While a lot of these organizations that pushed the Lost Cause theory are shit heads. I would like to present the Valentine.
The Valentine traces its roots to Edward Valentine, a member of an aristocratic family in antebellum Richmond. Valentine spent the war studying art in Europe, and was depicting Confederates before the final shots were even fired. He was “helping to define the visual imagery of the Lost Cause,” Vida told me, by fashioning generals as godlike. Rather than historical renderings, the imagery of Richmond’s Confederates could be better likened to propaganda. Valentine sculpted Davis, and the statue, funded by the UDC, debuted in 1907.
The Valentine is fairly based because...
In a brick row house down the street from the White House of the Confederacy, a statue of the former president is spotlighted—lying on its back. After Jefferson Davis was pulled to the ground in 2020, the Valentine, a museum that presents Richmond’s history, was delighted to welcome him home. “A rope was tied around his waist and attached to a sedan,” Christina Vida, the curator of general collections, told me with a grin, “and he was pulled off his pedestal.” Vida has neat brown hair that swished at her shoulders as she circled the fallen Confederate on temporary display in the gallery. She pointed to his broken arm, flattened face, and coat of Pepto-Bismol pink paint. She said that of all Confederates doused in 2020, this remarkable pink was found only on Davis. She quite liked it.
There’s a lacquer on Davis’s wounds—a smashed nose, a chipped thumb—to preserve the damage. Tufts of a tissue noose still stick to his neck. When I asked Vida what she thought about the fact that he returned like this, she told me she’s thrilled. In this condition, he doesn’t need placards contextualizing the Lost Cause: He’s a new monument altogether. Atop a pedestal, Davis’s outstretched arm once commanded authority. From the ground, he’s reaching for a helping hand that no one seems to be offering.
Source: The New Republic, Yes, They’re Pro-Confederacy. But They’re Just the Nicest Ladies.