Alabama is replacing Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry with Helen Keller in the U.S. Capitol’s  statuary collection, and I haven’t heard any loud outcry emanating from the Heart of Dixie.

That’s probably because the blind, deaf and mute Ms. Keller, born in Tuscumbia, has been an inspiration to the world in a way a Confederate officer and education advocate could never be. When Alabamians think of Curry, their minds go to Bill Curry, former head coach at the University of Alabama. During his three years in Tuscaloosa (1987-89), his teams had a 26-10 record—dismal, indeed, for the Crimson Tide. Even worse, their record against Auburn was 0-3.

Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry never coached football, but he was a staff aide during the Civil War to Gen. Joseph E. Johnston and to Gen. Joseph “Fighting Joe” Wheeler, Alabama’s other entry in the Capitol’s statuary pantheon. After the war, Curry worked for free public education for Southern whites and blacks. 

Several other states are contemplating switcheroos in their statuary representations since Congress voted nine years ago to allow substitutions. California has already installed Ronald Reagan, Kansas has installed Dwight Eisenhower, and Missouri has installed Harry Truman, replacing figures you’ve never heard of. Ohio wants to replace 19th-century Gov. William Allen, who once characterized black people as savages, with someone from its assortment of heroes and heroines such as Thomas Edison, Dean Martin and Annie Oakley. Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, both native Ohioans, are not in the running. Nobody down South is complaining.

It was in 1864 that Congress authorized a Statuary Hall to be established in the Capitol’s old House chamber after the new House wing was completed. Each state was allowed two statues.

Southern states, once they were back in the union, were eager to put a gloss of glory on the men who had led their sons in battle. Hence, many of the statues in the Capitol represent heroes of the Ante-Bellum South.

Mississippi’s first choice was obvious: Jefferson Davis, the native son who became president of the Confederacy. Her second choice was James Zachariah George, known in the Magnolia State as “the Great Commoner.” He was a private in the Mexican War under Jefferson Davis and a colonel in the Civil War. He signed the Ordinance of Secession, but after the war served on the state’s Supreme Court and then in the United States Senate, where he supported the creation of a Department of Agriculture. Nice guy, but I’m thinking that one of the state’s Miss America winners might brighten the Capitol a tad more.

Louisiana chose the controversial Huey Long, who ran the state like a dictatorship and organized the “Share the Wealth Society” to out-New Deal Franklin Roosevelt.

No. 2 in the Bayou State was Edward Douglass White, a Civil War veteran whom Grover Cleveland appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. He served there for 27 years.

Florida also tapped into its Civil War honor roll, sending a statue of Edmund Kirby Smith, the last of the Confederate generals to surrender. No. 2 for the Sunshine State was an obvious choice: John Corrie, father of refrigeration and air conditioning.

Without him, how could Floridians survive?

Tennessee chose Andrew Jackson, an immigrant from the Carolinas, and John Sevier, the Revolutionary War hero who served as governor of the state of Franklin—forerunner of the Volunteer State. He was also governor of Tennessee after it entered the union under its real name.

South Carolina overlooked her Revolutionary War heroes—Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter and Andrew Pickens—and opted for John C. Calhoun and Wade Hampton.

An early nationalist, Calhoun initially supported the protective tariff, but later bitterly opposed it and espoused the doctrine of nullification in an attempt to exempt his state from it.

Ten years before the Civil War, he predicted that abolitionist agitation would cause the Union to split. Whereas many statesmen regarded slavery as a necessary evil, Calhoun proclaimed it “a good—a positive good.”

Wade Hampton was a Confederate Army hero, serving at the side of Robert E. Lee. After the war, he tried to calm the seething emotions of white South Carolinians during Reconstruction. He finally won the governorship in a violent campaign that marked the end of Reconstruction and the establishment of white supremacy in the state for the next 90 years.

Georgia is represented by Alexander Hamilton Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, who did not endear himself to his state’s black population when he said of the breakaway nation: “The cornerstone of the new government rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and moral condition.” Jimmy Carter, a Georgian who became president of the United States, was more egalitarian. But a lot of Georgians would like to replace Stephens with Herschel Walker.

Georgia’s other Capitol statue is of Crawford W. Long, toward whom everyone who has ever faced surgery can feel deep gratitude. He pioneered the use of anesthesia on the operating table.

North Carolina’s statuary representatives are Charles Brantley Aycock and Zebulon B. Vance, neither of whom is widely known outside the state. Vance was governor during the Civil War, and a thorn in the side for Jefferson Davis because of his insistence on putting the interests of North Carolina ahead of the interests of the Confederacy. Aycock became governor in 1900 and devoted his administration to building schools and promoting public education. One could argue that Sam Ervin, the Diogenes of the Watergate investigation, and governors Luther Hodges and Terry Sanford are 20th-century peers.

No state had a clearer choice than Virginia. It chose George Washington, “the father of his country” and Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy’s knight in shining armor.

As for James Lamar Monroe Curry, I don’t think we’ll have any trouble forgetting him. Most of us never even knew him. Let’s hear it for Helen Keller!

Readers may write Gene Owens at 317 Braeburn Drive, Anderson, S.C. 29621, or e-mail him at WadesDixieco@aol.com.