The War Over Memory

The War Over Memory. Manassas National Battlefield Park. , In 1938 the Sons of Confederate Veterans conveyed land on Henry Hill to the United States government for the creation of Manassas National Battlefield Park. A stipulation of the transfer required the National Park Service to permit Virginia to erect a monument to Confederate General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, who had earned his famous nickname on Henry Hill at the First Battle of Manassas on July 21, 1861., Designed by sculptor Joseph Pollia, the monument presented a heroic Jackson with exaggerated physical features, meant to inspire a nation wracked by economic depression and fearing the descent into another world war. At the unveiling in August 1940, the keynote speaker encouraged military leaders to emulate the "lessons of war as taught and practiced by Jackson." The dedication ceremony perpetuated Lost Cause mythology, however, emphasizing Confederate valor and ignoring slavery as the central cause of the Civil War., The monument of Stonewall Jackson, together with the adjacent memorials of the same era honoring other Confederate leaders, created a landscape of competing memory. Adherents of the Lost Cause laid claim to the historical narrative of Manassas Battlefield - site of two Southern victories - as the federal government prepared to accept ownership of Henry Hill. The Jackson statute epitomizes the complicated legacy of the park's creation and the preservation of the battlefield as a place of contested memory., (caption) Dedication of the Stonewall Jackson monument, August 31, 1940.