Jefferson Davis and George Washington Statues

The statue of George Washington, the first president of the U.S. (1789–1797), stands on the northern edge of the South Mall. This statue once stood between two others of presidents—the 28th President of the U.S. Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921) and the President of the Confederate States Jefferson Davis (1861–1965). The University removed the statues of these two persons in 2016. This stop explores the symbolic relationship between these men and their representation on the campus.

The pairing of Jefferson Davis with that of Woodrow Wilson on either side of the stairway leading up to the grand plaza in front of the tower is not accidental. In fact, the history of its shifting placement in the commemorative ensemble of the South Mall tells us much about the changing and contested meanings the statues were intended to convey.

George W. Littlefield, one of the nation’s wealthiest ex-Confederates, developed the idea of a commemorative installation on the South Mall as part of his plan to create a grand entrance to the University.[1]

Littlefield, who served as a UT regent from 1911 to his death in 1920 and who built his mansion just across the street from the 40 acres, was a strong supporter of the University and of it being a “southern” institution. He worked hard to make sure that UT projected a positive image of the anti-bellum South and a negative one of the “disastrous” Reconstruction. Littlefield was a firm proponent of Lost Cause ideology, which maintained that the Civil War had not been fought over slavery but instead was a righteous struggle against the North’s abuse of the Constitution and the right of individual southern states to honor their citizens’ constitutionally granted birthright to private property.

Littlefield was an important personage in a number of Confederate veterans’ organizations.[2] By 1890 he was a member of the United Confederate Veterans whose objective was to “promot[e] the South’s interpretation of the war through the preservation of history and the establishment of monuments celebrating the Confederate cause.”[3] For the rest of his life Littlefield went about using his wealth and influence to fulfill this objective. He was a major supporter and financier of the Jefferson Davis Monument in Kentucky the largest of all Confederate monuments in the country.[4]

Jefferson Davis Monument State Historic Site in Fairview, Kentucky, undated, Wikimedia Commons

He also played a key role in the erection of the Confederate Dead Monument in 1903 at the entrance to the South Mall of the Texas Capital Building, topped by a statue of Jefferson Davis.[5] In the words of UT President Robert Vinson with whom he worked to erect Confederate statues on UT’s campus: “to a degree unsurpassed by any man I have ever known, Major Littlefield lived and died in the firm conviction of the righteousness of that [Confederate] cause.”[6]

“Died for States Rights Under the Constitution.” Confederate Dead Monument, south entrance Texas State Capital grounds, Austin, TX, 2015, Wikimedia Commons

On the UT Campus Littlefield used his financial and political power to “… impose his cultural and social views on a financially needy university and on Texas students … maneuver[ing] the university into serving as the largest homage to the Confederacy in a major public institution.”[7] Littlefield began to conceptualize his commemoration of the Lost Cause in 1915. By 1916 he was in communication with Italian neo-classical sculptor Pompeo Coppini asking him to consider undertaking the artistic work on the project.[8] Coppini had worked on a number of Confederate Memorials in Texas and elsewhere including collaborating with Littlefield and others on three on the Texas capital grounds.

When he died in 1920 Littlefield left the money ($200,000.00 later increased to $250,000.00) to undertake the entrance and memorial, as part of over a million dollars’ worth of total funding to the University. While he would ultimately agree with Coppini and the University to modifications in the memorial before his death, his original desires are clearly stated in his will. Its terms created a committee of trustees consisting of the UT president, H.A. Wroe, a Littlefield relative and president of his bank, and Will Hogg (son of the commemorated governor) to oversee the project. Littlefield’s original concept for the Gateway centered on “a massive bronze arch over the south entrance…” to the University.[9] At the top of the arch he stipulated the placement of a “life size statue of Jefferson Davis.”[10] Below Davis and to his right was a statue of Robert E. Lee, and below him John H. Reagan’s statue. Below Davis and to his left was a statue of Albert Sydney Johnston and below him a statue of James S. Hogg. (See the supplemental essay on Johnston, Hogg, and Reagan).

The position of Jefferson Davis at the top of the arch is significant. In the late 18^th and early 20^th Centuries many areas of the South subscribed to a version of the Lost Cause that took Robert E. Lee as its most important symbol. In most of the South, as art historian Kirk Savage writes, “Lee was an extraordinarily respected figure, always represented as the South’s exemplar of manhood.”[11] The placement of Lee, a heroic if defeated military figure, as the South’s “premier representative … depoliticized the Confederacy after the fact … the Lost Cause became a glorious military record rather than a political struggle to secure a slaveholding nation.”[12] Lee had also not been a large slave holder and after the War voiced ambivalent feelings about the institution. He fit well with the Lost Cause narrative of the Civil War as a righteous struggle for states right rather than the retention of slavery.

On the other hand, Davis as a plantation owner from the deep South had owned a large number of slaves. As president of the Confederacy, he consistently voiced strong support for the institution. He was the rebellious nation’s preeminent political figure and policy maker.[13] Littlefield’s original proposal to place Jefferson Davis in the most prominent position in the memorial he financed and his championing of the placement of Davis in the position of prominence in the other commemorations he helped finance, made it very clear that he and his associates favored a relatively unrepentant and even pro-slavery version of the Lost Cause.[14]

Proposed Littlefield Fountain Sketch #2, undated, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History

The South Mall Statuary ensemble was not constructed as Littlefield originally envisioned. There were at least two problems. One was that the money he left in his will for its construction was not enough to erect the arch that he had desired even with the addition of an extra $50,000. The size of the ensemble and alternative proposals was so massive that members of the campus community believed that it would dwarf other nearby features of the University entrance. Finally, even in the early 20^th century there were faculty members and others who believed that, after the nationally unifying WWI, a Confederate memorial was too divisive. Coppini too was of this opinion. The sculptor, along with the UT president and the head of the faculty building committee, convinced Littlefield to include a WWI memorial and a statue of Woodrow Wilson in his ensemble. With these additions, the ensemble would be commanded by Davis, the president of the Confederacy and Wilson, the US president. By 1921 when the elaboration of the statues was well underway, Coppini was representing the ensemble to the chair of the faculty building committee as a commemoration “of the reunion of the Nation after the Civil War.”[15]

Jim Nicar’s wonderful blog The UT History Corner and the Jefferson Davis exhibit at the Briscoe Center for American History portray Coppini as a moderating figure who worked to make Littlefield’s ensemble a symbol of national unity. However, while it is undoubtedly the case that Coppini wanted the South Mall Gateway to be a nationally unifying gesture, he was not opposed to it maintaining its Lost Cause elements with white supremacy as a central theme. As Mendoza states Coppini, a supporter of segregation, was sympathetic to “all things southern” and “epitomized the white supremacist views that characterized Texas and the South during the Jim Crow era.”[16]

In fact, Professor William James Battle, who was the extremely influential chair of the faculty building committee, contested Coppini’s description of the ensemble observing “… every single statue represents a southern man. How can a group composed of men from only one section stand for a united nation?”[17] In his 1921 letter to UT President Vinson, Battle proposes a new meaning for the ensemble more appropriate for this emerging post Lost Cause era:

“Let me propose that the monument be made a memorial to the Patriotism of the South. The statues of Davis, Johnston, and Lee stand for the southern defense of the right of self-determination; those of Reagan and Hogg for the development of the new South in the restored union; that of Wilson, the Southerner once more made president, for the final triumph of the Indivisible Union. The great central group [Littlefield Fountain] would then represent the Spirit of the South leading her children … to battle for the rights of the whole nation.” [18]

Within the next decade architects, faculty, and administrators further modified the design and amended its meaning until the 1950s when it reached the form it was in when the first statues were removed. Nevertheless, its staunch Lost Cause heritage and white supremacist core were maintained through the changes by the continued prominent position of the statue of President Jefferson Davis.

The University removed the Jefferson Davis statue on August 30, 2015 at the insistence of the student government and placed it on display at the Briscoe Center. The Wilson statue was removed at the same time for “aesthetic” reasons.

[1] Joy M. Giguere. “’Young and Littlefield’s Folly’: Fundraising, Confederate Memorialization, and the Construction of the Jefferson Davis Monument in Fairview, Kentucky, 1907–1924.” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 115, No. 1, (Winter 2017), 39-73.

[2] Alexander Mendoza, “The Vision of Littlefield Preserved: Memorializing the Confederacy at the University of Texas at Austin.” The Journal of the West 51, No. 2 (2012), 49.

[3] Alexander Mendoza, “Causes Lost but not Forgotten: George Washington Littlefield, Jefferson Davis and Confederate Memories at the University of Texas.” In The Fate of Texas: The Civil War and the Lone Star State, edited by Charles D. Grear, 155–179, Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2008, 160.

[4] Giguere, 41.

[5] Mendoza 2008, 2012.

[6] Mendoza 2008, 158.

[7] Mendoza, “The Vision,” 49.

[8] Mendoza, “The Vision,” 52.

[9] Codicil Number Two, Box 3A90, Folder LOCO-121, Final Will and Codicils, 1910-1920, George Washington Littlefield Papers, 1860–1942, Dolph Briscoe Center of American History, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas.

[10] Codicil Number Two, George Washington Littlefield Papers, 1860–1942.

[11] Kirk Savage. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America. New ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018, 131.

[12] Savage, Standing Solider, 2018, 131

[13] Savage, Standing Soldier, 2018, 131.

[14] See “Ex-Confederate Day.” June 23, 1897, Austin Daily Statesman, 1.

[15] Letter, Mr. William J. Battle to Dr. R.E. Vinson, September 22, 1921, Box VF 15/C.b, President’s Office Records. Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.

[16] Mendoza, “Causes Lost,” 167.

[17] Letter, Mr. William J. Battle to Dr. R.E. Vinson, September 22, 1921, President’s Office Records.

[18] Letter, Mr. William J. Battle to Dr. R.E. Vinson, September 22, 1921, President’s Office Records.

Equestrian statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, Dallas, TX, 2014, The Lyda Hill Texas Collection of Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America Project, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

“Ex-Confederate Day.” June 23, 1897, Austin Daily Statesman, 1.

George Washington Littlefield Papers, 1860–1942, Dolph Briscoe Center of American History, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas.

Giguere, Joy M. “’Young and Littlefield’s Folly’: Fundraising, Confederate Memorialization, and the Construction of the Jefferson Davis Monument in Fairview, Kentucky, 1907–1924.” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 115, No. 1, (Winter 2017), 39-73.

Mendoza, Alexander. “Causes Lost but not Forgotten: George Washington Littlefield, Jefferson Davis and Confederate Memories at the University of Texas.” In The Fate of Texas: The Civil War and the Lone Star State, edited by Charles D. Grear, 155–179, Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2008.

——–“The Vision of Littlefield Preserved: Memorializing the Confederacy at the University of Texas at Austin. “The Journal of the West 51, No. 2 (2012), 49-59.

“Monument Unveiled,” The Austin American Statesman, April 17, 1903, 1, 8.

President’s Office Records. Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas.

Savage, Kirk. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America. New Ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.

Images appearing in 360 video:

Cannon, Deborah. “Jefferson Davis Statue,” Austin-American Statesman, 23 June 2015.
http://highered.blog.statesman.com/2015/08/27/live-coverage-court-hearing-on-moving-ut-confederate-statues/

Gator87. “Map of Confederate States,” Wikipedia, 13 June 2010. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Southern_United_States_Civil_War_map.png

“Jefferson Davis,” Wikipedia from Library of Congress, 1861. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Davis#/media/File:President-Jefferson-Davis.jpg

“Seal of the Confederate States of America,” Wikimedia, 18 Aug. 2008. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seal_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America.png

Gobetz, Wally. “Woodrow Wilson Statue,” Flickr, 16 Aug. 2012. https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/8041986650“Woodrow Wilson,” Wikipedia, 1916. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vance_McCormick_wi_th_Woodrow_Wilson,_1916.jpg

This space, because as I said before, this tour is as much as about what’s not here as it is about what is here. This space here used to be a space occupied by a statue of Jefferson Davis who was the President of the Confederacy. And across the way on a similar pedestal, matching pedestal, was a statue of President Woodrow Wilson.
So now, this is the University of Texas. So it seems strange to have a statue of a President of the Confederacy, a man who visited Texas a couple of times but really didn’t come here, didn’t retire here or anything else like that.
But one could I guess understand it if one remembers that Texas was part of the Confederacy. Why it is that Woodrow Wilson would be here and no other Presidents is a bigger question that we’ll try to answer as we go through and look at more of these things.
From where we’re standing we can turn and look at a statue that’s in-between and it is a statue that was erected after the Jefferson Davis statues in the decades after the Jefferson Davis and the Woodrow Wilson statues and the rest of the statues that we’re gonna see on the mall.
It’s a statue of George Washington. It was established or erected by the Daughters of the Revolution. And many people think it to be apart from or distinct from, in terms of its purpose and setting, than the rest of the statues that we’re gonna look at. While this statue, the George Washington statue, was certainly conceived of and installed later, I think it does play into the general, one of the general themes of the statue because of who it is and where it’s placed.
If you have a look at the Great Seal of the Confederacy, and you think about the United States of America and how when the President makes a speech, on his podium is the Great Seal of the United States, the Confederacy had its own great seal. And you think about who sits at the very center of the Great Seal of the Confederacy, you have a better idea of why it is that George Washington is here on campus sitting amidst a number of other statues of Confederates. Because, of course, the central figure in the Great Seal of the Confederacy is George Washington. So let’s move down and have a look at the next statue here to our right.

Changing...

Next Stop

9. Albert Sidney Johnston Statue

1933 architectural planning map of the University of Texas rendered by Paul Philippe Cret, with the location of the Albert Sidney Johnston tour stop marked.