Objects Referencing the Confederacy and Sewanee’s Past Reported on Campus

Ginna Allen, News Editor

The recent discovery of three strange, homemade relics in reference to the University’s history in late August and early September has renewed conversations about Sewanee’s historical connections to the confederacy and the handling of confederate symbols on campus. While this is not a new topic of discussion, the items themselves, their unusual nature and their personal references to Sewanee have raised many questions and concerns across the campus community. 

Students and faculty were alerted to the discovery of these objects in an email on Sept. 19 from Provost Scott Wilson.​​ Responding to questions from The Sewanee Purple, Provost Wilson wrote about the decision to send the email to the University community: “In the days prior to the communication to the campus community, the administration had been contemplating such a communication. A meeting of Vice-Chancellor Pearigen’s cabinet and subsequent Joint Faculty meeting, which occurred days before the communication was sent, helped to clarify what needed to be communicated.” 

The email stated that the Sewanee Police have been notified about the objects: “The University administration has informed the Sewanee Police Department about these objects and continues to monitor campus for any other objects of this nature. At present, the Sewanee Police Department has not found evidence of a crime being committed.” The items since have been removed and are being held in a private location for any further investigation by the Sewanee Police. Provost Wilson told The Purple on Monday that no formal investigation has been opened “because the Sewanee Police Department did not believe that a crime had been committed.”

The first object was discovered nailed to a tree in the forest surrounding Lake Cheston on August 25. It was then reported to a Sewanee community member who communicated it to Dr. Woody Register, professor of Post-Civil War U.S. history and director of the Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation. 

Register described the object to The Purple as “a wooden cross about two and three feet tall, painted red, and ornamented with copper wire.” Register also noted the specific construction of the cross was an Arma Christi, which is a “late medieval practice of building shrine-like objects that were placed on pilgrimage routes and other places that tell the story of the passion of Christ,” Register said.

In the center or “Christ position” of the cross, there was also a photo of Leonidas Polk, who was “the first bishop of Louisiana and the most important figure in the founding of the university,” according to Register.

Historically, Polk was often referred to as the “Fighting Bishop” or “Bishop General” due to his appointment in the confederate military and his death in battle during the Civil War. As a result, many regarded Polk as a “Christian martyr” for the confederacy. Polk was also a prevalent enslaver in his time and held large holdings of land with enslaved people in Tennessee and Louisiana, where 200 or more slaves labored on his Leighton plantation, according to the University Archives. 

Partnered with his confederate affiliations, Polk played an influential role in the founding of Sewanee, with him garnering the nickname of “Sewanee’s Fighting Bishop.” In 1860, Polk laid the cornerstone of the first building on campus with the vision of creating a “national university for the Southern United States.” A portrait honoring Polk in liturgical robes with his confederate uniform nearby titled Sword Over the Gown was originally hung in Convocation Hall until 2016. According to a Purple article at the time of its removal, “The portrait’s relocation occurred because it did not belong with Convocation’s aesthetic and historic theme, but the move sparked a conversation about what kinds of confederate imagery Sewanee should or should not include on campus.” 

Register continued in his description of the first item: “On the left arm [of the cross] was an image attached by wire of Nathan Bedford Forest. On the right arm was an image of Charles Colcock Jones Carpenter, who was the Episcopal bishop of Alabama in the late 50s to the mid 60s and the chancellor of this university. And then at the foot of the cross was an image of the university seal. At the very top of the cross, beneath a much smaller cross fashioned out of twigs held together by that wire, were two images: one of the university mace, which was donated to the university in the late 1960s by a woman named Louise Claiborne-Armstrong. The other was a photographic image of a portrait of Louise Claiborne-Armstrong.”

Nathan Bedford Forrest was the first Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, a general in the confederate army and a prominent American slave trader. While Forrest has no known connection to Sewanee, the mace was emblazoned with a jeweled confederate battle flag along with an engraving on the handle that read “To the Glory of God and in Loving Memory of General Nathan Bedford Forrest.” Additionally, the mace was consecrated June 3, 1965, (Jefferson Davis’s birthday) in a religious ceremony in the University’s All Saints’ Chapel by the university Chancellor Charles Colcock Jones Carpenter. The mace was damaged in 1997 and has since been replaced. 

Louise Claiborne-Armstrong’s father also served in Forrest’s regiment in the Civil War and her brother, James Morton Armstrong, was a graduate of the University’s grammar school and College of Arts and Sciences; thus, the mace was taken both as a dedication to Forrest and Armstrong’s familial ties to the university. 

The second object found on Sept. 3 in the University Cemetery was similar to the first in its construction with the copper wire and cross-shape in reference to an Arma Christi; however, it was significantly smaller and had no photographs attached. 

“It was similarly fashioned out of that copper wire like the kind you would find at Ben Franklin. It too had a variety of ornamentation, but instead of Polk at the center, it had what looks like a confederate flag lapel pen. The flag represented there was Bishop General Polk’s regiment flag, so it too is a reference to Polk,” said Register. 

The third object found on Sept. 10 in the University Cemetery was unlike the previous two. As described by Dr. Register who discovered the object, it was “a cylindrical glass jar that had what appeared to be some pebbles and water inside of it. It was affixed by the wire to the grave of Robert Kelso Dabney, the first professor of metaphysics at the university and a confederate veteran.” 

The nature of these objects has reignited conversations about what efforts should be made to address and examine the University’s historical links to the confederacy. In particular, there have been ongoing efforts to re-examine the names of buildings and other areas on campus that honor founders and donors of the University with ties to the confederacy. There have already been some renaming efforts, including the renaming of the old “Thompson Union” in 2020 when it was renovated and reopened under the name Biehl Commons. “Thompson” was in reference to Jacob Thompson, a prevalent enslaver, head of the confederacy’s secret service under Jefferson Davis and an eventual business partner with Davis in the Carolina Life Insurance Company. With his lucrative business and support from Chancellor William Mercer Green of the University, Thompson became an integral donor on the executive board of trustees at Sewanee, a precursor of today’s Board of Regents.

Additionally, there was a recent communication from the Vice Chancellor that the Board of Regents were acting on recommendations of the Names and Places Committee, a Committee created in 2020 to evaluate and provide recommendations regarding the University’s honorifics that tie to the confederacy and their underlying implications of white supremacy. It is important to note that, as outlined on the NPC website, “The NPC is not tasked with offering alternative honorifics to places that they recommend should be changed. It is noted that the Board of Regents have ultimate authority for naming, and renaming, all places on the Domain.” 

The Regents’ resolution stated: “The work of the Names and Places Committee provides support for contextualizing challenging parts of our history so that we can move forward in a dynamic and vibrant way for our future and in service to the University’s strategic plan, “Elevating Mind, Heart and Place.” The Board of Regents strongly affirms an institutional commitment to a publicly accessible program of contextualization to more meaningfully represent our University’s story, rather than removal of names from places. To that end, the Board of Regents is providing additional resources to support the contextualization efforts and to advance the broader and important process of understanding and education, and invites the Vice-Chancellor and the administration to provide regular updates to the Board of Regents on action steps being taken.. ” 

In his Sept. 18 statement releasing the Regents’ resolution, Vice Chancellor Pearigen wrote that he was creating a panel to act on the Board of Regents’ recommendations.  “Our work is not only about recognizing our history,” Pearigen wrote, “but also about telling our collective story in a way that strengthens the University’s foundation for the generations to come.”

With this, many in the University community have speculated that the objects were placed in challenge to the recent efforts by the Board of Regents and the Names and Places Committee, especially given the nature of the objects and their personal references to confederate figures in Sewanee’s history.

From observing the objects and their distinct nature, Register considered the in-depth knowledge regarding Sewanee’s history that the person who created these items may have: “the person who did this has a kind of knowledge that few people have…It’s a kind of arcane knowledge.” He continued, “The person who did it is someone who has a deep attachment to the university and a deep kind of veneration in respect for the symbols that this person associates with the university…they evidently are observant of these ancient christian practices and associates them with what they see as the historic mission and purpose of the university.” 

While these specific objects are seemingly an uncommon occurrence on campus, Register noted that “other things have happened in the past that I would file away in the same folder I would file this under. Nothing very recent…I’ve never heard of anything that used these kinds of ancient sacral practices.” 

In his Monday email answering questions from The Purple, Provost Wilson also noted the anomalous nature of these objects: “I know of no other incidents of this nature on our campus during my 31 years at Sewanee.”

Still, the act of leaving confederate symbols and objects on graves is a recurring instance here and elsewhere. “People who cherish their heroic memory of the Civil War, the confederacy and those who fought and died for the confederacy have decorated graves in a variety of manners. These kinds of things are consistent with those practices. It has happened here for many years. There are a good number of confederate veterans buried in the university cemetery and many of them are prominent figures in the early history of the university. They have been decorated with little confederate flags,” Register said. 

Many community members have voiced anxieties about the implications behind these objects, particularly in regards to the KKK. Register addressed these concerns with the KKK: “I don’t think this about the Klan. Although, I do think it is about the veneration of Forrest…There are lots of people who have very strong positive feelings about Forrest.”

There are also various modern groups that uphold the idea of the “Lost Cause” and the confederacy, similar to the implications behind the recent objects on campus. “These are issues and questions of great importance to people, and of anger and fury among some who believe that there has been a desecration of these people’s memory over the last decade and more,” Register said. 

However, while the anxiety felt by many on campus is not unreasonable, there is no prominent threat to the integrity and safety of Sewanee and its community members. “There’s a lot of mystery surrounding it. And where there’s mystery, people fill in the vacuum of where there’s a better or effective understanding,” said Register.