Fame Holds Dying Rebel

Salisbury, North Carolina

Cast in Belgium, the statue Gloria Victis ("Glory to the Conquered") was sculpted by Frederic Wellington Ruckstuhl, who attended its dedication on May 10, 1909 -- as did Stonewall Jackson's widow, over 100 Confederate veterans, and a crowd which obviously did not feel guilty about the South's role in America's bloodiest war.

Fame, whose wings reach 23 feet high, holds a dying Confederate soldier in one arm, while her other is poised to crown him with a laurel wreath of famousness when he expires. The Rebel holds a battered gun, possibly a factor in why he came to such a sad state.

The Rebel is modeled on Lt. Henry Howe Cook of Franklin, Tennessee, who in fact did not die in the Civil War. He later became a judge and lived until 1921. And "Fame," despite appearances, is not an angel, and is not about to fly the dead Confederate to heaven, although a lot of the statue's supporters later insisted that she was.

The statue, formerly downtown, was removed in July 2020, then moved a year later to Salisbury's Old Lutheran Cemetery, which has Confederate soldiers' graves. It is now protected with floodlights and an eight-foot-high iron fence.