Explore the Campaign about the Early history, 1909–1913 of this artwork, Silent Sam.
During the American Civil War, over 1,000 students and employees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) enlisted, of whom 287 are known to have lost their lives. University president David Lowry Swain had petitioned the Confederacy to exclude students in their final two years from conscription, and this was granted in 1863, but revoked a year later.  Swain was able to keep the university open throughout the war by educating the few students unable to fight—those too young to enlist, exempt because of ill health, or discharged because of war injuries—though the senior class in the spring of 1865 had only one student.In 1907, the North Carolina chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) decided that its next major goal was to be "the erection, on the campus at the State University, of a monument to the students and faculty, who went out from its walls in 1861 to fight and die for the South." University President Francis Preston Venable spoke to the 1909 UDC Convention, approving of the plan for a monument, and saying that record of the students who enlisted "should ever be before the eyes of the present-day students". The request for a monument was presented to, and approved by, the UNC board of trustees on June 1, 1908.The monument was funded by the university, alumni, and the UDC. UNC and the UDC spent until 1913 fundraising the $7,500 that Canadian sculptor John Wilson charged for the statue, which he discounted from his asking price of $10,000. The Daughters originally were slated to give $1,500 of the cost of the statue, though their success at fundraising led the university to ask for them to cover $2,500 by 1911. Most of the rest of the cost was covered by alumni donations. UNC eventually had to give $500 to reach the contracted total of $7,500. The statue was planned to be in place by 1911 for the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. Raising funds to pay for the statue delayed the project by two years.
United Daughters of the Confederacy University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University of North Carolina UDC Francis Preston Venable David Lowry Swain John Wilson American Civil War