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The Confederate Memorial (also referred to as the First Confederate Memorial) at Indian Mound Cemetery in Romney, West Virginia, commemorates residents of Hampshire County who died during the American Civil War while fighting for the Confederate States of America. It was sponsored by the Confederate Memorial Association, which formally dedicated the monument on September 26, 1867. The town of Romney has claimed that this is the first memorial structure erected to memorialize the Confederate dead in the United States and that the town performed the nation's first public decoration of Confederate graves on June 1, 1866. The idea to memorialize the Confederate war dead of Hampshire County was first discussed in the spring of 1866. Following the decoration of the graves that summer, the Confederate Memorial Association engaged in fundraising for construction of the memorial, and by 1867 the necessary funds were raised. The inscription "The Daughters of Old Hampshire Erect This Tribute of Affection to Her Heroic Sons Who Fell in Defence of Southern Rights" was selected, and the contract for the memorial's construction was awarded to the Gaddes Brothers firm of Baltimore. The memorial's components were delivered to Indian Mound Cemetery on September 14, 1867, and the memorial was dedicated on September 26 of that year. The construction of the Confederate Memorial marked the beginning of an era of post-war revitalization for Hampshire County following the American Civil War. The Confederate Memorial is in the form of an obelisk, and it stands on a raised mound. The list of 125 names engraved on the monument includes four captains, seven lieutenants (one of which was a chaplain), three sergeants, and 119 privates. The memorial underwent a restoration in 1984, and is decorated annually with a handmade evergreen garland and wreath on Hampshire County Confederate Memorial Day. == Confederate Memorial Association == The idea to memorialize the men of Hampshire County who had died fighting in the Military of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War was first discussed at a meeting in early spring of 1866 at the Romney residence of former Confederate Colonel Robert White. In addition to White, those present at the meeting included his brother Christian Streit White, his future sister-in-law Elizabeth "Bessie" Jane Schultze, and his sister Frances Ann White, who later married Samuel Lightfoot Flournoy. Following the meeting, the concept gained support among other residents of Romney.〔 Later in the spring of 1866, a group of Hampshire County women held a public meeting to organize the Confederate Memorial Association with the mission of honoring the men who had died fighting for the Confederacy and providing financial aid to their families. At this meeting, the association appointed officers, adopted a constitution, and organized committees to arrange for the decoration of Confederate interments.〔 The people of Hampshire County had been overwhelmingly pro-Confederate during the American Civil War, but the county now lay within Unionist West Virginia. West Virginia's first state constitution disenfranchised Confederate veterans and partisans and forbade them from holding elected office. In spite of these impediments and risking the ire of Unionist authorities, members of the Confederate Memorial Association and their families marched through Romney to Indian Mound Cemetery and formally decorated the gravestones at the interment sites of Confederate dead on June 1, 1866.〔〔 Few Hampshire County residents participated in this first decoration of the Confederate graves, fearing reproach from Federal authorities; some who had pledged to take part in the decoration later refused to do so for the same reason.〔 This adornment in Indian Mound Cemetery has been called the first such public decoration of Confederate burials, but the claim is disputed by other towns in the Southern United States.〔〔 Romney's decoration contributed to a precedent that spread throughout the South during the Reconstruction Era.〔〔〔 Relatives and loved ones of the Union dead buried in Indian Mound Cemetery also began to follow this precedent by decorating the cemetery's Union headstones.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Confederate Memorial (Romney, West Virginia)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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