Sacred Memories: The Civil War Monument Movement in Texas (review)

2010Book Reviews41g determined by the Hogg family tended to reflect their values rather than other perceived needs of the community. Nevertheless, Kirkland has provided an engaging and insightful look into the often private world ofphilanthropy. By placing the Hogg family within the context of progressive reform and urban development, she explains the lasting impact they had in pursuit of a civic ideal. Anyone interested in the Hogg dynasty, urban Texas, or philanthropic studies will benefit from this volume. After putting die book down, it will be hard to imagine Houston or Texas widiout the many institutions and philanthropies that have long survived the Hogg family. Lamar UniversityMary Kelley Scheer Sacred Memories: TL· Civil War Monument Movement in Texas. By Kelly McMichael. (Denton: Texas State Historical Association, 2009. Pp. 128. Illustrations, maps, appendix, notes, index. ISBN 97808761 12380, $9.95 paper.) This short volume will be of interest to the casual student of Texas history as well as the scholar. Most of the book is dedicated to interesting and informative short discussions of the histories of each of the sixty-eight known Civil War monuments in Texas. These include three dedicated to the Union cause as well. In addition, the author provides an introduction that offers generalizations about the cultural purposes of these monuments and a discussion of the movement that led to the creation of the majority of them. It is the latter section on which this review focuses. McMichael is well-grounded in the literature on public monuments. She sees in them efforts not only at reminding a community of lived experiences but also of forming a social identity for the present and future. Not surprisingly, Confederate monuments asserted the justice and legality of the Southern cause, the unity of white Southerners behind that cause (embodied in the celebration of the common soldier), and defeat based on a confrontation with overwhelming odds rather than any internal shortcomings. Slavery, as a part of the antebellum South and the war, disappeared completely from this celebratory memory. In these conclusions, McMichael parallels those offered by Gaines M. Foster and other scholars who had examined the cultural values embedded in the idea of die Lost Cause that emerged in the postwar South as a whole. The author goes beyond a discussion of the message of the monuments, however , in an examination of the individuals responsible for their construction. In particularly interesting findings, she shows that monument building was left primarily to women. Most of these were members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Drawn largely from the middle class, these women saw their efforts as a part of the general efforts of that class to improve their communities. Their monuments were to express positive morals and virtues as well as add to the beauty of their town's landscape. McMichael believes that for many women, work on behalf of monuments also provided an opportunity to move beyond their traditional gender role in society. Among McMichael's insightful observations are those she makes about the tim- 420Southxvestern Historical QuarterlyJanuary ing of the monument movement. Nearly half of them were erected between 1900 and 1915. In part she attributes this delay to the economy of the South, which forced Texans and other southerners to work first at rebuilding dieir lives. On the other hand, she recognizes that the majority of the monuments were built at a time of severe economic and social upheaval. Agrarian society was experiencing depression and political turmoil. At the same time, the modernizing trends of urbanization and industrialization challenged the old economic, social, and racial order. The monuments were a response, reasserting traditional values and assuring citizens of continued white supremacy and die solidarity of die white race in the face of the disruptive forces. Sacred Memories is not die definitive work on the Civil War monument movement in Texas and clearly was not so intended. The insights offered by the author in the short introduction, however, are diought provoking and hopefully should encourage even closer examination of this important cultural movement in Texas. University ofArkansas at Little RockCarl H. Moneyhon Dinosaur Highway: A History ofDinosaur Valley State Park. By Laurie E.Jasinski (Fort Worth: TCU Press, 200g. Pp. 224...