This exhibit focuses on the changing ways that Lieutenant Richard W. "Dick" Dowling has been remembered since the American Civil War, particularly in the city of Houston. It was written and curated by undergraduate Rice students enrolled in the Spring 2011 course on "Public History and Civil War Memory" and the Fall 2011 course "The American Civil War Era," with editorial and research assistance by Professor Caleb McDaniel.

Introduction

Many Houstonians drive past the Dick Dowling Monument on Cambridge Street without noticing it at all. Yet this statue once stood outside Houston's City Hall, and the man it commemorates was once remembered widely as the commanding officer at a Civil War battle that some admirers compared with the Battle of Thermopylae.

The Battle of Thermopylae, fought by the Spartans in 480 BC against Xerxes of Persia, has become synonymous with unthinkable bravery and fighting prowess against incredible odds. So it was high praise indeed when former Confederate President Jefferson Davis claimed in an address in 1882 that Dowling's victory at the Battle of Sabine Pass was "more remarkable than the battle of Thermopylae, and when it has orators and poets to celebrate it, will be so esteemed by mankind" (1). In the late nineteenth century, Davis and many other former Confederates included Dick Dowling in the pantheon of Confederate military officers like P.G.T. Beauregard, Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Sidney Johnston. This was how the men who commissioned and erected Houston's only statue to Dick Dowling wished him to be known: as a war hero notable for his military achievements.

But Dowling's original admirers would probably be surprised to read the text of the historical marker currently accompanying his statue in Hermann Park. Written in 1997 with strong influence from Dowling descendant Ann Caraway Ivins, the marker's inscription has five sentences concerning the war and seven about his businesses and personal life (2). His business success is noted and the monument recognizes him as the first person in Houston to install gas lighting and later to form an oil company. His achievements outside of the war are presented as equal to his military victory. While Jefferson Davis's speech was full of flowery praise for the righteousness of the Confederate cause, the historical marker makes no mention of that cause or what Dowling fought for.

What happened between 1882 and 1997 to cause such a drastic change in the way Dowling's memory was presented? What has not changed? Why would a Dowling descendant in the twentieth century choose to focus on his business legacy instead of the military legacy that initially made him famous? What do Davis's and Ivins's representations of Dowling share in common? How did Dowling's Irish heritage become so important to the way he is remembered in Houston? And how did a parade celebrating the emancipation of slaves come to be held on Dowling Street?

Curious about how the commemoration of Dick Dowling changed over time and why? Continue exploring this exhibit to learn more!

Sources:

1. "Address of President Davis," Southern Historical Society Papers 10, no. 5 (May 1882): 225-233.

2. Houston Municipal Art Commission Records, box 2, folder 24, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library. View item.

Dowling's Story

Immediately after the Battle of Sabine Pass, Dick Dowling and his Davis Guard became legendary among Confederates for their military achievement, which had prevented federal troops from occupying Texas. Due to the significance of the battle for the Confederacy, Dowling and his men received a great deal of praise and recognition, especially from Texans and fellow Houstonians, who could boast a local connection to the victory. The stories these early admirers told laid the groundwork for later attempts to commemorate Dowling, both in what they emphasized—his unlikely victory—and in what they elided from the story. 

Some of the initial stories about Dowling's victory at Sabine Pass highlighted the Irish heritage of the Davis Guard and its commander, but most contemporary accounts of the battle focused on the odds that Dowling faced and the service he provided to the Confederacy. For example, an 1863 note from Leon Smith describing the battle reads, "God bless the Davis Guards, one and all! The honor of the country was in their hands, and nobly they sustained it." The women of Sabine City presented a flag to the Davis Guard, and Charles Otis even proposed that a concert be held for Dowling and his men to commemorate their valiant military efforts (1, 2). Within days of the battle, contemporaries already compared it to the Battle of Thermopylae, the famous stand of the 300 Spartens against the invading Persians. Early in 1864, the Confederate Congress passed a resolution which included, among other complimentary language, the declaration that "this defense . . . constitutes, in the opinion of Congress, one of the most brilliant and heroic achievements in the history of this war." At the suggestion of Jefferson Davis himself, the soldiers also received silver medals with green ribbons that had "D.G." (for Davis Guards) engraved on one side and "Sabine Pass, Sept. 8, 1863" on the other. (Click here for an image of one of the surviving medals.)

In the succeeding decades after the battle, most stories about Dick Dowling continued in this vein, turning him into a legendary Confederate war hero who single-handedly saved Texas from destruction by Yankee forces. His obituary in 1867, after his death from yellow fever, lauded his "unparalleled boldness and intrepidity" and praised him as a "warm-hearted hero" for his activity at the Battle of Sabine Pass, but did not include his manner of death or his accomplishments in the city of Houston. Instead, the obituary spent four paragraphs detailing the battle, while only one sentence focused on Dowling himself, demonstrating the centrality of his war hero image in the public understanding of Dowling's persona.

Sources

1. Oct. 16, 1863. "Address of the Rev. J. J. Loomis At the Presentation of a (Garrison) Flag to the Davis Guards, at Fort Sabine, Sept. 19, 1863." Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, Page 2.

2. Charles O. Otis, "The Davis Guards," Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, September 16, 1863, 2.

Dowling's Story

In the thirty years after Dowling's death, stories about the battle and the Davis Guards's heroism continued to spread, taking on mythic proportions. The battle was referred to as "the greatest feat of the war, surpassing even that of the recapture of Galveston," by the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph (1). As time passed, the number of Union soldiers and prisoners in the battle was also increasingly exaggerated as a means of glorifying the Confederacy. Initially, local newspapers claimed that the Davis Guard had taken around 235 prisoners. About a week later, the number of prisoners captured had "increased" to 400. In 1867, the number of attacking soldiers was supposedly 15,000 men, but a few decades later various sources quoted the numbers as 10,000 and 20,000. This disparity in the statistics indicates the prevailing tendency of Confederate sympathizers to focus on the victory as an example of Confederate heroism.

The Battle of Sabine Pass was particularly celebrated in an 1882 speech by Jefferson Davis, which called Sabine Pass the Confederacy's Thermopylae. In his exaggerated retelling of the battle, Davis described an "iron clad fleet [that] came steaming up the river with nothing to oppose it but a mud fort armed with field guns and held by 42 men." The fleet actually contained no ironclad ships, and the fort Dowling defended was not a simple "mud" shelter, but Davis used this account to stress the bravery of Dowling, who supposedly told his men, "We will fight to the death!" (2). According to Davis, Dowling was an even more successful commander than the Spartan leader Leonidas because Dowling's forces were victorious without suffering any casualties. 

Told in this way, Dowling's story fit easily into the mythology of the "Lost Cause," which was first developed by Southern historians and former Confederate leaders such as Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee in the aftermath of Reconstruction and was later taken up by groups such as the United Confederate Veterans. The Lost Cause referred to the idea that the South was never capable of winning the Civil War because the North had an overwhelming advantage due to their increased resources and manpower. According to the Lost Cause, Southern soldiers never would have been able to defeat the Northern forces no matter how bravely and nobly they fought, and were therefore fighting a "Lost Cause." Lost Cause historians and writers also denied that slavery was a cause of the Civil War, arguing instead that courageous white Southerners were only defending their homes from Northern aggression. 

The early versions of the story of Dowling and the Battle of Sabine Pass certainly supported these Lost Cause ideas. As remembered in the immediate aftermath of the battle, Dowling's life offered a perfect example of guileless Confederate heroism and the Union's overpowering amount of resources. Although stories about Dowling were less prevalent between 1867 and 1882 than before or after, the idea of the Lost Cause established a powerful narrative that helped ensure the revival of his memory in the 1880s. 

Sources

1. "The Davis Guards," Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, September 16, 1863, 2.

2. "Address of President Davis," Southern Historical Society Papers 10, no. 5 (May 1882): 225-233.

Dowling's Statue

For half a century, the story of Sabine Pass formed the core of Dowling's memory in the Houston area and beyond. Indeed, the tale of the Davis Guard’s victory over overwhelming odds was retold as far away as San Francisco, where an article recounting the battle was published in 1911 (1). But until the 1890s, little was done to publicly commemorate Dowling or the Davis Guards in the public spaces of Houston. This changed around the turn of the century as a new wave of public art and commemoration about the Confedarcy and the Civil War more generally swept throughout the United States.

The Civil War marked major changes in the way the public remembered the average solider. Cemeteries became not only planned places of mourning, but also public meeting places. Former soldiers also worked hard preserving former battlefields, turning them into privately sponsored parks. By the end of the nineteenth century, the erection of statues and memorials about the Civil War also accelerated all over the county, but particularly in the South. Between the years of 1863 to 1879 Connecticut had built 32 statues honoring soldiers, while Virginia constructed only 10. In a few decades, however, things had changed. Between 1900 and 1919 Connecticut built 34 monuments while Virginia built a whopping 83. Statues were often sponsored by the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) and by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), two organizations dedicated to preserving a memory of the Civil War that favored Southern interpretations about the causes and character of the conflict. In many Southern cities, groups like the UCV and the UDC also began trying to preserve their stories about the Civil War by altering the physical landscape itself with statues, memorials, parks, and other public spaces dedicated to Confederates and their stories.

Sources

1. Cunningham, S. A., Ed. "The Battle of Sabine Pass." Confederate Veteran 19, 11. (November 1911): 531.

Dowling's Statue

Dick Dowling, too, began to move out of printed stories and into public spaces during the 1880s and 1890s. In 1889, Dick Dowling’s daughter received a gold medal at a ceremony in the Texas State House of Representatives "as a token of esteem for her distinguished father and as an expression of their appreciation of the services he rendered the 'Lost Cause', and especially the people of Texas in saving their State from invasion in 1863 by the Federal Army" (1). Only a few years later in Houston, the name of East Broadway was changed to Dowling Street "in honor of Dick Dowling, the hero of Sabine Pass" (2). The new Dowling Street intersected the already named Tuam Street, which referred to Dowling’s birthplace in Ireland.

These attempts to honor Dick Dowling and his men with physical markers and public ceremonies coincided with the creation of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) in 1889. The UCV rapidly gained membership and popularity, creating its own publication, the Confederate Veteran, in January 1893. A UCV Reunion hosted in Houston in May 1895 drew more than 10,000 people for a three-day event, which included speeches by veterans and an appearance by Jefferson Davis's daughter, Winnie. (Click here to read more about this event.) In Houston, a chapter of the UCV created in July 1892 was also named in honor of Lieutenant Dowling, and, in subsequent years, the Dick Dowling Camp attempted to revive public commemoration of its namesake. For example, the Camp was formally presented with a sword said to belong to Dick Dowling on December 5, 1900 in the presence of one of the few surviving members of the Davis Guard (3).

The revival of local interest in Dowling spurred new attempts to construct a stone marker at Dowling's gravesite and to build a marble statue in his honor. Efforts to raise funds for both of these initiatives began in the late 1880s, but turning Dowling's likeness into stone was a hard task. For one thing, building a statue was a costly enterprise. Fundraising for a Dowling monument began first among members of the UCV. But fundraisers ultimately turned to Irish immigrant groups in Houston like the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Emmett Council to assist with financing and planning the statue. On January 2, 1901, members of these Irish groups joined with UCV supporters to found the Dick Dowling Monument Association, which consolidated fundraising efforts, solicited bids for the construction of a statue, and ultimately hired designer Frank Teich to build a memorial to Dowling and the Davis Guards in Houston.

Sources

1. “‘Dick’ Dowling at Sabine Pass.” Confederate Veteran (October 1896), 336-338.

2. "Resolution providing for the changing the names and designations and the renaming of certain streets in the City of Houston." Houston City Council 52 (1892): 34.

3. "Presentation of Dick Dowling Sword," Confederate Veteran, Febuary 1901, 76-77.

Dowling's Statue

The involvement of Irish Houstonians in the Monument Association introduced new dimensions to the commemoration of Dowling that had not been emphasized in early versions of his story. Confederate veterans and most white Texans who knew of Dowling focused on Sabine Pass and its relationship to the story of the Confederacy. The Irish, however, wanted not only a figure to honor, but also a way to fit in with the broader community. Emphasizing Dowling's Irish heritage would provide a role model for the entire Irish American community in Houston and also identify the community with Houston as a whole. These unique concerns were reflected in Teich's final design, which was different in several ways from the standard Civil War monument built in this period. Like other statues, the Dowling monument depicted a proud, independent solider. He is not, however, dressed in full regalia or arms. Instead, Dowling, holding a pair of binoculars, rests on his sword, deemphasizing his role in the military. Meanwhile, though many Civil War monuments featured inscriptions explaining the reasons why soldiers fought or the tragic odds they faced, the Dowling statue instead provided a simple list of those who fought in the Davis Guard, together with a list of the organizations that helped build it. Finally, as a testament to the involvement of Irish groups, shamrocks were etched right beside the list of names.

The statue was finally unveiled on March 17, 1905, with a series of ceremonies that reflected the mixture of Irish and Confederate themes. Monument planners had initially hoped to unveil the statue on Jefferson Davis's birthday in 1903. The unveiling, however, was delayed nearly two years to Saint Patrick's Day 1905, a testament to the importance of Irish groups' assistance in bringing the project to completion. The statue's unveiling got considerable attention from the Houston community, as a "jam of humanity" flooded the streets for the dedication ceremony. A parade was held leading to city hall. Surviving members of the Davis Guard attended, along with the Sons of Erin, a local Irish group. The celebration reserved 150 seats for members of local committees and distinguished guests, including Dowling's descendents and the governor of Texas. Mayor of Houston Andrew L. Jackson delivered a speech on the need to remember and commemorate the sacrifices of Confederate cause as well as Dowling as a great Irishman (1, 2, 3).

Such speeches reflected the increasing prominence of Dowling's Irishness in the stories told about him, but stories about his Confederate victory still remained prominent as well. The placement of the statue outside Houston's City Hall also reflected the continuing power of Civil War memory and the memory of the Confederacy in Texas. For decades to come, Houston's city business would be guarded by a Confederate hero, a fact that, while once consoling or unremarked among white Houstonians, became disquieting as the years passed.

Sources

1. "Three Out of Forty-Seven: Trio of Sabine Pass Heroes Received With Cheers," Houston Chronicle, 17 March 1905, 1.

2. "Monument is Now Unveiled," Houston Chronicle, 17 March 1905, 9-11.

3. "Dick Dowling Monument", The Confederate Veteran, November 1902, p 501.

Leaving City Hall

In Houston, attention to Dowling's statue declined gradually after the unveiling of his statue in 1905. In the half century after its dedication, the monument would undergo a series of relocations that would take it from the front of City Hall to a storage shed to an undeveloped corner of Hermann Park. During the same period, some white Houstonians attempted to keep Dowling's story in the public eye, but with decreasing success.

The statue's travels began when it was moved from its location on September 13, 1939. The City of Houston had built a new City Hall and was in the process of repurposing the old building into a bus terminal. Instead of following City Hall to its new location, Dowling's statue was moved to Sam Houston Park, the site of several other historic structures and monuments. Then, in 1957, while renovations on the Noble-Kellum House were taking place, Dowling's statue was placed into storage, its future location undetermined and uncertain (1, 2).

The movement of Dowling's statue into storage upset some white Houstonians who had already complained of a decline in the respect paid to the memory of their hero, specifically at his grave site. As early as 1929, one writer in the Houston Chronicle worried that the lack of a proper marker at Dowling's grave in St. Vincent's Cemetery was an insult to the honor and legacy of Houston's "boy hero." The article lamented that the "neglected mound" of Dowling sinks lower year-by-year, and has become "lost to sight by grass." Author Julia Watts feared that within "a generation" not only would the location of Dowling's grave be lost to sight, but that the memory of Dowling himself would be forgotten without a permanent marker (3).

Sources

1. "Ancient Statue of Dick Dowling Moved to Park." The Houston Chronicle, September 14, 1939 B16

2. "Twice Uprooted Dick Dowling Statue May Be Moved Again", The Houston Chronicle, April 27, 1958, Section C, p 8.

3. "Julia Watts. "Dick Dowling, War Time Hero, Sleeps in Unmarked Grave." Houston Chronicle, August 25, 1929, Society, 10.

Leaving City Hall

Local members of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) and the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) shared these concerns, and between 1929 and 1939, Dowling's admirers worked independently to keep the statue clean and to erect a monument at Dowling's gravesite in 1935. "All Soul's Day" of that year, a Catholic Holy Day that honors the dead, was specifically chosen to pay tribute to Dowling's Irish heritage and Catholic faith. 800 men, women, and children braved "threats of rain" to attend a dedication ceremony at St. Vincent's Cemetery, including several former Confederate veterans, Mayor Oscar Holcombe, Attorney General William McCraw, and Bishop C.E. Byrne of Galveston. Dowling's only living child, "Mrs. Annie Dowling Robertson of Austin," also appeared, reprising the ceremonial role she had played in 1889, when the state legislature honored her father (1).

Despite the mayor's attendance at this ceremony, the movement of Dowling's statue to Sam Houston Park only four years later reflected a dwindling of public concern for Dowling's story. Although the UCV and the UDC held ceremonies at the statue's new location in 1940, only about 50 people attended and the mayor, instead of making an appearance, as he had in 1935, dispatched Assistant City Attorney Spurgeon Bell to make "the dedicatory address" in his place (2). Changes in Dowling's notoriety were further signaled both by the statue's movement to storage in 1957 and by a brief dispute over where the statue would be relocated. Initially the City Parks department planned to put the statue on the corner of Fannin Street, in Hermann Park, directly across from Hermann Hospital, both named after Houston philanthropist George H. Hermann. The granite base of Dowling's statue was even placed there temporarily. But when trustees of Hermann's estate objected that this spot had been reserved for a statue of Hermann himself, Dowling's statue was uprooted again in 1958 and moved to the corner of Hermann Park where it stood until 2020 (3). Dowling's statue was removed on June 15th by the City of Houston and moved to an undisclosed location following a few weeks of furor regarding the statues of Confederate war heros. This furor was linked to a series of nationwide protests regarding the racist murder of George Floyd by the police.

Sources

1. “Monument Dedicated to Dick Dowling While 800 Brave Threats of Rain,” Houston Chronicle, November 3, 1935, pg 1, 6

2. “Dick Dowling Service Held at Monument,” Houston Chronicle, March 17, 1940, A9.

3. "Twice Uprooted Dick Dowling Statue May Be Moved Again", Houston Chronicle, April 27, 1958, Section C, p 8.

Leaving City Hall

After 1958, concern over Dowling's statue would primarily be left to local chapters of the UDC and the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a successor organization to the UCV, and to "unofficial caretaker[s]" like former City Councilman Tom Needham, an Irishman who complained that Dowling's statue had been "shoved in some obscure corner of the park" (1). In the same year Dowling's statue was brought out of storage and placed in that corner, local members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans laid a wreath at the statue on the anniversary of the Battle of Sabine Pass, beginning a tradition of unofficial ceremonies held at the site (2). But the excitement and prestige that had once accompanied public commemoration of Dowling had all but died out. The Chronicle article on the laying of the wreath devoted a single sentence to describing Dowling's victory at Sabine Pass (3). The grandeur and spectacle of public commemoration for Dowling had changed a tremendous amount in the passage of his statue from City Hall through storage and into an "obscure corner" of Hermann Park, where it was watched over by a small and shrinking number of Houstonians.

Sources

1. "Twice Uprooted Dick Dowling Statue May Be Moved Again", Houston Chronicle, April 27, 1958, Section C, p 8.

2. Sept. 8, 1958. "Dowling Tribute." Houston Chronicle, Page 9, Section A.

3. "Memorial Rites Set by Sons of Confederate Veterans." Houston Chronicle, Sept. 7, 1958, Page 6, Section B.

Debating Dowling in a Changing Houston

By 1958, the Houston Chronicle speculated that "there probably are only a few Houstonians who have more than a hazy idea about Dick Dowling’s contribution to Texas history" (1). Other evidence also suggests that Dowling was no longer remembered with the same gusto as earlier in the century, except among members of Confederate heritage groups and a few other admirers. An additional 1958 article from the Houston Post announced that the sword that made up a part of the Dowling statue had gone missing for a fifth time (2). While it is impossible to know the intent of the thieves, this incident may suggest, if nothing else, that Dowling might no longer have been the revered war hero of years past. Beginning in the 1960s, Dowling and his statue were periodically catapulted back into the public eye. The broader social and political changes in Houston, however, ensured that all future discussions of Dowling's memory would be accompanied by more debate than before.

Less than a decade later, in the mid-1960s, as Texas and the rest of the country marked the centennial of the American Civil War, the City of Houston was very different from the city in which Dowling's statue first stood. In 1905, the year the statue was unveiled outside City Hall, public spaces in the city were racially segregated and poll taxes and other voting restrictions had reduced the turnout of African American voters in Texas to 2 percent. As an example of the pervasive nature of racial sepearation in early twentieth century Houston, one of the few public parks in which African Americans could legally assemble was Emancipation Park, which was bounded by Dowling and Tuam Streets—a telling symbol of how the freedoms of Houston's African American community remained circumscribed for decades after emancipation.

Sources

1. "Dowling Statue Deserves Display," Houston Chronicle, May 17, 1958, pg. 1.

2. "No Weapon: Dowling's 5th Sword Missing," Houston Post, August 23, 1958, Section 3, 1.

Debating Dowling in a Changing Houston

Sixty years after the statue's unveiling, the Civil Rights Movement and school desegregation were changing Houston and African Americans were mobilizing new efforts to challenge racial injustice in the city and beyond. In 1965, for example, African Americans in Houston's Third Ward organized a "Century of Emancipation March and Parade." The parade, which ended at a local bank owned by African Americans, also served as a "symbol that we have awakened to our economic plight and intend to do something tangible" about it (1). Also symbolic was that the march proceeded down Dowling Street, which, despite being named after the Confederate hero, had become a cultural center for Houston's African American community. Dowling Street's musical venues hosted prominent rhythm and blues musicians like Ray Charles. By 1970, the People's Party II, a black nationalist organization modeled after the Black Panthers, had opened a local office on the street.

Concurrently, local historical groups, such as the the Harris County Historical Survey Committee, along with Confederate heritage groups, namely the United Daughters of the Confederacy, continued to promote a heroic image of Dowling. In 1966, Dowling's admirers sponsored a ceremony to mark the erection of a metal tablet from the Texas State Historical Survey Committee near his statue (2). The historic marker (which is no longer extant) gave a brief mention that Dowling was born in Ireland, and members of the Irish heritage group the Ancient Order of Hibernians were present at the ceremony. But the text of the tablet focused almost exclusively on Dowling's story as the leader in a "victory unparalleled in world history" and praised the lieutenant for turning back "15,000" soldiers who had come to "invade" Texas. These exaggerated descriptions of the Battle of Sabine Pass were a reproduction of the "Lost Cause" narratives about Dowling told by Confederates and Confederate veterans one hundred years prior, starting as early as the conclusion of the Civil War.

Sources

1. "Route of the 'Century of Emancipation March and Parade'." The Houston Forward Times, June 5, 1965. D5.

2. “Texas Will Dedicate Marker To Honor Sabine Pass Victory.” Houston Chronicle. Houston, TX, May 8, 1966, sec. 3.

Debating Dowling in a Changing Houston

The placement of a marker at Dowling's statue sprung partly from the increased public attention to the Civil War in the 1960s, but it also symbolized the continued conservatism of a state and city whose officials were resistant to federal Civil Rights legislation and court orders. As one of the largest segregated school systems in the nation in the 1950s, the Houston Independent School District initially responded slowly to the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling against segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. The district did not truly begin to integrate schools until 1970, when a federal judge ordered the district to integrate more rapidly. In the meantime, the struggle over school desegregation coincided with the naming of new schools after Confederate figures. In 1959, HISD opened a new middle school named after Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnson, which was followed in 1962 by the opening of a high school named after Robert E. Lee.

In the fall of 1968, less than six months after the assassination of Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., the Houston Independent School District also opened Richard W. "Dick" Dowling Middle School on the southside of Houston. Dowling joined other, older schools in the city named after Confederate leaders, including Jefferson Davis High School and Jackson Middle School (named after Stonewall Jackson). But this latest decision by the predominantly conservative school board to name a new school after a Confederate symbolized both the subtle and overt resistance of many Houstonians to the growing gains of the Civil Rights movement, like court-ordered school desegregation and the election of Houstonian Barbara Jordan as the first African American to serve in the state legislature since Reconstruction, two years before Dowling Middle School opened its doors. 

Debating Dowling in a Changing Houston

Through these changes, the Dowling statue remained a permanent fixture on the corner of Hermann Park, but attention to it dwindled further in the 1970s and 1980s. Physical care of the statue fell to Larry Miggins, a private citizen and member of the Ancient Order of the Hibernians who was interested in Dowling's history as an Irishman rather than his role in the Battle of Sabine Pass. Miggins worked to preserve the statue of Dowling each year on St. Patrick’s Day by cleaning its exterior with his family (1). The activity became a family tradition and started Miggins on a path toward devotion to the memory of Dowling. In 1989, Miggins gained an important ally in Ann Caraway Ivins, a genealogist and direct descendant of Dick Dowling who conducted extensive research about his life in Ireland and Houston. In 1989, Miggins and Ivins together formed the Dick Dowling Irish Heritage Society, which sponsored commemorative events about Dowling and began a campaign to restore the deteriorating monument and replace the historical marker (2).

By the 1990s, however, the Dick Dowling Irish Heritage Society faced an uphill battle in its attempts to raise public awareness about Dowling and the statue. A Houston Chronicle article about Ivins had to provide readers with basic information about Dowling, who, by 1997, was "just one more obscure historical figure" (3). In a city no longer dedicated to legal segregation of its schools and public spaces, efforts to recover Dowling's history also sparked more controversy than before. In 1997, while Ivins and other Dowling admirers petitioned the state for a new historical marker at Dowling's statue and made plans for a ceremony to rededicate the site, local African American poet Bob Lee launched a separate effort to change the name of Dowling Street because of the Confederacy's history of enslavement and racial oppression. A poem published by Lee at the time asked "Who is this Dick Dowling and what is he to you?  What is Adolf Hitler to the Jew?  Ask what is Custer to the Sioux?" (4)

Ivins sought to deflect controversy about Dowling by focusing on his Irish heritage and business ventures, rather than his achievements during the Civil War, and by claiming Dowling's Confederate service was not motivated by racial ideology but instead by a desire to defend his adopted home. By 1997, the decades of dramatic changes in Houston had made it more difficult to call attention to Dowling without confronting Houston's troubled history of slavery and racial segregation.

Sources

1. "The luck of the Irish," Houston Chronicle (March 16 1985), Section 1, pp. 29.

2. Houston Municipal Art Commission Records, box 2, folder 23, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library. View item.

3. Bob Tutt, "Hero of Sabine Pass buried, forgotten here in hometown," Houston Chronicle, September 2, 1997, 18A.

4. Siemssen, John. "The Name of the Road . . . Dowling Street," Public News, July 9, 1997, 16.

The Statue 1990s-2010s

For all intents and purposes, by 2011 Dick Dowling had been largely forgotten by most Houstonians, even though his statue has remained in the same spot for over fifty years. Recent commemorations of Dowling have not focused on his victory in the Battle of Sabine Pass or his history as a Confederate war hero. That memory has been confined to small groups of people since the cultural shift after the Civil Rights movement. There have been few, if any headlines since 1997 about Dowling as a prominent Houstonian Irishman. The Dick Dowling Irish Heritage Society in which Larry Miggins and Ann Caraway Ivins played leading roles appears to be defunct. Literally and figuratively, Dowling has come a long way from the front steps of City Hall.

Still, the last time the City of Houston took an active interest in Dowling was not so long ago. In 1996, the City worked with the Dick Dowling Irish Heritage Society and the Houston Municipal Arts Commission to complete an expensive cleaning and restoration of the statue. Funds came primarily from appropriations made by Congress's Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 for roadway beautification, and the project was led by the Texas branch of Save Outdoor Sculpture! (SOS!), a group dedicated to the preservation of historic public artworks. Additional restoration of the statue was completed by the City of Houston in 2009. (Click here for more information about the funding for the statue's restoration.)

As these projects suggest, however, today Dick Dowling is not usually noted publicly for who he was, but for the statue of him. The Dowling statue is the oldest civic monument in the city of Houston, and restoration efforts have focused on saving a piece of art by Frank Teich more than on retelling Dowling's story. Even the story that his most vocal admirers told about Dowling in the 1990s was different from the stories once told by Confederate veterans and Jefferson Davis. In her efforts to secure the City of Houston's help in restoring the statue, Ivins stressed Dowling's contributions to Houston as an Irish businessman before the Civil War, rather than focusing exclusively on the Battle of Sabine Pass and his role in preserving a Confederate Texas.

The Statue 1990s-2010s

This shift from the "gray" to the "green" in Dowling's story was especially evident in a ceremony held to rededicate the Dowling statue after its cleaning in 1996. Led by the Dick Dowling Irish Heritage Society and Larry Miggins, the ceremony was advertised as a "celebration of Irish heritage" (1). Irish elements filled the ceremony, from the playing of bag pipes, to traditional Irish dancing, a “strolling leprechaun,” and a lengthy speech by Dr. John A. Claffey, the president of the Old Tuam Society, who was flown to Houston from Ireland for the occasion. Claffey’s speech brushed past Dowling's role at the Battle of Sabine Pass, which he described as an "encounter," and instead discussed the historical conditions of Ireland in which Dowling was raised (2). While there was a military salute and the posting of the colors to Dowling performed by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, these elements were greatly overwhelmed in comparison to the amount of Irish elements (3).

This shift of emphasis was also evident in the new official Texas historical marker that was placed next to the statue in 1997, which was written primarily by Ann Caraway Ivins after an initial draft by a state historian (4, 5, 6). Unlike the previous historical marker, which focused exclusively on Dowling's victory at Sabine Pass, the new text introduced biographical details culled from research by Ivins and others that painted a picture of Dowling as a prominent businessman and Irish immigrant. Ivins revised the original text of the marker to note that his family emigrated from Tuam, Ireland to New Orleans after the Irish potato famine of 1846. The text also stressed that one of Dowling's three bars was "a prominent gathering place for Irish immigrants.” Ivins also emphasized Dowling's successful business ventures in Houston, revising the text from "his third Houston bar, 'The Bank of Bacchus,' opened in 1860," to "by 1860, he had owned three bars, installed Houston’s first gas lighting in his home and business, and was a charter member of Houston Hook and Ladder Co. No. 1."

These details added new layers to the public representation of Dick Dowling's story. But the original stories about Dowling's career as a Confederate soldier have never totally disappeared or been erased from the city's landscape. The historical marker that still stands by the statue misleadingly suggests that 27 ships and 5,000 Union troops entered Sabine Pass to face Dowling's guns, even though the vast majority of these ships and troops never entered the Pass and did not participate in the battle. For the first time, the 1997 marker also included a quote from the Confederate Congress praising Dowling's "brilliant" achievements at Sabine Pass, echoing Jefferson Davis's own assessments of the battle and the rhetoric of the "Lost Cause" narrative discussed previously.

Compared to the throngs of Houstonians who turned out to celebrate the statue's unveiling in 1905, the number of those dedicated to celebrating the original, Confederate versions of Dowling's stories is small. But the slow, steady decline of attention to Dowling and his statue also allowed elements of the oldest stories about Dowling to persist into the twenty-first century. Despite the many afterlives of Dowling, the multiple locations of his statue, and the different groups who have rallied to keep his memory alive, the story told by his statue and its historical marker still focuses attention on those aspects of the Battle of Sabine Pass that mattered most to Dowling's first admirers—most notably the large numbers Dowling faced and his skillful management of his men. Meanwhile, other aspects of the battle, like its place in the broader context of the Civil War and the reasons why Dowling and other Confederate Texans fought, have seldom been considered in public discussions of Dowling and his legacy.

Sources

1. Houston Municipal Art Commission Records, box 2, folder 27, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library. View item.

2. Dick Dowling Scrapbook Small Collection, SC1268-f1, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library. View item.

3. Houston Municipal Art Commission Records, box 2, folder 27, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library. View item.

4. Houston Municipal Art Commission Records, box 2, folder 24, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library. View item.

5. Houston Municipal Art Commission Records, box 2, folder 24, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library. View item.

6. Houston Municipal Art Commission Records, box 2, folder 24, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library. View item.

Statue Removal

The questions regarding Dowlings statue and the memory of Dick Dowling took a new turn in 2020. After the murder of George Floyd, a Houstonian who went to Yates High School in the Third Ward, by Minneapolis Minnesota policeman Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020, a series of racial protests against police violence began across the country. These protests, which have continued through the month of June, eventually moved away from a sole focus on police violence and towards a broader question of race relations in America, including the placement of Confederate monuments. Some monuments honoring Confederate soliders were forcibly removed by protesters. In response to these vast changes, the Dick Dowling statue was removed by the city of Houston on June 17, 2020. This was also done to honor the 155th Juneteenth, which fell on June 19, 2020, an important holiday that denotes the day the enslaved in Texas were told of their freedom at the conclusion of the Civil War, over two years and 5 months after the Emancipation Proclamation was annouced by President Abraham Lincoln.

As of October 2023, the city of Houston removed the statue from its official art collection list. The statue resides in the Houston Parks and Recreation Department facilities at 6500 Wheeler St., where it has lived since 2020.

Professor Caleb McDaniel wrote an opinion piece in the Houston Chronicle regarding the 2020 removal of the Dick Dowling monument available.