The Death of Southern Heroes: Historic Funerals of the South

The Death of Southern Heroes: Historic Funerals of the South Charles Reagan Wilson Despite pronounced divisions and decades of change, the South and southerners have sustained their identity through institutions, customs, and rituals. Funerals for public leaders and cultural heroes are among the most significant. They affirm the community's values and continuity: the society will survive its loss. Over history , prominent funerals show how the South's sense of itself has changed.1 The funerals of early southern leaders differed little from those of other American heroes. When a George Washington or a Thomas Jefferson died, eulogists hailed him as a great nationalist or as a citizen of his state. John C. Calhoun's death, shortly after the passionate debates that led to the Compromise of 1850, did evoke sectional emotions in the South, but the funerals of southern heroes did not take on well-defined regional dimensions until the Civil War. By the late nineteenth century, public funerals included overtly "southern " rhetoric and symbolism, and death served to remind southerners of their cultural differences from the rest of the nation. Symbols of Dixie were prominently displayed and eulogies explained the hero's contributions not just to the local community or the nation but to the South as a whole. The most prominent funerals, such as those for Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, were aristocratic ceremonies for military and political figures. They honored the Lost Cause and reinforced white racial identity. In the twentieth century, large-scale public rituals have been more democratic , celebrating the heroes of common people. There have still been massive funerals for populist politicians like Huey Long, but even greater public outpourings have appeared for heroes of popular culture such as Hank Williams and Elvis Presley. Martin Luther KingJr. was controversial, but the formal public rituals honoring him showed how much the South had changed from the time when public funerals were occasions for affirming white racial identity. The evolution of southern funerals suggests that southerners now think of the South mainly as a cultural region. After the Civil War the political and military significance of the South waned; for southerners, the South became a place held together by its music, food, humor, values, myths, and customs. Public rit- 4 Southern Cultures ual, including funerals for prominent regional figures, nurtured the growing popular belief in a southern cultural identity. Robert E. Lee and the Lost Cause After the Civil War, the funerals for military heroes were the clearest regional displays , reflecting the region's psychic involvement with its warriors. The most memorable funerals were for military figures, combining martial symbolism with religious ritual and imagery. They were elitist affairs, aristocratic in tone and style. Through elaborate ceremonies advocates of the Lost Cause defined a tradition that reinforced regional orthodoxies about race, religion, and the meaning of southern history. Robert E. Lee should have received the grandest funeral in the region's history . He was a beloved father figure and a symbol of unity for southern whites. He also represented both military values and the aristocratic South—the cultured, educated, romantic cavalier. When he died in the isolated village of Lexington, Virginia, on 12 October 1870, at the age of sixty-three, the South was in the midst of Reconstruction, and he remained a controversial symbol of national division, even though as president of Washington College he had avoided politics. Still, he was the central embodiment of Confederate symbolism, and his death brought a genuine outpouring of southern sentiment. Schools across the region closed, businesses shut down, legal proceedings were interrupted, flags flew at half-staff, memorial meetings were pervasive, and cities displayed the black and purple bunting of mourning. Nevertheless, Lee had requested a simple funeral, and the ceremonies were noteworthy for their stately simplicity. For a day and a half Lee lay in state in the college chapel. A flood impeded travel into the village, and the waters even washed away the available caskets, but thousands of people managed to view the general, who was dressed in a simple suit of black rather than in his wartime uniform . Evergreens and flowers covered the casket, but the Virginia flag was the only flag displayed...