Monument to the Man Without a Country

Andalusia, Alabama

The Man Without a Country was a work of fiction by Edward Everett Hale, written during the Civil War. The man, Philip Nolan, angrily tells a judge that he never wants to hear about the USA again. The judge takes Nolan literally, and banishes him to spend the rest of his (long) life in isolation, with his jailers ordered to never mention America in his presence. Nolan is very sad, and as he dies in 1862 his last request is that a gravestone be erected to him.

On July 4, 1975, Andalusia, as a American Bicentennial project, did so, including Nolan's suggested patriotic epitaph, even though Nolan never existed and Andalusia had nothing to do with the story.