This tour is designed to engage with items in the collection at the Morris Museum of Art. It primarily travels through the Civil War and Southern Stories Gallery spaces.

“Constitution” Window Shade – Unknown Artist

This scene depicts common period imagery with a pale, white woman weaing white (which is often an allusion to purity and virtue), a seal, and an eagle. The woman is standing on a foundation with the word “constitution.” Black laborers,presumably enslaved, work the fields in the background. A riverboat is in the near distance (and further represented on the shield) and sailboats are in the far distance in a larger body of water, presumably an ocean. Multiple traditional Southern landscapes are represented from oceans, flat fields, rolling hills, and a river.

Battle of the Ironclads and Battle of the Ironclads – Gordon Hope Grant; Naval Engagement, Battle of the Ironclads – Unknown Artist

Few events in the Civil War highlight the war’s place as the first modern war as much as the battle of the ironclads. Ships literally clad with iron — armored with protective metal shells — rendered traditional wooden warships obsolete practically overnight. This battle, also known as the Battle of Hampton Roads, had relatively little tactical significance during the course of the war — the Confederate ironside never broke through the Union blockade and remained trapped in the river until it was eventually scuttled to avoid capture — but it marked a watershed moment in maritime history. Global naval superpowers like France and England halted construction of wooden-hulled warships entirely and the era of the modern battleship was on the horizon.

Memorabilia of General G.T. Anderson – Elizabeth E. Craig

George Thomas Anderson, born in Covington, GA, was a Confederate officer who rose to the rank of brigadier general. He surrendered along with Lee at Appomattox. The painting depicts a variety of artifacts, including a general’s frock coat, a pair of minie balls resting atop a small black book (potentially a bible or common prayer book; some soldiers carried pocket-sized versions), a canteen, and a few bills of currency. The words “dollar” and “Alabama” are partially visible on the note, as well as the number “50” indicating that this is a 50-dollar Confederate note. It is worth highlighting that one design of a known 50-dollar Confederate note with the word Alabama depicts enslaved labor working in a field, further cementing the centrality of the institution of slavery to the Confederacy.

Surprise Attack Near Harpers Ferry – John Mooney

This painting shows an encounter from the artist’s time in the Confederate army in which Confederates were set upon while bathing by United States forces near Harpers Ferry. This painting vividly demonstrates the utter chaos of being ambushed at bath time. Harpers Ferry is a battle that holds a special place in the lore of the Lost Cause. The larger battle was a rousing victory for the Confederates who captured a United States garrison, forcing the surrender over some twelve-thousand United States troops and their supplies, a massive coup for the Confederacy. The somewhat apocryphal legend and story of that battle includes captured United States soldiers lining up along the roadside to catch sight of Stonewall Jackson, one of the most deified figures of the Lost Cause.

The Lost Cause – Henry Mosler

This painting is inextricably linked to the Lost Cause, not just because of the name. This painting was hugely popular, with Mosler (and others) producing numerous copies as well as a booming market for lithographic prints. This painting’s counterpart, Leaving for War, shows the same soldier as he sets out in better times – a family and the same farmhouse are in the background. Now, the soldier mourns all that is lost. This work contributed substantially to the ideas of the loss and grief suffered, as well as the centrality of the yeoman farmer to the Lost Cause mythology. This painting gave vivid, powerful imagery to writings about the Lost Cause that were beginning to circulate. To learn more about this painting, visit the portion of the Digital Exhibit that focuses on the work.

Floyd’s Command, Gauley Bridge, Virginia – William Dickinson Washington

Gauley Bridge is a very small town in what is West Virginia today. The town is named for an actual bridge crossing the Gauley River. The bridge was a contested point during the Civil War, as control over the bridge enabled a stronger grasp on the entirety of the surrounding Kanawha River valley. The bridge changed hands several times in the early years of the war until Confederate troops were eventually pushed out of the region. Successes by the US Army in this region eventually paved the way for the creation of West Virginia. John B. Floyd, a former governor of Virginia and Secretary of War in the Buchanan administration (preceding Lincoln), was a Confederate general commanding forces in this region. In his memoirs, Ulysses S. Grant gave credence to longstanding suspicion that Floyd had used his position as Secretary of War to station many military resources in the South so that, as Grant put it, “when treason wanted them” they could be taken by southern forces.

The Rebel Charge – Sydney Adamson

This image depicts a romanticized vision of war. An officer leads the charge of a line of Confederate soldiers directly towards the viewer. The Confederates are in mismatched uniforms, some with bayonets drawn. Fallen US army soldiers in blue lay in the foreground. This is a curious scene, although one that is common in battle depictions of the time – these soldiers in their final repose are bloodless and clean, highlighting the romantic notion of war at the time that often presented itself with highly sanitized depictions of battles. The rebel charge is a sort of popularized, romanticized image of the war, with ties to the “rebel yell” attributed to charging Confederate soldiers. Adamson was born well after the end of the Civil War, and it is not known what battle this is supposed to depict. The flag waving behind the officer is the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, but that flag became a sort of generic stand-in for Confederate flags, so this may or may not be of this Army.

Columbia Welcoming the South Back into the Union – Constantino Brumidi

Columbia Welcoming the South Back into the Union is a smaller version of a work which Brumidi painted on the ceiling of the Vice President’s office in the US Capitol building. The image is rife with symbolism, from objects the figures are holding to the whiteness of the figures themselves. This painting plays on a reconciliatory sentiment that was extremely common in white Americans, in the North and South alike, in the years and decades after the war. This “reconciliation trope” presented a model which allowed white Americans to imagine that the conflict had occurred, was now done, and “both sides” could now come together amicably and move forward. This harmful idea of the war minimizes the cause of the war, the failings of Reconstruction, and marginalizes the experiences of Black Americans, particularly those in the South as the newly emerging Jim Crow laws meant conditions were often not markedly improved compared to the antebellum period.

The Price of Blood – Thomas Satterwhite Noble

The artist was the son of a successful hemp and cotton farmer whose operations extended to include a rope factory. Enslaved labor was utilized on both the farm, where many enslaved people lived and labored, as well as in the Noble family’s factory, often through lease arrangements. Noble studied art in Paris in the late 1850s. He was 26 at the outbreak of the Civil War and served as a captain in the Confederate army. He returned to painting in the years after the Civil War. As he grappled with his upbringing and the changing world, Noble painted a series of works that depicted the gross mistreatment of the enslaved population. These works were popular in Northern markets.

The painting depicts an enslaved individual of mixed race being sold by his father and enslaver. The Lost Cause, when it acknowledges slavery, positions it as a benevolent institution that ultimately benefitted the enslaved and that the real victims of the institution were the white men who were burdened by having to “care” for the enslaved. The Lost Cause argues that enslaved individuals, like the man who is being sold in this painting, were beneficiaries of the system and that the man who sexually assaulted a woman and sold their child was the one who was most harmed.