Baltimore Monuments-XXIV

Bronze Honors Women Aiding Confederate Cause

By RICHARD POLLAK

In 1914 a delegation representing the Daughters of the Confederacy went to Annapolis to ask or a statue.

The ladies appeared before the Finance Committee of the Senate and the Ways and Means Committee of the House and asked for an appropriation of $12,000 with which to complete the fund for erection of a monument to the Confederate Women of Maryland.

In support of their mission, they aid: That in all of the Southern states monuments were being erected to the Confederate women.

That the Confederate women were worthy of being thus ignored.

That they deemed it the confer ring of a benefit on the State to perpetuate so high a type of domestic virtue.

Supported By Veterans

Three years before, when the daughters resolved to have their monument, Gen. A. C. Trippe, commander of the Maryland Division of the United Confederate Veterans, supported them fully.

And so it was resolved to erect the monument to the women because “their names live in blessed memory all through our Southern land with the veterans for whose welfare they gave such labor and service.”

On November 2, 1918, the resolution came to fruition.

A crowd of several hundred persons braved cutting winds that swept across the intersection of University parkway and Charles street to see the unveiling.

Sympathizers Present

The onlookers included former supporters of the Confederacy, their friends and descendants. The monument, the work of J. Maxwell Miller, depicts a mother holding a dying hero in her arms in front of a woman representing the devoted women of the Confederacy.

The monument was veiled with both the Stars and Stripes and the Stars and Bars, which were drawn aside by Mary Ringgold Trippe, granddaughter of the general, who died before seeing the monument.

The three figures in bronze rest on a red granite pedestal, each section about 12 feet high. The base is of three granite steps.

Artistry Praised

“The massing is skillfully worked, the lines being kept distinct in spite of the necessary compression of the group,” observes one book on the city’s monuments.

The inscription on the front reads:

TO THE
CONFEDERATE WOMEN
OF MARYLAND
1861 – 1865
“THE BRAVE AT HOME”

The back reads:

“IN DIFFICULTY AND DANGER
THEY FED THE HUNGRY
CLOTHED THE NEEDY NURSED THE WOUNDED
AND
COMFORTED THE DYING”