Daughters of Confederacy claims ownership of Bastrop County monuments
The United Daughters of the Confederacy has injected itself in Bastrop County’s Confederate monument relocation process to claim possession of the markers, asserting that it has full authority over monument relocation decisions.
Last week, Dorothy Norred, president of the Texas Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, designated John Thomas Hancock with the Veterans of Foreign Wars Park in Smithville as the UDC’s agent, and instructed him to take possession of the monuments on behalf of the UDC.
“At such time as the Texas Division United Daughters of the Confederacy wishes to take possession of these markers, ownership will be returned to them,” Norred wrote in her letter to Hancock, which was shared with the Bastrop County Commissioners Court.
The Commissioners Court by a near-unanimous vote on July 27 approved removing the monuments — a tall stone obelisk commemorating the Confederate Army and a headstone-shaped granite block commemorating Joseph D. Sayers, a major in the Confederate Army and Texas’ 22nd governor — from the courthouse lawn and finding a new home for them.
The court has convened a committee to find the monuments a new home, but Hancock said he intends to place them at the Veterans of Foreign Wars’ park.
“Any monument marked with UDC on it belongs to the UDC,” Hancock said. “It doesn’t really need to go through the committee, but if they want to do it I’m open to talking with them. I’m waiting on a phone call from them.”
“The only thing we want to do is get in there, get them, and get out of the way. That’s it,” he said. “We ain’t interested in news cameras or that kind of crap. We just want to get our stones and get on down the road.”
The stone obelisk was erected by the UDC in 1910 and is inscribed with the group’s marking. The Sayers memorial was erected in 1964 by the state of Texas, though Norred’s letter claims interest in both markers.
Bastrop County Judge Paul Pape said he sees the timing of Norred’s letter as auspicious. Hancock and the UDC’s proposal to relocate the monuments to Veterans of Foreign Wars Park in Smithville may provide the solution the relocation committee was looking for.
“It very well could be that this is an answer for our committee to bring back to the court for our final approval,” Pape said. “We’ll turn this (letter) over to the committee and hopefully communications will be strong and details can be worked out."
’Breach of contract’
The county’s decision to remove the monuments is, to Hancock, a betrayal of fallen Confederate veterans and a “breach of contract” — the verbal agreement the UDC and the county made in 1910. According to him, the agreement to keep the monument on the courthouse grounds for full public display was made at a time when “a handshake was a handshake, no paperwork was needed. Back in the day when your word was good.”
“The Commissioners Court has broken that contract,” he said.
A local civil rights group, now known as the Bastrop 5 which helped form a grassroots campaign to mount pressure on the court to relocate the markers has long argued that the monuments, and the UDC as a whole, are intended to glorify an oppressive era of American history and transform the historical narrative surrounding the Civil War.
That view is backed by University of North Carolina historian Karen Cox who, in her book “Dixie’s Daughters,” argues that the UDC was responsible for crafting a narrative of the Civil War that characterized it as an issue primarily over states’ rather than slavery. The thousands on Confederate monuments erected all over the South were in service of that aim, Cox says.
But to Hancock and many others who voiced opposition to the monuments’ removal, the markers go no further than honoring veterans.
“These memorials are to Confederate veterans. The Confederate veterans, whether Judge Pape likes it or not, they are American veterans,” he said. “If you turn your back on these guys, which is what’s happening, then you turn your back on all veterans. That’s the way we see it.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated which park the UDC wanted the Confederate monuments moved to. The group wants the monuments moved to the Veterans of Foreign Wars park in Smithville, not the city-run Veterans Memorial Park.