Confederate Memorial (Wilmington, North Carolina)

The monument was designed by Henry Bacon, who had been the principal designer of the Lincoln Memorial.

He spent much of his youth in Wilmington and is buried there.[7]

The statue was sculpted by Francis Herman Packer, a native of Germany who lived on Long Island, New York and was a student of Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

A decade earlier, Packer had been hired by a United Daughters of Confederacy chapter in Wilmington to sculpt the Confederate George Davis Monument (dismantled, June 2020), located one block to the north and dedicated in 1911.[8]

1861–1865
To the Soldiers of the Confederacy

Erected by a Committee under the
testator's Will representing the
Daughters of the Confederacy, the
the Confederate Veterans Association
and his Executor

MCMXXIV

Confederates blend your recollections
Let memory weave its bright reflections
Let love revive life's ashen embers
For love is life since love remembers
PRO ARIS ET FOCIS
This monument is a legacy of Gabriel James Boney
Born Wallace, NC 1846 – Died Wilmington, NC 1915[9]

The reverse of the memorial, before its covering with a black shroud in June 2020

The motto Pro Aris Et Focis translates from Latin as "For Altars and Hearths."[10]

The motto has been used for centuries mostly by military organizations, and is often transliterated in myth as "for God and Country." ("Pro Deo et Patria" is an equally ancient and more common Latin motto directly translated as "For God and Country.")

In the context of Lost Cause mythology, "For Altars and Hearths" is intended to place within the public memory the falsehood that the Confederacy did not fight in the American Civil War principally for the preservation of chattel slavery.[11]

Historians have argued that similar monuments erected by the UDC are pieces of a far wider national effort by the UDC and others, decades after the surrender of the confederacy, to insert the false Lost Cause Narrative into the public memory, announce to nonwhites the final defeat of Reconstruction, and to support white supremacy. [12]

A motor vehicle knocked the statue down. A supplier from Salisbury provided replacement granite.[16] It was repaired and re-erected on the same spot.

On an unknown date during the latter half of decade, the bayonet was damaged and replaced.[17]

In late 1999, a motor vehicle knocked the entire monument from its foundation and onto South Third Street. Two people were hospitalized.[18]

The foundation was cracked and the backdrop tablet was knocked over. The monument and statue were removed for repair and, where necessary, replacement with new granite.

Architect Charles Boney told the Wilmington Star-News soon after the collision that he was committed to ensuring the memorial would be repaired and then restored at its original site:

“It’s a part of my heritage and it’s a part of the city’s history, so I just want to make sure it’s fixed right.”[19]

While re-erecting the tablet at the original location, the crane fell damaging overhead power lines, parked motor vehicles and a nearby wall.[20] The monument pieces were again removed for repair and replacement. During re-re-erection in 2000, the works were again damaged. That damage was repaired and the monument restored to its original location and configuration.

On an unknown date during that year, an unknown person broke off the bayonet from the rifle held by the Confederate soldier in Packer's statue, and the piece of bronze went missing. The damage went unrepaired for at least 10 years.

In 2013, a descendant relative named Gabriel James Boney said of the damage:[21]

“My father [aged 89] would love to see it put back on. It’s a priority for him.“

In the early hours of July 4, an unknown person threw orange paint on the memorial.[22]

In March, an unknown person placed a white flag of surrender in the statue's hands.

In early June, two unknown persons painted the words "Black Lives Matter" on the base of the statue.

That same month, during a period of declaration of a state of emergency, the city government blocked public access to the monument with traffic cones and crime scene tape.

In the early hours of June 25, the City of Wilmington removed the statue and covered the remaining tablet and pedestal, and their Lost Cause inscriptions, with a black shroud.

In September, Wilmington's mayor said that the threat to public safety that conditioned the memorial's dismantling continued. A majority of the Wilmington City Council told a journalist that the disposition of the city's Confederate monuments was not a high priority.[23]