Library Guides: Contextualization at University of Mississippi: Memorials

Detail from Tiffany window

Materials from Archives & Special Collections about the Confederate Cemetery

Beautiful Arch Adorns Entrance to Old Cemetery
Our Heritage, December 1927, page 4.
Confederate Cemeteries and Monuments in Mississippi
R.W. Jones, Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society 8 (1904), pages 87-119; and Jemmy Grant Johnson "The University War Hospital” Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society 12 (1912).
Daily Mississippian
Relevant articles: (8 February 1978), page 6; (18 January 1982), page 1; (19 April 1990), page 4; (2 December 1994), page 7. Available on microfilm.
Dr. Gerald Walton Collection
Box 3, Folder 6 “Confederate Cemetery.”
Ghosts of the Confederacy: New Technology May Reveal a Second Burial Pit in UMs Confederate Cemetery
by Deidra Jackson, Ole Miss Alumni Review 50 (Fall 2001), pages 22-23. Available in Special Collection and main library.
Minutes of the Annual Convention of the Mississippi Division, United Daughters of the Confederacy
references: (1901), page 29; (1903), page 36; (1905), page 45; (1908), page 41; (1937), page 59; (1938), page 67; (1939), pages 93-97.
Mississippi Senate Journal
1906, pages 345-346. This item is at our library annex. Click the request button in the record to have it brought to JD Williams.
Three years in Mississippi by James Meredith
See page 283. Copies available in Special Collection and main library.
United Daughters of the Confederacy & Sons of Confederate Veterans Collection.
Box 1, Folder 14 holds a program from a SCV memorial service at the cemetery in 2008; Box 2, Folder 1 contains a broadside “Confederate Parade, Memorial Service, and Monument Rededication,” 2008.
University Small Manuscripts
Box 49, Folder 4 “Partial List of Men buried in University Cemetery” (1939); Folder 8 “Presentation of Monument, United Daughters of the Confederacy, May 1939 [Confederate Cemetery Monument]”
Vertical File
Folder “University of Mississippi – Cemetery”.

Confederate Cemetery

Two stone pillars frame a path leading to a stone memorial surrounded by trees.

Memorials and Contextualization

The Confederate Cemetery on campus originated from burials during the Civil War when the campus served casualties from both sides as a hospital. Union burials were removed after the conflict to national cemeteries. Over the years, the cemetery accumulated and lost various markers and memorials. Dedicated in 1889, the Tiffany window in Ventress Hall commemorates the University Greys, the students who formed Company A of the 11 Mississippi Infantry Regiment in the Confederate Army. In 1906, a local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected the Confederate statue in the Grove to honor the Confederate soldiers of Lafayette County.

Stained Glass Memorial in Ventress Hall

Materials in Archives & Special Collections about the Tiffany window in Ventress Hall.

Buildings & Grounds Collection
Box 2, Folder “Ventress Hall.”
Chancellors Collection- Robert Burwell Fulton
Box 19, Folder 9 “Stained Glass Memorial to University Greys, 1889-1890”.
Dr. Gerald Walton Collection
Box 8, Folder 41 “Stained Glass Window.”
Mississippi University Magazine
Issues: 2 (May 1877), pages 184-185 & 189 and 3 (December 1877), pages 52-53.
University Greys
University Small Manuscripts Box 49, Folder 12. Typed manuscript “The Memorial Window to the University Grays [sic]” by Mrs. T.O. Gilbert, Amory, Miss.
Vertical File
Folder “University of Mississippi – Buildings & Grounds – Delta Gamma Window”

Confederate Monument

A Brief Historical Contextualization of the Confederate Monument at the University of Mississippi
Written by faculty in the History department, this treatment rebuts historical misnomers and includes comments on the contextualization committee’s revised language.

Materials from Archives & Special Collections about the Confederate monument

Buildings & Grounds Collection
Box 2, Folder “Confederate Monument” and Box 3 vintage postcards.
Confederate Monument at Oxford, Miss
article in Confederate Veteran (July 1906), pages 306-307.
David Moore Robinson, “A Simonidean Epitaph at Mississippi”
from Classical Bulletin 27 (February 1951). Main library and Special Collections.
Dr. Gerald Walton Collection
Box 3, Folder 8 “Confederate Statue.”
Minutes of the Annual Convention of the Mississippi Division, United Daughters of the Confederacy
published in 1901; pages 25-26; (1903), page 36; (1905), page 45; (1906), page 44.

Select Books about Confederate Memorialization

Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 by Charles Reagan Wilson
Charles Reagan Wilson documents that for over half a century there existed not one, but two civil religions in the United States, the second not dedicated to honoring the American nation. Extensively researched in primary sources, Baptized in Blood is a significant and well-written study of the South’s civil religion, one of two public faiths in America.
Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory & the American Civil War by David W. Blight
Scholars have increasingly addressed the relationship of history and memory. David W. Blight has been a pioneer in the field of memory studies, especially on the problems of slavery, race, and the Civil War. In this collection of essays, Blight examines the meanings embedded in the causes, course, and consequences of the Civil War, the nature of changing approaches to African American history, and the significance of race in the ways Americans, North and South, black and white, developed historical memories of the nation's most divisive event.
Defining Moments: African American Commemoration & Political Culture in the South, 1863-1913 by Kathleen Ann Clark
Clark adds to the growing literatures on African American commemorations, historical memory, and political culture with this thoughtful examination of blacks' presence in the southern urban public sphere during the half century after emancipation. Both gender issues and the role of the black church receive much-needed analysis, as Clark demonstrates how African Americans used commemorations to express their understandings of history, society, and politics.
Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergency of the New South, 1865 to 1913 by Gaines M. Foster
After the long and bloody Civil War, the South at last had to face defeat as the dream of a Confederate nation melted into the Lost Cause. Through an examination of memoirs, personal papers, and postwar Confederate rituals such as memorial day observances, monument unveilings, and veterans' reunions, Ghosts of the Confederacy probes into how white southerners adjusted to and interpreted their defeat and explores the cultural implications.
Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation by Caroline E. Janney
Janney analyzes sectional reunion and reconciliation from the Civil War to the beginning of WW II. Effecting reunion was difficult, and both Lincoln and Grant hoped that easy peace terms would promote it. Reunion occurred, with Northerners and Southerners saluting the US flag. But sectional reconciliation proved more difficult.
The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory by W. Fitzhugh Brundage
Since the Civil War whites and blacks have struggled over the meanings and uses of the Southern past. The Southern Past argues that these battles are ultimately about who has the power to determine what we remember of the past, and whether that remembrance will honor all Southerners or only select groups.
Dixie's Daughters by Karen L. Cox
Even without the right to vote, members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy proved to have enormous social and political influence throughout the South—all in the name of preserving Confederate culture. Karen Cox traces the history of the UDC, an organization founded in 1894 to vindicate the Confederate generation and honor the Lost Cause.