Inclusion of a dedication to the Union participants on the proposed monument in the 1899 legislation was controversial. Reflecting social attitudes present in the nation at the time, the UDC adopted a resolution calling for the repeal of the bill, as “they did not care to divide honors intended for the Confederate dead with negro dead of the Union army.” As one UDC representative stated, “If the union dead had been white men it is possible that we would have remembered them in the bill, but as they were negroes, and we ignored them in the bill, we consider the change made by the legislature as worthy of our highest indignation.”