Ladies' Memorial Association

Their immediate goal, of providing decent burial for soldiers, was joined with the desire to commemorate the sacrifices of Southerners and to propagate the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.

Mary Dunbar Williams of Winchester organized a group of women to give proper burial to Confederate dead whose bodies were found in the countryside, and to decorate those graves annually.

After an emotional plea in the paper, "the women of Montgomery, in answer to this call, filled the sacred halls of the old Court Street Methodist Church on that beautiful Monday morning on the sixteenth day of April, eighteen-hundred and sixty-six!

In Montgomery, the LMA raised $10,000 for the Confederate Memorial Monument on the grounds of the Alabama State Capitol, designed by Alexander Doyle and erected in 1898.

[6] Monuments built by LMAs (on cemeteries) often included sculptures symbolizing Johnny Reb, such as in Petersburg, Virginia: "the statue of the soldier is of bronze, a Confederate soldier, six foot high, 'accountred as a private of infantry, a full cartridge box, lightly filled haversack, rolled blanket, canteen and old slouch hat' that in the days gone by waved the measure of the yell of 'Johnny Reb.'

Two years later, on May 5, 1868, John A. Logan, Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), commanded all posts across the country to decorate Union graves with flowers on May 30.

Their historian, Margaret Cary Green Davis, outlined the goals of the association thusly: To future generations of the people of the South and to the sons and daughters of the women of the Confederacy, who first banded themselves together in memorial work, may this Confederation carry its messages and legacy of devotion to the memory of a Cause and the heroes who fought for it, the Deathless Dead of the Southern Confederacy.

"[19] Thus, their function was therapeutic in respect to the psychological trauma suffered as a result of the Confederacy's loss; at the same time, while "ostensibly apolitical", they acted on public policy by "advancing and refining the Confederate tradition and reinforcing the political and social hierarchy they believed in.

"[20] The promotion of public commemoration and the establishment of a Confederate memory by organizations such as the LMAs took place in a world in which the now-public presence of African Americans caused great anxiety, suggesting, according to some scholars, a "more purposeful strategy of racism".