In 1938 the Sons of Confederate Veterans conveyed land on Henry Hill to the United States government for the creation of Manassas National Battlefield Park, with a stipulation requiring the National Park Service to permit Virginia to erect a monument to Confederate General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, who earned his nickname on Henry Hill at the First Battle of Manassas on July 21, 1861. Designed by sculptor Joseph Pollia, the monument presented a heroic Jackson with exaggerated physical features, intended to inspire a nation strained by economic depression and fearing descent into another world war. At its unveiling in August 1940, the keynote speaker urged military leaders to emulate the lessons of war taught and practiced by Jackson. The dedication perpetuated Lost Cause mythology by emphasizing Confederate valor while ignoring slavery as the central cause of the Civil War. Together with adjacent memorials from the same era honoring other Confederate leaders, the monument created a landscape of competing memory. As the federal government prepared to accept ownership of Henry Hill, adherents of the Lost Cause claimed the historical narrative of Manassas Battlefield, the site of two Southern victories. The Stonewall Jackson monument came to epitomize the complicated legacy of the park's creation and the preservation of the battlefield as a place of contested memory.