley declared “…it is better to make a small beginning, than to delay any longer, as each year will add to the difficulty of the undertaking. We have already had a gift from General DeRosset of some valuable maps, and from Mrs. W. G. Thomas through the memorial association of a collection of photographs of confederate officers, about forty in number, and four larger confederate pictures nicely framed, two of them being portraits of Lee and Jackson. Other contributions have been promised as soon as we are able to receive and take care of them…”

The Idea becomes a Reality

 It took the ladies three years set up a Museum after the Wilmington Light Infantry offered them a room.

In December 1897, when the WLI again offered the UDC a room in the armory and a glass case, the chapter decided the time was right to try to make the museum a reality.

The women appropriated $25 for the Museum at the January 1898 meeting. And they announced to the world -- well the people who read the local paper -- they had reached an agreement with the Wilmington Light Infantry and secured room in the WLI’s building for a museum of “confederate relics.”

Colonel John D. Taylor’s Uniform about 1864 

Old Museum, Contemporary Concerns

We think our concerns are somehow "modern" -- that they reflect the professional growth of museums and the field.  But looking back to the founding of Cape Fear Museum, it's clear that some of today's concerns are age-old issues. 

Like museums today, the ladies’ “Confederate Museum” needed objects and images, a space to display them in, and money to create exhibits and preserve the collection.   

Space was easier to come by than cash.  As early as 1895, the Wilmington Light Infantry offered the women room in their building for a museum.  In  January 1897’s annual report, the local United Daughters of the Confederacy's president, Eliza Hall Nutt Parsley noted that the UDC  hadn’t taken the WLI up on their offer because the group “have never had money enough to fit it up for the safe and proper keeping of these valuable things.”

The Wilmington Light Infantry's building CFM 1994.119.001

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