A bizarre and troubling stamp honoring the group behind many controversial monuments honoring the leaders of the Confederacy is today’s #stampoftheday.
Issued in 1951, the 3-cent stamp commemorates the final reunion of last gathering of the United Confederate Veterans – that is the last surviving soldiers who fought to preserve slavery in the United States. Not surprisingly, this group played a major role in the construction of numerous Confederate monuments, including the ones that sparked the horrific incidents in Charlottesville, VA in 2017 and the bitter fights over the Silent Sam statue in Chapel Hill, NC.
Although federal law prohibited the formation of “rebel” societies from the end of the Civil War until 1878, Confederate veteran groups began forming as soon as the war ended. In 1889, many of these groups came together to form the United Confederate Veterans (UCV), which billed itself as a nonmilitary, educational, social, historical organization concerned with the welfare of its members.
The organization was hugely popular, drawing, at its peak, over 160,000 members (a figure estimated to be about one-quarter of all the Confederate soldiers who survived the Civil War). In addition to local meetings held by its almost 2,000 local chapters, UCV also held annual reunions. The third of these, held in New Orleans in 1892, attracted over 30,000 veterans who marched in a parade that was viewed by about 200,000 people. The largest, which was held in Little Rock in 1911, drew over 100,000 participants (more than twice the city’s population at the time).
While many Union Army veterans were troubled by the new group, over time, the UCV began to sometimes hold gatherings with the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), the major group of Union veterans. With resistance to the group fading, by the early 1900s, UCV was able to secure $200,000 in federal funding for cemeteries for Confederate soldiers in the South and headstones for Confederate soldiers buried in Northern states.
And in June 1917, a few months after the U.S. had declared war on Germany, President Woodrow Wilson spoke at the group’s reunion, which was held in Washington, DC. In addition, the Marine Corps Band played the Star-Spangled Banner and then Dixie at the event’s flag ceremony and about 30,000 Confederate veterans along with their children and grandchildren marched in a parade that reportedly was viewed by hundreds of thousands of well-wishers.
In the early 1900s, the group also began to focus on offering what it believed was a true history of the Civil War by developing textbooks and supporting the construction of many monuments to Confederate leaders and soldiers. The statue of Stonewall Jackson in Charlottesville, for example, was unveiled in 1921 at ceremony that, according to newspaper account at the time, served as “the crowning event of the Confederate Reunion of the Grand Camp, United Confederate Veterans and the Virginia Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans.”
UCV also has strong connections with “Silent Sam,” the controversial statue that until recently had stood for years at UNC’s Chapel Hill campus. Speaking at that statue’s dedication, Julian Carr, the commander-in-chief of North Carolina’s UCV chapter credited the Confederate soldiers for having “saved the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South,” and as a consequence, “the purest strain of the Anglo Saxon is to be found in the 13 Southern States.”
It’s important to note that Carr, who publicly supported the KKK and who ran unsuccessfully for US Senate on a white supremacist platform, was no fringe gadfly. Rather, he was one of the state’s wealthiest and most influential people. He headed the company that created Bull Durham tobacco. He owned the state’s leading newspaper. He was a key early backer of Duke University. He played major roles in a variety of key enterprises in the state involved with textiles, banking (Durham’s First National Bank), railroads, and electric power. And he is the namesake of Carrboro, NC, the funky town next to Chapel Hill, (an honor he received in 1913 for bringing electricity to the hamlet to serve a mill he had purchased in 1909.) Because of his legacy, “Carr-washing” (removing his name from buildings and possibly even renaming the town of Carrboro) has become increasingly common.
While the UCV’s legacy lived on, the group did not because its membership declined as Civil War veterans passed away. The 61st and last UCV reunion, which is honored in today’s stamp, was held in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1951. The event drew 3 of the 12 then-surviving Confederate veterans. (Events included a reenactment of the battle of the Monitor and the Merrimac, which were the subject of yesterday’s #stampoftheday). Seven months later, the last verified Confederate veteran, 104-year old Pleasant Crump passed away.
The stamp issued in conjunction with the last UCV reunion depicts an elderly United Confederate Veteran as he appeared in 1951 in front of an image of the same man as a young Confederate soldier. The theme is reiterated in a nearly empty hourglass also shown on the stamp.
I have been troubled by – and been curious about – this stamp ever since I first saw it my dad’s albums. I’m shocked, but not surprised, that there doesn’t seem to have been any outcry about its subject when it was issued. And I wasn’t sure I should even feature it today. But, having delved into some of the history behind it, I think it’s a good thing that I did. And, sadly, the stamp is, perhaps, even more timely today than it was when it was issued 69 years ago today.
Stay safe and be well.