Phil Skinner/AJC
STONE MOUNTAIN CARVING (Stone Mountain Park): Let's start with the largest Confederate monument in the world. The 90-feet-by-190-feet carving of Robert E. Lee, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, and Jefferson Davis is also the largest bas-relief sculpture in the world. The carving was first conceived by a founding member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1916. Work began in 1923, was scrapped and restarted in 1925, abandoned in 1928, restarted in 1964 and completed in 1972. (Phil Skinner / AJC file)
Curtis Compton/ccompton@ajc.com
LION OF THE CONFEDERACY (Oakland Cemetery): Historical markers may be plentiful, but for a city that saw so much Civil War fighting, Atlanta has remarkably few large displays memorializing the Confederacy. The two largest can be found in Oakland Cemetery. This monument, based on Switzerland's Lion of Lucerne, is surrounded by the graves of 3,000 unknown Confederate soldiers. (CURTIS COMPTON / ccompton@ajc.com)
David Tulis
PEACE MONUMENT (Piedmont Park): This one's complicated. The large monument greeting park visitors at 14th Street depicts a Confederate soldier, yes, but it also depicts an angel calling a halt to his fighting. The monument was built in 1911 by former members of the Gate City Guard—a Confederate-era city militia—that was on a peace mission to unite the North and South in the decades after the Civil War. Today's Old Guard of the Gate City Guard still rededicates the monument each year, and on the group's website, acknowledges the Peace Monument's complicated message: "Newspaper accounts of the day confirm that the Peace Monument represented different things to different people: Patriotism, reconciliation, the pledge of friendship and good will, and optimism about America's unfinished history were all sponsors. There is much historical evidence to suggest that it also represented a tribute to a proud people, who, even though defeated, still remained unconquered." (David Tulis / AJC Archive at GSU Library AJCP282-038f)
KEITH HADLEY/AJC staff
DEKALB CONFEDERATE MONUMENT (DeKalb County Courthouse/Decatur Square): This obelisk was built in 1908, long before there was a Decatur Square built up around it. In fact, the courthouse next to it burned to the ground in 1916 and was replaced by the structure that we see today. In the 1970s, the construction of the Marta line further changed the surrounding landscape and in doing so, created the Decatur Square that we know today. The monument has often looked out of place as Decatur has become one of the more liberal environments in the state, and residents are currently petitioning for its removal. (Keith Hadley / AJC file)
Pete Corson
JEFFERSON DAVIS HIGHWAY MARKER (Agnes Scott College): You'll find this marker on the border of Agnes Scott College, on East College Avenue near the South McDonough Street intersection. In 1913, the United Daughters of the Confederacy conceived of naming a transcontinental series of highways after Confederate President Jefferson Davis. It would counter a similar proposal that had been made the year before for an Abraham Lincoln Highway. As the U.S. Dept. of Transportation explains, "In that era, it was common for private organizations to identify a route, give it a name, and promote its use and improvement." The Jefferson Davis Highway eventually stretched all the way to the border with Canada in the Northwest. In 1925, a new government numbering system for highways made the name obsolete, although some Southern states continued to preserve the name. UDC markers such as this one can still be found across the country. (Pete Corson / pcorson@ajc.com)
AJC file/Atlanta Journal Constitution
ETERNAL FLAME OF THE CONFEDERACY (Underground Atlanta): This gas lamp was one of 50 original Atlanta Gas Light Co. lamps first lit on Christmas Day, 1855. It stood on the northeast corner of Alabama and Whitehall (now Peachtree) Streets, right next to where Solomon Luckie stood when he was struck by a shell during the Siege of Atlanta in 1864. (The photo on the left, from 1957, also shows where the shell blast damaged the front bottom of the lamppost.) According to Atlanta Time Machine, the lamp was displayed in City Hall from 1864-1880 as a war memento and wound up being returned in 1919 to its street corner. During the 1939 "Gone With the Wind" premiere, the Old Guard Battalion of the Gate City Guard lit the lamp and declared it "The Eternal Flame of the Confederacy." The creation of the viaduct and Underground Atlanta muddle the history of the lamp's location a bit -- at one point it stood aboveground as in the 1957 photo at left. Then it was moved below to Underground Atlanta at roughly the same location, which today is right outside a set of public restrooms. Underground Atlanta is now closed to the public as it undergoes an extensive redevelopment. (Left photo: AJC file; Right photo: Curtis Compton / ccompton@ajc.com)
Pete Corson
THE LITTLE CANNON (Marietta Confederate Cemetery): We'll let the carving by this cannon tell the story: "This little cannon served at the Georgia Military Institute from 1852 to 1864, then went into the Confederate Army, was captured on Sherman's March to the Sea, 1864-1865, was held as a trophy of war until 1910, when it was returned by the United States government to the Confederate Cemetery at Marietta Georgia." (PETE CORSON / pcorson@ajc.com)