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Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Civil War Monument

When JR and I went to Shiner, Texas the other day we decided to take the back roads home. At one point we ended up in the town of Gonzales. It is a quaint little town that we plan to go back up to because of the outstanding architecture up there.

Remind me to show you a photo of their old movie theater. It is very cool and retro and still being used. Amazing!

Anyway, when driving around town I happened to spot this Civil War Monument. Though they prefer the "War between the States" to "Civil War". I screamed at politely asked JR to pull over so I could get a picture.

 

I have a grave and abiding interesting in Civil War monuments, Northern and Southern. My long time goal has been to someday catalog, photograph, and write a picture book of as many as I can find. Now, if someone would just give me the money to take a year off, buy a motorhome, a decent camera and such that would be great. The money has been a bit of a sticking point on this project.

What I find fascinating is that the Northern monuments were usually erected shortly after the end of the war. Typically, within the first 5 years. The Southern monuments took considerably longer. They usually didn't get erected until 10 or more years later. I'm sure it was a money/loser/carpetbagger thing.

Some battle fields and towns in Border States (those states that border the Mason-Dixon line) have both a Union and Confederate monument. I've noticed when this happens the Union one was dedicated first and is usually larger. While there are exceptions to this rule though. The social history aspect of this intrigues me. Call me a geek!


This particular Confederate Soldiers monument wasn't dedicated until 1910. After years of looking at these thing I can speculate that by waiting so long to design and dedicate their Confederate monument the town was able to put up a very grand one. 

I just wanted to share that little bit of my craziness with you. Like you didn't already know I'm a freak for this kind of thing.

Does your town have a Civil War monument?
Would you send my a picture if it does?

Thanks,
M

2 comments:

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  2. That's fascinating about the timing of the monuments. I didn't know that!

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