This May Be It For the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Virginia
Last week Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger signed legislation ending the practice of issuing specialty license plates for the Sons of Confederate Veterans. In my post on this last week I anticipated news in the coming week that would impact the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Virginia Was the Lost Cause's Sacred Ground. Then It Wasn't
For more than a century and a half, Virginia was the Lost Cause’s most consecrated ground. As the former capital of the Confederacy, the Commonwealth did not merely tolerate Confederate mythmaking. It institutionalized it. Its boulevards were lined with bronze generals, its schoolchildren taught from textbooks that recast sec…
Well, earlier today the governor signed legislation ending the organization’s tax-exempt status. The UDC, formed in 1894, is largely responsible for the vast majority of Confederate monuments dedicated during the twentieth century.
The organization made it its mission to spread the Lost Cause narrative through school textbooks and other activities that influenced generations of white Americans.
This legislation is going to hit the UDC hard in Virginia. Its national headquarters is located in Richmond. In the summer of 2020, the building was severely vandalized during the wave to protests that swept the city in the days following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
According to the New York Times, if the UDC defaults on its property taxes, the building “will revert to the state.”
The total property is valued at about $4.7 million, which according to the city’s rate would make the annual property tax over $57,000. The organization had about $2.1 million in revenue and about $1.1 million in expenses in 2025, according to a tax filing.
This could spell the end for the UDC, though it is worth pointing out that it largely avoids politics and it no longer has any influence on public memory in the South.
There isn’t much more to say. In terms of its influence on public memory in Virginia, the Lost Cause has effectively been gutted.
To add insult to injury, both signings by Spanberger have taken place during Confederate History/Heritage Month, which Virginia no longer recognizes.
the good news just keeps coming on the Lost Cause front.
Day job had me fussing over RevWar tricorn hats yesterday so my eye was immediately drawn to that Daughter on the upper right who is wearing one. What?