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THE CADDO PARISH CONFEDERATE MONUMENT
In 1896, a United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) chapter was chartered in Shreveport, Louisiana, and named Shreveport Chapter #237, the 237th such chapter in the country and second to #72 in New Orleans in the state.
The idea of a Confederate monument was first discussed as early as 1902 among the charter members including Chapter President Birdie Scott, Eugenia Scott, Mary Rose Scott, and Betty Scott Youree.
It had been almost 40 years since the end of the conflict (1865 to 1902) when discussion of the monument began as the surviving participants of the war were dying of old age. This monument’s erection became a project for a group of about 25 women who belonged to Shreveport Chapter of the UDC. They wanted to honor their men before they were gone and leave a piece of art that would move future generations and encourage them to learn more about that period in history.
It was the sacrifices of their fathers, brothers, fiancées, and husbands in the war for Southern Secession that these women felt needed to be publicly remembered. The constitution of the Shreveport chapter, like all other UDC chapters, contained one article which read: “Our purpose is to collect and preserve all material for a truthful history of the Confederate States and to honor the memory of all men and women who served in the cause”.
The monument would be used to define the place of Caddo Parish’s sons in history, becoming a source of cultural pride. The erection of this type of outdoor art would satisfy the need to connect the Confederate heroes of the past with the monument builders’ time and with future generations.
The Shreveport Chapter UDC members made money to contribute to the purchase of the Caddo Parish Confederate monument by having food booths at a festival that would eventually be called “the Louisiana State Fair”, holding talent presentations, and selling handmade clothing at Christmas social events. In addition to the city wide efforst, the monument’s construction also had parish-wide support. Quoting Historian Eric J. Brock in his column in The Forum News magazine published on April 17, 2002: “In 1903, The Caddo Parish Police Jury allocated $1,000 or 10 percent of the funds needed to pay for the monument to the UDC for its realization ($10,000 in 1903 is equal to approximately $200,000 in today’s [2002] money.)” Finally, more money was raised with the UDC contributing over half of the $10,000 needed. The police jury, the forerunner of the modern Caddo Parish Commission at that time, also reserved for the UDC a plot of land large enough to accommodate the monument on the Courthouse Square. This reservation, made on June 18, 1903, gave the UDC use of this plot in perpetuity, but did not actually convey or donate the plot to them. Although the police jury appears to have intended to do so, there is no record that such conveyance was actually ever made."
With the necessary funds finally raised, the women commissioned the monument in 1905. Their selection of sculptor was easy. The choice was nationally-known Texas sculptor Frank Teich, a German immigrant working out of Llano County, Texas. The Scott family, whose female members provided leadership of the Shreveport UDC chapter, had already commissioned Teich to create several sculptures for their private family cemetery, located at their home across the state line in Scottsville, Texas. The Scott family would eventually provide Teich’s largest patronage. In addition to the family pieces and the Caddo Parish monument, they commissioned a column with soldier at Greenwood Cemetery, also in Shreveport, erected in 1911.
The Louisiana State Historic Preservation Office considers Frank Teich to be a master sculptor. Unfortunately, sculpture has not received the scholarly study in Louisiana that it has in some other states. The SHPO is unable to prove Teich’s status to National Park Service standards at this time and is not claiming significance for the monument’s status as an outstanding example of Teich’s work. Nevertheless, it is instructive to learn what scholars have said of his work in general.
Cynthia Mills and Pamela H. Simpson, in their book Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory named Frank Teich as one of six “key image makers of Confederate Memory”, placing him in a very small group of nationally known sculptors of his time. Sybil f. Crawford, writing in the AGS Quarterly in the summer edition of 2004, called Teich a “Sculptor Extraordinaire”. “As ‘father of the Texas granite industry, Frank Teich may have been his own best customer and has seldom been given the credit he deserves as one of the nation's leading sculptors, and even more certainly so one of the South's.” Although it is not possible to determine the exact number of commissions Teich completed during his lengthy 60 year career, it is obvious that his work was much in demand. He claimed that he was responsible for three-fourths of the Confederate monuments in a three state area (Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana). His “finishing plant” would become one of the South’s largest suppliers of commemorative sculpture. It had provided at least one third of all Confederate monuments located in Texas alone.
Commissioning the statue would be a significant moment in the history of this group of Louisiana women. Here in the first years of the new century, they had power. Even though they did not have the right to vote, they could step out of their traditional role as homemaker to organize, raise funds, and influence politicians. They had a presence in civic affairs and they even cemented their names in the history book of the parish in words and the likeness of a beautiful young woman on a permanent public fixture.
Sculptor Frank Teich specifically recognized the role of women in the Commemorative Sculpture Movement by including a female figure as a prominent focus in the design. This feature is unique among Louisiana’s Confederate monuments and statues. None of the other 84 Confederate commemorative sculptures in Louisiana have a full-sized, standing, classically dressed woman figure who, according to Teich, is meant to portray the Roman goddess of history, Clio. She is shown writing the names of the Confederate dead in a book of history. This is very unusual for sculpture of this period, and a subtle reference to the women of the Shreveport Chapter of UDC (the organization that erected most of the South’s commemorative period sculptures) as the body responsible for keeping local history. Who does that woman in sculpture really represent? Even at the time of the monument’s dedication she was so symbolic as to be a mystery to even the guest speaker who thought she represented the women of the South. Who was she intended to represent: the muse of history as Teich explained? Is she the South itself? Does she represent the Confederate mothers and daughters? Or the ladies of Shreveport Chapter?
The monument was installed and dedicated in the spring of 1906. The large attendance at the ceremony, the words of officials and guest speakers, and the press coverage provided clearly show how deeply entrenched the citizens of Caddo Parish were in Phase II of the Confederate Memorial Movement and how strongly they still clung to the Cult of the Lost Cause.
For example, guest speaker Edward H. Randolph, US District Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, said:
All over the Southland the United Daughters of the Confederacy have erected monuments to perpetuate the memory of brave and devoted sons of the South who bled and died for the principles embodied in the cause for which the Stars and Bars were so heroically created and defended.
For we believe that all the great reforms among the nations, and all the mighty strides of the people towards constitutional government and personal liberty have had their genesis and their clearest expressions in the principles for which the Confederate soldier fought and died. We all agree that the deeds of the men who followed Lee and Jackson and Beauregard are imperishable in history—and that such monuments as this, erected by the noble women of our land who even excelled our brave soldiers in their sublime devotion and in the self-sacrifice they made to the cause are eminently calculated to perpetuate the memory of the men who sacrificed their all on the alter of such sacred principles.
Another speaker at the monument dedication, Methodist Reverend Dr. W.T. Bolling, said the following:
This occasion . . . has a meaning far beyond the mere exhibition of a beautiful work of art chiseled by the hand of genius from the cold and shapeless stone. It means more than the loyal devotion and unremitting toil of these noble women (of the UDC) in making this . . .possible. It means a tribute of love to the memory of the most remarkable body of men ever engaged in war’s bloody strife, whose deeds gained for them the respect of their enemies and the admiration of the rest of the civilized peoples of the world, and whose setting sun, going down behind the clouds of defeat, left an eternal stream of military glory along the path of martial fame and threw the light of pride of a nation upon the tomb of the dead Confederacy.
The men who went forth to battle under this banner were not actuated by hate, by desire for conquest, or to maintain the institution of slavery, but battled for what they believed to be a great fundamental doctrine, a foundation principle in a government founded upon the consent of the governed.
Dr. Bolling closed the Dedication celebration by saying “We are still loyal to the solemn convictions of the sixties (1860s), still thrilled by the strains of ‘Dixie’. To those whom this monument represents: we lovingly and reverently salute you, whose last picket has been called from his post, whose last camp fire has died out, and who have crossed over the river to rest under the shade of the trees."
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