Casting a modern light on memories and artifacts of the Civil War
In December 2021, a copper box filled with artifacts that had been buried beneath the statue of Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, for 134 years was opened with great ceremony. Newspaper articles from 1887 had dubbed these mementos of Lee and life in the capital during and after the Civil War "cornerstone contributions."
In The Buried Cause, historians, curators, preservationists, and other experts from across the commonwealth come together to analyze these individual contributions, which include Masonic and military calling cards, copper coins gathered by the young sons of a Confederate veteran, a photograph of a memorial window in the Confederate Memorial Chapel, Southern bonds and currency, muster rolls and medals and reunion programs, and more. The essays also uncover and reveal to readers the lives of the people who donated the objects, the ceremonies that enshrined them, as well as the communities disregarded and unaccounted for in this material snapshot of the past.
Acknowledgments
Editor's Note
Introduction / Adam Domby
General Monument Avenue
1. Creating Monument Avenue / John Salmo
2. Richmond's Other Confederate Cornerstones / Christina Keyser Vida
3. "For A Far Remote Posterity": Cornerstone Boxes and Masonic Ceremonies / Sir Knight Peter Spring and Christina Keyser Vida
4. How to Make a Time Capsule: Lessons Learned While Opening and Preserving the Lee Monument Cornerstone Boxes / Sue Donovan and Katherine Ridgway
Life and Times
5. Where Are the Women? / Caroline E. Janney
6. Mitchell's Prophecy: Black Richmonders, the Lee Monument, and the Lost Cause Redux, 1890–2021 / Ervin L. Jordan Jr.
7. In Other News: Stories from The Daily Times, October 23, 1887 / Sam Florer
8. Calling Cards: An Introduction from the Past / Elizabeth Moore
10. Twelve Copper Coins from Two Little Boys / Erik Goldstein
11. Reconciliation and Reconstruction in Two Carved Objects / Laura Galke
12. Biography of a Contribution: The Nolting Note / Maggie Creech
13. Virginia Is for Huguenot Lovers / Laura Lavernia
Militariana
14. Buttoning on a Navy in Haste / Brendan Burke and Patrick Boyle
15. Carlton McCarthy's Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life / Christopher A. Graham
16. Analyzing the Past: Analysis of an Army of Northern Virginia Badge / Hannah Sanner
17. The Richmond Sharpshooters, Company H, Twenty-Third Virginia Infantry Confederate Veterans Muster Roll / Robert L. Jolley
18. Muster at High Tide: The June 30th Muster Roll of the Petersburg Old Grays, Co. B, Twelfth Virginia Infantry / Brendan Burke
19. Annual Reunion Pegram Battalion Association / Christopher A. Graham
20. A Lasting Impression: Inspecting the Seal of the Office of the Adjutant and Inspector General's Office, CSA / Brendan Burke
21. Investing in the Confederacy: The Role of Bonds in Funding the Confederacy / Robert L. Jolley
Epilogue / Julian Hayter
Appendix A: Contents of the Stonewall Jackson Monument Cornerstone Box
Appendix B: Contents of the Jefferson Davis Monument Cornerstone Box
Appendix C: Time Capsule Resources
Appendix D: Contents of Robert E. Lee Cornerstone Box
Notes on Contributors
Index
