The Monument
Interest in the American Civil War Centennial in the 1960s prompted a local committee to initiate and raise state funds for a monument to honor the city’s namesake, Henry Watkins Allen. The Town of West Baton Rouge was renamed Port Allen in his honor in 1878. A controversial figure today, Allen was a slaveholder and owner of Allendale Plantation in West Baton Rouge Parish, an officer for the Confederacy who took up arms against the United States, and Louisiana’s second (and last) Governor of the Confederately held portions of the state. To create the monument, the committee secured the talents of Angela Gregory, a pioneering and well-respected woman sculptor in New Orleans with family roots in the parish. Erected with civic pride in 1962 beside the then-new West Baton Rouge Parish Courthouse, the monument was moved across the street, facing the Courthouse, in 1992.
Ethel “Puffy” Claiborne Dameron (1890-1976), a civic-minded philanthropist in Port Allen, led the local committee who commissioned the monument to Allen. She personally petitioned the State of Louisiana in 1959 to fund it. The State Senate Finance Committee decided they did not have the funds despite a plea from the normally fiscally conservative Senator William Rainach. A staunch segregationist and white supremacist, Rainach believed in the importance of supporting a monument to Allen because it would also uphold the causes he held dear.
Undeterred, Puffy and her committee approached the State Board of Liquidation of State Debt, which agreed to provide $15,000.00. Puffy promptly invited sculptor Angela Gregory to make the monument. Angela had an established reputation for her work on the Louisiana State Capitol, among other important buildings, and her recently completed colossal bronze monument commemorating Sieur de Bienville in New Orleans. Angela agreed to take on the commission.
Angela worked on the Allen Monument for over two years. She studied Allen’s biography and even acquired a 19th century photograph called a carte de visite to ensure an accurate portrait. Not only did she take great pains to create a recognizable likeness of Allen but also a sensitive portrayal of him as neither a hero nor a martyr. Unlike most Civil War military statues, Gregory’s depiction shows Allen pensive, with his head in his hand and seated, emphasizing his wounded legs and the crippling effects of war. Carved in the sculpture’s base is a quote from Allen’s farewell letter to Louisiana begging forgiveness. It reads: “Let us forget the past and look forward to the future.”
After committee approval of a small maquette (model) of the Allen statue, Angela carved a full-size model in plaster. The Bedi-Rassy Art Foundry in New York used this to make the mold for the bronze casting. This process took three months. Meanwhile, Angela designed the statue’s limestone base and worked with the landscape architects, Teddy and Lou Landry, on the surrounding plantings. The foundry shipped the finished bronze statue to Louisiana in May of 1962.
On Sunday, June 3, 1962, the monument committee, local politicians, and members of the public gathered to witness the dedication of the Allen Monument. The date was selected to coincide with Confederate Memorial Day, a holiday initiated after the Civil War in many Southern states but is no longer observed in Louisiana as of 2022. A local Boy Scout troop raised the American flag while the Brusly High School Band played the national anthem. The pastor of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church led a prayer, then the Master of Ceremonies, District Judge Paul B. Landry, Jr., gave the opening remarks.
Harnett T. Kane delivered the keynote speech. A member of the National Civil War Centennial Commission and a renowned New Orleans author, Kane began his address by remarking on the legendary request for forgiveness that Allen wrote in his farewell to Louisiana upon his self-exile to Mexico. Allen had declared “Let both parties bury in the deepest sea of oblivion, all envy, all hate, all revenge.”
Following remarks from Angela Gregory, Puffy Dameron unveiled the statue, which was four inches larger than life-size. The event concluded in prayer officiated by the pastor of the West Baton Rouge Presbyterian Church and a musical rendition of “Dixie.”
There has been much debate about the merit of monuments to the Confederacy. Some have been defaced and destroyed by protestors; others removed from public spaces. Many Confederate monuments, especially those erected during the Jim Crow Era, were intended as symbols of White dominance and spread the Lost Cause myth—a false telling of the events of the Civil War that ignored slavery and glorified the old South. The Allen Monument, created in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, did little to reconcile the deep divides that the country still faced, but the design did attempt to highlight Allen’s conciliatory response to the end of the war. Today, the monument stands as a reminder of America’s troubled past.
***To learn more about the artist, Angela Gregory, visit https://64parishes.org/entry/angela-gregory