A bronze sculpture of a man in uniform, with crumpled hat, hands folded in front of him, and a …

The Confederate Soldier

Designer David Richards (American, 1829 - 1897)

Maker Maurice J. Power (American, 1838 - 1902)

Date1879

MediumBronze

Dimensions28 × 9 1/2 × 7 inches (71.1 × 24.1 × 17.8 cm)

Credit LineGift of George Wymberly Jones DeRenne.

Object number1879.1

On View

Not on view

CopyrightThe images and text contained on this page are owned by Telfair Museums or used by the Museum with permission from the owners. Unauthorized reproduction, transmission or display of these materials is prohibited with the exception of items deemed “fair use” as defined by U.S. and international copyright laws.Label TextThis bronze statuette of a confederate soldier is a small-scale copy of the statue that resides atop Savannah’s confederate monument in Forsyth Park. That monument was erected shortly after the Civil War to memorialize the confederate dead. Today, historians recognize that although the Civil War wrought a terrible toll in death and destruction, it also freed four million enslaved southerners and fostered passage of amendments to the U.S. Constitution that created national citizenship and equal protection under the law, regardless of race. This statuette was given to Telfair Museums as a gift by George W.J. DeRenne in 1879. This sculpture is one of the first fine art items acquired by the museum, which officially opened to the public in 1886. During the period from 1870 through the 1920s, over 1,000 confederate monuments were erected by memorial organizations in the South. In Savannah, the Ladies’ Memorial Association started raising funds in 1868 to erect the monument in Forsyth Park. The original monument, dedicated in 1875, was designed by Canadian sculptor Robert Reid and featured two allegorical female figures of Silence and Judgment that represented the heavy loss of life suffered by the South. The gentlemen of the Monument Committee wrote in an open letter to the Savannah Morning News on May 7, 1874, that these figures were chosen over more typical figures like Liberty and Victory because “We were not a victorious people; on the contrary, we have to commemorate the noble heroism of those who fell in a ‘lost cause,’ hence silent grief and undying faith were to be expressed in the chiseled stone.” The allegorical figures were removed in 1879 and replaced by a more publicly-approved bronze statue of a battle-scarred confederate soldier standing at parade rest, with his gun at his side. New York sculptor David Richards, funded by DeRenne, was commissioned to make the sculpture, which he designed using Savannah Civil War veterans as models.

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