As news outlets were shutting down for Thanksgiving, the University of North Carolina quietly gave white nationalists $2.5m to settle a lawsuit that hadn't even been filed

Nope. He was/is a custom job which is in part why the 190x Jim Crow Era Daughters had trouble raising the funds to get him made. UNC, at the time, paid the difference. That’s part of the argument that UDC never really owned him in the first place.

Establishing a Confederate monument at a Southern university became a goal of the North Carolina chapter of the [United Daughters of the Confederacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Daughters_of_the_Confederacy) (UDC) in 1907. UNC approved the group's request in 1908 and, with funding from UNC alumni, the UDC and the university, Wilson designed the statue, using a young Boston man as his model. At the unveiling on June 2, 1913, local industrialist and UNC Trustee [Julian Carr] gave a speech espousing [white supremacy] while Governor [Locke Craig] and UNC President [Francis Venable] and members of the [UDC] praised the sacrifices made by students who volunteered to fight for the Confederacy.
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