Confederate Memorial Hall (former name) | |
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![]() Confederate Memorial Hall, with flag, in 1997 | |
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Alternative names | Confederate Embassy |
General information | |
Status | Closed and building sold to pay fines. Converted into four apartments. |
Type | Brownstone townhouse |
Address | 1322 Vermont Avenue |
Town or city | Washington, D.C. |
Coordinates | 32°54′32″N77°01′51″W / 32.9089°N 77.0308°W |
Completed | 1885 |
Inaugurated | 1907 |
Closed | 1997 |
Cost | $3,900,000 (2014 transaction) |
Technical details | |
Floor count | 4 floors + finished basement |
Floor area | 9,880 square feet (918 m2) |
Grounds | 4,356 square feet (404.7 m2) |
Other information | |
Number of rooms | 25, including 11 bedrooms |
Parking | carport |
Website | |
https://confederate.org/hall.html |
The Confederate Memorial Hall (sometimes calling itself the "Confederate Embassy") was a museum, library, and social club owned by the Confederate Memorial Association and located at 1322 Vermont Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. The brownstone that housed it, just off Logan Circle, became a private residence in 1997.
The Hall was originally the Confederate Memorial Home, [1] a residence and gathering place for Confederate veterans. In 1919, 54 years after the Civil War's end, with few veterans still alive, it was converted into the Confederate Memorial Hall, no longer a residence but a library, museum, and "social hall for white politicians from the South". Notices in newspapers tell of events held there: the United Sons of Confederate Veterans, a "musical entertainment" in 1909; [2] the Children of the Confederacy hosted in 1913; [3] the women's auxiliary, a benefit concert in 1914; [1] the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a reception in 1916 [4] and a benefit card party in 1917; [5] open house in 1917 for those attending "the annual pilgrimage of Confederate veterans to Arlington". [6]
According to a 1997 web page kept active, the Hall had oil portraits of Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Sterling Price, Joseph E. Johnston, and Fitzhugh Lee. [7] Also on display were an original print of the Burial of [William] Latane, [8] a marble bust of General Robert E. Lee by "Lost Cause" sculptor Herbert Barbee, a Jefferson Davis sideboard, two chairs once the property of General Beauregard, "numerous battle flags", and the First National Flag of the Confederacy that flew during the siege of Atlanta. The library contained over 1,000 books. [7] The Hall had a collection of Civil War-era musical instruments on which small concerts of Civil War-era music were performed, "a copy of Lee's farewell order to his troops after the Battle of Appomattox...as well as a yellowed legal copy of Davis' bail bond". [9]
During the 1960s and 70s, the building and the association fell on hard times. Membership declined, and the hall became a refuge for vagrants. Hurley, whose father was a member, stepped in and helped refurbish the building, partly with his own money. [10] [11]
"As the 20th century drew to a close, the CMA was sponsoring magnificent white tie grand balls, barbecues, horse events, and a myriad of activities that showcase Southern culture and its inherent good manners and abiding respect for others." [12] On January 17, 1987, the date chosen because Robert E. Lee's birthday was January 19, the Association held an $80 (equivalent to $191in 2021)–per–couple ball and fundraiser. It featured "period dancing to Stephen Foster melodies played on antique instruments." [13] In March 1989, there was a fox hunt in Virginia. "In June there is a grand ball to celebrate the birthday of Jefferson Davis." [14] It claimed a membership of several thousand, [10] [15] but the only visible member is its president, John Edward Hurley (who calls it "my...organization"). Hurley, who is described as a White House correspondent on the website of the Justice Integrity Project, [16] and is also member of a lobbying group, [17] has been president since the 1980s. Sarah McClendon was on the Association's board. [18]
Richard T. Hines was a former South Carolina state legislator, U.S. General Services Administration official, commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans chapter in Washington, and "a major neo-Confederate", [19] [ better source needed ] who "in 1984...penned a paean to Preston Brooks, the secessionist South Carolina congressman who caned Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the Senate floor in 1854 for his speeches against slavery." [20] In 1987, he filed suit seeking to dismiss Hurley and the association's vice president, Mrs. John Tilden Rogers. Hines complained, among other things, that Hurley operated the building for personal gain, renting out rooms and pocketing the proceeds.
"In one of the most bizarre cases to ever come before the courts", [21] Hurley and Mrs. Rogers responded by suing Hines and six others, claiming they were victims of a legal coup. Hines and his followers countered with a $250,000 suit against Hurley and Mrs. Rogers. In 1990, Hurley filed a $5 million suit under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, charging Hines and others with perjury, mail fraud, and money-laundering, "among other misdeeds". [10] [11] The suit was dismissed with prejudice, and defendants were awarded $69,066 in attorneys' fees. [22] Over several years, Hurley also accused various people and federal agencies of corruption and a variety of financial crimes, as well as drug trafficking. In a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno, he linked government corruption and retribution for his whistleblowing, with the efforts to force members onto the Association's board and thus seize its building. [23]
Hurley said his life was threatened on several occasions. [21] There was a fight inside the Memorial Hall in which the shirt of one of Hurley's rivals was torn from his body...and the fracas "nearly led to bloodshed." "They call my wife and threaten her or threaten me and put notes on my door. That's Ku Klux Klan stuff." [11] "I'm relatively conservative myself...[b]ut their conservatism is off the chart as far as I'm concerned." [11] He was jailed briefly for contempt of court and fined $30,000 in court costs during this extended battle, "because he had failed to obey [the judge's] previous order requiring that Hurley add new members to the organization's board of directors". "According to Hurley, the individuals the judge had ordered on the board had affiliations with Oliver North's Contra operations." [24] What "the North/Republican operatives" really wanted was..."a beautiful front behind which it can run a nasty military/intelligence operation". [25]
To no avail, Hurley also reported the federal judge deciding his case, John H. Bayly Jr., to the District of Columbia Commission on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure. [26] He alleged that Bayly "hired the plaintiffs to sue him", and feared "his own 'probable assassination' by the government as payback for his uncovering court complicity in cocaine trafficking." [21]
According to Hurley, his "bizarre court odyssey" began in the 1980s when he canceled an Oliver North "Freedom Fighter" fund-raising event, to be held at Confederate Memorial Hall, for "denizens of the Reagan Doctrine, a peculiar gathering of Nicaraguan contras, Afghan-based mujahedeen and members of the Angolan guerrilla group UNITA, which was funded by the South African apartheid regime." [20] He said he took this action because the Tax Code prohibited such political activity by his tax-exempt organization; in fact, Hurley's Association lost its 501 (c)(3) status for a few years but regained it. "Hurley said that after ten years of litigation he can prove beyond a shadow of doubt that members of Oliver North's operation was [sic] using a Mid-Atlantic Credit Union account in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and a review of this account would prove the costs imposed on Hurley were fraudulent. Judge Bayly, however, quashed subpoenas for both Oliver North and the account without explanation. Hurley said that the board of trustees of his organization, which included those trustees that Judge Bayly had ordered on the board, had voted to sell the museum to cover the fines and costs that were being imposed by the courts." [27]
The building was seized and sold in 1997 to pay $500,000 in contempt of court fines that Hurley received in District of Columbia courts for undisclosed reasons. [27] It then became a private residence. [28] [29]
"'Constitutional government is a thing of the past', Hurley sadly observed." [27]
The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) is an American neo-Confederate hereditary association for female descendants of Confederate Civil War soldiers engaging in the commemoration of these ancestors, the funding of monuments to them, and the promotion of the pseudohistorical Lost Cause ideology and corresponding white supremacy.
Confederate Memorial Day is a cultural holiday observed in several Southern U.S. states on various dates since the end of the American Civil War.
The United Confederate Veterans was an American Civil War veterans' organization headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana. It was organized on June 10, 1889, by ex-soldiers and sailors of the Confederate States as a merger between the Louisiana Division of the Veteran Confederate States Cavalry Association; N. B. Forrest Camp of Chattanooga, Tennessee; Tennessee Division of the Veteran Confederate States Cavalry Association; Tennessee Division of Association of Confederate Soldiers; Benevolent Association of Confederate Veterans of Shreveport, Louisiana; Confederate Association of Iberville Parish, Louisiana; Eighteenth Louisiana; Adams County (Mississippi) Veterans' Association; Louisiana Division of the Army of Tennessee; and Louisiana Division of the Army of Northern Virginia.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) is an American neo-Confederate nonprofit organization of male descendants of Confederate soldiers that commemorates these ancestors, funds and dedicates monuments to them, and promotes the pseudohistorical Lost Cause ideology and corresponding white supremacy.
The Lost Cause of the Confederacy is an American pseudohistorical negationist mythology that claims the cause of the Confederate States during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not centered on slavery. First enunciated in 1866, it has continued to influence racism, gender roles, and religious attitudes in the South to the present day.
The American Civil War Museum is a multi-site museum in the Greater Richmond Region of central Virginia, dedicated to the history of the American Civil War. The museum operates three sites: The White House of the Confederacy, American Civil War Museum at Historic Tredegar in Richmond, and American Civil War Museum at Appomattox. It maintains a comprehensive collection of artifacts, manuscripts, Confederate books and pamphlets, and photographs.
The White House of the Confederacy is a historic house located in the Court End neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia. Built in 1818, it was the main executive residence of the sole President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, from August 1861 until April 1865. It was viewed as the Confederate States counterpart to the White House in Washington, D.C. It currently sits on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University.
The Confederate War Memorial was a 65 foot (20 m)-high monument that pays tribute to soldiers and sailors from Texas who served with the Confederate States of America (CSA) during the American Civil War. The monument was dedicated in 1897, following the laying of its cornerstone the previous year. Originally located in Sullivan Park near downtown Dallas, Texas, United States, the monument was relocated in 1961 to the nearby Pioneer Park Cemetery in the Convention Center District, next to the Dallas Convention Center and Pioneer Plaza.
William Dickinson Washington was an American painter and teacher of art. He is most famous for his painting The Burial of Latané, which became a symbol of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy in the years following the American Civil War, and for the work he did in establishing the fine arts program of the Virginia Military Institute.
Kate Mason Rowland was an American author, historian, genealogist, biographer, editor and historic preservationist. Rowland is best known for her biography of her great-great-granduncle, George Mason, a Founding Father of the United States. Rowland was also a charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. She later went by the name of "Kate Mason."
Appomattox is a bronze statue commemorating soldiers from Alexandria, Virginia, who had died while fighting for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. The memorial was located in the center of the intersection of South Washington Street and Prince Street in the Old Town neighborhood of Alexandria.
Eliphalet Frazer Andrews, an American painter known primarily as a portraitist, established an art instruction curriculum at the behest of William Wilson Corcoran at his Corcoran School of Art, and served as its director, 1877–1902. He received many commissions to create both original portraits and copies of images of deceased famous Americans, which are displayed by federal, state, and local institutions. His art is housed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Ohio State Capitol, and numerous paintings at The White House and the United States Capitol.
Although the Confederate States of America dissolved at the end of the American Civil War (1861–1865), its battle flag continues to receive modern display. The modern display began during the 1948 United States presidential election when it was used by the Dixiecrats, a political party that opposed civil rights for African Americans. Further display of the flag was a response to the civil rights movement and the passage of federal civil rights laws in the 1950s and 1960s.
More than 100 monuments and memorials to the Confederate States of America and associated figures have been removed, all but five since 2015. Some have been removed by state and local governments; others have been torn down by protestors.
Jefferson Davis, created by Henry Augustus Lukeman, is a bronze sculpture of Jefferson Davis – a U.S. Senator, U.S. Secretary of War, plantation owner and the only President of the Confederate States of America – commissioned by the U.S. State of Mississippi for inclusion in National Statuary Hall Collection at the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall, in Washington, D.C. The statue was widely controversial at the time of its unveiling and there have been many efforts to remove it from the Capitol since the 2010s.